@BB.TAEEE * BEN YIM * HAYLEY CHEYNEY KĀNE * HOUSE OF BENTON * IZIK * @JOSHYBU * LEI PUA ‘ALA * LEILEHUA
LANZILOTTI * MAAARY MONARCH * MĀHŪ TO DA MAX * MĀHŪ
MIX & MIXED PLATE * PATRICK MAKUAKĀNE * SASHA COLBY* T.J. KEANU TARIO * TWINKLE BORGE
THE JOURNAL FOR �UEER HAWAI‘I
EXCLUSIVELY MADE IN HAWAI‘I
Contents
18 • ex is a verb poem by no‘u revilla 20 • patrick makuakāne text by sarah burke, photos by luke kraman 30 • māhū to da max text by lanie punani, illustrations by tintadia 38 • hulihia poem by ‘ihilani lasconia 40 • leilehua lanzilotti and t.j. keanu tario photos by mahina choy-ellis 50 • maaary monarch photos by keatan kamakaiwi 58 • lei pua ‘ala queer histories of hawai‘i text by mitchell kuga, illustrations by ren kanoelani markle 70 • hayley cheyney kāne and sasha colby photos by simone komine, styling by ari south 82 • the girls text and photos by makananui fuller 92 • every butch queen poem by ryan tito gapelu 94 • @joshybu and @bb.taeee photos by marie eriel hobro 103 • māhū is not my name, it’s my responsibility poem by m.a. kalikopuanoheaokalani aiu 106 • izik as told to mitchell kuga, photos by michael vossen 118 • the lei portrait studio photos by mahina choy-ellis 128 • anh chi . em bakery text by martha cheng, photos by john hook 134 • kiawe poem by kai gaspar 136 • 909s off nimitz photos by vincent bercasio, styling by jacky tang 150 • ben yim text by mitchell kuga, photos by john hook, styling by reise kochi 158 • in memoriam: twinkle borge illustration by ash lukashevsky
Growing up in Hawai‘i I thought being gay meant leaving. That being gay and happy— could you even imagine?—meant moving to San Francisco or New York or really anywhere on the “mainland,” which sounded so grand to me as a teenager in the early 2000s. The Main Land. Like the main stage where all the action took place, unlike the backstage closet of Honolulu.
This issue of Lei, the magazine’s tenth, is a refutation of that idea. When I was invited to edit this issue I agreed, but under one condition: that we focus Lei’s attention entirely on Hawai‘i. That instead of looking elsewhere, as in past issues, we centered the magazine on the māhū and LGBTQ+ communities that make Hawai‘i a better, more vibrantly off-kilter place. That Lei reflected, to the best of our abilities, the richness of queer life in Hawai‘i.
Which is how this publication went from its previous tagline, “For the LGBTQ+ Traveler,” to its current one: “The Journal for Queer Hawai‘i.” It’s a tagline that Cody Maemori, my creative collaborator and our lead designer behind this rebrand, came up with after listening to me rhapsodize about my hopes for this issue, and one that perfectly articulated my goals. I think I was struck most by the preposition “for”—as in an offering, in service of, arms extended.
For longtime fans of Lei, this issue still travels. A profile on San Franciscobased kumu hula Patrick Makuakāne (page 20), and a conversation between New York-trained classical musicians Leilehua Lanzilotti and T.J. Keanu Tario (page 40) speaks to the power of diaspora, proof that there are ways to pull from influences on the continent that bolster Native Hawaiian culture in new and sometimes unexpected ways. Elsewhere, the O‘ahu-based singersongwriter Izik takes us to the secluded mountains of Taumarunui, Aotearoa (page 106), where he recorded his album Kōwā, and the first openly gay Miss Hawai‘i,
Hayley Cheyney Kāne (page 70), talks story with Los Angeles-based Drag Race winner Sasha Colby about competing in pageants on the continent, being polyamorous, and the painful process of emerging out of unaccepting birth families.
After high school I did eventually leave. First to Syracuse, where I studied journalism, and then to New York City, where I built a career telling stories about Hawai‘i and LGBTQ+ culture for places like GQ, Out, and The New York Times Style Magazine. What called me home fourteen years later was family, a sometimes complicated subject we playfully explore through Mahina Choy-Ellis’ portraits at The Lei Portrait Studio (page 118), huddled around the red plastic stools at Diana Pham’s pop-up Anh Chi Em Bakery (page 128), and within the candid conversation between social media personalities @joshybu and @bb.taeee (page 94).
I don’t know about you but as I get older, one of my favorite parts about travel is coming home. The way gratitude suddenly permeates the monotony of routine, that feeling—however fleeting— of seeing old things anew. Discovering the Lei Pua ‘Ala Queer Histories of Hawai‘i Project (page 58) gave me a similar feeling; a reminder that, if you know where to look, there are portals to queerness hiding in some of the most seemingly mundane places. Lei will always travel, but hopefully this issue feels like a homecoming.
