Posted on: Friday, April 4, 2003
HAWAIIAN STYLE
Couple eager to take elevator-riding hobby to new heights
Call it "vertical sightseeing."
But don't tell Larry and Dawn Wegger their unusual hobby has "its ups and downs." Or that it's "uplifting." Or that they're getting "the shaft."
They've heard them all.
Larry and Dawn ride elevators. They have done so across the nation, gazing out on the world from dizzying heights.
Dawn marvels at her husband's dedication to what is now their avocation: "Imagine, just riding elevators ...(such) a simple thing. (Larry) makes it an adventure."
Larry, on the other hand, sees it almost as a calling. In the days before Sept. 11 and the destruction of the World Trade Center, the pair was discouraged by security one Fourth of July from riding the elevator to the top of the twin towers because of cloud cover and fog. The pair persisted, and once they were on top, the blanket of fog parted, almost on signal, to reveal a glorious parade of tall ships coming up the Hudson River.
"I was hooked," Larry said. And soon the pair was hopping elevators at the Empire State Building and Chicago's Sears Tower — and finally "riding the vertical rails" in Hawai'i.
Now, elevators are as likely as Sea Life Park or Diamond Head to end up on their "must sees" for visiting friends and families. Here's what they had to say about Hawai'i's elevators:
• The "Neatest": the glass elevators gracefully rising up the side of Alakea Plaza on the corner of Hotel Street. Larry: "All of a sudden, all of Honolulu is before you."
• Most recommended: Sheraton Waikiki Hotel. Larry: "We take all our visitors there. You can see the waves, the coral, the boats."
• Most spectacular: The new First Hawaiian Bank main branch. Larry: "Ohhh... the whole shoreline."
• Most nostalgic: The 'Ilikai. Larry: "I remembered it from (the opening shots of) Hawai'i Five-0."
• A runner-up: Hawai'i Prince Hotel Waikiki. Larry: "In addition to the elevators, each floor has (panoramic) windows to soak up the view."
• Most unexpected: Straub Clinic. Dawn: "You enter on one side, and exit on the other — hey?!"
• The weirdest: The News Building (We think Dawn was kidding.).
• Most unusual: Top of Waikiki. Larry: "The trip up begins by elevator, then changes to escalator" at the top.
• Highest: First Hawaiian Bank main branch. Dawn: "Fast, too!"
• Most beautiful: Straub Hospital, with the stained-glass roof. Dawn, joking: "It's so nice for patients on a gurney!" (Actually, that was the intended purpose, said Straub's Claire Tong.)
Over the years, the hobby has been generally pleasurable. The pair has yet to be stuck in an elevator, although Dawn, who works for a telephone answering service, frequently gets calls from frantic, distraught "elevator prisoners-of-walls."
But their hobby isn't everyone's cup of tea. Marveling at the view from Atlanta's outside glass Peachtree Plaza elevators, one passenger was turning green. "I'm gonna be sick," he announced. "And, I'm a jet pilot!"
But even Larry and Dawn can get too much of a good thing. They boarded a Waikiki hotel elevator recently with visiting relatives, and other passengers had punched in their 15th floor. The door closed, rose to the ninth floor and stopped. Then, without opening, it descended back to the first floor. Then again. And again — over and over, up and down, refusing to release its "prisoners" — until someone realized the need to swipe the hotel security card in the reader BEFORE punching in their floor.
"I thought I'd be in that elevator with those people the rest of my life," Larry said.
The Advertiser's Wade Kilohana Shirkey is kumu of Na Hoaloha O Ka Roselani No'eau halau. He writes on Island life.
