Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Under the Hula Moon | March/April 2006

Under the Hula Moon
By: JOCELYN FUJII

CHINATOWN GETS Funky

Photo: Brett Uprichard

Everyone has a favorite experience in Honolulu’s Chinatown. For some old-timers, it’s images of Trixie Buttons, Lovey Lavender and Candy Baby twirling their pasties at the old Club Hubba Hubba, or posing for photos with bras painted on back when nudity was illegal. For others, it’s fitting into a cheongsam at Lai Fong, finding the perfect fresh mullet at O‘ahu Market or getting their first “Mom” at Sharkey’s Tattoo.

My memorable moment occurred in January, at a birthday luncheon for a friend at 2 Couture, the fashion studio and style salon of Eric Chandler and Takeo (photo, below), located on Nu‘uanu Avenue. The guest of honor was led there blindfolded—quite a spectacle on Nu‘uanu Avenue—and the unveiling made all of us, not just her, gasp.

We walked three flights up the stairway of an old brick building and stepped through a doorway to behold, under 30-foot ceilings, an Air Moloka‘i DC-3. This old warhorse had been installed through a hole in the ceiling during renovations in 1988.

We five women strode up the ramp, seated ourselves in the cabin and were served Champagne by artist Roy Venters, the unofficial mayor of the Chinatown arts district. Outside the cabin, the salon space gleamed. Natural light illuminated the gold threads of Tibetan monks’ vests, necklaces of humongous amber beads, centuries-old Tibetan thangkas, custom-made gold cherubs, Japanese kimono and eclectic treasures from around the world. A mannequin wore Takeo’s latest creation, a sliver of a red gown, and a “white painting”—a lavish Italianate gold frame over a patch of blank white wall—added a brilliant irony to the scene.

Holy hubba-hubba! “This is Chinatown?” we gushed, incredulous.

That day made me realize that even the savviest Islanders have yet to discover untold jewels in the nooks and crannies of this spirited community. Immigrants and artists, business people and the homeless, rich and poor, police officers and the demimonde—they’re all in this hub of diversity bordered by Nu‘uanu Avenue, River Street, Nimitz Highway and Beretania Street.

At the makai end of Chinatown is O‘ahu Market, established in 1904, the oldest continuously operating open market. In the mid-1980s, when the building was about to be sold, its 25 original vendors formed a corporation and became shareholder tenants. One of them, now retired, recalls how she’d arrive for work at 2:30 in the morning, struggling with her weighty goods on the loading ramp.

“We had people in the streets then, too,” she says. “In those days, we used to call them bums. They used to wait to help. ‘Sistah, sistah, you need help?’ They’d help and I’d give them a bag of fish. Nowadays, they don’t want to help, they want cold cash and, if you don’t give them cash, they get mad at you.”

It is a painful dichotomy. While many want Chinatown “cleaned up,” no one wants it sanitized, homogenized beyond recognition. Diversity is its soul. It’s the immigrant business incubator, not predominantly Chinese anymore, but a mix of Vietnamese, Laotian, Thai, Cambodian and a growing Micronesian population. Each group brings its traditions to the table in an ever-evolving cultural stew.

With nighttime First Friday gallery walks attracting attention and new business growth (five businesses on Hotel Street opened within a year), concerns about gentrification are real and complex. Some want a place like New York’s SoHo, once low-rent, now gentrified; others fly into a panic at the mere mention of the name. Artists like Venters, who has lived in Chinatown since 1996, and the First Friday organizers at ARTS at Marks Garage, deal with this conundrum daily. While tirelessly promoting Chinatown, they know they run the risk of becoming victims of their own success, displaced by greedy landlords and the rising rents of the very community they have popularized.

That fear haunts me, too, even as an outsider. As I tuck into pot stickers at Little Village, order lunch at the Napa-esque Grand Café, or marvel at a DC-3 parked in a penthouse studio, I know that Chinatown, with its gritty, colorful diversity, is the urban equivalent of our shorelines—not just worth protecting, but essential to who we are.                                                                                                    

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