Hawaii classic or dud

does super cub still post?

kinda weird we never met.

Hi Jersey Al and everyone. Yes, I've lived here in Honolulu for most of the last 20 years

classic: obviously the amazing weather, esp. the tradewinds, natural splendor everywhere, all the activities that go with it year-round; also the great diversity of cultures, tons of great restaurants, hawaiian pidgin english, dole whip, island hopping, localism

dud: obscene housing costs, ongoing homelessness and houselessness crises, corporate overthrow of indigenous monarchy & disenfranchisement of native population, traffic like LA, localism

commercial island hopping just about as obscene as housing, these days, now that there's only one airline and it's saved itself from the ferry.

i grew up in this town and have recently returned; it must be growing because the traffic is much worse and the bayfront much bourgier than it was before i left, tho land on this side of the island can still be got startlingly cheap if you don't need too spectacular a view. kohala, across the mountains--ranch country, brambly coasts, smauglike desolation--is where i lived when i was little and i think it is the most beautiful place in the world and i want to make a western there.

was a fascinatingly successful civ pre-contact, w a very high population sustained in something better than feudal poverty despite tiny land availability and almost absolute isolation. the socioeconomic and religious modes and practices that enabled this success (not to mention various species of trees) were of course obliterated by capitalism+xtianity+freedom but i recommend their study to commies. 19c hawaiian history an absolutely riveting tragedy in which the country, thru some kind of underdog bismarckism, heroically preserves its independence in the face of every hungry empire on the planet while simultaneously being slowly seized from within by the anchor-baby descendents of the missionary generation, who buy up the islands for sugar, open free trade with the u.s. in exchange for founding a long tradition of giving it bits of them to blow up (or for other countries to blow up), and finally stage a coup.

oahu's koolau range just unutterably gorgeous.

(after the western, a fantasy epic.)

also gorgeous btw: "tiny bubbles". i teched a show last year called A CENTURY OF HAPA-HAOLE SONGS and when don ho finally came along after two only occasionally interrupted hours of tin pan alley hacks writing waka-hiki-hoki stuff about how yr definitely gonna get laid my hair stood up every time. a beautiful vision of peace. of course what i ended up singing for a month was "o'brien is tryin to learn to talk hawaiian" ("for his honolu lulu").

difficult listening hour otm about everything.

btw i have a little radio show and would like to do an occasional 'difficult listening hour', if you wouldn't mind me using the name. :)

all queries should be directed to laurie anderson

davey are you on ktuh? prob heard you from my hnl friend's car at some point. gr80 one of the few ilxors i've met; wish his camera still haunted waikiki. last time i visted oahu i saw screaming females at downbeat lounge with maybe 85 moshing teenagers and my best friend since kindergarten and thought huh maybe i should die here.

didn't realize it was a laurie anderson piece. heh.

my girlfriend was mad at me for missing the screaming females shows because apparently they were awesome, but i was exhausted from work when they were in town. yes, i'm on KTUH on friday nights 6-9pm. i play at downbeat lounge every month, too, which ranges from amazing to terrible because it's all random people who show up for the chinatown art walk / first fridays.

i miss gr80 and all the fun parties we used to go to and dj together. gonna try to visit him and some family in chicago this year.

yes, i'm on KTUH on friday nights 6-9pm. i play at downbeat lounge every month, too, which ranges from amazing to terrible because it's all random people who show up for the chinatown art walk / first fridays.

will listen 4 u next time! kind of an effortlessly cool town; after the show we got burgers and when we got back in the car screaming females were live in-studio on ktuh.

I once had a late-night loco moco at the Downbeat on a first Friday.

i had a mid-afternoon loco moco (portagee sausage variant) at cafe 100 yesterday. gotta cut that out. dunno how i ingested as many as i did in high school and lived.

wtf I had no idea dlh lived in Hilo. I have an aunt in South Kohala, we visited a couple years ago and are likely to go again next year...

well dlh used to hail from Portland, so there's that

I miss super cub, good poster

I really like the Big Island. I have some friends in Lower Puna and try to get over every other year. So see you guys next year, I guess!

yeah i was in portland about eight years.

any ilxors visiting the big island should def hit me up! it's not really that big an island.

hawaii and honolulu in particular are thrilling in the ways in which you end up rubbing up against so many different cultures and backgrounds and ethnicities all crammed in to such a relatively small space compared to the metropolises that usually produce such diversity. i always felt this uneasy mix of delight and fatigue living in a place defined by its insiders and outsiders or its natives and transplants. and among the outsiders this common bond of all being transplants drawn to the same place not because of industry or culture but just out of some kind of idea of paradise

grady otm. though i just came because my family moved here. it was a big culture shock, but now i think it's kind of a good thing that locals scare off plenty of the more thin-skinned people who transplant themselves to hawaii. you have to earn your acceptance here, and it keeps the place from becoming another california.

