HONOLULU Magazine May/June 2025

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T I C K E TS O N SA L E N OW

Saturday, May 31, 2025 VELO C IT Y HONOLU LU 8 8 8 KAPI OLAN I BLVD. 6 p.m. VIP Admission 6:30 p.m. General Admission

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C E L E B R A T I N G H AWA I‘I’S S O U L M AY/J U N E 2 0 2 5 | V O L . L I X N O. 9

FEATURES 16 Hawai‘i’s Historic Homes They reveal our past and offer a richer understanding of who we are. We take a look at three neighborhoods full of these gems.

BY DARLENE DELA CRUZ, DIANE SEO, MARI TAKETA AND K ATRINA VALCOURT

28 Mu‘umu‘u Moments The classic Hawai‘i garment feels decidedly fresh again, with local designers dreaming up exciting iterations for all occasions.

BY BRIE THALMANN

38 HONOLULU Book Awards In selecting our 2024 winners in seven categories, we considered heart, breadth of audience, readability and connection.

BY DON WALLACE

DEPARTMENTS 6 Editor’s Page

Tropical vibes at Aloha Got Soul. See more in our fashion feature starting on page 28.

We hope you enjoy our May/June issue.

The July/August issue will be available in mid-July.

SAM FEYEN

WHY THESE STORIES?

In this issue, we celebrate historic homes, mu‘umu‘u, lei and Hawai‘i books, all reflections of our unique history and culture.

7 Currents A local superfood, where to learn lei-making, a septuagenarian dancer and more.

57 ‘Ono Invasive species are bad for Hawai‘i’s ecosystem. The best way to vanquish our enemies? Eat them.

BY MARTHA CHENG

64 Afterthoughts THE THINGS I CARRIED

After leaving Hawai‘i for Southern California, life remains an adjustment.

BY CHRISTINE HITT

PROMOTIONS 48 Pets & Parks Discover local businesses that treat your pets like family—whether they’re chasing tennis balls or crossing oceans.

51 Who’s Who in Real Estate In this curated feature, HONOLULU spotlights Island professionals who are shaping the future of property across Hawai‘i.

BY DIANE SEO

ON THE COVER: The James J.C. Haynes

residence on Kalākaua Avenue in the Lē‘ahi area is listed on the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places. Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino.

E D I TO R’ S PAG E

Why These Stories?

In this issue, we celebrate historic homes, mu‘umu‘u, lei and Hawai‘i books, all reflections of our unique history and culture.

and change to emphasize the importance of preserving and maintaining traditions and emblems of the past.

Although preservation was not an intentional theme for this issue, it’s an undercurrent of our three main features, on historic homes, the mu‘umu‘u and lei, and standout Hawai‘i books and authors.

While these stories involve different topics, they all reflect our Islands’ unique and long-standing culture and history.

As far as historic homes, there are now 400 of them—340 on O‘ahu—on the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places. They’ve been deemed historically significant for various reasons; some are attached to noteworthy architects, while others were built in distinctive architectural styles or were home to prominent people.

Whether you consider such homes charming or not, they link us to our past and show us our roots, how we lived and what our neighborhoods were like well before many of us were born. While reporting on the feature with my colleagues, Katrina Valcourt, Darlene Dela Cruz and Mari Taketa, we all came to deeply appreciate these older homes and the stories behind them.

I was particularly struck by a comment

by Glenn Mason, whose firm, Mason Architects, has taken a leading role in preserving historic homes. When asked why he believes it’s important, his comment was to the point: Without recognizing the past, “we would have no knowledge about how to move forward in the future,” he says.

Also in this issue, we celebrate the mu‘umu‘u and lei, iconic representations of Hawai‘i fashion and culture, a bridge between the past and present. Brie Thalmann, HONOLULU’s managing style editor, and senior art director Christine Labrador carefully scouted locations for the shoot, and Brie meticulously curated the dress6

HONOLULU MAGAZINE

AARON K. YOSHINO

I

T’S FITTING IN THIS ERA of cutbacks

One of the many Mānoa homes now on the state’s Register of Historic Places.

es and designers to be featured. The idea was to show how the mu‘umu‘u is timeless—it’s woven into our culture, even in the most modern settings.

“It’s exciting and heartening to see the resurgence in mu‘umu‘u that’s been happening lately—few garments are so distinctly Hawai‘i and offer a connection to culture the way it does,” Brie says. “New generations are falling in love with the style, local designers are creating fresh takes, and even vintage pieces are being unearthed to shine again, all underlining how special it is.”

Our third feature honors outstanding Hawai‘i books and authors. We launched HONOLULU’s annual book awards last year as a way to celebrate good storytelling by authors with Hawai‘i ties. Writing, like many artistic crafts, is being threatened in this age of AI-everything, but contributing editor Don Wallace, a true bibliophile, believes Hawai‘i’s regional literature and authors are “enjoying a historic conjunction of wide exposure and mainstream, even global, interest.”

“Our writers and readers are keeping the faith with the openhearted, open-minded civilization that made it one of the most literate countries in the world,” he says. “At the moment, prospects for local writers seem promising. Major publishers in New York and elsewhere have invested in new voices from here, and not just for one certain kind of book. But it was gut-wrenching to read a string of stories recently about an elevator-drop fall in book sales. It’s a reminder that nothing is guaranteed and … that Hawai‘i writing rose on a foundation of small-press entrepreneurs and visionaries. So let’s set aside some time to read these and other local books.

Appreciate what they’re saying about our times and the place we call home.

Appreciate that they exist. Because there isn’t always next year. Unless we make it so.”

DIANE SEO EDITORIAL DIRECTOR DIANES@HONOLULUMAGAZINE.COM

➸ KUNG HEE FAT CHOY! P·20 // AN EXCLUSIVE SHORT STORY P·21 // PASTA LA VISTA , BABY P·23

LIFE

IN

HONOLULU

PERFORMANCE

Distant Worlds

➸ TAIMANE’S LATEST SINGLE, “SERPENTWINED,” tells the stories of two powerful female

figures, serpentine goddess Shahmaran and Hawaiian mo‘o wahine Kalamainu‘u. The singersongwriter and ‘ukulele star shot a video for the song at the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design, drawing inspiration from the center’s rich collection of global Islamic art. Taimane served as an artist-in-residence there in 2024, immersing herself in the mythology of Shahmaran, a serpent queen of Indo-Iranian and Turkic folklore. Inspired by her tale, Taimane wove it with Kalamainu‘u’s story to create the memorable video. —Diane Seo, photo by Blake Abes/NMG Network

M AY/J U N E 2 0 2 5

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CURRENTS

HAPPENINGS

Summer Picks Top events this season.

BY ANDREA LEE

Exhibition Mary Cassatt at Work June 21–Oct. 12 / Museum admission from $15 Honolulu Museum of Art

COURTESY: SHINNYO LANTERN FLOATING HAWAI‘I

The traveling exhibition showcases the paintings, pastels and prints of Mary Cassatt, who was the only American counted among the French Impressionists of her time.

Theater Kim’s Convenience May 15–June 8 / From $25 Mānoa Valley Theatre The play that inspired the Netflix sitcom follows a Korean Canadian family running a convenience store in Toronto, blending comedy and drama in a heartwarming tribute to immigrants. manoavalleytheatre.com, @manoavalleytheatre

NEW IN TOWN What’s opened or launched recently.

COURTESY: BAY VIEW GOLF PARK, OVERSTORY, ANDREA LEE, GETT Y IMAGES/ KUMIKOMINI, HOT YOGA8

Ceremony Shinnyo Lantern Floating Hawai‘i May 26 / 6:30 p.m.

Ala Moana Beach / Free

Musical Six

June 17–29 / From $50 Blaisdell Concert Hall

Honor loved ones who have passed this Memorial Day by writing messages on paper lanterns and releasing them on the ocean tides.

Broadway in Hawai‘i returns with an award-winning musical sensation that retells the lives of Henry VIII’s six wives through a pop singing competition to determine their band’s leader.

lanternfloatinghawaii.com, @shinnyolanternfloatinghawaii

ticketmaster.com, @broadwayinhawaii

B AY V I E W NIGHT MARKET This new night market at Bayview Golf Park hosts local vendors and live entertainment every Tuesday from 4 to 8 p.m. Visitors can also try out the on-site zip line and golf courses. @bayviewnightmarket

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HONOLULU MAGAZINE

honolulumuseum.org, @honolulumuseum Concert Maoli June 27 and 28, 7:30 p.m.

Blaisdell Arena / From $79.50 Known for blending genres to create his own style of “country reggae,” the Maui artist makes a stop in Honolulu on his Last Sip of Summer Tour. ticketmaster.com, @maolimusic Festival Mō‘ili‘ili Summer Fest July 5 / 5–10 p.m. / Free admission Washington Middle School At a new venue this year, the city’s largest bon dance brings together food and retail vendors, cultural performances and activities, plus hot fresh andagi to kick off the obon season. moiliilisummerfest.org, @moiliilifest

OVERSTORY The nonprofit online newsroom, an initiative of The Kūpa‘a Network, aims to provide solutions-oriented journalism on topics that matter to locals. overstoryhawaii.org, @overstoryhawaii

WELLNESS

Turmeric Is Having a Moment

You’ll see it everywhere these days at farmers markets, grocery stores and more.

BY DIANE SEO

A ARON K. YOSHINO

I

T’S ONE OF THE WORLD’S most tapped remedies to naturally heal pain, inflammation and other ailments. And Hawai‘i’s year-round warm weather provides the ideal setting for turmeric to grow.

The global market for turmeric is projected to reach about $400 million by 2030, a jump from $267 million in 2023, according to a Research and Markets report. “A lot of people with active lifestyles have aches and pains, and turmeric is one of the only botanical plants you can take on a regular basis to safely deal with that,” says Denny Kwock, co-founder of Good Life Mana, a Waimānalo-based company that sells locally grown turmeric supplements.

“It’s definitely getting more popular.”

Curcumin, the active ingredient in turmeric, originates from India and has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years.

Turmeric also has a long history in Hawai‘i, having been brought here by Polynesians as a canoe crop. A dozen different varieties grow in the Islands, and there are some 38 certified organic turmeric growers, says Kevin Flanagan, Kwock’s business partner at Good Life Mana, which procures its turmeric specifically from local farmers with sustainable agricultural practices.

Known in Hawai‘i as ‘ōlena, the root can be found at farmers markets, grocery stores and several other outlets. You can also get it as a supplement and blended into drinks; it’s easily identified by its vibrant orange hue. While perusing the FarmLovers Market in Kaka‘ako on a recent Saturday, we found two vendors, Tay and Tholi and Organic Turmeric Treasures, selling turmeric-focused products, and various other farmers offering turmeric root.

While the Waimānalo-based Organic Tur-

meric Treasures makes turmeric teas, honey, spices and capsules, Tay and Tholi sells two sizes of a specialty turmeric tonic sourced from local farmers. Owner Deepak Sheehan says the inspiration for Tay and Tholi came from her traditional Indian mother, who relied on homemade Ayurvedic healing remedies. “My mom never gave us medicine or stuff from a drugstore; instead, she’d whip up a concoction from her pantry,” Sheehan says. “That’s how I grew up, with nature having the answers.”

VICTORIA WA R D PA R K With a certification for sustainable design, the Ward Village park features a pond, native plants, art installations as well as public tables and seating.

FIRST CABIN I N T E R N AT I O N A L Hawai‘i’s first capsule hotel has taken over the 14th floor of the Waikīkī Business Plaza, offering space-efficient pod rooms inspired by firstclass airline cabins.

HOT YOG A8 Alexis Inso has opened a Bikram yoga studio in Kaimukī, with Yin classes too. The instructor lineup includes longtime Bikram teachers who taught at her former studio.

wardvillage.com, @wardvillage

first-cabin.us, @firstcabinhawaiiofficial

hotyoga8.com, @hot_yoga_8 M AY/J U N E 2 0 2 5

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C U LT U R E

Advocating for Native Hawaiians Federal cuts are threatening various programs.