Mahalo for reading,
M I TCHELL KUGA
jason cutinella president & ceo joe v. bock publisher, partner/general manager, hawai‘i
mitchell kuga deputy editor matthew dekneef
executive editor lauren mcnally editorial director
eunica escalante managing editor cody maemori
lead designer taylor niimoto managing designer
eleazar herradura designer coby shimabukurosanchez designer alyssa francesca salcedo intern
gerard elmore vp, film kristine pontecha client services
director kaitlyn ledzian studio director/producer blake abes filmmaker romeo lapitan filmmaker
jhante iga video editor arriana veloso digital production designer
gary payne accounts receivable sabrine rivera operations director sheri salmon traffic manager
jessica lunasco operations coordinator kylie wong operations and sales assistant
alejandro moxey head of partnerships, hawai‘i simone perez advertising director rachel lee account executive
m.a. kalikopuanoheaokalani aiu jerrica benton
vincent bercasio sarah burke martha cheng
mahina choy-ellis tintadia makananui fuller
ryan tito gapelu kai gaspar bao hoang
tamiko hobin marie eriel hobro risa hoshino
john hook keatan kamakaiwi reise kochi
simone komine luke kraman ‘ihilani lasconia
jordan lee ash lukashevsky cody maemori
ren kanoelani markle
no‘u revilla alec singer ari south jacky tang aja toscano cole turner michael vossen
m.a. kalikopuanoheaokalani aiu (@mahutingz) is a creator, organizer, painter and dancer based on O‘ahu who is roommates with a cat. They are a Capricorn sun and Cancer moon with two extra bones, and their favorite lei is lā‘ī. kalikopuanoheaokalani wrote the poem “Māhū is not my name, it’s my responsibility” on page 103.
Sarah Burke (@sarahlubyburke) is a writer, editor, and producer born in Mānoa and currently based in Brooklyn. She ran the LGBTQ+ publication Them for three years and her favorite lei is a simple lei pua melia with flowers from the yard. Sarah profiled Patrick Makuakāne on page 20.
TintaDia (@tinta.dia) is a visual and tattoo artist born in Mexico, raised in Minnesota, and currently based on O‘ahu. A water-sun, earth-moon, and air-rising (“y'all get to guess!”), her favorite lei is any kine with pīkake or Pele’s hair. TintaDia illustrated “Māhū to da Max” on page 30.
Makananui Fuller (@makananuiloa) is a freelance photographer, homosocial anthropologist, and queer archivist based in Kapolei. They are an Aquarius sun, Sagittarius rising, and Pisces moon who’s never chewed gum before, and their favorite lei is maile lei and double tuberose. Makananui wrote the text and took the photos for “The Girls” on page 82.
Ryan Tito Gapelu (@ryantito) is an uncle, poet, teacher, coach, dancer, and bartender who was born in Ft. Jackson, South Carolina and grew up mostly in Waipahū. He’s an Aries whose favorite lei is tī leaf maile from Hilo, because it reminds him of his uncle Randal Wong and his hula brother Isi Tuifua, who both taught him how to make it. Ryan wrote the poem “Every butch queen” on page 92.
Kai Gaspar (@kai.e.gaspar) is a teacher who grew up in a shack at Pu‘uhonua o Hōnaunau, Kona. Patti LaBelle once told him, “You can’t dance, but I like your voice.” An Aquarius under a wet moon, his favorite lei are the plumeria ones that go on and on and on. Kai wrote the poem “Kiawe” on page 134.
Reise Kochi (@reisekochi) is an artist and stylist born in Mililani, O‘ahu who currently lives in Pauoa. He is a Capricon whose favorite lei is pakalana, and Beyoncé touched his face once. Reise styled Ben Yim on page 150.
Luke Kraman (@lukerss) is an analog photographer, film editor, and artist born in Brooklyn and currently based in San Francisco. A Virgo, he is an avid plant aunty whose favorite lei is orchid. Luke photographed Patrick Makuakāne on page 20.
Cody Maemori (@codymaemori) is an ex-designing dogwalker turned ex-dogwalking designer who recently moved back in with his parents in Honolulu (they’re thrilled). A Scorpio sun, Capricorn moon, and Taurus rising, he’s only cried at work once. His favorite lei is trinket lei from Small Kine Gift. Cody is the lead designer behind Lei’s rebrand.
Ren Kanoelani Markle (@renmaicha) is a freelance artist from O‘ahu currently based in Los Angeles. They are a Cancer born in the Year of the Rabbit whose favorite lei is lei lā‘ī. Ren illustrated the Lei Pua ‘Ala Queer Histories of Hawai‘i story on page 58.
Lanie Punani (@laniepunani) is a multimedia artist, designer and DJ living in Kapolei. A Sagittarius sun, Aquarius moon, and Capricorn rising, their biggest accomplishment is being alive and their favorite lei is jade. Lanie wrote “Māhū to da Max” on page 30.
No‘u Revilla is a poet and associate professor of creative writing at UH Mānoa who was born and raised with the Līlīlehua rain of Waiehu on the island of Maui. Her debut collection, Ask the Brindled, was selected by Rick Barot as a winner of the National Poetry Series, and her favorite lei is every pua kenikeni her wife handpicks and makes. No‘u wrote the poem “Ex is a verb” on page 18.
Come be here.
