Hawaii’s World
PERHAPS the most rhapsodic writer ever to describe Hawaii was Mark Twain, who island-hopped for four months in 1866. He was only 31 then but kept up his idyllic descriptions of balmy airs, seas flashing, garlanded crags, leaping cascades, plumy palms and remote summits until his death in 1910. Updating Hawaii’s
bests and worsts"The loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean," was one of his late-life word pictures.
Back in 1976 I traveled all the islands, asking myself what Twain would say of modern Hawaii. Many things might offend him, I concluded, but he might find improvements such as lava patches made green by irrigation for golf courses, sugar and pineapple, hillsides twinkling with home lights at night.
I listed what I considered our "bests" and "worsts."
My BESTS included downtown Honolulu in general, Honolulu Financial Plaza in particular; the resorts of Kaanapali and Wailea on Maui; well-planned Mililani Town and Hawaii Kai on Oahu, Mauna Kea Beach Resort, Queen Emma Gardens Apartments in Honolulu, Ala Moana Shopping Center, Polynesian Cultural Center, the Kauai Surf Hotel on Nawiliwili Bay, the eucalyptus tree road tunnel near Koloa, Kauai; a fun, yuppified Front Street, Lahaina.
My WORSTS fingered Oahu's walls of concrete, overbuilt resorts at Kihei and Napili, Maui; the Big Island's speculative raw lava subdivisions, ugly walk-up apartments in Honolulu, overhead roadside wires, the USS Arizona Memorial because its visitors center was so shabby, the University of Hawaii's hodge-podge Manoa campus, building overload in Waikiki, most particularly on Lewers Street; ditto overload at Kailua-Kona; Makaha, Oahu, apartments blocking ocean views and too close to the sea, Wahiawa's barren main street.
I gave the Sheraton-Waikiki Hotel a worst/best award for being far too big but doing it about as gracefully as possible with its pinwheel wings.
I haven't scoured the state in 1999 with the thoroughness I attempted in 1976 but my impression is of significant changes for the better, but not enough, and fewer for the worse.
BETTER -- Planting along the Ala Wai, the Hawaii Convention Center, the magnificent park-like redevelopment of Fort DeRussy, Hilton Hawaiian Village's demonstration of how to have both more rooms and greater attractiveness, the new Aloha Tower Marketplace, Chinatown upgrading, an attractive new visitor facility at the Arizona Memorial and the battleship Missouri now nearby as a historic bookend for World War II, H-3's opening of beautiful Halawa Valley, UH's new Kapiolani Community College campus, a bypass highway making Haleiwa, Oahu, more visitor friendly, ditto for bypasses of Kihei and Napili on Maui, the new Kauai Hyatt resort and upgrade of Sheraton-Poipu not far away, Koele Lodge on Lanai, an improved Hilo shopping waterfront.
WORSE -- Abandoned sugar and pineapple fields not fully replaced by diversified agriculture, Ala Moana Center add-ons that haven't added charm (though Neiman-Marcus has), Kamehameha Highway where it becomes "Main Street" for both Wahiawa and Kaneohe, overall weariness in Waikiki and at Kaanapali, two still unreconstructed hurricane-battered hotels on Kauai and setbacks at Nawiliwili's resort.
Pluses mostly reflect better development controls. Minuses emphasize an economy too depressed to afford upgrading. A return to prosperity could make Hawaii a place Mark Twain might like better or dislike less.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.