F

ROM HOUSING TO HEALTH to

education to disaster recovery, Native Hawaiian programs are at risk of losing millions due to federal funding cuts and policy shifts.

The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement’s Kāko‘o Maui Recovery Program has already faced workforce losses due to federal cuts that affect Maui’s wildfire survivor assistance. In March, Office of Hawaiian Affairs chair Kaiali‘i Kahele, CNHA CEO Kūhiō Lewis and CNHA chief of staff Nick Carroll traveled to the U.S. Capitol to advocate for Native Hawaiian interests. They met with U.S. Sens. Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono and Reps. Ed Case and Jill Tokuda, among others.

“A primary focus was advocating for Native Hawaiian programs that risk being misclassified under DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility) or as environmental justice initiatives,” Kahele says.

In his first month in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order rolling back DEIA policies and programs.

“We’ve tried to distinguish ourselves as not part of DEI,” Lewis says. “We’re getting lumped in … largely due to people not understanding Native Hawaiians, or the difference between Native Hawaiians, Alaska Natives, Native Americans. But we’re an Indigenous people of America.”

The leaders fear executive orders could prevent Native Hawaiian businesses that benefit from the Small Business Administration’s Native 8(a) business development program from receiving federal contracts.

Funding from the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act, which supports the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, could also be delayed or

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HONOLULU MAGAZINE

“We’ve lost all of our land, we’ve lost significant parts of our way of life.

And this is helping us to perpetuate our culture.”

— KŪHIŌ LEWIS

reduced. Also, the Native Hawaiian Education Act could potentially lose $30 million in funding, which would affect Hawaiian immersion schools and other educational programs.

“We are extremely concerned about the renewal of some of our Hawaiian education program funds and its impact on our pūnana leo (campuses) and our immersion programs,” Lewis says. “The housing programs that help fund Department of Hawaiian Home Lands [are also] at stake.

Who knows what’s going to happen next time that goes up for renewal.”

And potential cuts to the Native Hawaiian Health Care Act “could limit access to critical health services, increasing health disparities in the Native Hawaiian community,” Kahele says.

Sheri Daniels, CEO of the nonprofit Papa Ola Lōkahi, established under the act to improve the health and well-being of Native Hawaiians, says the organization “stands ready” to preserve the act for the health and well-being of kānaka maoli. “We already see that there will be changes in

funding and other areas of the federal government, but are working to better understand those pivot points to leverage our established partnerships and collaborations … to support and uplift our lāhui.”

Kahele emphasizes that the public can get involved by advocating for these programs. He suggests spreading awareness through social media or community events. He also says to contact congressional representatives to urge support for Native Hawaiian education, health care and housing.

Lewis says he sees opportunities to work with the new administration and is looking for ways to overcome challenges arising for the various programs. “I think it starts with educating them on how these programs affect people, affect our culture, but it also holds America accountable for past deeds,” Lewis says. “We’ve lost all of our land, we’ve lost significant parts of our way of life. And this is helping us to perpetuate our culture, so that Native Hawaiians continue to exist, our culture continues to exist.”

ISTOCK /GETT Y IMAGES PLUS, RARRARORRO

BY CHRISTINE HITT

CURRENTS JUSTICE

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

GETT Y IMAGES/KLYAKSUN

Leading With Pride Kathleen O’Dell shares her vision for the Hawai‘i State LGBTQ+ Commission.

A S T O L D T O K AT R I N A VA LC O U RT

L

AST SUMMER, Hawai‘i formed a state LGBTQ+ commission un-

THE FIRST THING we did back in No-

IN MY OPINION, the more you get to

TRANSGENDER PEOPLE are getting

vember was get a constitutional amendment passed (removing language that gave the Legislature power to reserve marriage for opposite-sex couples). We advocated for that so the rights of marriage would be protected in our state regardless of the federal administration. We’re trying to come out with strong efforts whenever we see LGBTQ+ rights being threatened.

know a person, the more you understand equality and human rights and to not just see me as a lesbian, but as Kat O’Dell. That is a facet of my identity, but that isn’t my entire identity. I see the commission as being an opportunity to educate, listen and understand needs and to bring together resources to support the community and advocate for the rights of our community.

der the Department of Human Services to assess the needs of the community and work with other organizations to advocate for their rights. Eight members were appointed by Gov. Josh Green, including Chair Kathleen O’Dell. A lecturer of human development and family sciences at UH Mānoa, as well as network coordinator of the Hawai‘i ‘Ohana Support Network, O’Dell is committed to social justice and educating others about inclusion and equity.

ridiculously targeted right now, and you’re talking about maybe 2% of our population, but it is a 2% that is greatly affected by this bullying. Our transgender youth have a much higher rate of suicide, a much higher rate of living in houselessness, and a much higher rate of substance abuse. If we are caring about our children and student success, you can’t look away from the fact that although they represent a smaller population, they are seeing the most harm put upon them by society and sometimes their own families.

It’s bullying, and it’s in its worst form.

COURTESY: K ATHLEEN O’DELL; COMPOSITE: JAMES NAK AMURA

MORE THAN ANYTHING, we want to bring folks together, not allow for a divide. As an educator, I always feel like the best way to do that is to educate and give people opportunities to learn. Any form of discrimination is based on ignorance.

IT’S A TIME TO STAND UP and to stand

together. There have always been threats to our rights. There will always be threats to our rights, but our rights will never change because the rights of the LGBTQ+ community are human rights, and they are worth fighting for. humanservices.hawaii.gov/lgbtq-commission, @hawaiistatelgbtqpluscommission M AY/J U N E 2 0 2 5

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C R E AT E

In the Mood for Lei Where to find lei-making classes for every budget.

WITH FEE

BY ANDREA LEE

Stamen + Style at Island-Boy Stamen + Style owner Jill Harunaga teaches classes at Island-Boy so you too can turn a medley of flowers into chic, multi-stranded lei.

FREE The Veranda at The Kāhala Hotel & Resort The Kāhala Hotel & Resort offers two classes, one where you can weave a kupe‘e, or bracelet, out of raffia and another for flower lei.

Haku Kupe‘e Bracelet-Making: Every Thursday, 9 to 10 a.m.

Lei-Making: Every Friday and Sunday, 10 to 11 a.m., kahalaresort.com, @kahala_resort

Royal Hawaiian Center Learn to make an orchid lei, with all the materials provided. This class is first come, first served for guests ages 10 and older.

$120, sign up for Island-Boy’s newsletter for workshop news, @islandboy, @jharunaga Eco Mindful Lei at Waikīkī Beach Enjoy the sea breeze as you craft a lei po‘o (lei for the head) with locally sourced flowers and greenery in a shaded area of Waikīkī Beach.

Every Friday, 11 a.m. to noon, royalhawaiiancenter.com, @royalhwnctr International Market Place Head to the open courtyard for a flower lei class, while supplies last.

Every third Thursday, noon to 1 p.m., shopinternationalmarketplace.com, @intlmktplace

$88, see website for class schedule and to sign up, ecomindfullei.com, @eco.mindful.lei Palai Receive group and one-on-one guidance on how to craft locally harvested botanicals into lei po‘o. $100–$110, see website for class schedule and to sign up, palaihawaii.com, @palaihawaii

RACHEL K APULE, COURTESY: THE K ĀHALA HOTEL & RESORT, JESSICA A .H. PINE COURTESY OF LULU’S LEI + BOUQUETS

Lulu’s Lei + Bouquets Learn to make a lei po‘o in a lovely flower shop setting in Hale‘iwa; all materials are included.

HEADS UP

Get Real ISTOCK /GETT Y IMAGES PLUS, GRIVINA

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HONOLULU MAGAZINE

$95, two hours, see website for class schedule and to sign up, lulusleiandbouquets.com, @lulusleiandbouquets O‘ahu Leis In this workshop at her home in Lā‘ie, host Kiana provides a variety of locally sourced flowers with which to make lei po‘o along with the cultural background of lei. $125, 1.5 hours, see website for class schedule and to sign up, oahuleis.com, @oahuleis See the latest lineup at honolulumagazine. com/lei-making-classes/

Starting May 7, your state ID or driver’s license needs a gold star to be valid for domestic flights and for access to certain federal buildings and military bases.

To qualify, provide proof of your name, date of birth, legal presence, Hawai‘i residence, and name change if any of your documents don’t match.

—Katrina Valcourt

CURRENTS

C O N V E R S AT I O N S

Kaukau and Kūkākūkā with Kalani Pe‘a Over malasadas and lettuce wraps, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter talks about his bold path as a Hawaiian, from Pana‘ewa to Carnegie Hall.

BY N A K A N AT H A N I E L

FROM LEFT: K ALANI PE‘A , NAK A NATHANIEL. COURTESY: NAK A NATHANIEL

F

OR THIS ISSUE’S K AUK AU AND KŪK ĀKŪK Ā, I met up

with Kalani Pe‘a, who had just won his fourth Grammy for his album Kuini. He picked the spot: Cafe O’Lei in Waikapu, Maui. Pe‘a had gastric bypass surgery last year, and his weight had dropped by more than 150 pounds.

While he didn’t eat more than a few bites, he did order like I’d hoped.

“I love coming [here] with my family and friends and spending lots of money, but we’re supporting local, local kanaka who work here,” Pe‘a says.

He orders the lettuce wraps and crabcakes while I have the pork belly bao. He sips on a Starbucks Americano. Instead of his name being misspelled on his cup, the barista drew a Sharpie’d heart with the message, “Have So Much Fun in Japan!” He’s leaving the next day for a multicity tour of the nation with fellow Hawaiian musician Weldon Kekauoha.

Pe‘a is the only Hawaiian recording artist to have won even one Gram-

my in the Best Regional Roots Album category, which includes zydeco, polka and Native American music. Hawaiian music had its own category until 2012, when it was folded into the broader “regional roots” category.

In fact, each of his four nominations has led to a golden trophy. Why does he think he’s the only Hawaiian musician to win?

It’s all about networking, he says, and not every musician does that.

“If I really want the gold for Hawai‘i, it’s the network,” he says. “It’s like campaigning to be a mayor. So I’m campaigning and sharing my mele and they’re judging. These are producers for Beyoncé. These are engineers for big artists going, ‘What’s this album? Let me hear your album.’

They’re judging not on me; they’re assessing and voting on the quality and technical quality and merit of my album.”

Pe‘a is disappointed to learn that the banana cream pie he insists on sharing with me is no longer offered.

Dessert-committed, he orders mala-

sadas, which I claim to be heretical since we are from Hawai‘i Island and Maui isn’t necessarily known for the sugary fried treat.

The malasadas arrive dangling on metal skewers above tiny metal dipping cups with ube, liliko‘i and English cream sauces.

They’re kept from sliding off by a pineapple chunk. Pe‘a says that’s just Maui showing off the pineapple industry that Hawai‘i Island doesn’t have.

As true malasada connoisseurs—despite our Hawai‘i Island roots—Pe‘a and I give them above average grades. In embracing his proclivity for the finer things in life, we decide “Kalākauan” is a more appropriate label for him than “epicurean,” with King David Kalākaua being known for his proclivities to fine foods and culture.

As we wrap up our meal, I ask Pe‘a about his path as a Hawaiian performer, from Pana‘ewa to places like New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. “To have my face and see the words ‘sold out’ on the billboard was the best feeling,” he says.

Pe‘a has taken a bold path, unafraid to assert his identities. He is a fashion standout, and I admired his heavy use of ‘Ōlelo throughout lunch even though I was often left on my heels comprehension-wise. And, while accepting his Grammy for Kuini, he called himself a “queen.” That’s far from what Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole declared about Hawaiian-ness in his intro to “Kaleohano.”

I read Kamakawiwo‘ole’s words to Pe‘a: “Hawaiian to me is the feeling of getting somewhere without stepping on anybody’s toes, without causing friction with anybody,” Iz said.

Pe‘a quickly answers: “Talk about generational gaps.”

Pe‘a says that he’s not here to step on toes, but he’s prepared to use his platform to hold others to account.

So what is his version of being a Hawaiian?

