Honolulu Lite
It was no honeymoon in Vegas for Gov. Ben Cayetano and Hawaii cooking legend Sam Choy recently, although, after having reviewed the evidence, I'm not sure what my buddy Sam is complaining about. Cayetano is snubbed and
Sam Choy gets an eyefulCayetano and Choy were in Las Vegas earlier this month to take part in a trade show featuring Hawaii products, a sort of "Hey, Give Some of the Money Hawaii's Been Pumping Into This Berg for the Past 40 Years Back to Us!" convention.
Hawaii did almost as much as the Mafia to establish Las Vegas as a gambling hot spot. Sure, the mob used union pension funds to build casinos, but Hawaii sent planeloads of gamblers weekly to drop their hard-earned money.
If that money had stayed in Hawaii, we would have by now the finest public education system in the country, the lowest crime rate, the purest air, the best mass transit system, the ... wait ... Who are we trying to kid here? That money would have been pried out of the would-be gamblers' hands in taxes, fees and random assessments and would have disappeared down the insatiable bureaucratic gullet of state government without so much as a burp to show for it.
At least Hawaii gamblers could help build places in Vegas like the California Hotel and other casinos that serve as a second home to Hawaii residents. So many Hawaii residents go to Nevada to lose their money that Las Vegas is considered something of a suburb of Honolulu, just a ways past Hawaii Kai. In fact, nearly 100,000 former Hawaii residents live in Las Vegas, which brings a tear to the eye of airline executives who used to soak them for weekly fares.
So you can understand that the governor was a little miffed when he went to check into the Stardust Resort and Casino this month for the "Great Ninth Island Expo" (Vegas being Hawaii's "ninth island") and the front-desk clerk took him for a foreigner and asked to see his passport.
My god! You'd think they'd put posters of the governor of Hawaii in the casino and hotel employees' lounges with instructions to kiss this man's okole should he appear on the property. Unfortunately, the clerk was both a new hire and stupid. He was told Hawaii's governor would be checking in, but apparently didn't realize Hawaii was part of the U.S.A. So it was more geographic idiocy than run-of-the-mill racism, although there likely was a touch of that, too. Cayetano showed his driver's license, checked in and was gracious about the mix-up on his return to Hawaii.
You got to give him class credit for that since being gracious isn't the governor's strongest suit.
Sam Choy had a different experience. He checked into the same hotel and was led to a room already occupied. Occupied, it turns out, by a couple making sport on the bed. Choy was a bit off-put by the experience, apparently not realizing that it usually costs extra in Vegas to be met in your hotel room by people having sex on your bed.
It's ironic that two Hawaii bigwigs would be treated so shabbily in a fellow tourist city. But considering how we treat our mainland visitors, subjecting them to higher costs for everything from golf to hotel rooms than Hawaii's "kamaaina" have to pay, it's hard to accuse Las Vegas of a major "Aloha Violation" in this check-in fiasco. At least Vegas restaurants put shoyu and Tabasco on their tables.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com