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Residents might
make their marks on
Kaimuki sidewalks

Hand, footprints would be
'something they can leave
behind of themselves'

---

By Leila Fujimori
Star-Bulletin

Hand- and footprints with inscriptions of Kaimuki residents may one day adorn Waialae Avenue sidewalks, a la Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

It's one of a couple of novel ideas to spruce up Waialae Avenue, which dates back to the 1930s.

In 1938, Tuck Yee Yap, a Kaimuki citizen, hand-wrote in the wet cement of the sidewalk at the corner of Waialae and Koko Head, "A dream come true." The inscription remains there in front of Azteca Mexican Restaurant.

"There's precedence here for writing in the sidewalk: this testimonial of a Kaimuki citizen that the mayor helped build the town of Kaimuki," said contractor Alan Fujimori, who came up with the idea.

Plans are already before the city to widen Waialae, create curb extensions, add new street lighting and trees to slow traffic and beautify the district.

Fujimori, the urban designer and landscape architect who has designed the Kaimuki Business District Traffic Calming Master Plan, proposed the idea at this month's Kaimuki/Palolo/Waialae-Kahala Vision Team meeting.

"It's a unique sidewalk treatment," said Leonard Tam, the community member on the Vision Team who keeps on top of the project. But the idea is not set in stone, and Tam emphasized that it is still a proposal.

Kaimuki citizens will possibly inscribe "their names in a very aesthetic pattern in the concrete, something they can leave behind of themselves in the public work," Fujimori said.

Another touch of the days when streetcars ran along Waialae that Fujimori would like to incorporate is the stringing of unique Christmas light ornaments above Waialae Avenue during the holiday season.

In the past, merchants would hang a single ornament on wires attached to each utility post. The wires would span the street, and the ornament would hang overhead down the center.

Fujimori would like to retain the original design of the ornaments that he noticed in a Bishop Museum photograph: two Nike-like swooshes crossing in the center with a red bell at each end and a star in the middle.

The utility posts would be equipped with extensions so that guy wires could be attached.