“Can we just share each other’s ‘ōlinolino, their light, and not hinder others from seeking that light? To me, that’s Hawaiian,” he says.

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TO DO

Listen Up!

PURSUITS

Waltzing Through Life

These community-minded podcasts can help cut through the confusion of our state’s most pressing concerns.

BY JAMES NAKAMURA

Now in her mid-70s, Margaret Okimoto ​​discovered her true self on the dance floor.

VIA MIDJOURNEY

BY DIANE SEO

KA PEWA Hawai‘i Community Foundation The first three episodes of this new podcast hosted by Kanoa Leahey tackle ongoing efforts to address Maui’s housing crisis—identifying gaps where aid is needed and the initiatives to fill them.

VOICE OF BUSINESS PODCAST Chamber of Commerce Hawai‘i Business leaders track the ever-shifting terrain of doing business in the Islands. Some recent episodes revolve around workplace mentorship, cybersecurity and Hawai‘i’s economic future.

THE ONE O‘AHU PODCAST City and County of Honolulu Host Brandi Higa talks with Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi and other city officials about everything from our new mass alert system to a new hub for lifeguards to the latest developments on rail.

THE THIRTY PERCENT PROJECT Paula Daniels How long would it take for Hawai‘i to run out of food if shipping lanes and docks were closed? A month, weeks or days? Daniels tracks the state’s progress toward being 30% food sustainable by the year 2030.

SEEDS OF WELL-BEING University of Hawai‘i College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources Hear about the complex geological, economic and political challenges of getting locally produced food to your plate, including battling invasive species, labor shortages and climate change.

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HONOLULU MAGAZINE

SIT DOWN HAWAI‘I Sea Foam Host Joshua Duhaylonsod chats with influential local leaders about such pressing concerns as homelessness, emergency readiness and rail development.

Spoiler alert: There are no easy fixes, but the candid conversations provide insight into the complexity of the issues.

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HEN SHE STEPS ON to Aloha

Ballroom Co.’s dance floor in her strappy heels, 74-yearold Margaret Okimoto feels a fire. She transforms into the passionate dancer she’s long dreamed about being, at last unleashed.

Ballroom dancing is a fairly recent endeavor for Okimoto—she took it up about nine years ago—but it’s become her ticket to an exciting new life filled with glimmering costumes and travel across the country. “I love everything about it,” she says. She particularly favors the waltz, captivated by its old-world grandeur and the music. “Oh, the music …” she says, flashing a smile.

In February, Okimoto and fellow dancers from the Aloha Ballroom Co. traveled to New York City to compete at the prestigious New York Dance Festival. They killed it. Okimoto was a finalist in the cha-cha, while other students from the studio, all 50 and older, swept multiple categories. Beyond the thrill of faring well in competition, Okimoto describes her first visit to New York City as “magical.” Being there as a dancer and performing before judges was “just like the movies,” she says.

In her other life, Okimoto still works at Wai‘anae Store, her family’s beloved market that celebrated its 75th anniversary last year.

Twice a week, she makes the long drive to town for private lessons with Aloha Ballroom instructor Keith Michael Denlinger, whom she credited multiple times during our short interview for not just elevating her skills, but for believing in her. “He makes me feel like a little girl,” she says.

In response, Denlinger says he can’t think of anything more gratifying than coaching someone like Okimoto, who took up ballroom dancing at an age when many people slow down. “When older people come here and start dancing, everything else disappears for them,” he says. “They become dancers.”

A ARON K. YOSHINO

CURRENTS

Margaret Okimoto dancing with Tony Meredith, a professional ballroom dancer and choreographer, at Aloha Ballroom Co. M AY/J U N E 2 0 2 5

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HAWAI‘I’S HISTORIC HOMES THEY REVEAL OUR PAST AND OFFER A RICHER UNDERSTANDING OF WHO WE ARE. WE LOOK AT THREE NEIGHBORHOODS FULL OF THESE GEMS.

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By D A R L E N E D E L A C R U Z , D I A N E S E O , M A R I TA K E TA and K AT R I N A VA L C O U R T Photos By A A R O N K . Y O S H I N O

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Y

OU MAY BE FAMILIAR with the bronze

“historic residence” plaques prominently displayed outside some O‘ahu homes. They’re a visible designation of historic properties, a half century or older, on the state’s official register.

While some are linked to such notable architects as Vladimir Ossipoff, Charles William “C.W.” Dickey and Albert Ives, others reflect celebrated styles, perhaps a 1920s plantation home, a Tudor or a midcentury modern. Many have noteworthy past owners or an intriguing backstory.

“If the architecture, engineering or construction are in some way significant and have characteristics that tell a story about building and design of a particular time and place, it can qualify,” says Kiersten Faulkner, executive director of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation.

The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 set up a nationwide program to recognize historic properties. It also enabled states to develop their own programs. The Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places, celebrating its 50th anniversary next year, arrived a decade later. “It’s a way to help people understand the roots of a community, telling stories of the people,” Faulkner says.

Without appreciating historic markers, we’re settling for a superficial understanding of who we are, says Honolulu architect Glenn Mason, whose Mason Architects firm specializes in historic consulting and restorations. “We would have no knowledge about how to move forward in the future.”

The Official Designation To be placed on the state register, which provides a significant property tax exemption designated by each county, homeowners must go through an extensive process to confirm their home’s historical importance and gain approval from a review board. This requires deep research, a task homeowners can take upon themselves or outsource.

Once approved, the property must remain publicly visible (no barricading gates or walls), and owners cannot demolish their homes. They’re not restricted from modernizing or remodeling, but they need state approval for both interior and exterior projects. Failure to meet conditions can result in penalties, including

payment of any taxes they might have been exempt from.

According to the state’s Department of Land and Natural Resources, which administers the program, the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places includes 1,127 properties. Of these, approximately 400 are houses or residences; 340 of them are on O‘ahu, 37 on Hawai‘i Island, 12 on Maui, and 11 on Kaua‘i.

Mary Kodama, architecture branch chief at the State Historic Preservation Division, says those numbers represent just a fraction of the homes that might be eligible.

While scanning O‘ahu’s list of officially designated historic homes, it’s clear the majority are concentrated in older, wealthier neighborhoods like Mānoa, Nu‘uanu and Diamond Head. According to Mason, it’s because homeowners in these areas tended to have the financial resources to hire renowned architects to design notable homes to match their personal tastes.

“We have to be honest that it was an old boys club,” he says. “People who had money hired architects they knew. It’s not an accident that Ossipoff got to design the Outrigger Canoe Club and the Pacific Club and did Thurston Memorial Chapel at Punahou. He knew people.”

So, Are Historic Homes Coveted Real Estate?

Yes and no, Mason and Faulkner say. While some homebuyers truly appreciate the history and charm of older homes, others want modern homes. “Some buyers might think, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool. Look at that weird little cupboard over there,’ and admire all the things that are sometimes present in old houses,” Mason says. “But there are others who look at a property and see the restrictions from a historic designation as … controlling or limiting of what they want to do with the property.”

The Historic Hawai‘i Foundation now works with the Honolulu Board of Realtors to offer guidance on what it means to buy, sell and live in a historic home, in the hopes of helping Realtors avoid buyers who might want to tear them down, even though the home would lose its historic designation.

The designation, after all, should be deemed as something special, Kodama says. “It should give the homeowner a sense of pride.” —DS MARCH 2024

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NU‘UANU

A Step Back into Old Honolulu SOME OF NU‘UANU’S HISTORIC HOMES ARE UNITED BY THOUGHTFUL DESIGN THAT INCORPORATES THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT. B Y K AT R I N A VA L C O U R T

J

Left: the property designed by landscape architect Catherine Jones Richards in 1921. Right: an ‘auwai and Nu‘uanu Stream in the backyard of Waipuna. Below: ‘auwai running through many Dowsett Tract properties.

U ST PA ST N U ‘ U A N U VA L L E Y PARK , more than a dozen homes

with historic designations sit within a mile of one another, many built as part of Dowsett Tract after Pali Road was constructed early in the 20th century.

Back in the day, the neighborhood’s proximity to Nu‘uanu Stream, Downtown and Honolulu Harbor appealed to government officials, wealthy business owners and other well-to-dos, who tapped some of the most noted architects of the time to build their homes.

But let’s go back even earlier.

After 1795’s destructive Battle of Nu‘uanu, the area was converted to lo‘i kalo. “The ‘auwai, the ditches that irrigated fields, are still there. And they run through the front yards of all the homes built in the ’20s and ’30s as landscape features,” says Kiersten Faulkner, executive director of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation. Walking along Dowsett and Alika avenues, a steady burble is almost always audible as the ‘auwai snakes along the side of the road, sometimes no more than a foot wide and a few inches deep.

“There’s an ‘auwai committee that’s trying to bring back interest in the ‘auwai system, and that was kind

of a passion project for my family,” says one longtime homeowner in the area who didn’t want to be identified.

She says that maintaining a legacy of Hawaiian culture honors her family’s ancestors and the land. “The really lovely thing about it is it is a real connector for the community. It’s a great way to meet neighbors and to have this shared purpose. … There’s this water flowing through our properties that connects us in a really special and deep way.”

The home, on the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places since 2003, was built and designed by Catherine Jones Richards, Hawai‘i’s first licensed landscape architect, and her husband, Russell. Known for designing the courtyards and grounds of the Honolulu Museum of Art, Ala Moana Beach Park, YWCA Laniākea and more, Richards “had to have been the

only female landscape architect in town,” says Glenn Mason of Mason Architects.

The 1921 home, built in Colonial Revival style, was adapted for Hawai‘i with clapboard siding, high ceilings, large windows and French doors that allow for airflow and light. You’ll see similar elements at the nearby Thomas Victor King House, built in 1918; the Isabelle Jones House, built in 1924 by Richards’ mother; and the Louis and Marjorie Stephens Residence, built in 1926, among others.

Farther mauka, the homes are more Spanish Colonial Revival and Spanish Mission Revival—different names for similar styles. “Typically, they don’t have big overhangs; they have stuccoed walls and whatnot.

They’re fairly plain-looking on the outside,” Mason says. The Mediterranean climate is similar to Hawai‘i’s, so people thought “that kind of architecture could be transplanted here.”

Former Gov. George Robert Carter’s old house, called Lihiwai, was constructed in this style in the late 1920s out of bluestone and concrete with an Otis elevator, multiple fireplaces, ‘ōhi‘a flooring and other design elements befitting of the most prominent members of society. It was built by architect Hardie Phillip, who also worked on the Honolulu Museum of Art and C. Brewer Building.

A few years later, more homes were being built across the stream.

The Purvis Residence—a Spanish

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HAWAI‘I’S HISTORIC HOMES

DIAMOND HEAD Mission style home built for a Bishop National Bank vice president—was designed by C.W. Dickey in 1930, though without the signature roof for which he would become known. In 1934, Dickey built a home for James L. Coke, a former Hawai‘i Supreme Court chief justice. Known as Waipuna, the Colonial Revival house itself isn’t as impressive as its yard, which was designed by notable landscape architect Richard Tongg in the 1930s. It includes both an ‘auwai and Nu‘uanu Stream running side by side and once featured lily and koi ponds with dozens of other plants.

On either side of the Kimo Drive bridge, you can see these waters and imagine all that has occurred along the stream’s path, from its source in the valley all the way down to Honolulu Harbor.

“You can see everything from this definitive moment in Hawai‘i’s history (the Battle of Nu‘uanu) to consulates that were built after World War II when Korea and the Philippines and Japan wanted to have a presence for trade,” Faulkner says. “To me, that’s what’s amazing about Nu‘uanu. Other places have layering, but you see that so explicitly there.”

The landscape of Nu‘uanu is designed around its water.

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HONOLULU MAGAZINE

The Lure of Lē‘ahi IT’S LONG BEEN HOME TO PROMINENT HOMEOWNERS WITH THE MEANS TO BUILD NOTABLE HOMES IN DIVERSE ARCHITECTURAL STYLES.

