A financial windfall, in the form of some extraordinary sales on eBay, combined with free airfare, allowed Wifey and I to run off for a cheap week-long vacation in Oahu. I'd last visited there more than 20 years ago, and Wifey had never seen Hawaii, so it would be a new adventure for the both of us.
All through the trip, I kept making mental notes of things I'd want to blog about when I arrived home. Here they are; they are all impressions; they are based on observation, not research. The "why's" and "how comes" are unknown to me; all I can report is what I saw and surmise. If I'm off-base in my opinions, I apologise now -- but this is what I saw, processed through my experience, and regurgitated, without further analysis, for you to ponder here.
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Mankind, sadly, has brought nothing of significant value to Hawaii, and that includes the contributions of the Hawaiian people themselves. What culture these people once had may be well documented elsewhere, but for the casual tourist such as myself, the Hawaiians left little that have withstood the forces of Euro-American colonization and subsequent statehood. What remains seems to exist for the sole monetary benefit of the tourist industry.
Honolulu resembles several areas I have known well. The city center looks much like Long Beach; the suburbs and industrial areas could be anywhere in the San Fernando valley or Orange County, California. Hawaiian graffiti looks pretty much the same as it does elsewhere. Even the much-loved Aloha Tower, once a beacon to arriving steamships to the harbor, looks familiar to someone who has seen its virtual twin in San Francisco.
The only difference, and it is the best and greatest difference, is that Honolulu's streets are bathed in a brilliant tropical light, and swept with air that, if packaged, people the world over would gladly pay to breath.
And as for Waikiki, the very essence; the postcard representation of all Hawaii?
Waikiki's streets at night resemble a Las Vegas devoid of gaming, or a Hollywood Boulevard minus its star-strewn sidewalk. Tourists from Tokyo and Tacoma gamely make their way around the sidewalk performers banging out half-hearted tunes on drum kits, and black men, painted in silver, copy Michael Jackson's old robot maneuvers. Kids break-dance on cracked brick sidewalks, while artists of varying talent sketch portraits of visitors.
The street rumbles with fellows gunning rented Harley-Davidsons from one stop light to the next; jacked-up 4-by-4 pickups rumble by, blaring mainland ghetto rap; faux San Francisco-style cable cars shuttle Japanese tourists to hula shows, and an abundant cadre of police cruise by, oblivious to the hookers at their posts alongside the ATM machines.
Outside the city, on the windward side of the island, or as the locals call it, the "country," one has to wonder why Hawaii's own haven't tended to their paradise in better fashion. Ramshackle houses stand on short stilts, sharing small yards littered with broken boats and the hulks of Camaros and Cadillacs that have long succumbed to cancerous rust. Vacation homes built during the boom days of Hawaiian tourism show, if not neglect, an apathy of sorts, lacking fresh paint or fresh ideas. The real money has apparently moved to Maui.
Tourism dollars are never far from the Hawaiian heart. Years back, I remember visiting the Dole pineapple processing plant in Honolulu. It was a big, smelly factory, but it was fascinating and one could drink all the fresh pineapple juice you wanted for free. The water tower was shaped like a pineapple; it was a kitchy local landmark for decades.
Now, Dole has bulldozed the factory, and instead offers tourists a Disney-fied "plantation" out in the back-country. For around twenty bucks, you can ride the 'pineapple express' train through a field, walk through elaborate gardens, and get lost in what is supposedly the world's largest maze. What you won't find is any free pineapple juice. You can buy souvenirs, though, in their fully-stocked 'plantation' store.
Then there's the "Polynesian Cultural Center". The Mormons opened this attraction / amusement park decades ago as a way for students at their nearby university to pay for their tuition, so I'm told. Every bus tour goes there, and every tour book will tell you it's overrated. But, just like the young Mormon Elders you'll find knocking on your front door, you can run, but you can't hide, from either big religion or big tourism, especially in Hawaii.
Back in Honolulu, it being a good union town, with good politicians who know they must please the building trades, have graced their fair city and county with miles of roads that would amaze Europeans in their width and length, and, not one, but two sets of twin tunnels crossing the island. Soon, three billion dollars will be spent on steel-rail mass transit for a community that didn't have but three miles of freeway 30 years ago.
Dozens of road crews constantly find reasons to tear up tarmac and lay down fresh material; Swarms of men in orange jackets and hard hats trim miles of parkway with weed-whackers.
The men in orange gamely mow around the squatters who litter the parks along the western end of the island, over where the tour buses don't travel. Though clearly posted that camping is not permitted, people have moved in with as much permanence as can be afforded with tents and tarps and the cast-off detritus of Hawaiian-American life.
Farther up the road, in the low trees that edge the shore, old Chevy vans, having traveled their last mile, hunker down in the sand. Tarps and plywood spread wing-like their rusty bodies, forming the core of a modern, not-so-transient life.
Then there's the ever-present military. The words "Pearl Harbor" alone give the rationale why we need a strong military presence at this outpost halfway across the Pacific; but does each branch need it's own base, it's own airfield, it's own roads and gates and barracks and mile upon square mile of land? How odd, with round after round of base closures, no General ever wants to give up their piece of paradise?
Only the things that man has not touched still inspire. The mountains soar straight up, vividly green, jaggedly edged, like spear points or axe heads. Forests of amazingly broad, graceful trees form a canopy for fern and palm and a hundred other plants, rich with the vigor of life. The soil itself, so impossibly rich and red, provides exact contrast to the foliage, and the ocean, warm and energetic, surrounds it all; an embryonic fluid surrounding a fetus with a volcanic father.
What man has brought to Hawaii, it has brought everywhere in the name of commerce, of profit, of exploitation and dominance. They are mankind's lowest common denominator. Nature gives way easily to these, but I suspect that some day, not today or tomorrow, but someday, nature will take back what is rightfully hers, and make things right.
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