Who said exes shouldn’t hook each other by the bra and talk shit? Like, which Venus will be next to make house and tangle with Gemini law? Who with the horns, forward-
thinking, bright with faith, will grope in darkness and make us a shape at last? Anything but an edge to leap from, cliff incarnate. Our marrow is not their medicine:
two in the morning, Waikīkī in heels, the same Marlboro light passed back and forth. They don’t know what it takes to count the veins. Your long black hair, my long black hair twisting into the earth. You said scissorfucking
joy was your birthright and fortune, and would I be there with you to emerge from the dark…
yes, yes, yes
NEW SUN RISES IN HAWAI’I
A new dawn of live entertainment rises in Cirque du Soleil ‘Auana –a Hawai‘i-inspired production featuring a cast of powerful acrobats, talented musicians and singers, and profound hula dancers. Only at the OUTRIGGER Waikīkī Beachcomber Hotel.
By fusing hula with the pageantry of theater, the advocacy of AIDS protests, and the subversion of Burning Man, kumu hula Patrick Makuakāne has defied expectations around the art form—becoming the first Native Hawaiian practitioner to receive the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in the process.
Text by SARAH BURKE
PhotosbyLUKEKRAMAN M U A
On a warm April evening in Waikīkī, the sun dips low as two figures take the stage at the Kūhiō Beach Hula Mound. Clad in an iridescent teal kīhei, one performer begins chanting in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i while another, donning a flowing, ocean-hued cloak, translates the mele into English. Together, they invoke the mo‘olelo of Kapaemahu, a quartet of Tahitian māhū healers of dual male and female spirit who brought their miraculous abilities to O‘ahu before sealing their powers into four massive stones and vanishing forever. Today, those monuments live just steps from the hula mound, quietly nestled along lively Kalākaua Avenue.
As unsuspecting tourists and surfers happen upon the open-air show, titled The Return of Kapaemahu, a curious crowd begins to form around the seated audience while seven more performers join the stage. Over a cinematic soundtrack mixing chanting, music, and English narration, the dancers bring the healers’ story to life through hula. While the movements feel familiar, the show unfolds more like theater than ceremony. Robed in shimmering costumes, the dancers inhabit characters as the hula numbers string together like scenes in a play. It’s at once a transmission of ancestral knowledge and a distinctly contemporary expression of queer artistry. That hybridity, while unusual, would be expected for fans of San Francisco-
based Patrick Makuakāne, who composed, choreographed, and directed the show, which was produced by the Lei Pua ‘Ala Queer Histories of Hawaii Project and is set to run every Wednesday night for nearly a year. Makuakāne, who himself identifies as māhū, is a kumu hula known for challenging expectations around the art form. Through his uniquely stylized approach, which he’s dubbed “hula mua” (meaning “hula that evolves”), he not only blends traditional choreography with non-Hawaiian music, but stages productions of Broadway-like proportions that incorporate English to help viewers understand the stories. Often dramatizations of Hawaiian history and mythology, his shows have educated audiences on themes such as decolonial struggle, queerness, and religion. Makuakāne has set hula to songs in nearly every genre of music, including Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” at the San Francisco Opera House; in 2024, his hālau, Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu, was invited to dance at Flack’s home in New York, after she was diagnosed with ALS. While some traditionalists may take issue with Makuakāne’s approach, the 63year-old argues that preserving culture doesn’t have to mean fixing it in time—it can also mean carrying it into the future through evolution. In 2023, that perspective made Makuakāne the first ever Native Hawaiian practitioner to receive the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, one of the most prestigious honors an artist can receive. “Our ancestors were highly innovative people,” he told the MacArthur Foundation at the time. “What I’m doing with innovating in hula is keeping that innovative spirit of our ancestors [alive].”
Perched on a rock wall near the hula mound before the show, Makuakāne tells me that this production has felt full circle. “I grew up
in Kaimukī you know, so this was my beach,” he says with some nostalgia.
Makuakāne fell into hula almost by accident. As a 13-year-old in the early ’70s at Saint Louis School, an all-boys Catholic school, he joined the Hawaiian Club because he wanted to learn the songs his family sings. “I don’t really want to dance hula. I just want to sing,” Makuakāne recalls telling
“IT WAS LIKE, ALL THESE BIG GUYS WHO WERE VERY MASCULINE. IT WAS A LITTLE BIT DISCOMBOBULATING.”
his teacher, the esteemed late kumu hula John Keola Lake. “He looked at me and he goes, ‘In this club, you dance hula and you sing. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.’”
Within weeks, the practice had unlocked something for Makuakāne; hula had become his language of pride as a Native Hawaiian. “I knew that I was proud, but I didn’t have any way to articulate that,” he says. “This was a portal into my culture, into history, into ancestry. Hula did all that.” The next year, he went on to join Hālau Nā Kamalei o Līlīlehua, the all-male halau of legendary Robert Cazimero, half of the musical duo The Brothers Cazimero.
Just as Makuakāne was discovering his calling for hula, he was also confronting his sexuality. He had initially shied away from hula in part because in elementary school he was first exposed to the dance through a one-off class taught by a “flamboyant” gay man. “My own internalized homophobia was like, ‘Oh my god, if I like hula, I’m gonna
be like that big muffy,’” he says. “And now I love him because of his flamboyance, because he's so funny, because he's so free and easy with himself. But that scared me initially.” By the time he joined Cazimero’s hālau, however, he was coming to terms with being a gay man himself.