By DIANE SEO

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to Kapi‘olani Park, worldclass beaches and killer ocean views, Lē‘ahi (or Diamond Head) has long been a haven for well-to-do residents. As such, when the area’s neighborhoods were first developing in the 1920s, some of Hawai‘i’s most distinguished architects were commissioned to design its homes and condos.

Today, several residences along Kalākaua Avenue, Hibiscus Road, Kiele Avenue and other Diamond Head streets display plaques indicating their inclusion on the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places. “Diamond Head is loaded with historic homes because it was one of the earliest residential areas, and it’s where people with lots of money always have gone to develop homes,” says Glenn Mason, whose architectural firm has taken a leading role in preserving historic properties.

And while not all residences are grand—some are modest-sized bungalows and cottages—Diamond Head is the clear opposite of a so-called “cookie-cutter” community. Rather, its historic homes span a range of distinctive architectural styles.

“The property owners often had a custom house built, so it was very individualized,” says Mary Kodama, architecture branch chief at the State I T H I T S P R OX I M I T Y

Historic Preservation Division.

During a walking tour of the area’s historic homes, here’s what you might encounter: double-pitched roofs by architect C.W. Dickey, often referred to as “the Dickey roof”; regional, plantation-style beach houses popular from the 1920s through the 1940s; Spanish Mission Revival residences; and European Tudor homes, some in a storybook style and referred to by those in the neighborhood as “gingerbread homes.”

A cluster of 15 properties—mostly in Diamond Head, but elsewhere, too—gained historic designation as a group. Built between 1923 and 1932, they are “highly stylized, ‘Olde English’ or French Norman design styles that often include asymmetrical massing, half-timber and stucco façades, casement windows with diamond panes, and either high-pitched roofs or roofs with rounded eaves in imitation of thatch,” according to a description of the homes on the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation website.

Liz Perry, a Realtor, lives in and owns an oceanfront “gingerbread” home that’s part of the designated cluster—a 1932 French Tudor along Kalākaua Avenue that she adores for its playfulness. Indeed, the three-bedroom, three-level home exudes whimsy with its with its wrought-iron stairwell,

This 1920s home on Kalākaua Avenue is part of a Gold Coast walking tour organized by AIA Honolulu.

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HAWAI‘I’S HISTORIC HOMES

Gold Coast Walking Tour diamond-paned windows and many other unique features. “It wasn’t meant to be a mansion … to me, it has more personality,” Perry says. “It’s just the right size to me, not large, but I have my bedroom on the third floor, and I’m able to have house guests on the second floor.”

Along with her stunning ocean views, she loves the tight-knit neighborhood. “We should be retaining historic homes, otherwise, you lose a lot of the charm of Honolulu,” she says. “Every day, all day long, people come into the courtyard to look at our homes. They’re walking to Diamond Head, maybe from Waikīkī, and we’re part of their tour.”

A block away, on Kiele Avenue, Tony Cannariato and his wife, Sharon, bought a 1928 Storybook Tudor Revival home that was deemed at the time a tear down. It was 2021, and instead of building from scratch, they decided to restore the original structure and get it approved for the state’s historic register. During the application process, the Cannariatos discovered their home had a distinguished past owner—William Kanakanui, a Native Hawaiian who graduated in 1924 from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and served in the Navy as a commissioned officer until he retired in 1947. As a Punahou student and at the Naval Academy, Kanakanui was a standout swimmer.

Cannariato beams as he tells the backstory and says despite the years it’s taken to rebuild the home to its original glory—and it’s not finished yet—he and Sharon have always loved historic homes.

“We were looking for something with character, and we like this cottage-looking design,” he says.

“It’s the reason we’re in this neighborhood, because of the charming architecture.”

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On Oct. 14, 2023, AIA Honolulu chose the Gold Coast, including parts of Diamond Head, for its annual walking tour. The group toured both midcentury condos and historic single-family residences from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The descriptions featured here were provided by AIA Honolulu, the local branch of the American Insti-

tute of Architects, with some editing. Note: The AIA tour included several other places, beyond homes, but we focused on residences listed on the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places. It doesn’t include all Diamond Head homes on the register but offers those on foot the opportunity to see a sampling of homes.

❺ ❶ The Tahitienne

❸ Egholm Residence

❷ Tudor/French Norman Cottages

❹ James J.C. Haynes Residence

2999 Kalākaua Ave. Architects: Bob Fraser, Paul Hammarberg, Edwin L. Bauer Year built: 1958 The only Gold Coast condo on the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places, this modern, utilitarian and asymmetric building reflects Hawai‘i during a co-op building boom in the 1950s.

3000 block of Kalākaua Avenue, and other areas Architect: Earl Williams Years built: 1923–1932 This collection of French Norman-style residences reflects the influence of California, where houses like these were popular at the time. Fifteen separate residences remain in Honolulu, several on the Gold Coast. The style typically is distinguished by asymmetric massing, a mix of timber and stucco in the façade, diamond-pane windows and high-pitched roofs with rounded eaves that imitate thatch.

3022 Kalākaua Ave. Architect: Carl William Winstedt Year built: 1926 The residence is one of Honolulu’s few examples of a small cottage in the Spanish Colonial Revival, a popular style suitable for Hawai‘i’s warm climate. The brick, stucco and red clay roof tiles are common characteristics of the style.

3026 Kalākaua Ave. Architect: Ray Morris (Lewers & Cooke) Year built: 1926 This home sits on a unique lot, larger than most in the neighborhood, spanning both Kalākaua and Kiele avenues. The well-built Colonial Revival home incorporates detailed craftsmanship with wood-shingled exterior walls and Colonial detailing.

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❺ C.W. Dickey Residence 3030 Kalākaua Ave. Architect: C.W. Dickey Year built: 1926 This residence is a quintessential example of the double-pitched, hipped roof that represented a distinctive Hawaiian style of architecture at the time. The cottage features some early Dickey trademarks such as large overhangs, board-and-batten siding, and stained concrete flooring.

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3044 Kalākaua Ave. Developer: Rudolph Bukeley Year built: 1929 The home is an example of a Cotswold cottage, a type of Tudor Revival style popular at the time. It’s represented by romantic asymmetric massing, a skewed gable roof over the entry lānai, round arched openings, and an overall whimsical appearance.

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❻ Doctor Frank & Kathryn Plum Residence

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3050 Kalākaua Ave. Builder: Fred Harrison Year built: 1923 Fred Harrison was a prominent local builder who built this home as an investment for his family. It represents a typical middle-class rental of the time, characterized by a sweeping roof line, bay window, double gable ends and a front entry door not facing the street.

❸

❽ Marion & Samuel Steinhauser Residence

3043 Kiele Ave. Architect: Hart Wood Year built: 1938 Designed by Hart Wood, one of Hawai‘i’s most influential architects, the residence is an example of the 20th century Monterey style with its steeply pitched sidegabled roof, stucco walls and cantilever portion of a second-story porch.

❾ Adolph Egholm Kiele Avenue House

❼

3023 Kiele Ave. Architect: Carl William Winstedt Year built: 1926 This Adolph Egholm house, a Spanish Mission Revival cottage, is a single-story home with stucco walls, a red clay tile roof and a round-arched arcade.

❿ William & Edna Montgomery Residence

3014 Kiele Ave. Building supplier: Lewers & Cooke Year built: 1926 This pavilion-style home with Mediterranean influences and touches of European tradition features stucco walls and Tuscan columns on the lānai.

⓫ Gobindram Watumull House

3015 Kiele Ave. Architects: Dahl & Conrad Year built: 1939 This residence has characteristics of the modern style, including acid-stained concrete floors, curved walls, built-in cabinetry and corner sliding windows, but with adaptations for Hawai‘i. Typical modern buildings have flat roofs. Here, the wide overhang provided by a hipped formation provides shade.

⓬ Mrs. Josephine Ketchum Residence

3004 Kiele Ave. Architect: Not listed Year built: 1931 This Craftsman-style bungalow, adapted for Hawai‘i, has naturally stained boardand-batten walls, with heavy timber elements that accentuate horizontal features, all characteristics of the Craftsman style. Hawai‘i-specific adaptations include a complete double-pitched hip roof, screened lānai and an exterior bathroom door.

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MĀNOA

A Proud Past MĀNOA’S HISTORIC HOMES CUT ACROSS THE VALLEY, CONNECTING THE COMMUNITY TO ITS RICH HISTORY.

By DARLENE DELA CRUZ

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NCE A POPULAR RETREAT for Ha-

wai‘i’s ali‘i, Mānoa has long been one of O‘ahu’s most desired residential neighborhoods, with its lush valley setting, cooler temperatures and proximity to Honolulu’s urban core.

Along with attracting royalty like Queen Lili‘uokalani and Ka‘ahumanu, a queen consort to Kamehameha I and later queen regent, Mānoa has drawn a diverse range of residents over the centuries, including plantation workers, as well as families and faculty of Punahou School and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

As one of the island’s oldest residential neighborhoods, Mānoa has retained its vintage charm, reflected through its many historic homes. Across the valley are classic Tudor residences; contemporary midcentury homes by architect George Wimberly; and residences designed by Hawai‘i regional architecture pioneer Hart Wood and Ted Vierra, one of the Islands’ first Native Hawaiian architects.

Built in 1929, Hale Huelani is a historic Craftsman cottage in upper Mānoa that once was home to Earl M. Welty, a notable local newspaper editor and radio broadcaster. Its current owners, who wished to remain anonymous, have made a conscious effort to preserve the home’s classic features, including wood planks, canec walls and vintage hardware. One of the homeowners’ favorite features is the chimney, which has four red bricks that stand out against its lava rock construction. “Another very nice feature [in the home] is the large eaves,” the homeowner says. “You can keep your windows open all the time without the rain coming in.”

Maintaining Mānoa’s distinct architecture and character is a priority among Hale Huelani sits on a quiet street at the base of the Ko‘olau Range in upper Mānoa.

residents, says Linda LeGrande, a board member of Mālama Mānoa, a nonprofit with a mission to preserve historic Mānoa.

She describes the valley’s lush setting as unique, blending urban life with the natural beauty of the Ko‘olau. “We have a defined mountain range that encompasses our valley, and it’s like the arms that encircle and hold us,” she says.

LeGrande, who lives in a statedesignated historic home, was among those who launched the organization’s first historic homes walking tour in 1996, with 66 attendees. In 2019, the last time the tour was held, about 450 people took part. That tour featured stops at homes representing different architectural styles, including Craftsman, Colonial Revival, Late Victorian Single, Queen Anne, Prairie, and Georgian Revival with Italianate influences. LeGrande says the tour became more popular with growing public interest in older architecture, especially styles from the 1920s through the midcentury era. She says people were also curious about notable past residents who contributed to the development of Honolulu. Although the pandemic-initiated hiatus has been lengthy, LeGrande hopes to resume the tour soon.

She says Mānoa’s historic residences strengthen the neighborhood’s sense of identity and connect the community to its rich past. She hopes to one day have the area’s historic College Hills tract added to the National Register of Historic Places.

“When you document a neighborhood— when you describe it and define it—it gives people something to be proud of,” she says.

The current owners of Hale Huelani have preserved classic details, including a working fireplace in the living room (above), lava rock stairs leading to the dining room (left), a lava rock chimney (below), and the original crystal chandelier in the dining room (bottom left).

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Modest, But Infinitely Rich IT’S THE TYPE OF HOME WHERE HER PARENTS MIGHT HAVE WORKED WHEN THEY B y M A R I TA K E TA WERE A CHAUFFEUR AND A HOUSE SERVANT.

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N EAST MĀNOA ROAD, George and Ruth To-

kumi’s 1915 Craftsman-style bungalow appears modest compared to the valley’s stately mansions. But its designer was Oliver Traphagen, architect of the Moana Surfrider, and like other masters of his craft, Traphagen filled the interior with rich detailing. With coffered ceilings, an Italian-tile fireplace and stained glass roses on built-in hutches framing the dining room, it’s an officially designated historic home—the kind of house, Ruth Tokumi says, where her parents might have worked when they were a chauffeur and a servant.

