Spirit of Aloha | Features | September/October 2002

Wow! Waikiki!
By: Martha Noyes

A revitalized Waikiki works the old magic with more greenery, more art, broader walkways, a graceful new bandstand and a restored history

I'm sitting on The Wall, the breakwater jutting out between Queen's Surf and Kuhio Beach. In front of me is the sea, blue water and white-edged waves. Beachboys steer outrigger canoes filled with visitors wildly paddling. Local folks and tourists play in the shallows and surfers catch the summer swells.

It's a weekday afternoon and Waikiki glistens in the
lowering sun. Behind me I hear the hoot of a monkey. It must be feeding time at the zoo.

I don't know how old the zoo is, but I do know that its first elephant was a gift from carnival impresario E.K. Fernandez. I remember her name-Daisy.

Daisy's gone now, and so are the many others, the people whose lives gave Waikiki the magic of memories and the delight of dreams. But the memories and dreams still live, renewed, reinvigorated and reclaimed by the renovated streets and parks and new site markers that name names and promise the riches of restored histories.

When I was in high school in the 1960s, my friends and I went to Waikiki often. We rode the waves, spied out the good-looking guys, and watched the summer coeds and winter tourists play. Visitors then no doubt saw us as we saw them-we the locals, exotic to visitors, and they, the visitors, exotic to us.

Waikiki was the "Gathering Place." It had been the Gathering Place for centuries before my friends and I were born, and it will be the Gathering Place long after we are gone.

A few years ago, Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris announced plans to improve Waikiki. The changes, Harris promised, would embrace history and the present, and Waikiki would be both Hawaiian and cosmopolitan.

I like this new Waikiki. It invites me and my friends and the friends of my friends. The sidewalks are broader. There's more greenery. There are new public showers and restrooms, more art, and renewed respect for Hawaiian history and culture.

Earlier today, I walked along Kalakaua Avenue from Ala Moana Boulevard to Kapi'olani Park. There's more green space, especially between Kalakaua and Fort DeRussy, and the green invites strolling. At the V-intersection of Kalakaua and Kuhio, there's a pocket park with a statue of David Kalakaua, the king of Hawai'i from 1874 to 1891.

It's nice to see him memorialized at the entrance to Waikiki. His family had homes and properties in the area, and the king entertained favored visitors there.

But the changes that make me feel the wow of Waikiki begin at Kuhio Beach.

The Wizard Stones stand on the beach near the sidewalk. They've stood there for about a hundred years, but they've been in Waikiki for a thousand years. They were moved to the beach from their first Waikiki home at the edge of 'ainahau-the estate of Kalakaua's niece, Princess Ka'iulani-where today the Princess Ka'iulani and Hyatt Regency Waikiki hotels are.

The stones were largely ignored, except by those who used them as backrests or pillows for napping. But now the stones are neatly set apart and a plaque makes reference to their legendary significance as the repository of mana from four mystical healers.

The statue of Duke Kahanamoku is nearby. To me, it represents not only Duke, but all the great Waikiki beachboys, past and present.

A hundred or so feet away is the new Hula Mound, the pa. Ceremonies and hula performed here are not limited to those designed for visitors. In May, for example, an afternoon-long musical memorial for one of Hawai'i's best-loved entertainers took place at the pa.

I was there for the event. The man it celebrated was my dear friend and hanai (adoptive) brother, Moe Keale. His childhood, adolescence and young adulthood centered on Waikiki. Before he was famous as an entertainer, he was a Waikiki beachboy. He always said he wanted a beachboy funeral. He got what he wanted.

The music ended before sunset. After a brief ceremony, family and friends in outrigger canoes and catamarans accompanied Moe's ashes out to sea. Near the reef, we were met by the great voyaging canoe Hawai'i Loa. Moe's wife and son gave his ashes to the sea.

We returned to the beach just as the sun prepared to set. Clouds had masked the sun all day, but as we left the canoes, the clouds in the northwest sky slipped away and the sun sat on the edge of the sea by Moe's beloved island of Ni'ihau.

It was a perfect day, a perfect beachboy memorial, in the perfect place.

It was weeks before the confluence of history and future, before the serendipity of place, people and time gathered meaning. When they did, the first thing I thought about was The Wall. For as many generations as The Wall has stood there, it has been a gathering place in the Gathering Place. It's where little children learn to surf, where fathers urge sons to challenge the waves, where boys and girls
discover beach and waves together, and it's a landmark,
a place to tell friends and family where to find you in Waikiki.

I end my walk at Kapi'olani Park and its new bandstand. Like almost everyone who grew up on O'ahu, I have a storehouse of personal memories associated with the old bandstand. But the new bandstand really is more attractive. The old one was massive, a concrete half-circle, sort of 1950s "modern." The new one replicates the architecture of a gentler time, a time when royalty ruled the Islands, when the well-heeled took tea on Victorian lanais and visitors to Hawai'i stayed for months. Time moved more slowly then.

When I walk the paths across the ponds and moats at the new bandstand, time really does seem to slow. The shallow water works like reflecting pools, inviting meditation and quiet daydreams.

This Waikiki welcomes everyone. Its arms are open wide, its heart is rooted in history, its spirit is renewed. This Waikiki endures as the Gathering Place.

Free-lance writer Martha Noyes is the author of "The Quality of Rain," which ran in the March/April 2002 issue of SPIRIT OF ALOHA. As a teenager, Noyes was once a Tanya Hawaiian Suntan Lotion Girl and rode up and down Kalakaua Avenue in the back of a convertible, tossing tubes of suntan lotion to tourists.

Features Archive