Johmbolaya This Is

Missing home more than I care to admit. (Photo taken from here)

Received a book earlier this week called Theatres Of Hawai’i, with stories and photos of movie theaters from back home, most of which are before my time.  Most of the theaters I went to as a kid are no longer there, or if they are there, they are either churches or retail stores that have nothing to do with movies.  I fondly remember the Empress, Cinerama, The Kuhio, Waikiki 1 & 2 and Waikiki 3, and of course drive-ins like the Kailua, the Waialae, the Royal Sunset in Waipahu, and of course the Kamehameha next to Pearlridge.

Before my time, there were neighborhood theaters, back when one of the primary functions were cartoons for the kids on Saturdays.  My mom has often talked about going to the Kaimuki Theater, paying 10 cents to be apart of the “Porky Pig Club” to watch a string of cartoons all morning.  Upon doing some research online, I discovered there was a movie theater not too far from where I lived.  It was the Liliha Theater, and when I heard about this, I though ‘what? Liliha had a movie theater? Really?” Doing some Google searches lead me to discover that its location is where the H-1 Freeway today.  It was up on the hill, and when demolished in 1962, a path was paved for the H1.

I couldn’t find a photo of the Liliha until I opened the book, and there it was.  Even though Hawai’i hasn’t been my place of residence for years, I still understand and respect the idea of the neighborhoods. That goes back to my mom’s time when living in Kaimuki meant you had to travel “very far” to go to Makiki, even though it was only a five mile drive.  Or that being in Nu’uanu meant having to travel to Waianae which may have felt like a chore, but it’s only 32 minutes away.  Still, it was nice to see a photo of the Liliha, in its simplistic yet bright glory.

Checkers and Pogo Poge were my childhood idols, the hosts of a very popular children’s show each weekday on KGMB.  They had their own “treehouse” (it was actually the KGMB studio) where kids could come in, watch cartoons, play games, and more.  Checkers & Pogo also had their own video segments including On The Go, and I remember this one made because Meadow Gold was often one of the primary brands of choices for dairy in Honolulu.  I think my family drove past this Meadow Gold plant every week, and I remember once walking past it and thinking “where are my ice cream sandwiches?” It did make me become more aware of the food that was made for public consumption.

While this video is not as good as the one where the camera man went to the Honolulu Zoo and was hit by a hippo, it still brings back a lot of memories. Oh, Checkers and Pogo, how I miss you.

This is the apartment building where I first had my first Spam musubi.  Kapi’olani Boulevard, across the Ala Wai Canal, around the block (or so) from Waikiki.

This is where my Uncle used to live with his then-girlfriend.  I had just finished my senior year in high school and this was a place to say for a week.  This place was very nice and it felt like a hotel, but on the bottom floor there was the apartment equivalent of a corner store.  My uncle had said “you ever tried one of these? It’s called a Spam musubi.”  Now, my family and I were no longer residents of Hawai’i any more, it had been four years since we were residents of the mainland, but returning home was a way for not only to “charge up” again, but also to get all of the good food we missed.

As I collected comic books back then and loved my magazines, I looked to this store to see what they had in stock.  I remember buying a comic or two, but don’t remember the names.  However, I had to see what this Spam musubi was.  Now, I grew up on Spam, so eating Spam was nothing new to me.  Eating rice, another “no brainer”.  But the thought of uniting them as one, solid meal was unheard of.  We went downstairs and these “Spam musubi” were individually wrapped in plastic.  We all bought one, and once we got upstairs, we had a bite.

Aiya.  So ono!

To me, it seemed like the perfect meal to have if one had to make the treacherous drive around the island.  It was made out of convenience, it was made for flavor, it was perfect.  A rice ball with a slice of Spam slapped on top of it, wrapped in a nori sheet?  That was it?  Perfection at its very best, and it could not have been made anywhere else but Hawai’i.  I think we probably ate one or two a day, without thought, as snacks.

Mid-July 2013 will mark 25 years since I had my first Spam musubi.  These days, people can (and do) make all types of (name your favorite meat)-musubi’s.  Portuguese sausage.  Vienna sausage.  Tonkatsu.  Teriyaki.  The possibilities are endless, and it probably originated by someone who looked in their kitchen and said “what we get? Eh, we get Spam.  We get rice.  We get nori sheet.  I no like crumble nori all ova my rice.  Shoots, I goin’ make this.”  I don’t know who operated that store at the bottom of this building, but to whomever it was at 2341 Kapi’olani Boulevard: mahalo nui to you.

