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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, August 21, 2009

Black Eyed Peas traffic snafu offered lesson


TGIF Staff

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Nae and Hiroshi Watanabe star in the comedy "White on Rice," to screen at the Hawaii International Film Festival.

HIFF

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Sure, Black Eyed Peas concertgoers should have known they'd run into traffic congestion at BayFest last weekend.

If you live on an island where a fender bender can slow traffic for hours, why would you expect anything different when it comes to getting on a military base with one road in and one road out?

But at the same time, BayFest officials should shoulder some blame and maybe offer a partial refund to those who missed the concert, if only as a PR move for future concerts.

Why? Because they knew weeks in advance they had the hottest music group coming to their festival and even announced record ticket sales early because of it. And yet, still no plan for the traffic overload?

Among the stranded was KHNL reporter Leland Kim, who put the lost time in perspective:

"It would take me less time to drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles to see a concert at the Staples Center," Kim said. "I gave myself two hours to get there, and it took me 3 1/2 hours to step on to the venue. Do they seriously expect us to budget 4 1/2 hours to get to KBay?"

Seems like a good point. In a perfect world, BayFest and the stranded ticketholders would go half-and-half. ...

Members of the Hawaii International Film Festival recently got to check out trailers from a handful of the movies at this year's festival (Oct. 15-25), including the comedy "White on Rice." The mixer was held at SoHo Mixed Media Bar in Chinatown. Among this year's HIFF festivities will be a tribute to "Lost," which is wrapping up its final season of shooting on O'ahu. Been a great run. We'll miss it. ...

Fresh off his whooping of Kenny Florian at UFC 101, Hilo's BJ Penn is on O'ahu to promote his DVD documentary "BJ Penn 90 Days." He's here through Sunday for signings at various stores across O'ahu. The first signing is at 8 tonight at Wal-Mart in Kunia. ...

The only good thing we can say about the new VH1 dating show "My Antonio" — shot on the Big Island — is that no Hawai'i women were harmed, err, took part, in the dating pool. Wish the same could be said for fellow VH1 show "Real Chance of Love 2," where "Aloha" (real name Rae Nohelani of Wai'anae) got the boot after the third episode. After getting ripped by fellow cast members for (gasp) eating raw salmon, Aloha shot back "That's Hawaiian-style, baby. You just grab it from the ocean, break the spinal cord and then you just start chomping on it." Who says there's nothing good on TV anymore. ...

Boys Like Girls, which recently played at Pipeline Café, releases its sophomore album "Love Drunk" on Sept. 8. They're also going to help the New England Patriots kick off their 2009 season with a free concert Sept. 13, outside Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.