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Hawaii’s World
ONE day recently I shopped at Ala Moana Center. A few days later I was in mid-town Lanai City. Lanai City has
appeal for shoppingThey could be the North and South Poles of shopping in Hawaii. For many purposes I prefer Lanai City.
Ala Moana, already the biggest shopping center for thousands of miles around, has grown bigger for sure, better for maybe. More floors. More shops. More choices. More activity. More excitement.
It still calls itself an open center, but the opening to the sky has gotten narrower with added floors. At some spots seeing the sky is like looking up from the bottom of a well.
It's jammed at times. Parking can be a challenge. People like it, obviously.
Is it still Hawaiian -- whatever that means? Yes, kind of. But it is also glitzy mainland stuff.
For a nice, nostalgic contrast I recommend Lanai City with stores and shops scattered around Dole Park, a lot of open space and trees between them. Plenty of sky. No traffic.
The streets on opposite sides of the park once were called Bank Street and Market Street because that's what was on them. Today's names are Seventh and Eighth streets, respectively, but they aren't very urban. Eighth has two markets -- Richard's and Pine Isle -- where foods and staples are available.
Seventh has two small side-by-side restaurants that are great. Kanagawa's boasts hamburgers so good people come from other islands to partake. At Blue Ginger my wife had what she called one of the best mahimahi sandwiches she has ever eaten.
Hotel Lanai at the end the park opens only for dinner. It is pricey like its corporate-sister food services at Koele Lodge and Manele Bay Hotel. Very few hotel guests rent cars or SUVs. White Lanai Co. shuttle buses keep traffic minimal.
Small shops on the park are apt to post a sign never seen at Ala Moana -- "Out to Lunch." Lanai's community college and the police station also are on the park.
Lanai has only 3,000 residents and Lanai City, once Hawaii's pineapple capital, is only 80 years old but I nominate it as one of Hawaii's best links to the rustic past.
Those links are getting fewer and fewer.
My wife and I like Kahala Mall, a fairly recent creation, because we use it frequently and experience old-fashioned neighborliness there. Ditto other neighborhood centers for those who use them. Friendliness can be the unifier.
Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center in Waikiki deserves a vote for its openness and greenery. International Market Place with its great banyan is fascinating but filled with Asia-Pacific trinket stands.
WAIKIKI's new Duty Free arcade simulation of old-time Boat Day atmosphere is too artificial for me.
A better place to find that kind of atmosphere is at Honolulu Harbor, Aloha Tower and the surrounding Aloha Tower Marketplace. The harbor traffic provides real color, real piers and real ocean liners, fascinating shops and restaurants, too. But you can't buy your groceries there. Trolleys from Waikiki are a help since parking is inadequate.
"Hawaiianness" is a term even our best architects have trouble defining and capturing. Among posh hotels, Halekulani and Kahala Mandarin rate high. Ditto Waikiki's oldest hotel, the sedate Moana, and its banyan court. The improved Hale Koa military resort has its banyan court, too. New Otani Kaimana is helped by its Hau Terrace dining area under, of course, a hau tree.
Thatched shacks are rare today. The best are at La Mariana restaurant off Sand Island Access Road, where old-timers burst into song Friday and Saturday nights.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.