Walking into a room filled with male peers, Makuakāne was as excited as he was intimidated. “It was like, all these big guys who were very masculine,” he recalls.
“It was a little bit discombobulating.” But Cazimero had little concern for machoness, insisting that the boys learn to confidently control their hips and perform graceful ‘auana dances. As Makuakāne settled into his own ‘ami, he found power in his queerness. “In your hips is your masculinity, is your femininity” he says. “You get to see how that works for you.”
“[The experience] taught me how to be comfortable with being a man—however you want to define that,” Makuakāne continues. “And at the same time, it allowed me to be vulnerable. It allowed me to be forward-thinking. It gave me so many things that I employ in my entire life today.”
By 17, Makuakāne came out to Cazimero. “It was a place that I felt safe,” he says.
By his early twenties, Makuakāne had fallen in love again, this time with a young Californian who had traveled to O‘ahu.
After a few more visits, they devised a plan: Makuakāne would move to San Francisco for three months while the pair saved money, then they’d return to Honolulu together. But after experiencing the loudand-proud rebelliousness of the city in the mid-’80s, Makuakāne knew he had to stay: “I was like, ‘Oh, I want to be a part of this energy for a while.’”
Makuakāne can even exact the point of no return. In 1990, soon after he arrived, he attended an AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) demonstration
“THE EXPERIENCE TAUGHT ME HOW TO BE COMFORTABLE WITH BEING A MAN—HOWEVER YOU WANT TO DEFINE THAT.
AND AT THE SAME TIME, IT ALLOWED ME TO BE VULNERABLE.”
against a major department store’s corporate pinkwashing. He and hundreds of protesters occupied the escalators of San Francisco Centre shopping mall, and at the blow of a whistle threw thousands of pamphlets into the air. “We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going shopping!” they later chanted. “That protest was so memorable for me because it was part theater, it was part irony,” Makuakāne says, chuckling. “You can’t just say, ‘Hey, no fair.’ You gotta glamorize it, give it a little theatrical element, so people remember. It’s kind of what I try to do in my productions.”
Makuakāne soon started Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu, first sharing a studio with the choreographer for The Joffrey Ballet. At the time, San Francisco was a hotbed of unbridled experimentation. (“I mean, men are walking around with a sock on their ding-dong,” he says. “Nobody cares, you know?”) Without any elders peering over his shoulder, Makuakāne began channeling that fearlessness into his work, gradually developing the foundation for his hula mua. It wasn’t until 1996, however, that Makuakāne cemented hula mua as the signature style of his hālau by creating what would become his most well-known piece, The Natives Are Restless. The searing stage show chronicles the devastating history of colonialism in Hawai‘i, beginning with real quotes pulled from missionaries’ journals: “Can these be human beings?” the narration booms as the curtains pull back to reveal two dozen bare-breasted women elaborately adorned in tattoos as they perform an elegant hula. Later, Makuakāne, dressed
as a priest, hoists a giant cross into the air as his hālau dances frantically to thumping house music.
According to Makuakāne, at least a few people walked out of that first show, one of whom was an actual priest. “I thought, ‘Yay, good,’” he recalls. “‘If this was awful enough to make [him] get up and walk out, that means I’m striking a chord.’”
But many more audience members were blown away. “I was shocked how many people were so moved by it,” Makuakāne
says. “I’m guessing because they’ve never seen anything like that before.”
In 2023, when the MacArthur Foundation first reached out to Makuakāne to inform him of his “Genius” honor—and the attached $800,000 grant—he was deep in the Nevada desert without cell service, performing with his hālau at Burning Man. Ever charting new territory, Makuakāne says the three times they’ve performed at the remote festival have been some of his most challenging yet rewarding feats. “We're tropical people, and here we are in the desert with these strange people and artwork, and people are fucking loving what we’re doing,” he says. “I found that so strange, impossible, and wonderful at the same time.”
By that time, Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu had grown into a Bay Area cultural institution with an up to 40-person professional dance company, more than 300-student dance school, and consistently
sold-out home seasons. And Makuakāne continues to take risks. Just the year before, his hālau debuted Māhū, showcasing Native Hawaiian transgender guest performers Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Kuini, and Kaumaka‘iwa Kanaka‘ole. A response to rising anti-trans hate in the U.S., the show was a celebration of māhū contributions to Hawaiian song and dance. “I was like, ‘It’s not gonna be a show about protests,’” he says. “It’s just to show your talent, and people will immediately see your humanity.” Today, despite greying hair,
WHATIT’SKINDOFITRYTODO
Makuakāne remains extraordinarily fit and unceasingly prolific. In March 2025, he and his band, KupuKupu, released a selftitled album that corresponds to an accompanying stage show. And in August 2025, Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu celebrated its 40th anniversary (“That means one thing: I’m old,” he quipped on Hawai‘i Public Radio) alongside Robert Cazimero’s hālau, which is celebrating its 50th. In Spring 2026, Makuakāne will direct the ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i opera The Sheltering Tree, about the life of 19th-century Hawaiian emissary Timoteo Ha‘alilio, and in November 2026, he
and collaborator Roslyn Catracchia will premiere The Story of The Epic Tale of Hi‘iaka, an original musical telling the story of the Hawaiian goddess.