This is the beast known as a Seeburg, the jukebox company.

I grew up when jukeboxes were still a primary means of listening to music in a group setting.  When I went to the dentist as a kid, there was a jukebox.  Pizza Hut: jukebox.  Breakfast at Alakea Grill, we could sit on our tables but was fully capable of selecting a song from our table to play.  I will never forget going to a Pizza Hut in 1985 and someone having the nerve to play USA For Africa’s “We Are The World”. It’s a good song, don’t get me wrong, but it seemed foolish to hear a song to help people in Africa when everyone was in the restaurant, consuming slices without a care in the world.

I’m pinpointing this Seeburg jukebox for a reason.  In my youth, my mom did her share of shopping and if it was the weekend, I’d have to tag along as my dad was probably hanging out with friends, fixing his car, or both.  We head to a section of Honolulu called Kaimuki, about four miles from where we lived.  After my mom did her shopping (probably at Woolworth or Kress, I don’t remember), we decided to have lunch at a restaurant on Waialae Avenue.  I think I had a burger, maybe a milk shake, but in my presence at this burger joint was a jukebox.  It was huge, it was massive, and it had that musky jukebox smell.  I had never seen a beast like this, where the mechanics inside made it possible to see a 45 rpm record be selected, filed out of the rack, flipped onto the record player, the needle mounting the record and boom: music.  I believe most of the jukeboxes I had experience with (and experience in this sense means “putting money inside, selecting a letter and number to pick out a song, and waiting) were enclosed, but this looked like it was from the 1950’s, maybe 1960’s.  I stood there, watching how the machine worked.  It was straight out of a Schoolhouse Rock cartoon where I was hanging out with the record machine, but I’m watching things move.  I was not foreign to stereos or record players at that age, but this was so cool to me.  I’d head back to the table, probably had a fry or two, sipped on a shake or soda or whatever I had, and went back to watching the Seeburg.  I don’t remember what song I selected or what songs were being played before I got there: I want to say that I remember the A&M label, and it might have been Captain & Tennille’s “Muskrat Love”, for some reason that sticks out in my mind.

We were probably at this restaurant for 15 minutes before we had to head back home, but I said that if there was ever a time in my life when I lived the good life, I would get myself a Seeburg jukebox that looked like or close to this.  Decades later, I’m still waiting for the day to have a jukebox like this.  I can dream, still.

Description for this photo said it was in Waikiki. Looks more like Kalihi or Manoa but… still very nice.

My love of old movie theaters existed even when they were around. I believe I found the origin of that love.

This is the cover to Led Zeppelin’s official live album, the soundtrack to the movie The Song Remains The Same.  The cover features an illustration of a dilapidated Ritz Theater, while the portrait in the background shows the Ritz in its heyday.  To me, it was a way to show “this is how it looks now, but it used to be a lively place”, and very much a place with life. This was an album my Uncle David had, and while I played his copies of II, III, (untitled 4th album), and Houses Of The Holy, I never touched this one.  The first time I heard it was when I bought the double-cassette in my pre-teens.

Many of my early movie theater experiences were in single screen rooms, in such Honolulu theaters as the Cinerama, the Empress, the Royal, the Kuhio, and the Waikiki 3, but there were also two screen theaters like the Marina and the Waikiki 1 & 2.  In my time, there was a theater multiplex in Pearlridge Shopping Center called the Pearlridge I, II, III & IV (very Pink Floyd there) but since the shopping center was “too far” from where I lived (I was under 13 years old and had no means of transportation other than my parents), I never went there.  The first time I entered a theater with more than two screens was when I moved to the mainland, and went to Clearwater Cinemas (three screens), Columbia Center Cinemas (three), the Uptown Theater (three), and Metro 4 Cinemas (four).

The point is that when I loved at this album cover, I wondered why it was created to describe the album.  Did it have anything to do with the music, the band, the music industry? What exactly? Yet there was a bit of charm in seeing a crumbling theater while its glory days was just a turn of the photo away.