Instead, they ended up buying it. With few options after the Great Depression left him jobless, Shoichi Okahara and his wife, Tsutomu, opened a saimin stand at the edge of Chinatown. The success of Okahara Saimin fueled expansion to a wholesale factory on Waiola Street in McCully, where the couple lived and raised seven children. The story might have continued along this trajectory, except in the late 1940s, Tokumi’s

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older brother died, and to ease their grief with a fresh start in a place without memories, her parents bought the house on East Mānoa Road.

Tokumi is in her 90s now. As stewards of the house for the extended Okahara ‘ohana, she and George renovated it, enclosing the wraparound lānai to create a large family room and a fourth bedroom. In her younger years, Tokumi opened the home to Historic Hawai‘i Foundation tours, pointing out the boxy layout devoid of hallways, scraps of original fabric wallpaper in a flowing Art Nouveau floral pattern, the renovated cottage and maid’s quarters behind the garden. When the guava tree fruited, Tokumi froze the purée to make juice year-round. When the Okahara clan gathered for the holidays, she got out her mother’s potato masher and made creamy mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving and sekihan, sticky red-bean rice, at New Year’s. She’s pulled back in recent years and the house is quieter now, more modest than ever in today’s Mānoa. But it’s still rich inside.

The Tokumis’ dining room is still the center of the house, with original light fixtures and built-in hutches along two walls.

To the right, an enclosed family room replaced a wraparound lānai with lava-rock columns and spindle railings, the latter now repurposed in the home’s distinctive carport.

FEATURE

How to Research Your Home Curious about whether your home qualifies for the state’s historic register, or want to know more about it? The Historic Hawai‘i Foundation and National Park Service offer resources to research your property’s history. Find them at historichawaii.org/how-to-research-the-historyof-your-home, along with a helpful webinar. Here are tips to get started: • Search your address online.

• Ask neighbors, previous owners or their relatives about what they remember, including what the house may previously have looked like.

• Find real property tax records at realproperty.honolulu.gov.

You can also find information about land parcels and maps at honolulugis.org. These are free online.

• The Hawai‘i State Library has city directories, newspaper archives and phone books that list who lived in the home—not just owners, but renters, too.

• Others who may have researched homes in your neighborhood can provide clues about yours, especially if they were built around the same time.

• Don’t underestimate social media. Neighborhood groups, real estate agents and others may have already done research, giving you a head start.

• Keep organized notes, including sources of information.

• Verify information with primary sources if possible.

If your home is historically significant—whether it’s because of architecture, association with individuals or some other reason—and hasn’t been majorly altered, you can submit a nomination form to the Hawai‘i State Historic Preservation Division. The process typically takes a year or more. —KV

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HAWAI‘I’S HISTORIC HOMES

Buying or Selling a Historic Home While historic homes can have obvious appeal, you should be aware of the pitfalls of owning one—and understand what you can and can’t do to the property—before you buy.

“Some people love historic homes, and that’s who you want to live in a historic home,” says Kiersten Faulkner, executive director of the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation. “Some people don’t like historic homes, and you really don’t want them to buy a historic home because it’s not going to meet their needs and then they won’t be good stewards for it.”

Glenn Mason of Mason Architects remembers when a Diamond Head homeowner looking to hire his firm didn’t care about the home’s significance. “That owner told me what they wanted. And I said, you can’t do that with this house,” he says. “They demolished the house. It was on the register, and they demolished it because they weren’t interested in keeping the historic look. They wanted what they wanted.” It isn’t illegal to demolish a historic home, though there may be repercussions such as fines if the proper process isn’t followed.

When shopping for a historic home, first look for documentation that proves it’s on either the Hawai‘i or national historic registers.

If it’s receiving a tax exemption, get familiar with the requirements for continuing to receive it. You should also read the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for the Treatment of Historic Properties. You’re still allowed to renovate and add things like solar panels, but all interior and exterior projects requiring building permits must be approved by the State Historic Preservation Division.

When selling a historic home, if its historic designation is important to you, find a real estate agent who aligns with these values. The Historic Hawai‘i Foundation works with the Hawai‘i Board of Realtors to offer guidance and connect the right property with the right buyer. “It’s that matchmaking,” Faulkner says.

“We want to provide this information to the Realtors so that they can provide it to their clients, and so they can provide better service to everybody.” —KV

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The classic Hawai‘i garment feels decidedly fresh again, with local designers dreaming up exciting iterations for all occasions. by brie thalmann photography by sam feyen

art direction christine labrador 28

HONOLULU MAGAZINE

creative direction james nakamura

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hair and makeup risa hoshino

m o d e l ta m i ko h o b b s , renew models

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To Market, To Market Lexbreezy Hawai‘i dress. Love Me Knots earrings and bracelet.

Mallow x Hola Marte Studio bandanna, Olive Boutique. Velvet Canyon sunglasses, Gillia. Vince sandals, Neiman Marcus.

Shot at Onda Pasta & Provisions. See Shopping Guide on page 37.

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The Daily Grind Fighting Eel dress.

The Honolulu Social Club customembroidered vintage jacket. Hernan Herdez necklace, At Dawn. Twin Urchins Superette tote. Shot at The Curb Kaimukī.

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An Open Book Freewheeling Simply Sisters by Lola dress. Love Me Knots necklace. Moon Collective cap. Tidal Theory bucket bag, Hook & Hide.

Sig Zane Designs dress. Jill Harunaga Stamen + Style custom lei. Salvage Public bandanna. Here x Kna Plus tote. Love Me Knots earrings.

Shot at Da Shop: Books + Curiosities.

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Girl, Put Your Records On Roberta Oaks dress. P2M Jewelry necklace, Small Kine Gift. Hula sunglasses, Single Double. Las Olitas bucket bag.

Horsenbuhs ring, Ron Herman. Shot at Aloha Got Soul. See more on page 5.

Stop & Smell the Pua Language of the Birds dress, Island-Boy custom lei, Hansel from Basel bucket bag, Island-Boy. Loewe sunglasses, Neiman Marcus. Staud sandals, Ron Herman.

Shot at Plantoem.

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From top: Arlie Glass Plumeria glass lei, Crown Flower glass lei, Pakalana glass lei, from $2,000 each. arlie-glass.com, @arlie_glass

Forever Strung It’s easily one of our favorite home décor trends of late—creative takes on forever lei, crafted with pua and leaves made of glass, leather and stone.

Muddy Things for Oliver Men’s Shop Hibiscus ceramic lei, $250. Oliver Men’s Shop, 49 Kīhāpai St., Kailua, oliveandoliverhawaii.com, @oliverhawaii

PHOTOS: A ARON K. YOSHINO

Grow Your Own Lei Garden Dreaming of a lei garden of your own?

This is your sign to dig in. We tapped horticulturist Pamela Hinsdale, who teaches classes on the topic at Foster Botanical Garden, for some tips to get you growing.

ILLUSTRATIONS: CHRISTINE LABRADOR

Consider the climate: When choosing plants, look around to see what’s already thriving in your neighborhood. For instance, puakenikeni does well in wet climates, while plumeria prefers dry.

Apartment growers: Start with plants that are known to grow well in pots, such as bozu, cockscomb and smaller chrysanthemums. Kupali‘i, a native plant from the mint family, is great for greenery.

Yard growers: Green ti leaf is fundamental. Take advantage of your space and grow

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From left: Tidal Theory Classic Puakenikeni leather lei, from $475, Ti Leaf leather lei, from $300, Modern Puakenikeni leather lei, from $375. Hook & Hide, 1136 Nu‘uanu Ave., tidaltheory. com, @tidal_theory

large filler plants—pōhinahina, crown flower and song of India all start easily from cuttings. Bougainvillea is thorny and gets wild, so keep it in a pot. Climbing vines, such as Stephanotis, and fast-growing shrubs, such as mini beefsteak and a variety of Galphimia, which puts forth pretty yellow flowers, are also good additions.

Long-term plantings: If you’re lucky enough to have a lot of space and don’t mind the wait, consider puakenikeni, plumeria, ‘ōhi‘a and ‘ohai ali‘i trees.

Mu‘u Evolution

Shopping Guide At Dawn, Ward Village, 1108 Auahi St., Suite 154, theatdawn.com, @atdawn_oahu

We turned to Tory Laitila, curator of textiles and historic art of Hawai‘i at the Honolulu Museum of Art, to share the origins of the iconic mu‘umu‘u.

Fighting Eel, multiple locations, fightingeel.com, @fightingeel Gillia, 131 Hekili St., Kailua, gilia.co, @gilliathelabel Here, Salt at Our Kaka‘ako, 685 Auahi St., #2-115, here-shop-here.com, @here.thestore

Humble Beginnings O OT PH When Western-style clothing was first introduced ILE F LU HONOLU to Hawai‘i by American Protestant missionaries in the th early 19 century, dresses were frequently made of fabrics that were difficult to launder, so they were worn with protective undergarments.

The mu‘umu‘u started out as a loose, chemiselike undergarment worn under a holokū (a long dress with a high neck and long sleeves).

The Long and Short of It In ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i, mu‘umu‘u translates to “cut off ” or “shortened,” which refers to the mu‘umu‘u’s length, usually shorter than the holokū it was worn under, and its short sleeves or lack of sleeves.

Fit for a Queen The first holokū, and thus the first mu‘umu‘u, was requested by and made for Queen Kalākua Kaheiheimālie in 1820.

Aloha Attire Over time, people began wearing the mu‘umu‘u as a housedress or swimming gown. Then, in the 1930s, the mu‘umu‘u emerged as a dress to be worn while out and about, coinciding with the decade’s alohawear boom and the rise in fabrics printed with Hawai‘i motifs.

Spreading the Word The word “mu‘umu‘u” officially entered the English lexicon during World War II.

Hook & Hide, 1136 Nu‘uanu Ave., hookandhide.com, @hookandhidehawaii The Honolulu Social Club, @thehonolulusocialclub, tracey@thehonolulusocialclub.com Island-Boy, 3464 Wai‘alae Ave., islandboy.shop, @islandboy.shop Jill Harunaga, Stamen + Style, @jharunaga Las Olitas, lasolitas.com, @las0litas Lexbreezy Hawai‘i, multiple locations, lexbreezyhawaii.com, @lexbreezyhawaii Love Me Knots, lovemeknotshi.com, @lovemeknotshi Moon Collective, moon-collective.com, @mooncollective Neiman Marcus, Ala Moana Center, 1450 Ala Moana Blvd., neimanmarcus.com, @neimanmarcus Olive Boutique, 43 Kīhāpai St., Kailua, oliveandoliverhawaii.com, @olive_boutique Roberta Oaks, 1152 Nu‘uanu Ave., robertaoaks.com, @robertaoakshawaii Ron Herman, Moana Surfrider, 2365 Kalākaua Ave., Tower Wing Shop #1, ronherman.com, @ronhermanthestore Salvage Public, multiple locations, salvagepublic.com, @salvagepublic Sig Zane Designs, sigzanedesigns.com, @sigzanedesigns

Pick Lit

CH RIS TI NE

LA BR AD OR

A guidebook for growing the lei garden of your dreams.

Simply Sisters by Lola, lolamillerdesigns.com, @simplysistersbylola

No gatekeeping here. In our quest for lei gardening resources, Growing Plants for Hawaiian Lei: 85 Plants for Gardens, Conservation, and Business came highly recommended, and it did not disappoint. Now in its second iteration, the extensively researched handbook from UH Mānoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, offers invaluable guidance for growing and harvesting 85 types of plants used for lei. Along with details on propagation, plant care and flowering habits, the book also shares harvesting tips and notes on how to clean, store and prepare materials for lei.