Beyond funding more trips to Hawai‘i, Makuakāne says he’s been using his no-strings-attached grant to fuel more collaborations and direct money back into his communities. Just days after the show in Waikīkī, he is on stage in San Francisco promoting a new film by Lisette Flanary, Māhū: A Trans-Pacific Love Letter, which
documents the making of his Māhū show. Speaking to the moderator, he shares that at one point he considered hula mua to be his kuleana—a unique responsibility and gift. “I’ve recognized in the last 10, 15 years, though, that my kuleana is to build a community, and nurture that community … and let them know they have a safe place to congregate and be themselves,” he says. “Because when you have a community that trusts you and that moves together in unison, you can accomplish so much.” •
INMY PRODUCTIONS.”
“I MEAN, MEN ARE WALKING AROUND WITH A SOCK ON THEIR DINGDONG. NOBODY CARES, YOU KNOW?”
Text by LANIE PUNANI
Illustrations by TINTADIA
OVAHSICKONINGBACKDOWN
(oh-vah-SICK-oh-ning-BACK-down)
A combination of multiple fierce local gay pidgin mixed all togayther in a plate lunch way to describe something or someone or a moment so fierce so cunt so fabulous so juicy. “Okay now Mary over there in the Rocket Ahuna fit is OVAHSICKONINGBACKDOWN!”
NAILZ (nails) Not it. Unpleasant. Ugly. Yuck.
Frustrating and annoying. “Girl, Unko Rocky stay so freakin NAILZ when he ate my pickled mango! I neva tink he was capable of dat!”
MARY (MEH-ree) A way to refer to somebody in the family. A way to greet someone, similar to saying “Hey, girl.” “EHHHHHH MARY, I neva know u was da kine, ah?! One mahu? Das beautiful.”
BOOM KANANI (BOOM-kah-nah-knee)
An expression of excitement or positive exclamation said when you’re ecstatic or someone’s doing something impressive. A statement of glee exclaimed matter-offact, like when your favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen turns it out.
BACK (BACK) An exclamation point expression in word form. Like one Oh Yeah! moment. Or one Yes! moment. Or one Get it girl! moment. Like when you’re driving down the street and you see one of your sistahz you yell “BACK, girl!”
Liberation is birthed, not borrowed. We will never return them their normalcy.
Raised by the hands of matriarchs, the mind is a womb that conceives paths to revolution.
Our bodies were made to not only bear children, birthing pains apply when pushing for a nation unbound to patriarchy.
Love is not nuclear, love is the revolution we dream of.
This revolution will not be televised It will be told through the lives of the mothers who carried us into this new world.
A world we did not “discover”, but create every day. A world that we raise in the image of Kū and Hina.
In this new world, we are not looking for a flag to stake claim. But rather to seek see ourselves in each other. To truly know one another.
Is it not our mothers who first called us by name?
A conversation between T.J. KEANU TARIO and LEILEHUA LANZILOTTI contemporary
“What does it work that is interesting way?”
mean to make also folding time in this
experimental
Topics include: the documentary Standing Above the Clouds, about the protests on Maunakea; honoring Hawaiian music through the New York Philharmonic; varying forms of sovereignty via art; Lili‘uokalani’s music as cultural conservation; and queerness in classical music.
Photos by MAHINA CHOY-ELLIS
T.J. KEANU TARIO (b.1994), who’s also known as Lady Laritza LaBouche, is a classical and “Shalang Shalang” pianist, film composer, drag artist, and cultural practitioner from Nu‘uanu, O‘ahu. Tario’s pronouns are “he/she/‘o ia.” She is the first Kanaka Maoli graduate of the Juilliard School’s classical piano division, and has performed the piano in drag twice withthe Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra. An Aries, she’s obsessed with collecting vintage mu‘umu‘u and has been making lei hulu, or feather lei, since she was little. Her favorite flower lei is pīkake or pua kenikeni poepoe.
LEILEHUA LANZILOTTI (b.1983) is a composer, multimedia artist, and curator who was born in Philadelphia and raised in Honolulu. Their composition, “with eyes the color of time”, was selected as a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and they are a 2025 United States Artists fellow. A Libra rising with their sun and moon in Scorpio, Lanzilotti drives a Japanese Kei car and is training for a 10K marathon with their cousin. Their favorite lei is pīkake.
LEILEHUA LANZILOTTI: It’s been really beautiful to see the kind of music that you’ve been making and the collaborations that you’ve been doing, especially in your recent release on Lō‘ihi Records1 , which started as a film score. How did your collaboration with the film Standing Above the Clouds start?
T.J. KEANU TARIO: In 2022 I received a grant from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation’s LIFT Program, and one of my project ideas was a ballet 2 that surrounded Maunakea, telling the stories of the deities Poli‘ahu, her sisters, and Poli‘ahu’s love interest. That was kind of my way of coming back home, because I had lived on the continent for so long—New York and then L.A.—it was about 15 years being away. Starting that project put me in contact with Standing Above the Clouds. They were looking for film composers. And it just so happened that the film was about the Maunakea protests. It followed three families, three wāhine, and their fight to protect Maunakea. It was synergy that it happened all at once and meant to be because I was going back and forth [from Honolulu] to Maunakea. I don’t know about you, but with my music process, I feel like it always stems from the place or origin of where I’m writing about. If you look at Hawaiian mele, they talk about the wind and the rain and this place and that flower.
