Zoo’s lookin’ good
for its ageTHE Outrigger Hotel people held their annual conference in Waikiki last week, and to celebrate the company's 50th year in business decided to get down and dirty to clean up the Honolulu Zoo, also celebrating its Golden Anniversary. Some 175 members of Outrigger's management team, including 20 from the mainland and international sales and marketing staff, joined in painting, cleaning, picking up trash, raking leaves, pulling weeds and planting plants at the Zoo, as a gesture of giving back to the local community where they work. Among those rolling up his sleeves was former "Poi Boy" Steve Nicolet, who now works with the company in Seattle. He had a ball playing old time music trivia with fellow former K-POI jock Tom Moffatt, now on 107.9FM. So if the Zoo looks particularly attractive these days, you have Outrigger in part to thanks ...
FORMER restaurateur George "Cas" Castagnola has long since given up his ladle in favor of a meter. Translation: He now drives a cab for a living, and works at his own pace. But he may go down as the first guy in history to lose $10 on the golf course when he doesn't even play golf. He dropped off a fare on Date Street the other night, gallantly opened the door for her, and as she handed him a ten and three ones for the trip, he watched helplessly as the ten-spot was blown out of his hands and onto the Ala Wai Golf Course. "Couldn't have been one of the ones," he groused ...
Swan song
FORMER Vice Consul of Italy in Hawaii Guido Salmaggi is now in his 80s, and boasts that he's sung the National Anthem for 10 presidents dating back to Roosevelt. For some reason he's missed Bill Clinton. Now he's ready to throw in the towel, and though he lives most of the year at his wife's home in Sarasota, Fla., he longs to sing the anthem for a final time and he wants to do it it in Hawaii. He's expressed the wish through channels to sing the anthem at the grand opening of the new Convention Center here, and promises if he's given the honor of doing that, it'll be his final rendition ...NORTH Shore residents were shocked to learn that as of the close of business Saturday night at the Chart House in Haleiwa, it was just that -- the close of business. For good. Word out there is that Bishop Estate wants too much of a rent hike. As if they don't have enough problems ... Tugman Steel owner Kathy Tugman, who has to be the most attractive owner of a steel company in Hawaii if not the U.S., took in "Tap Dogs" at the Hawaii Theatre. She enjoyed the show, but at its conclusion the uppermost thing on her mind -- unlike everyone else who saw the tap-dancing troupe -- was whether it was actual steel used in the construction site set or aluminum ... Richard Field was thrilled to find his R. Field Wine Co. named one of the top 75 retail wine merchants in the nation in Food & Wine magazine's "Official Wine Guide." ...
What if...?
THE new advertising theme Milici Valenti Ng Pack came up with for HMSA has a "What if?" theme, so where better to unveil the new spot using that theme but on last night's premiere of "X-Files." The spot has that other-worldly theme that implies contact with extra-terrestrials ... And Darrel Kloninger is the guy who came up with the spooky spot about Hepatitis B that is set in a graveyard. It gets home the fact that you don't have to be a drug user or practice unprotected sex to get the disease that kills. You might watch for it around the time the local ad industry has its next Pele Awards ...
Contact Dave by e-mail: donnelly@kestrok.com.