I find myself reminiscing a bit on my Tumblr in order to see if my memories are there, or what I may come up with as I think of something.  I mention Hawai’i a lot because that’s where I’m from and while I do long for home, it hasn’t been my “current” home in a long time.  The longer away I am, the more I want to see what still exists as a means to not only keep these places in check, but to keep myself in check too. I want to know and see that I existed in these old hideouts. As for movie theaters, I think they’re like record stores in that they are/were places where one could go out and get their means of entertainment. I’m very much all about digital technology, downloading a movie file or streaming through Hulu, Netflix, or whatever means, but there’s still that sense of gathering, a bit of community that I long for as well because I, outside of my immediate family, don’t have that where I currently live.  The more I think it has to do with record stores and old movie theaters, the more I learn and realize it’s much more than that.  Maybe I equate a decaying building with a slowly decaying me, in that I’m getting older and I want to be able to enjoy as much of the life that I have left.  I want to write about these things that I experienced so others will know that these things existed.  These buildings, these songs, these albums, these record stores, these people.  Plus, I want to know about them all, what made them vibrant “in their time” and what lead to their demise.  Almost sounds like a metaphor for life.

California sunlight
sweet Calcutta rain
Honolulu star bright
the song remains the same

This is where I got off the #6 bus in downtown Honolulu. What I didn’t know until now: this is the Oregon Building.  As someone who lives in the Pacific Northwest and someone who’d like to move and live in Portland, this blows me away for a few reasons.

As much as I hung out in downtown Honolulu as a kid, either as someone who tagged along with my mom while shopping, or me in my pre-teen years when I’d roam around on my bike and hang out in record and comic book stores, I never really looked anywhere but forward, as in “let’s go into this store”.  As I’m looking back and having memories of certain things, I did a Google image search for this corner.  This is the corner of Hotel and Bishop Street.  Hotel Street used to be considered the “start” of downtown Honolulu, but one end was also known as “hooker haven”, at least until Hotel Street was closed.  This corner used to have a decent pancake restaurant called Jake’s, and we’d go there usually once a month, or maybe every two months.  They’d have silver dollar and half dollar pancakes, a concept I never heard of before because at home, we just had pancakes with no special names.  If my mom wanted to shop and we didn’t eat, we’d head into Jake’s.  The Bus #6 would stop right in front of its doors, and we’d head in, or we would go shopping at Kress store across the way and eat at Jake’s later.

The Oregon was apparently adjacent to a building I didn’t know was a separate building.  I just knew this place as having a great okazu.  You’ll see the building with the red roof.  This building, to my surprise, is apparently called the Portland Building.  They were twin buildings and according to this article, they were built in 1901 by two Pacific Northwest expatriates (keep in mind that Hawai’i was a “territory” of the United States, not a full on state yet), and it was build at what was the end of Bishop Street.  Today, Bishop goes all the way until the end of the harbor and the Aloha Tower Marketplace today, so once you were at the corner of Hotel and Bishop, you were also at the Portland and the Oregon.  Never was aware of this until a few minutes ago.

In the above photo, you’ll see a building behind the trees with yellow trim and windows.  On street level where the trees are now, that used to be the main bus stop for Hotel Street, and everyone who had to go home, from the Japanese old ladies to the Filipino city and county workers who finished a paint job, would catch it.  It was also the headquarters of a street preacher whose voice sounded amplified but wasn’t.  Trust me, I looked.  I remember him once saying “how ya doin’, my man?” and I’d say “I’m doing okay”.  He would continue to preach the gospel with an Afro that was as big as ?uestlove’s, and he would do it out of the kindness of his own heart, never requesting for money.  Anytime I’d get off the bus or walk across Hotel to get to the Alakea bus stop and parking garage (no longer there) to get back home, he would be there, guaranteed.

That building across the way with the yellow also had the Kress store adjacent to that, and I remember hanging out not only in the record section right at the front entrance, but on the bottom floor in the toy section.  I also had memories of having lunch in their diner, and also seeing school portfolios with The Rolling Stones on it, circa Some Girls.  But it was in the building across Kress, the one that was in what I call “porcelain blue” paint, that had the record store I wanted to work in, a store that used to be my mom’s spot when she was a teen, Music Box Records.

So, I’ve learned almost 30 years that two buildings I had been in and out of many times in my youth are called the Portland and the Oregon.

ADDITION: To give this corner a bit more perspective, here is a much older photo of what was called the “Oregon Block”.  Oddly enough, the portion of the building that says Oregon Block was demolished, and Bishop Street now runs through it.