T.J.: It was an impetus for me to come back. Also, around the same time I had that gig for the symphony, and I think that’s when I heard about your work because you had the SHIFT award for your Lili‘u opera3. And I was like, “Oh my God, this is another Kanaka wahine who also grew up doing Western classical music.” My mouth was on the floor because you could literally count on your hand— there’s not a lot of us out there.
LEILEHUA: And I think that’s maybe part of both of our original impetus to leave, right? To connect with a larger community in the kinds of musical work that we were interested in—in your case, you went to Juilliard—and then reckoning that with a desire to be in community with the things that are happening here at home. I know that music for film is often a nice space to experiment because there’s not such strict boundaries around genre in some ways. How was it working in that medium?
3 “Dance Suite from Lili‘u” took place at Judson Memorial Church, in New York City, on October 2nd, 2025. This conversation took place in Nu‘uanu Valley Park on Friday, May 2nd, 2025, at 10:48am.
LEILEHUA: So was that the impetus for you to come home or were you already back by that time?
T.J.: I feel like my work is very visual, so it was nice having all of this amazing footage, and also heavy footage too. It’s all people that you know, family and friends, all protesting. I also felt that incorporating Hawaiian instruments into the score was necessary.
LEILEHUA: I think that also speaks to: How do we show up? There’s so many different ways that all of us can show up. Obviously, being on the ground is really, really important for both of us. We
1 Dean Harada's experimental record label, founded in 2024, celebrates “emergent endemic music, culture and community.” It is home to Lanzilotti's album beyond the accident of time (2025), and Keanu Tario's score for Standing Above the Clouds (2024).
2 Keanu Tario's ballet, “E aha ‘ia ana ‘o Mauna Kea” (“What is happening with Mauna Kea?”), debuted at Leeward Theatre on November 4th, 2023.
came back. But empowering people in diaspora by affirming and uplifting that there are these different ways to show up and all of them are equally important. And creating different spaces to gather— like in film, which can travel and create a shared narrative, or in installation work that can travel and allow people to be in physical space together—allows for these kinds of conversations about place to travel. And to think about these different issues for folks that might not be able to come back and might not be able to be here in person, I think that’s a really powerful part of this kind of work— making place-based work that’s also about displacement.
T.J.: Yeah, how are you maneuvering? I feel like in both of our forms we’re setting the cornerstones of what we want to see the future of contemporary Hawaiian music to look like. How are you bringing your culture—our culture—and your ancestors into your work?
LEILEHUA: You answer first. [Laughter]
T.J.: [Laughter] I want to know yours first, and then I’ll go.
LEILEHUA: I mean, I’ve been working a lot on this new piece for The New York Philharmonic4
T.J.: Which is fabulous and I have to congratulate you. Just being the first Kanaka wahine...
LEILEHUA: It’s really exciting, and it’s their season opener. Honoring our ancestors and the music of Hawai‘i is important to me, and the way that I’ve threaded that is looking at how I’m a contemporary musician. I perform experimental music. I write experimental music. I work in contemporary museum spaces. But our ali‘i were also modern people in their time. They were really interested in modernity. Kalākaua5 brought electricity to ‘Iolani Palace four years before the White House and had met Edison and was really excited about technology, while also advocating for a return of culture and hula. More people know about his
cultural advocacy, but he was also really interested in modernity and technology and being present in the world. In navigating the world as a diplomat. So bringing those things together is showing people these things are the same: blending our own indigenous culture with contemporary technology and mediums to create new ways of thinking, and new paths forward. So that’s what I find interesting about it: What does it mean to make experimental contemporary work that is also folding time in this interesting way? And so the piece that I wrote for the New York Philharmonic is kind of playing around with that idea of honoring the songs of Nā Lani ‘Eha, or The Heavenly Four6 , framing them in different ways in modernity. And blending Hawaiian music and poetry with Western music and ways of looking at form in the same way that the four of them did. They were all writing in this contemporary Western song style with Hawaiian poetry.
T.J.: Can I ask you about your Lili‘u opera? I want to know more about your project and how you came to know her more. I know she lives in your mo‘okū‘auhau, as well as mine.
LEILEHUA: Looking at source material was really interesting to me in developing
4 Lanzilotti is the first composer of Polynesian descent to have work commissioned by The New York Philharmonic.
5 In 1881, King Kalākaua became the first monarch to circumnavigate the globe. The journey took him 281 days.
6 The Heavenly Four refers to the siblings King Kalākaua, Queen Lili‘uokalani, Princess Likelike and Prince William Pitt Leleiohoku II, who were all composers.
7 Tatou Fest took place in New York City in the fall of 2025.
8 Kawaiaha‘o Church, located next to ‘Iolani Palace, is the oldest church on O‘ahu. As princess, Lili‘uokalani directed the church's choir, and after her passing in 1917, she lay in state in the church for a week before her funeral at ‘Iolani Palace.
