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April 3, 2011
Hawaii Day 9 - Nuff Hotels Already
Gate 9
I'm sweating profusely in an open air terminal at Kailua-Kona Airport. Somewhere, a sign says Gate 9, but it's a fair way down there and I can't be sure I'm in the right line. There are no signs that say "Hawaiian Airlines Flight So-and-so to Honolulu". Nothing like that. Just some flowered trees and sweaty tourists loafing about in the shade.
I spy a guy near me. He must work for the airlines out on the tarmac. He's dressed that way anyhow.
"It's a hot one out there today, huh bud?"
"Yeah, it is." he laments.
And then his voice trails off and I know he hates me.
I'm wearing fifteen grand of Canon and deep down, I know he wants to kill me. Wants to hack me to pieces with a machete and dump my body into the churning surf on the leeward side of the island.
I didn't mean to rub it in. I really didn't. Just making idle chit chat, in my mind anyway. But he wants to kill me. This much is clear.
Nuff Hotels Already
On the North Shore of Oahu, along King Kamehameha highway, a hand made sign reads "Nuff Hotels Already".
The truth about Hawaii is that everyone on the island hates tourists. They despise us, as surely as they rue the mongoose, boar, and gecko. Of this, there can be no dispute.
The only jobs in Hawaii are a) working for the government or b) catering to the tourist trade. So, working for the government is obviously not something most people would find rewarding. But catering to tourists, is probably even less desirable.
I once worked in Orlando and I asked my boss what it was like to live there. He said it was awful because, no matter where you went after work, everyone else seemed to be on this perpetual vacation. Spending lavishly. Drinking. Dining. Blowing through money like water. When you're an average guy, working during the week, and living for the weekends, this is almost intolerable. To see everyone around you constantly vacationing and living the high life must be somewhat disillusioning, if not depressing.
Now, that was in Orlando. Where every redneck with enough cash to buy a tank of gas can get to for the weekend. Imagine what it's like in Hawaii. In general, the people flying out here aren't exactly poor. They're probably considerably better off, as a general rule, than your average Disney miscreant.
Christine, my roomie in the flat on Russian Hill in San Francisco, she tells a story about a friend of hers...a white guy...they call the whites haoles ("pronounced "howlies") out here...well he came out here to Hawaii and he smarted off to a couple of mokes (mokes are big dumb Hawaiian dudes that you don't want to smart off to) and they beat him so badly that the doctors didn't know what to do with his face. Without photos, it was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle without the benefit of the picture on the box. So they called his family and asked them to fax pictures of his face from the mainland so they had a target to shoot for. You think I'm making this up, but I'm not. Christine tells me that It happened to her friend. And that the guy's alive, but not quite right since the incident. Christine told me this story when we went to Mel's Diner on Van Ness several years ago on a date that I remember, but somehow she fails to recall.
Waikiki
Jen and I fly from Kona to Honolulu and this is where it begins. This is where everything starts to spiral back to normalcy. I'm now deep in the pocket of this airline ride that goes Kona - Honolulu - Phoenix - Denver - San Francisco. Right? I've flown more this year than most airline pilots, I'm pretty sure.
So we land in Honolulu and some poor soul is trying to rent a jeep at a rental car place and I tell him..."dude...you can't imagine how hard it is to figure out how to put that top up on the 2011 Jeep. Seriously."
I mean...you try to warn people about these things. To no avail, of course. But you have to try, right? It's the humane thing to do. The top was designed by Rube Goldberg for Christ's sake.
Of course, once I mention this, they hand him a 9 page xeroxed document with photos explaining how to take the top down and put it back up, something no one bothered to offer me when I rented the miserable Jeep last week.
So we rent our car and check into a hotel in Waikiki and always, always, always they stick me in the worst room in the hotel. Maybe it's my "Hang Loose" cowboy hat with the big gaping hole in it. Maybe it's my accent. Who knows? But something about me says "Sucker Punch Me" and they put me in Room 511 and it's literally behind the elevator and beside the wiring closet, with a view of the alley out back. Seriously. But I just don't even care anymore. It's for one night. What's the diff?
Jen and I walk down to the main drag and down the beach a bit. I show her the Outrigger hotel, the statue of Duke next to the police substation, and we watch some hula dancers on the beach. Then I drag her down Kalakaua Avenue and through the International Marketplace.
The whole time, I've got my eyes out for the whores of Waikiki. At night, they come out like Formosan termites and stalk the tourists along the Kalakaua.
I seriously want to show her how some people end up, surviving on meth and prostitution - turning tricks in front of the police substation. To warn her that life is full of dead ends and you have to walk the straight and narrow or you might end up in a very bad place.
