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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Hawaii's Obama landmarks featured on tourism site

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By Robbie Dingeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

A Web site created by the Hawai'i Visitors and Convention Bureau highlights Barack Obama landmarks throughout the state.

gohawaii.com/Obama

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MAPPING BARACK OBAMA'S LIFE

  • The Hawai'i Visitors and Convention Bureau today officially unveils its microsite at www.gohawaii.com/Obama.

  • Local writer Rob Kay put together his own Web site on some landmarks in Barack Obama's life. His site is at www.obamasneighborhood.com.

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    Barack Obama's Hawai'i — from his Honolulu birthplace and Punahou School to where he ate shave ice on an August vacation — can now be traced on the Web.

    The Hawai'i Visitors and Convention Bureau today officially unveils its microsite at www.gohawaii.com/Obama. And a local writer got another site running last week.

    Bureau president and CEO John Monahan said the new Web information responds to the public fascination with the man scheduled to be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States in January, as well as some hometown Hawai'i pride.

    "Obviously, there's a lot of curiosity now about President-elect Obama and his life prior to being elected president," he said.

    The Web site spotlights two dozen sites related to historic or modern Obama landmarks.

    "We hope to inform visitors a little about Barack Obama's Hawai'i," Monahan said.

    Some of the locations pinpointed are:

  • Kapi'olani Hospital for Women & Children, where Obama was born on Aug. 4, 1961.

  • Punahou, where he attended school from fifth grade through graduation (with the caution that the campus is private and visitors are not permitted to enter any part of the property without prior consent).

  • Lower Makiki to East Honolulu, where Obama lived in six different places and spent most of his youth in an apartment with his grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn "Toot" Dunham.

  • The Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop on South King Street, one of the first places the president-elect worked as a youth.

  • Obama's favorite places to hang out with family and friends, including Pu'u 'Ualaka'a State Park on Tantalus, Kapi'olani Park at the edge of Waikiki, and the popular Sandy Beach for bodysurfing in East Honolulu.

  • References from an August family vacation here: golfing at Olomana Golf Links and Luana Hills Country Club; spending time at Kailua Beach Park; visiting Nu'uanu Pali Lookout; snorkeling at Hanauma Bay; enjoying a plate lunch at Zippy's; touring the Arizona Memorial; and paying respects to Obama's grandfather, who is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.

    Although the site focuses on places and pictures, it also refers to the community "where local values foster tolerance, compromise and mutual respect — and where diversity defines people rather than divides them."

    And it quotes Obama himself: "What's best in me, and what's best in my message, is consistent with the tradition of Hawai'i."

    Another Web site emerged last week from local writer Rob Kay after he researched more of Obama's roots in Hawai'i when he contributed to a Wall Street Journal story.

    "I realized there was a gap, a missing component to the Obama equation that explained who he was because of his Hawai'i upbringing," Kay said.

    "I believe people here understand this intuitively, but it was not something that people outside of Hawai'i comprehend," he said.

    Kay's site has some Google ads that could earn money. But so far, he said he got involved more for the research and hasn't quite determined what the business side could be.

    Reach Robbie Dingeman at rdingeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.