there will never be another california

because california is awesome

I was really surprised when we got over to my aunt's place in Kohala, I was like "what are these fields of wavy grass doing on top of this volcano"

i love california too. but i'm glad hawaii is distinct from it demographically is all.

ecologically we're pretty different of course. one thing i love is exploring the new land created by the volcanic flows around Kalapana. last time i went, that wavy grass was just sprouting up in patches through the lava rock. felt like being on the moon, but with the ocean right there.

oh man we drove the 137 when we were there, that stretch of rocky lava coastline is insane

being able to stand on land that didn't exist when you were born is a trip

yes! that highway is a beautiful stretch in spite of the many angry hippies who inhabit puna. the hot spring at ahalanui park down in that area is great, too. it's the only one in the state, which is kind of surprising considering that japan has about 7000 of them.

fun fact: just last year, the lava flow nearly destroyed the old hippie town of pahoa. it came as near as 100 yards of the main drag, then petered out for the most part. everyone was talking about it.

yeah we stayed near Pahoa when we were there, so when I heard about that and I checked some videos of the lava flowing - it's kinda funny what a slow-motion disaster that was, like no one could stop it but it moved at a snail's pace.

definitely angry hippies in Puna, I felt like we were perpetually on the verge of becoming very unwelcome visitors to someone's clandestine weed farm

the best, weirdest kind of natural disaster: ultra-slow-motion, daily headline updates (5 yards closer!), simultaneously of almost no danger to human life and totally impossible to stop from destroying an entire town -- xp

in hilo the derogatory term for hippie (besides "hippie") is "punatic"

hahaha that's classic

yeah there was something very *Hawaiian* about the lava flow. People just standing around looking at this stuff crawling forward, "huh well nothing we can do about it. shit, there goes the corner store"

if can can if no can no can

xp hehe 'punatic'. man, it's a pretty hardscrabble life, subsisting on the organic farm. i stayed on one in puna for a couple nights. to make a long story short, i wouldn't recommend it and i can understand where the anger and disillusionment comes from.

bumbye you going learn you bettah get one edumacation and one job.

from what I've seen the big island (and most of the other islands I've been to tbh) don't seem v conducive to farming in general

quite rich soil in places, like the hamakua coast, but yeah there's not a lot of soil compared to a continent, and most of this island is the dry stuff full of lava particles that i think needs a lot of coaxing to grow much except ohia and jurassic park ferns (this is the soil they grow the coffee in, and the mac nuts -- not exactly subsistence crops). another reason the pre-contact population is impressive. when i was seven another serious problem with the soil was the zero possibility of dinosaurs.

classic

Dud: Idiot travel writers coming to confirm their biases, disregard the history of the place, and paint the people who live here with broad-brush stereotypes. You might not expect the NYT to publish something that reductive and ignorant, but there it is: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/magazine/hawaii-travels-escape.html

headed to aunt's place on the big island at the end of June!

The lava flows have been going crazy lately. Should still be a great time to go see it by boat or on foot when you're here :)

I'm idly curious to see the destruction wrought by the lava in Pahoa since the last time we were there. dunno if we'll get around to where the lava's actually hitting the ocean in the south (assuming that's still going on)

I didn't get a chance to take one when I visited last year, but I've heard good things about the guided lava tours around the Pahoa area, in case you'd like to seek them out.

Most tourist destinations attract tourists because they are naturally attractive places, which is classic. But tourists generate their own atmosphere and where they congregate in the greatest numbers suffers degradation in proportion. This is like a law of the universe.

I'll keep it in mind, at the moment we just bought our plane tickets and are trying to figure out where to stay next. We'll be there for 8 days, I think, with half of that spent at my aunt's in Kohala, but I think the other four days we'll probably stay somewhere near Hilo, idk have to look around

xp

As for places around Hilo, I would try to stay in the Volcanoes National Park area b/c that is forever my favorite natural place in the islands. Note sure if that's too distant from Hilo for you tho, it depends on your itinerary.

xp Agree that tourism inevitably is exploitative.

You might not expect the NYT to publish something that reductive and ignorant

isn't that basically what they do about everything, including their local coverage? IIRC we have a few threads on it

maybe just need a rolling "NYT is dumb #6590728340 in a series" thread

I'd like to visit hawaii one day though.

You're probably right. I've only read their more journalistic news stuff, not so much the lifestyle stuff. Anyway you should come visit some time.

shakey - highly recommend a day trip to Waipio Valley:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waipio_Valley

http://www.hawaiimagazine.com/content/rare-look-waipio-valley-hawaii-island

one of the weirdest and most beautiful places i've ever been to.

there are feral horses walking around!

Arriving on big island today huzzah

a-looooooooooooooo-ha!

Super nice weather on Oahu today! So I went on the Hanauma Bay Ridge Hike and snapped this photo.

http://i.imgur.com/ltKDi4Jl.jpg

Hope you'll be getting similar weather on the Big Isle :)

why do people bring their fucking drones to the beach, on vacation WHY

happened twice, immediately cast about for a rock to throw both times