StarBulletin.com

Kailua gets into the act with free hula shows


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POSTED: Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Hula for the community is coming to Kailua starting Thursday.

The Harold K.L. Castle Foundation and Kaneohe Ranch Management Ltd., a major area landowner and property management company, will sponsor free hula shows for the community from 6 to 7 p.m. every first, third and fifth Thursday outside California Pizza Kitchen—through the rest of the year.

All halau that perform in the Kainalu Plaza fountain courtyard will be from Kailua or Waimanalo.

“;We are thrilled to present this opportunity to the local halau hula,”; said Terry George, vice president and executive director of the foundation, in a statement. “;Designed as a gathering place ... this venue promises to be a delightful way to enjoy the cultural richness that Kailua and its people have to offer,”; George said.

The foundation sought the input and guidance of several Windward halau in designing the performance series.

The inaugural halau, performing Thursday, will be Halau Haa Hula o Kekau 'ilani na Pua Hala o Kailua, led by Kumu Hula Charlani Kalama. Other Kumu Hula whose halau will perform include Mapuana de Silva, Chinky Mahoe, Kaanohi Aipa, Wanda Akiu, Ada Enos, Lehua Carvalho, Ku Souza and Donna Sylvester.

The rest of the year is scheduled, save for two puka on Nov. 4 and Dec. 16.

It is naturally anticipated that drawing the community to the performance around the dinner hour will result in a rising tide of revenue for the dozens of nearby restaurants.

Hawaii snubbed

No Hawaii-centric websites are among the Google Inc. 1,000 most-visited websites. Not a one, per your columnist's fine-toothed-comb perusal. OK, it was really apple-F smart-key searching.

But what about Mahalo.com at No. 946? Nope. It's a search engine.

Not surprisingly, facebook.com is the most-visited URL on the Net with 540 million unique visitors and 570 billion page views.

Rounding out the top five were Web portal yahoo.com; search engine live.com; wikipedia.org, an online encyclopedia that users can edit; and Web portal msn.com.

Twitter.com, the microblogging social media site, is the No. 18 most-visited website, while contrary to popular belief, people do still go to myspace.com, which is the 26th-most-visited online site, just above apple.com.

The most-visited news site, according to Google, is a so-called niche publication, cnet.com, which focuses on technology news. It is No. 35, besting the British Broadcasting Co.'s bbc.co.uk, at No. 43.

Linkedin.com, the social media site perceived to be more for grown-ups in the professional world, is No. 56.

The top American news site is The New York Times at No. 83, well below social media sites but in the stratosphere compared with the No. 277 ranking of the Wall Street Journal's wsj.com.

The Internal Revenue Service Web site is the 288th most-visited website, which makes one wonder whether the execs at saucy Super Bowl advertiser godaddy.com, the No. 333-ranked domain registry service, are rethinking the ad budget.