Whatever
Happened...

An update on past news

Saturday, July 7, 2001

KEN SAKAMOTO / KSAKAMOTO@STARBULLETIN.COM
Gene Kaneshiro earlier this week showed off the floor tile
from the mow closed Columbia Inn that his father had made
to commemorate the January 1969 visit of then-Heisman
Trophy winner O.J. Simpson.

O.J.’s Columbia Inn
tile in safe hands

Question: What ever happened to the Columbia Inn floor tile commemorating O.J. Simpson's visit to the restaurant in 1969?

Answer: When the Columbia Inn closed in January, Eugene Kaneshiro, son of former innkeeper Fred "Tosh" Kaneshiro, found that the grimy scrap of linoleum was something he couldn't throw away.

So along with the famed round table -- where his father once held court in the Columbia Inn bar -- and 25 boxes of framed photographs of celebrities and other Columbia Inn guests, Kaneshiro cut away the carpet surrounding O.J.'s tile and managed to get it off the floor in one piece.

"We had to gingerly scrape it off the floor," he said. "That doesn't say much about O.J. Simpson; people are still scraping him off the floor."

Once covered by Plexiglas, the tile had long ago lost its protection, Kaneshiro said.

"We kind of cleaned it up a little bit, but we wanted to leave most of the original scum on it," he said.

Since retrieved from the restaurant, the tile has been sitting on the round table on Kaneshiro's patio. "My intent is to frame it and keep it until I die," he said, laughing.

In 1969, Simpson was a University of Southern California running back, a "very young man ... very innocent," Kaneshiro said. He had recently won the Heisman Trophy and came to the restaurant to drum up publicity for the Hula Bowl he was playing in that year. His publicists coached him on how to sign autographs and take photographs with fans, Kaneshiro said.

Back then, Floors of Hawaii was next door to the Kapiolani Boulevard restaurant, so after Simpson's lunch, Tosh Kaneshiro asked them to make a floor piece saying that O.J. sat there in January 1969.

Kaneshiro said he has a photograph of his father kneeling and pointing at the tile.

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This update was written by Treena Shapiro.

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