Single Double, 1121 Nu‘uanu Ave., @singledouble

$30, uhpress.hawaii.edu

Plantoem, 3457 Wai‘alae Ave., plantoem.com, @plantoem

Small Kine Gift, 3424 Wai‘alae Ave., small.kine.gift, @smallkinegift Twin Urchins Superette, shoptwinurchins.com, @twinurchinssuperette

Locations (special thanks to): Aloha Got Soul, 2017 S. King St., alohagotsoul.com, @alohagotsoul The Curb Kaimukī, 3408 Wai‘alae Ave., Suite 103, thecurbkaimuki.com, @thecurbkaimuki Da Shop: Books + Curiosities, 3565 Harding Ave., dashophnl.com, @dashophnl Onda Pasta & Provisions, 3449 Wai‘alae Ave., ondapastahi.com, @ondapastaprovisions

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HONOLULU BOOK AWARDS In selecting our 2024 winners in seven categories, we considered heart, breadth of audience, readability and connection.

B Y D O N WA L L A C E PHOTOGR A PH Y BY A AR ON K . YOSHINO

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p.

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FEATURE

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HONOLULU BOOK AWARDS

THE BOOK GODS

... WERE KIND THIS PAST YEAR.

Once again, as with last year’s inaugural HONOLULU Book Awards, our local writers outdid themselves. As we stood in the powerful shore break of their words, we were swept away by so many good books about or from our world here in the Pacific.

What followed for me was two months of reading and another of interviewing and writing.

And it was great. This was Hawai‘i at its newest and best.

What we discovered? Hilo. Three of our award-winning books gestated, one literally, in Hilo or in its backcountry. All three go against the grain, too, with Hawai‘i Island more typically associated with the sleepy pastoral or Maunakea or hula. There’s a global crackle to their authors’ prose and ambitions.

Of last year’s six awardees, four titles came from large New York or mainstream publishers, plus one from a top New York indie. (Until 2023, Hawai‘i had never had more than two titles come from the Bigs in any year, going back to 1888.) The output, and our awards, went noticed. In addition to bookstores displaying our story alongside local titles, HONOLULU got a shoutout in the holiest-ofliterary-holies, The New York Times Book Review.

Of this year’s honorees, three are from major presses: Bloomsbury, HarperCollins/Mariner and Harper/MIRA. Two are from major indies—Soho Press and Brooklyn’s edgy Akashic Press—and two are from local standbys Bamboo Ridge Press and Saddle Road Press. The quality is once again very high, whether it’s a debut that sizzles or two career-crowning masterpieces.

It’s gratifying to get recognition from across the waters. But with the HONOLULU Book Awards, it isn’t just a numbers game, or a question of publishing house size or location. The questions we pose to ourselves are more about heart, breadth of audience, readability and connection.

Is this us? Do we feel it? Did it stop time until we had to turn on the lights to keep reading? And maybe even skip the fourth quarter of the game?

For the 19 authors represented in these seven books the answer is a resounding yes.

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Book of the Year (About Hawai‘i): Honolulu Noir, edited

by Chris McKinney, 13 authors Author of the Year: Zoë Eisenberg for Significant Others Book of the Year (Not About Hawai‘i): Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux Debut Author: Jessie Ren Marshall for Women! In! Peril!

Book of Poetry: The Oldtimers

by Wing Tek Lum Author Under 35: Kelly Murashige for The Lost Souls of Benzaiten Nonfiction Book of the Year: How to B

by Virginia Loo

ASKED TO ASSEMBLE AN ANTHOLOGY OF DARKER THEMED STORIES, Chris McKinney was intrigued,

but aside from local noir legends Scott Kikkawa and Lono Waiwaiole, “it’s not like there are two dozen talented wannabe Dennis Lehanes running around the island,” he says. And that’s a good thing: He says too many Lehanes—an author distinguished for his gritty crime stories and mysteries—would lead to “fedora fatigue.”

But instead of pulp crime scribblers, what if he tempted literary writers “who more or less represented the demographics of the city” into a trip to the dark side? Akashic Books publisher Johnny Temple liked the idea, but despite early yeses from two of Hawai‘i’s bestselling authors, Kiana Davenport and Alan Brennert, other rising stars rejected McKinney outright. Still, as the deadline loomed, he thought he had a good list, until several writers changed their minds.

Fortunately, McKinney’s wide net landed Stephanie Han, whose divorce thriller at Kaimana Beach opens the book. After hard-boiled tales of yakuza and double-crossing femme fatales by Waiwaiole, Davenport and McKinney himself, the “Home in the Islands” section fea(About Hawai‘i) tures locals caught in locals-only nightmares: Mindy Eun Soo Pennybacker’s saga of a sovereignty con artist, a tale of a heist by private school students that I submitted, and Christy Passion’s story of an ER nurse trying to calm a suicidal terminal patient. In the “Cops” section, Kikkawa tours the 1950s mean streets, Brennert masterfully depicts Chang Apana (the model for Charlie Chan), and speculative novelist Tom Gammarino spins an AI whodunit.

The final trio of stories—including two by last-second Gen Z recruits B.A. Kobayashi and McKinney’s daughter, Morgan— scramble logic, point of view and reality itself. Conjuring a shambolic ghoul out of various deities, iconic Filipino author Michelle Cruz Skinner ends the volume with the spirit of noir itself, culling humanity as she moves indifferently through the centuries.

Reviewers were enchanted.

The New York Times Book Review, New York Journal of Books, Kirkus, Booklist and Publisher’s Weekly EDITED BY praised Honolulu Noir’s revisionist take on our “paradise,” its diverse voices and genre-busting verve— validating McKinney, especially his enlistment of female writers. “The challenge was taking writers out of their comfort zones,” he says. In doing so, he took Hawai‘i literature with him.

BOOK OF THE YEAR

HONOLULU NOIR CHRIS MCKINNEY

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NOT MANY FIRST NOVELISTS HAVE THE CHUTZPAH and chops to rewrite the

AUTHOR OF THE YEAR

rules, but Zoë Eisenberg does just that in her acclaimed novel, which she says “came to me as a breakup story about friends.” Free spirit waiter Ren and hyperefficient real estate agent Jess, former college roommates, share a house and a platonic bed in backwater Hilo. The shock that divides is Ren’s unplanned pregnancy, laying bare their unequal power relations when Jess embraces her inner Mommyboss.

We’re in rom-com territory, but not for long, as Eisenberg’s tart observations and elegant but unshowy turns of phrase peel back the layers of Ren and Jess’ relationship. We eagerly follow familiar twists and tropes—who’s the guy, will Ren fall for him, will he fall for Jess?—while Eisenberg’s long game keeps us guessing, usually wrong.

“Ultimately what I’m trying to say about friendship is it’s just as beautiful and nuanced as any relationship,” she says, “and if you don’t give it that amount of care it will die.”

Slant/off-center relationships are a subject that Eisenberg, a Puna-based millennial, brings to life in fiction, film and dance, with equal aplomb and no shyness when it comes to sex: “I think we need to be writing about sex always, but the question of course is who and how,” she says.

True to form, last year she directed an indie feature about a woman who decides to pose as a high school student after a teenage boy mistakes her for a peer, with shattering results. Chaperone took the Slamdance Festival’s Grand Jury Award for Breakouts.

Eisenberg co-founded and is creative director of Aerial Arts Hawai‘i, a Hilo burlesque/circus studio, and also co-founded and ran the Made in Hawai‘i Film Festival from 2018 to 2022. Living an overscheduled life, she says, “is a way to offset my hermit recluse writer tendencies.”

In what feels like a signature move—bringing local writing, film and Hawai‘i creatives together—she’s currently working on a feature production of a Kristiana Kahakauwila short story about cockfighting on O‘ahu.

We can’t wait.

ZO Ë ZOË EISENBERG FOR

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SIGNIFICANT OTHERS HONOLULU MAGAZINE

FEATURE

BOOK OF THE YEAR (Not About Hawai‘i)

BY

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HONOLULU BOOK AWARDS

BURMA SAHIB

PAUL THEROUX

PAU L T H E RO UX H A D N ’ T P L A N N E D to

write a historical novel, but after reading a recent biography of George Orwell, he says he was “struck by how little there was about his time in Burma.” Theroux had read everything he wrote. “If you do that with an author—read everything—you know the person well,” he says. Now, he noticed the gaping hole about the future 1984 author’s life “when he was a policeman called Eric Blair, 18 years old, just out of Eton.”

Without telling his agent or publisher, Theroux began writing, for eight months wondering, “Is this anything?” After a “yes” from his publisher, he spent 18 more months writing, while re-reading Orwell, his letters and biographies. The result, Burma Sahib, was the most positively reviewed book by a Hawai‘i author in 2024. John Irving called it “the book of the 21st century” in The New York Times.

Readers can enjoy this as a brilliantly paced, highly sexed shocker, gorgeous with luminous linguistic cinematography. Burma and Blair come alive thanks to Theroux’s unobtrusive weaving of Blair’s own words and those of his contemporaries, including from Burmese sources. Lastly, Theroux says, “I had the great advantage of having traveled in Burma on four occasions, the first in 1970, when Burma, and Rangoon in particular, still had a colonial air and its architecture intact,” though seedier than before.

More than high entertainment, the book strips away the “dainty” (Blair’s word) nostalgia about British colonialism.

Theroux links imperial sadism, incarceration and sex to show how colonialism “alters the colonial administrators themselves, that is, makes them coarser and

unjust.” And the birth of Orwell as Blair’s conscience is Burma Sahib’s subject. But, Theroux warns: “People think of him as St. George, and he was far from that. He held at times racist views, he was violent and contradictory at times, he felt he needed to atone—and that produced many of his eccentricities. He was a brilliant writer and like many of us flawed, but he is the more human for that. You have to remember how young he was—a teenager.”

Today, Theroux says, with Donald Trump “talking of making Canada the 51st state, and acquiring Panama and Greenland, you have a clear indication of colonial megalomania.” Burma Sahib couldn’t be more prescient.

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DEBUT AUTHOR

JESSIE REN MARSHALL WOMEN! IN! PERIL!

COURTESY: JESSIE REN MARSHALL

FOR

“I’M A VERY POSTMODERN GIRL,”

says Jessie Ren Marshall, after detailing her off-the-grid life deep in a Hawai‘i Island valley in a house she built with her partner, Kimo, “who is out there in the fields tilling the earth with his hands to raise food for us.”

Exuberant contradiction marks Marshall’s neck-snapper of a story collection as it zigzags from The Internet of Things and interplanetary colonization to stripping for Russians in London to sharing child-rearing duties in a small town with your once-lesbian ex who’s married a (nice) man. We close the book exhilarated by its audacity and moved by its humanity.

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HONOLULU MAGAZINE

Half-Japanese via an island mother marooned by marriage in rural Pennsylvania, Marshall calls herself “a drama dork,” and “an outsider even in theater.” She escaped to Oberlin and the avant-garde as a writer, director and producer “making things that were not necessarily script-based,” as she puts it. In New York City, exposure to such artistic rule breakers as playwright Robert Wilson and dancers and choreographers Merce Cunningham and Pina Bausch didn’t sit easily with her MFA program at NYU. “Everybody was in kind of a lit bubble there,” she says. “Everybody reading the same book, the same articles, in the same magazines. There was this climber mentality. I feel Wall Street influenced it somehow—people always scheming.

How can I get ahead? How can I make

the connections I need? That’s not the kind of storytelling I wanted to do.”

She ditched New York for another “York,” the university in the U.K. “Afterwards, I considered California,” she says, “but fell in love with a man from Hawai‘i who wanted to move back here, so we did a test thing. A new relationship, you’re my person, let’s try moving to Hawai‘i together. And we did, and we’ve been together for 16 years.”

Marshall is now polishing her novel Alohaland, due out later this year. “I don’t have a lit community, I have a social community. I have my dogs, my trees, the land I walk every day, the fog.

The weather is my friend. I even wrote a musical: Weather is My Only Friend,” a mic drop that only whets our appetite for more.

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FEATURE

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HONOLULU BOOK AWARDS

WING TEK LUM TELLS THE STORY of the pioneer Chinese in Hawai‘i in brief

poems that function as chapters and, in many cases, as epitaphs for individuals who’d otherwise be lost in history. Begun in the 1990s, laid down, then resumed in 2015, the book exudes the confidence of a writer who has reached peak mastery by taking on the grandest, most challenging project of his life—and has seen it through to perfection.