Pu’unui Park. This used to be one of my dad’s favorite places to hang out with friends from his hanabata days.  It seemed every month or so, he’d head up there to hang out, and those friends would be there.  They would drink and smoke pakalolo, without a care in the world.  It was near the restrooms for the park, while the park would be attended by kids playing basketball, baseball, or whatever.  There was a playground next to the restrooms, and I’d play there, occasionally with my sister.  Yet my dad would visit it to get in touch with those he used to hang with, to keep in touch with those he grew up with.

That’s how it was.  I think these days, this restroom area would be monitored by neighborhood patrol or police, who would tell anyone hanging out to leave.  Or maybe not, I’d like to think that the old “local style” ways still remain but a part of me says it doesn’t anymore.  I admired the friendships my dad had because here was a man in his 30’s, still wanting to be with his old friends, or simply put: friends. It was always about that.  I admired that because I always wanted to have that: friends who I could rely on, even if it was to get me a loaf of bread from the corner store.  To “shoot the shit”.  I never got that chance, but I’d like to think had I stayed, I would have that.  I look back occasionally to see what I may have missed, but would I have had those experiences?  I didn’t want what my dad experienced, and I don’t think he’d want that either.  Most people in my family knew I was going to be my own person, even if that meant struggling with the obstacles of life that boils down to my own, sometimes not wise, decisions.

This is the apartment in Waikiki that my grandfather used to manage. It didn’t have a name as it does in this image from Google maps, but he lived and managed it in the 1970’s and early 80’s, so while I knew he worked at Pearl Harbor (he was an electrician), I also knew him as the manager.  The apartment was very “beachcomber”, but then again we were about a two minute walk from Waikiki Beach.

A few memories come to mind when I see this apartment:
1) He lived on the top floor, so to me, he was the king of the apartments.
2) Our entire family loves music, so my grandfather had a closet with a box full of old 45 rpm records, some of which came from his kids over the years, who lived there.  My uncle had lived in the apartment as well (he was in his teens) so while my uncle’s bedroom had the good albums (Pat Metheny, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin), the living room stereo would have all of my grandfather’s Hawaiian albums, maybe Perry Como.  But there would be that box of old 45’s, and I remember my uncle once saying “let’s throw these records like Frisbee’s to the apartment next door.  I did.  I’d throw them for the sole purpose of seeing them shatter.  I would never do that again after that.
3) In 1978, while watching Spiderman on Checkers & Pogo, my Auntie Tita (Linda) came over to say goodbye.  I didn’t know what for, but she was about to leave to the mainland.  Didn’t know why, but I thought she would be back.  She said she was getting married.  WHAT?!?  It was around 3:30pm or so, and I was depressed.  I then looked over the balcony and saw her drive-off.  I was down and out for the rest of the day.  At least until dinner.
4) The washing machine and dryer was in the garage, and it was for everyone in the apartment to use.  There was also a pay phone in the front.  In the late 70’s, there was a way to cut the tip of a pull tab from a can of soda or beer, wrap them up in masking tape, and be able to hack the phone or use the washer and dryer so it would make it seem like it was taking the coin.  My auntie also used to be able to tap the phone where you hang it up, click it a few times and be able to make long distance calls.  This lasted for a year or two before the phone company found out and changed all of the phones.
5) In my grandfather’s apartment, it was the first place I had macaroni in marinara, or what I called “spaghetti with macaroni”, and yes, I do realize that by definition, using macaroni means it’s not spaghetti.  It was also the first, and last time I tried frog legs. At least that’s what he told me they were.
6) It was also, through my uncle’s record, I first heard Aerosmith’s “Last Child”.
7) Depending on where I walked through the apartments, there was the smell of cigarettes, cockroach, old people, or “an enclosed area place”, what I used to call “a dusty corner”.
8) I used to skateboard a bit in the garage next door for the apartments, when a barber shop was in the store above it.  Those dingy, musty, and oily garages were great because the slopes/hills were smooth, and I could pretend I was Tony Alva when I wasn’t.  My uncle would go out to area pools and spots to skateboard with friends, but I was too youth for that.  I had garages.
9) Not sure if it’s still there, but when I could look over the balcony on Prince Edward Street, I was able to see the yard of the big house in front.  This is where all the party people hung out, so they would drink and smoke what seemed like all the time.

It was a cool spot in Waikiki because this was where the local people lived, it was a neighborhood that was not unlike Pauoa, Makiki, Kaimuki, or whatever.  I knew about some of the spots my auntie used to hang out at when she wanted weed, the strip club a boyfriend used to work at, and as a kid this was kind of thrilling to me.  Things also seemed so much bigger too.