You think I'm making this up, but I'm not. This is what goes on here in Honolulu. The Japanese mafia (Yakuza) controls the drugs and prostitution on this island and the police just look the other way. Why? I don't know. But that's how it is here.
But the whores aren't out yet so I take her for ice cream at this spot I used to hit when I lived in Waikiki, only when I get there, everything's changed. There used to be a store here, I'm pretty sure..where they served ice cream by the scoop. That's how I remember it anyway. Only now, everything's changed and, instead of my ice cream store, it's a just another generic tourist shop and I know Jen thinks I'm off my rocker.
She doesn't say anything...that's not her style. She wouldn't call me out on it. But she wonders if her old man isn't on the wrong corner. There is that doubt in the corner of her eyes. You can see that in there, certainly.
And the thing about this past is that, once it's gone, it's gone. And it lives on only in the memories of those who are still alive. So, there's no real way to prove that this place used to sell ice cream. It's not like that really. That's not how it works. Only you can try to find someone else that saw it there. That can confirm that there was once, indeed, an ice cream bar here.
So I ask one of the worker bees there..."how long has this store been here?"
Now, the problem about being on the Pacific Rim is that there are so many asians. And, although there's nothing inherently wrong with asians, I can't tell what they're saying. I'm around hispanics enough to where I can pretty much communicate adequately with them in Spanish.
But with the asians, this is not possible. They speak too many different languages. They didn't benefit from the conquistadors like the people in central and south america. So, you can't really know if they speak Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. It's a lost cause.
And their English is tough. I don't get their English, of course. Just not at all. And if they speak in their native language, I start having flashbacks, and I wasn't even in Vietnam, but it makes me want to start spraying a machine gun and tossing grenades. But I digress.
She goes and gets her manager.
"How long this been here?" she asks her manager.
"How long?" her manager mulls this over. She doesn't understand the question.
"What year?" I ask, thinking this might break the mental log-jam.
"Oh. Tree or foe years," she announces.
"What was here before?"
"restorant."
"Did they have an icecream bar?"
"Ice cream over here. Yes."
So, I'm not insane. Or, maybe that doesn't prove it either way. But it helps me. These little things do.
We come back to the hotel and, as we come into the hotel, a guy with a lot of tattoos falls in with us and walks with us and stands with us at the elevator. Jennifer pushes the button and when the elevator opens, she starts for the elevator but I call her back.
"Wait a minute. Come here. I want to show you something."
And the heavily tattooed guy gets on the elevator and disappears.
"Did you see how that guy walked up with us? He fell in with us as we entered the hotel. So that anyone that saw us would assume the 3 of us were together. But we weren't together. I don't know him from Adam. I didn't like that."
"Oh," she says. 'OK."
"We'll take the next elevator. It's not a big deal. Probably it was nothing. But you have to trust your instincts. Most people tell you that we're all the same and 'can't we all just get along', but we're not all the same. And we can't all just get along. That's not reality."
"The true reality is that there are some very bad people out there in the world. You've got to learn to trust your instincts."
"People wonder how it is that I've managed to go through Mexico, Peru, and Cuba and somehow slither back into the United State in one piece, but a big part of it is trusting your instincts."
"If something inside of you warns you about someone, for any reason, you've got to listen to your instincts. Maybe the guy is Black. Maybe he's Mexican. Maybe he's covered in tattoos. It doesn't matter. This isn't about being politically correct. It's about your safety. If you see something you don't like, you walk away. That's all. You got it?"
"Yes sir."
Update: FYI, I'm posting this using Jennifer's laptop. Mine is shut down and inoperable. Will attempt to have data retrieved on it in San Francisco on Tuesday. Am currently out 2 cameras, one laptop, one GPS. Down to my last functioning camera. Fingers crossed that it holds out for one more day. Power went out at the house in Colorado, but the neighbors were nice enough to reboot my servers when the power was restored.
Posted by Rob Kiser on April 3, 2011 at 1:18 AM
Comments
"So we rent our car and check into a hotel in Waikiki and always, always, always they stick me in the worst room in the hotel. Maybe it's my "Hang Loose" cowboy hat with the big gaping hole in it. Maybe it's my accent. Who knows? But something about me says "Sucker Punch Me" and they put me in Room 511"
At least it wasn't Room 101.
Posted by: Winston Smith on April 3, 2011 at 7:03 AM
Ha. Good one. That's a fair point.
Posted by: Rob Kiser 
on April 3, 2011 at 7:20 PM