Part One delves into the plight of those who immigrate to Hawai‘i, and those they leave behind. Both are losers in the deal, as these poem titles hint: “An Ocean and a Lifetime Away,” “In Exile,” “The Letter,” “The Spinsters.” Work dominates Part Two: “Sugar Cane Lament,” “Poi Factory,” “In the Store,” “The Houseboy” and so on.

We taste the bitterness of lives of drudgery that end without success or even variation. Because Lum has consulted numerous texts, archives and government reports, these spare chronicles are nonetheless packed with details of work, scents, foods, the sweat and, yes, joy in the landscape, the bird life, the grace of Hawaiians. And love. Lum weaves ‘Ōlelo proverbs collected by Native Hawaiian scholar Mary Kawena Pukui into his sex scenes, enriching them with hidden meaning.

Part Three, about Honolulu’s devastating Chinatown fire of 1900, is “the fulcrum,” Lum says. We experience the disaster from the inside, ignited by ignorance and racism.

Afterward, newly homeless Chinese are herded into tent camps, stripped of their clothing, doused in pesticide and released to start over with nothing.

Parts Four and Five chronicle post-fire lives, especially the diversions, which include opium and brothels. Lum steps into the lives of prostitutes to record this inevitable outcome of a remittance society. But we do catch glimpses, in poems of unearthly beauty, of the

BOOK OF POETRY

THE OLDTIMERS BY

WING TEK LUM

few who break away and move deep into the valleys, where they marry Island women.

Part Six is a requiem. Because of China’s emphasis on ancestor worship, “these men’s stories were forgotten,” Lum says. “In retrospect that was what I was trying to do in this book, poem by poem—to give voice to all those Chinese” who died leaving hardly a trace. With The Oldtimers, they’re back in the books.

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FEATURE

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HONOLULU BOOK AWARDS

KELLY MURASHIGE THE LOST SOULS FOR

AUTHOR UNDER 35

OF BENZAITEN

AFTER A BRUTAL BETRAYAL by her best girl-

friends, shy teenager Machi goes silent, but on the page, she’s a wicked storyteller. More than just a rant on mean girls, The Lost Souls of Benzaiten addresses depression—the auditioning of therapists until you find the right one, the acceptance of irrevocable loss, and Benzaiten. The Japanese Buddhist goddess, who Murashige daringly plops down into Machi’s life, is all-wise-and-knowing until her own gaping sense of loss kicks in. Now it’s Machi who rallies her out of a harmful obsession with a newly dead baby whom she’s supposed to help transition.

Getting to know grief instills purpose to Machi’s life, leading to a witty, dizzying yet grounded work that mostly evades young adult tropes.

This may be due to Murashige having a front-row seat to teenage life: “I had these very cool, older female cousins who were everything I wasn’t: homecoming queens, athletes, beautiful. They would give me a lot of hand-me-down clothes, they would give me purses, and they would give me books”—as did her mother and grandmother.

Private school was fertile ground for fiction.

“I understand Punahou can have a stuck-up vibe around it,” Murashige says. “There were a lot of people who were total stars, and I was the quiet girl who sat and read. But there was a lot of space for me, too. I worked with the student lit and arts magazine. I started thinking this is what I liked.

Something about the adolescent experience, about finding yourself, friendships, family issues, falling in love and being too awkward to fall in love. And it gave me an awareness of privilege.

I’m the first person in my family to go to that kind of school. My mom grew up very poor.”

Although buoyed by good reviews, and with a second novel coming out this July, also from Soho Teen, the 27-year-old kept her day job. She works remotely, of course, as a health care analyst from an apartment near the Ala Wai Canal, where she lives with her parents.

“I clock in, I clock out,” she says, laughing. “I have a good work-life balance—reading and writing, forever in my hidey-hole.”

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IT SOUNDS LIKE A HIGH-CONCEPT ROM-COM.

Globe-trotting epidemiologist Virginia Loo, holed up in a fortress in Pakistan that she learns is a terrorist death trap, vows to buy a place of her own when she returns home to Hawai‘i. Settling in Hilo, she relishes the peace and quiet. But its dating scene is quiet, too. And Loo has spent the best years of her reproductive life as an overseas consultant, often in high-risk places such as Islamabad and Kabul.

One night, back on assignment, this time in Rangoon, she turns to a gay male colleague and blurts: “I want a baby.” The eminently self-reliant Loo then embarks on a DIY pregnancy program. While simultaneously looking for a donor and researching the science and logistics, she’s mindful of her reticent Chinese parents. Wary of small-town Hilo gossip, she finds conception a challenge.

The comedy stakes ramp up as she tries to inconspicuously traffic in express mail sperm packets, even while traveling for work.

But for every misadventure there’s a growing worry about her failures. Even after she finally gets pregnant, she’s forced to confront her lack of social connection outside of her close-knit international colleagues. In Hilo, she has no one to take childbirth classes with, no one she feels comfortable asking to drive her home from the hospital, no one to sew a Hawaiian quilt for her. And so her story becomes one of lowering her defenses, forging new bonds, bringing her parents into the loop and living a real life.

Loo is a proud product of Punahou teachers Joe Sukimoto and Norman Henley, and the Kaimukī Writers Group, and her book is the work of longtime Hawai‘i Island press Saddle Road Press (which recently moved to New York). Fun and fast-paced, but also sneakily moving and, given our current threat to reproductive rights, even profound, How to B is a gem.

NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR

VIRGINIA HOW TO B LOO FOR

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SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL SECTION

Discover local businesses that treat your pets like family— whether they’re chasing tennis balls or crossing oceans.

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HONOLULU MAGAZINE

SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL SECTION

Take Your Pup on an Adventure Why should humans get to have all the fun? At Kama‘āina K9 Adventures, dogs don’t just play—they thrive. Nestled in the Kunia mountainside on 2.5 acres of land, this one-of-a-kind doggie haven features six themed parks designed for play, exploration and joy, with a million-dollar view to boot.

“Our favorite thing about this job is seeing dogs get their zoomies, playing with each other, making new friends, and going home tired and content,” says owner Maile Fong. “We love seeing happy dogs, and that is our goal.” Whether your pup is stopping by for daycare, staying overnight or enjoying a private play session, the team provides personalized care and regular photo updates— so you can travel with peace of mind.

Clients range from local families and military members to pro athletes and nonprofit partners like Fur-Angel Foundation. But no matter what, every pup is treated like ‘ohana.

94-1100 Kunia Road | Waipahu, HI 96759 | (808) 594-2484 | kamaainak9.com

#kamaainak9adventures

Kamaainak9

SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL SECTION

From Tortoises to Terriers: Island Pet Movers Does It All “Pet Relocation made easy and stress free”

Let’s face it—moving is stressful. Toss in a few time zones, an ocean, and a beloved pet, and things can get downright overwhelming. But that’s where Island Pet Movers comes in, turning chaos into calm and making sure your pets arrive safe, sound.

With over 15 years of experience and more than 60,000 successful relocations, this veteran-owned company is the go-to expert for both domestic and international pet moves. Whether you’re PCS-ing with the military, chasing new adventures overseas, or simply hopping islands, Island Pet Movers handles every detail—from flight bookings and vet appointments to doorstep pickups and cozy, airline-approved crates.

And when they say no pet is too big or too small, they mean it. They’ve shipped everything from Teacup Poodles, Great Danes, birds and pocket pets such as rats, mice, bunnies, chinchillas and tortoises!

Founded by Navy veteran and animal lover Kari Mendoza, Island Pet Movers isn’t just a service—it’s peace of mind. With real-time updates, compassionate care, and a team that treats your pet like family, you’ll never wonder if your best friend is in good hands.

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Your pet’s travel agent since 2009! www.IslandPetMovers.com

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WHO’S WHO In Real Estate

2025

WHO’S WHO IN REAL ESTATE In this curated feature, HONOLULU Magazine spotlights Island professionals who are shaping the future of property across Hawai‘i.

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 Senia’s venison carpaccio

Taste Invaders Invasive species are bad for Hawai‘i’s ecosystem.

The best way to vanquish our enemies? Eat them.

BY MARTHA CHENG

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PHOTOS BY AARON K. YOSHINO

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A

T LEAST OUR INVASIVES TASTE GOOD.

The tart and sweet ruby red strawberry guava along our hiking trails. The Himalayan ginger that gives cocktails the fragrance of a tropical forest after a warm rain. Axis deer, lean yet tender and clean-tasting, whether in a tartare or ragu. Compare that with invasives in other areas of the country, like nutria—large rodents with long teeth that look as if they’re stained with blood. Or lionfish with venomous spines. Or the Burmese python that can grow as long as a shipping container. While the continent deals with making 20-pound rodents tasty, our invasive deer are fancy enough for The French Laundry and Alinea.

In some ways, it’s embarrassing/ frustrating/indicative—take your pick—of our food systems that we don’t eat more invasives. On an island chain where around 90% of food is imported—food that seems to get more expensive every day—the invasive plants and animals all around us are abundant. For some, invasive species can even feel like a gift.

Vince Dodge, who makes flour from the pods of kiawe trees, remembers when he learned that Indigenous communities in the Sonoran Desert regarded mesquite (a cousin of Hawai‘i’s introduced kiawe) as a “mother tree of the desert,” and its flour a staple food. He thought, “Could it be true that the most common wild tree on the Wai‘anae Coast, where we have the most diabetes, makes a diabetic-friendly and naturally sweet food?” The answer, he says, “turns out to be 100% true.” Kiawe, rather than being a nuisance, suddenly felt like a valuable resource. “We’re not even taking care of the ‘āina, and the ‘āina is taking care of us.”

According to the Hawai‘i Invasive Species Council, there isn’t an official “invasive” designation, but an invasive species is generally one that’s not native to Hawai‘i and considered harmful to the environment, economy and/or human health. In many ways, what we deem invasive is framed by its usefulness to humans.

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Arden Waikīkī’s venison tartare



Take the nonnative honeybee. It can sting, but we are constantly trying to save it partly because it helps to pollinate our crops. Then consider the little fire ant, which also stings. It’s the target of aggressive eradication efforts. Certainly, the damage inflicted by some nonnative species can be devastating: In the past decade, a fungus that causes rapid ‘ōhi‘a death has killed between 1 million and 2 million ‘ōhi‘a trees, which support many native species and are integral to our watershed. And you only need to look at our dying palms to witness the destruction caused by the fearsome coconut rhinoceros beetle.

But the most invasive species of all? Humans. As Dodge puts it, it’s ironic to “label other creatures as invasive when we’re the ones that created the conditions for them to be invasive.” And so, we learn to coexist. For some “invasivores,” it’s about “eating them to beat them,” but it is also simultaneously, paradoxically, celebrating their abundance—and, sometimes, their deliciousness.

Some of these invasive species will likely never be eradicated, but perhaps we can enjoy them while finding equilibrium.

AXIS DEER Of all the invasives, Axis deer is my favorite to eat. It’s also one of my favorite meats, period. The more tender cuts make great steaks and are also tasty raw—try it as sashimi!— while the tougher parts are excellent as the backbone of hamburgers and long-simmered pasta sauces.

Venison is also one of the most available invasives in restaurants and markets. Preparations change frequently, but you might find it in Fête’s (@fetehawaii) three-meat lasagna, and as proof of its appeal raw, as a carpaccio with a soy truffle glaze and mac nut crumble at Senia (@restaurantsenia). At The Pig & The Lady (@pigandthelady), it’s a tartare heaped onto a mentaiko grilled cheese toast; at Arden Waikīkī (@arden_waikiki), it’s also a tartare, only there it’s mixed with bonito aioli and pickled shallots.

Venison is accessible thanks to the efforts of Maui Nui Venison (@mauinuivenison), Moloka‘i Livestock Co-op (@molokailive stockcoop) and Moloka‘i Wildlife Management. These businesses offer some of the only wild and hunted game meat that can be sold in the U.S. (“Game” meat like buffalo that’s often sold in stores is usually farmed.)

