Waikiki's peaceful these days

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

So I'm walking down Kalakaua Avenue checking out the scene and a doorman outside one of those below-street-level restaurants calls out a greeting in my direction: "Aloha!"

"Howzit," I shoot back over my shoulder, and he almost jumps out of his polyester aloha shirt and itchy-looking pants.

"Eh! You local! Right on!" He's almost dancing at this point. "Where's your friends? Bring your family! Come on down!"

They're scared, all those good people who put on the aloha print uniforms, the silk flowers, the plastic name tags. They're still smiling. They've mastered that part. But say to them, "Slow, yeah?" and the smile fades. Their eyes cloud over. "Yeah. Real slow. Scary."

The truth is that Hawai'i has been driving without insurance for decades now, foolishly certain that we'd never crash. Hurricane 'Iniki nine years ago should have served as a wake-up call. For a while, it did. Then we hit the snooze button and went back to sleep. When Kaua'i got nailed, there was renewed talk of economic diversity, along with less reliance on tourism and what-if-that-happened-to-Waikiki ... and then time passed and everyone relaxed right back into, "Nah, not going happen."

But pointing fingers right now is like arguing over the smashed cars at an accident scene on the freeway — it doesn't solve much in the moment and it doesn't get traffic flowing again. What we need is action.

What can we do? State leaders are talking about dumping money into yet another advertising campaign. Gee, that should do the trick considering how well tourism was doing before the terrorist attack. Hey, maybe we can pay "Baywatch" to come back and ... just kidding.

What can we do? We can convince our leaders to think outside the box this time. We can use this as an opportunity to reshape our economy. We can focus on growing other industries rather than go right back to worshipping at the altar of tourism.

Yeah, like that's gonna happen.

So how about this:

What if you used your Vegas money to go holoholo to Waikiki or Ka'anapali or Princeville instead? I know, I know. The mere suggestion is blasphemy to some. But now is the time to go to Waikiki, especially if it's been a while. Nice, you know. You can walk down the sidewalks without getting rear-ended by somebody's rolled-up tatami. You can get a beach-side table at a restaurant without waiting 45 minutes. You can go to the beach and write your sweetheart's name in the sand in big, loopy letters without encroaching on anybody's sand space. Don't feel guilty for enjoying the peace. If Ben Cayetano and Tony Vericella-guys get their way, the place will be happily packed again in no time and the rest of us can go back to sleep and pretend nothing happened.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com