“I write music. I work in contemporary museum spaces. But our ali‘i were also modern people in their time.” experimental
this project, which started as an opera project, but is really a festival7 . And thinking about the ways that we can make artistic work in which the goals of the artistic work are reflected in both the cultural and economic support of the project. So this is what we’re going to do in the fall, a dance suite with choreography by Anthony Aiu and some live musical elements. It’s not just a concert—although concerts are really important—but bringing people together is also a part of this larger festival. We’re going to have cultural practitioners there and other contemporary Polynesian artists that are also working in different kinds of crafts. Framing it in the context of contemporary Oceania is important to the context of the work itself, and also paying all the indigenous people that are involved in the project. A lot of the research was getting into that world and the entire text of the opera I wrote is sourced from Lili‘u’s diaries, and Hawai‘i’s Story By Hawai‘i’s Queen, and of course the lyrics of her prison songs. It was important to me to let her speak for herself. One of the scenes is every entry she wrote about the threats on her life—and my favorite one of those, although they’re not fun—she says, “…report was out that there might be an assault on me. Sent an order to Pacific Music Co. to send down 150 copies of ‘Aloha Oe’ and 150 of ‘He Mele Lāhui Hawai‘i.’” Which to me is like her saying, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” [Laughter] To me, the fact that she writes those two thoughts right
next to each other links the way that she was using music to advocate and to resist and to preserve language and culture. So that’s been really interesting, to deep dive into her own words. What kind of research did you do for your ballet?
T.J.: I grew up playing piano at Kawaiaha‘o Church8 , so Lili‘u’s music was always there. Hawaiian music was always prominent in the household. A playwright who worked at USC approached me looking for composers of Hawaiian origin who were close to Lili‘u’s story. Lili‘u—she is a distant cousin of my great-great-grandfather, Chief David Makainai, so I grew up learning those stories, and I think we all kind of grew up reading her memoirs and playing her music. But I came from the other side of the spectrum, not quite opera, but more musical [theater]. I think this is a good segue into how our music deals with sovereignty. I was given some really great advice by my kumu, Aunty Vicky Holt Takamine, that we need to be political. Living in Hawai‘i today, everything is not run by us. Even if you look at the issues at Maunakea, we’re still having to deal with it. And then two, to have your own space to do it. To bring community together through curating the shows that you want to see and
the music you want to hear. And with everything that I continue to write, just to be kū‘ē for our cause, because we’re creating something completely foreign and new. Also, as someone making music in the film industry, I would like to see— because there’re a lot of filmmakers that want to film here and tell our stories— but who’s behind the camera? Who’s doing post-production? Who are the musicians and composers?
LEILEHUA: Right, and how do we build projects that actually have that kind of inclusion and strength at all layers? Because we know from working in different spaces that the gaze behind the camera affects the shot and what’s noticed. It was so great meeting Cris [Romento]—her film, Dear Aloha, has been touring and is about being from and in the diaspora—and just looking at people like her who are and offering a different viewpoint into framing the work that all of us are doing. I think this is also about these different kinds of sovereignty: What does it mean for us to be advocating for water sovereignty? What does it mean for us to be advocating for language sovereignty? How do we build that into projects where maybe we can’t be doing everything. For example, I didn’t get to grow up speaking Hawaiian in my home.
T.J.: Oh, same.
LEILEHUA: But I can make sure that I build language keepers and their mana‘o into my projects. I can make sure I’m building in space and funding to support people who are teachers and native speakers to be a part of that. That’s also about the ways we are building projects, which is world building. It’s kind of experimenting with world building within these different ideas of sovereignty. We’ve been talking about our ali‘i, and we know from our mo‘olelo that there was a lot of queerness in our society here that was inherently part of the culture. And then the push and pull with the influence of more
“Finding drag was an armor of putting on a more fabulous outlook. It made me love music again.”
conservative missionary culture here. Do you still feel that tension?
T.J. : I feel like I’ve always had to interject my gender within what I do. Like even though I grew up in the church, later on in life, living on the continent and finding out that I’m māhū and trans and making that transition when moving back home—for me, I felt like it was easy. Well, it was kind of hard when I was just strictly doing classical music. For the most part, classical music is basically just playing dead white men. It wasn’t really fulfilling. In my younger years, I did think that I was going to be a classical concert soloist, but you kind of fall into this mold of what your teachers expect from you and what your family and parents expect from you. So that’s why I didn’t really delve into playing Hawaiian music other than at church. Right now, Hawaiian music is definitely fulfilling me when it comes to music making and performing and drag. I’m doing a mixture of anything under the sun, and playing Hawaiian music in Waikīkī four to five times a week for the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement. I also came into knowing my transness through drag. At Juilliard, my teachers kind of told me that a solo career wasn’t going to happen. And after performing since I was five, that’s all you know, so I needed to find other avenues of trying to love performing again, and love music again, because I fell out of love with music while in school. And finding drag was an armor of putting on this, not disguise,
but a more fabulous outlook, you know? It just made me love music again. It also brought me into finding my voice in composition. What about you?