For them to get that meat, USDA inspectors have to accompany the businesses on their overnight hunts, an expense and hassle that other companies won’t undertake. Maui Nui Venison started with the mission to balance the deer populations on Maui to help protect the island’s ecosystem and agriculture. Axis deer arrived here as a gift to King Kamehameha V in 1867; without natural predators, the original eight deer ballooned into a population of tens of thousands on Moloka‘i, Maui and Lāna‘i. They’re so voracious, they destroy their own habitats. Jessica Rohr of Forage Hawai‘i (@foragehawaii), a local butchery that carries Maui Nui Venison on O‘ahu, says, “My whole business started because I wanted to get people to eat more venison.” Previously a vegetarian, she says, “No matter where you stand between vegan and carnivore, if you care about the environment, you can appreciate that we have too many deer here, and the population needs to be managed for the ecosystem, for the sustainability of a lot of native species.”

Because the process of making game meat commercially available is arduous, the meat itself is expensive.

Unless you hunt. With a license, you can hunt on Moloka‘i, Maui and Lāna‘i (make sure to contact the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife for details) and stock your freezer, as many local hunters do. If you’re not in it for the hunt, find venison at Forage Hawai‘i, Farm Link Hawai‘i (@farmlinkhawaii), ChefZone (@chefzonehi), and from Mauka Meats (@maukameatshawaii).

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TA‘APE A few years ago, Mud Hen Water (@mudhenwater) spotlighted ta‘ape with an entire tasting menu built around the blue-stripe snapper. It opened with a crudo paired with strawberry guava and green haole koa seeds (more invasives!), and included pasta stuffed with smoked ta‘ape and finished with ta‘ape fish sauce. The main dish: a ta‘ape “porchetta,” the mild white fish rolled with rosemary and fennel and wrapped in a crispy taro crust.

Ta‘ape on menus is still relatively rare, but since Conservation International Hawai‘i launched its campaign to eat more ta‘ape in 2020, it’s seen the annual harvest of the fish nearly double. That means you’re now more likely to find it at places like Local I‘a (@localiahawaii), Tamashiro Market (@tamashiromarket), and Brian’s Seafood Market at the Marketplace at City Square. With its delicate white meat, it’s become my favorite fish to deep-fry whole. Plus, it’s cheaper than a lot of fish, at about $6 a pound.

This isn’t the first time people have pushed ta‘ape. In 1987, a biologist with the Division of Aquatic Resourc-

es started the Ta‘ape Market Development Project, telling an interviewer: “it’s a good eating fish. People in Hawai‘i like fish so much that we import fish every year.

It’s crazy that we don’t use the ta‘ape. … If only people would try it.”

In the 1950s and early 1960s, 2,400 live ta‘ape from the Marquesas were released in Kāne‘ohe Bay to provide additional fishing opportunities and food sources. You can guess what happened—the population exploded.

CI Hawai‘i decided to target ta‘ape because it schools in the hundreds of thousands, and “it’s found in 10 feet of water all the way to 600-plus feet, everywhere from Hawai‘i Island to Papahānaumokuākea,” says Jhana Young, sustainable seafood manager at CI Hawai‘i. “So from a commercial harvesting standpoint, you could really target the ta‘ape schools and feed people from that food security angle, which is what we’re really passionate about. And from an environmental perspective, they’re carnivorous, and eat a lot of our native species.” Add to that the tastiness and affordability of ta‘ape, and it’s indeed crazy that we don’t eat more of it.

JAVA PLUM Yuki Uzuhashi of Mānoa Honey & Mead (@manoahoneymead) didn’t start adding Java plum to his mead because it was invasive, but because it gave his mead the complexity he was looking for. He found that mead made with only honey tends to become bland, making it “very difficult to make something delicious.” Taking cues from red wine, in which grapes and their skins are used to create all the dimensions that we love in the drink, he experimented with various local fruits. He discovered a Java plum tree, and when he added its dark purple fruits to his brew, he was immediately pleased with the results. The characteristics that most people shun Java plum for—it’s sour and astringent—lent his mead acidity and tannins, as well as a lovely pink that sometimes verges on magenta.

The result: the Java Plum Rosé Sparkling Mead, bright and lightly tart.

KIAWE I love kiawe flour and its coconutty and sweet molasses aroma in baked goods, whether it’s chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake, cornbread or topping a fruit crumble.

At Mud Hen Water, a kiawe bean brownie is topped with black sesame gelato, and at 53 By The Sea (@53bythesea_hawaii), kūlolo with kiawe beans is paired with liliko‘i, brioche and coconut ice cream.

Vince Dodge’s Wai‘anae Gold (@waianaegold) kiawe flour is available on Farm Link Hawai‘i, as are ‘āina bars, the company’s energypick-me-ups made with kiawe bean flour, peanuts and honey.

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‘ONO

53 By The Sea’s kūlolo-kiawe bean toast

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 The Local General Store’s liliko‘i, orange and strawberry guava mochi Danish



 The Local General Store’s brown butter mochi with strawberry guava jam Danish

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‘ONO

Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle

STRAWBERRY GUAVA Around town, you’ll see strawberry guava as a flavor, but most often, it’s a combination of strawberry and guava, not the actual prolific fruit that peppers our hiking trails during certain seasons. Strawberry guava, bright red when ripe and about the size of a large marble, is also different from the bigger guavas more commercially available. The Local General Store (@thelocal generalstorehi) highlights the fruit when in season in its pastries; past sweets have included a brown butter mochi with strawberry guava jam Danish, and a strawberry guava and cream cheese braid. And when available, the bakery and butcher shop makes and bottles a sweet and tart strawberry guava barbecue sauce.

Zingipop Sodaworks (@zingipop) also uses strawberry guava in its guava lemon soda, supplementing it with regular guava as supplies fluctuate.

I think of Mōhala Expressions’ (@mohalaexpressions) butterfly ginger blossom syrup as a local, tropical version of an orange blossom syrup. It’s powerfully floral and fragrant with a slightly spicy, gingery edge, giving sweets and drinks a sultry touch. While the Himalayan ginger (Hedychium gardnerianum) was deemed one of the world’s 100 worst invasive species, a few other Hedychium species are also considered invasive in Hawai‘i. With similar flowers, sometimes they’re generally termed butterfly ginger, and can be used interchangeably.

HAOLE KOA Haole koa capers, fries, salsa and even tempeh can be made with different parts of the haole koa tree. Sunny Savage (@sunny savageofficial), a wild foods advocate on Maui, brines the haole koa capers’ unopened flower buds (much like the more common caper) and sells them online. “Each 4-ounce jar prevents an average of 10,000 seeds from ever dropping on the ground,” reads the product description. Haole koa’s green seeds very occasionally make an appearance on Mud Hen Water’s menu, where they’re charred and blended with chiles, citrus, tomatoes and onions, for a take on Mexican salsa de guaje. The haole koa lends a garlicky flavor to the condiment, which recently accompanied grilled pa‘i‘ai and rib-eye.

WILD PIG Unless you’re a hunter yourself, or have an uncle or auntie who hunts and supplies you with smoked meat, it’s hard to get wild pork. On O‘ahu, one of the few suppliers is Forage Hawai‘i, which offers ground pork from wild boars that graze on mac nuts and are trapped on a Hawai‘i Island farm. If you’re aiming to be self-sufficient, Slow Food O‘ahu (@slowfoodinhawaii) occasionally has classes (pending when the feral pigs are caught) on how to butcher and prepare wild hogs.

IDMANJOE/ISTOCK /GETT Y IMAGES PLUS VIA GETT Y IMAGES

HIMALAYAN, OR KĀHILI, GINGER

OK, when we said our invasives are delicious, we weren’t thinking exactly of the coconut rhinoceros beetle, a ferocious-looking 2-inch-long horned insect. It’s decimating Hawai‘i’s coconut trees and threatening native palms, taro, bananas and hala. But Nat Bletter, a forager (and founder of Madre Chocolate), wants to rename the CRB larvae “land shrimp” in an effort to get people to eat them. Fair enough: Why are many of us OK with eating aquatic creatures that look like bugs, but not with actual bugs? “They taste a lot like shrimp,” Bletter insists, though he adds that he hasn’t had shrimp in a few years. His post on Instagram showing him eating the sautéed grubs isn’t quite convincing—“not bad,” he says, before adding hot sauce to the next bite. You’ll have to forage for the grubs; Bletter recommends going where there are coconut trees and stumps to find them.

Foraging Resources and Tours Natty By Nature nattybynature.net, @nattybynature808

Follow the Wai followthewai.com, @followsthewai

Mōhala Expressions

mohalaexpressions.com, @mohalaexpressions

Sunny Savage

sunnysavage.com, @sunnysavageofficial

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AFTERTHOUGHTS

BY CHRI STINE HIT T

The Things I Carried Since leaving Hawai‘i for Southern California, life remains an adjustment.

The continent is nothing like Hawai‘i. In my first week in Southern California’s Orange County, a drunken driver crashed into parked cars in front of my apartment building. It was a fiery end to a multicity car chase, like the ones you see on TV. A few days later, a school shooting erupted across the street from me, or so I thought. Turns out the school was conducting a drill that included someone shooting a gun loaded with blanks while alarms blared. I was a newcomer and didn’t get the memo like everyone else, so it was pretty terrifying.

I left O‘ahu for the same reasons others do—to further my career and to give my son more educational opportunities. Being part kānaka maoli and raised in the Islands, the first year away from my family and friends was difficult. I was incredibly homesick and flew back to Hawai‘i four times. It was even worse during COVID. Even now, when I return, it’s like I’m recharging my battery just so I can handle being away.

When I first moved, I didn’t think crime would affect me.

But since I’ve lived in California, there’s been a stabbing across the street, a shooting 2 miles away, and so many pedestrian hit-and-runs I’ve lost track. At first, I was glued to the local news but then shut it off. The greater Los Angeles area, including five counties, has a population of more than 18 million, so “it’s going to happen everywhere,” an LA friend told me. Instead of worrying about it—and to help me feel I have some control of the chaos around me—I bought a home alarm system, pepper spray and my first knife.

What do I miss, besides friends and family? Hawai‘i’s beaches, my refuge. I have vivid dreams about them. I’ve spent many days beach hopping along the California coastline, seeking a semblance of home. Santa Barbara, Venice, Huntington Beach, San Diego.

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But Southern California beaches are so big, cold and uninviting, with expensive homes lining their sands. Finally, I found the sunsparkled waters of Crystal Cove State Park, Orange County’s only remaining natural coastline. It’s beautifully undeveloped.

I miss local food, too. There’s an L&L nearby and I make kālua pork in a slow cooker, but I crave Two Ladies Kitchen mochi, Chun Wah Kam manapua, Leonard’s malasadas and Hanalei poi.

I tried frozen poi (yuck), and also grew a dryland taro plant on my lānai, but it got invaded by pests.

It’s funny how things you thought you disliked are what you long for, like Hawai‘i’s humidity.

I always complained about it before, but now I need humidifiers, lotions, eye drops and allergy pills to keep my skin and eyes happy.

What else? I miss Hawai‘i’s hiking trails, getting muddy and exploring forests and waterfalls without worrying about dangerous wildlife. Hawai‘i’s beauty spoiled me; the hikes around me now are not nearly as scenic. Still, I tried the trails, until a mountain lion scared me off one. It snarled behind bushes, scattering the hikers ahead of me. I turned right around.

Yet, when friends ask me if I’ll ever move back to Hawai‘i, it surprises me that I can’t answer their question. Instead, I think about how going back means maybe never owning a home, having limited career opportunities, and struggling financially. Maybe I’ll end up in the Pacific Northwest, with more affordable home prices and where the forests and waterfalls remind me of home. But no matter where I go, Hawai‘i sits heavy in my heart, like a weight, reminding me why I will never let it go.

Now I know what it means to live in two worlds, like lots of other Hawai‘i folks in Vegas or all the other places that we move to for myriad reasons. You don’t realize what you have until you’ve left it, but you move forward, connected to the past and present, in an expanded life.

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