LEILEHUA: Yeah, it absolutely is connected to writing and composing for me, because it affects the kinds of texts that I choose and the way that I’m framing the work and the way that I’m writing about things—the subtlety in terms of being able to be in these in-between spaces. I think it’s really powerful to be able to explore that in music. This different way of viewing things as not black and white affects the way that I write and the way that I approach sound and timbre. And sometimes it comes out more obviously, or more obvious to me in certain ways. Maybe that’s a part of growing up hapa and living in these different intersections, the intersectionality of all these identities. Queerness and being non-binary is a piece of that. For me, building greater solidarities through these intersectionalities is so important—to practice listening to discover how we can better support each other.
T.J.: I guess Hawaiians have so many hats that we have to wear, and that also includes gender as well. We straddle that fence. You can’t put us in a box or define us, because there is no box. We’re coloring outside of the box. •
MONARCH MAAARY(!)
KEATANby KAMAKAIWI
Photos
Lei Pua ‘Ala is a nonprofit dedicated to discovering, sharing, and memorializing the sites and stories vital to Hawai‘i’s LGBTQ+ history. The project was founded by directors (and husbands) Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer, who were inspired by the public’s reception to The Healer Stones of Kapaemahu exhibition they helped curate, along with Kumu Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, at Bishop Museum in the summer of 2022.
Wilson recalls observing people at the exhibit—everyone from gender diverse kids with their families to older queer folks—and seeing “the light that emerged in them when they were in a space they felt somehow reflected a little bit of who they were,” he says. It got him thinking: What would be the impact of revealing more of those stories in different ways?
Since its inception in 2022, Lei Pua ‘Ala has worked with the City and County of Honolulu to install plaques throughout the city, detailing the queer histories of
places like Queen’s Surf Beach and The Glade nightclub; produced the Kapaemahu hula show, composed and directed by kumu Patrick Makuakāne, which takes place every Wednesday at the Kūhiō Beach Park in Waikīkī; and created a comprehensive digital map composed of historically important LGBTQ+ sites across the Hawaiian Islands.
“It’s a large collection of stuff that is somehow going to make sense at some point to the people that are looking for it,” says Wilson, about the breadcrumbs they’re scattering throughout their project. “In fact, somebody in one of our storytelling sessions said it like this: For people who are LGBTQ or māhū, we often feel like we’re alone, right? Our family rejected us, or our community, or church, or school. So we’re out there looking. And so her quote was, ‘Just remember that those who you’re looking for are also looking for you.’”
Lei asked Wilson and Hamer to highlight seven sites.
HAWAI‘I ISLAND
KE AHU A LONO MOLOKA‘I
MISS GAY MOLOKA‘I PAGEANT O‘AHU KAPAEMAHU
QUEEN’S SURF BEACH
THE GLADE NIGHTCLUB
PLANTATION MARRIAGE KAUA‘I
Illustrations by REN KANOELANI MARKLE
Text by MITCHELL KUGA
HAWAI‘I ISLAND
On the King’s Trail, also known as the Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail which runs through Hawai‘i Island’s Waikōloa Beach Resort, sits a cairn that marks the love story between a high chief, Lonoikamakahiki, and a commoner, Kapaihiahilina, who was his aikāne, the Hawaiian term for a close, intimate same-sex friend that often denotes a sexual relationship.
In broad strokes, their mo‘olelo has all the makings of a contemporary soap opera. After killing his wife on Hawai‘i Island during a game of kōnane (Hawaiian game resembling checkers), Lonoikamakahiki fled to Kaua‘i where, overcome with grief, he retreated to the wilderness. After his attendants and followers abandoned him, only one man, Kapaihiahilina, stayed and cared for Lonoikamakahiki through sickness, poverty, and hunger. When the chief asked him why, Kapaihiahilina responded, “Aloha ia ‘oe.” “Because I love you.”
After regaining his sanity, Lonoikamakahiki returned to Hawai‘i island with Kapaihiahilina, who he appointed as his second in command. Jealous of his new position, Lonoikamakahiki’s former aikāne spread false rumors about Kapaihiahilina that caused Lonoikamakahiki to shun Kapaihiahilina, who fled the court in sadness. Realizing his mistake, Lonoikamakahiki eventually chased after Kapaihiahilina before finding him at ‘Anaeho‘omalu, on the leeward side
of Hawai‘i Island. At their reunion, Kapaihiahilina chanted a beautiful oli of devotion to the chief, recalling their life of poverty and hardship in the Kaua‘i wilderness. Struck with emotion, the two men pledged to never listen to rumors about the other and Lonoikamakahiki erected an ahu, or stone cairn (which translates to The Altar of Lono), at the site of their reunion.
“This story was one of the very first that I’d ever heard about sexual and gender diversity in Hawai‘i,” says Hamer, who recalls reading about it in a legal paper written by the attorney Robert J. Morris, during the national debate over gay marriage in the ’90s. “He was basically making the argument that it was against the Hawai‘i Constitution to forbid same-sex marriage because it’s part of Hawaiian culture, and you have to respect Hawaiian culture in the Constitution. So it had always struck me as the example of same-sex love in Hawai‘i.”
MOLOKA‘I MISS GAY MOLOKA‘I PAGEANT
In the summer of 1985, kumu hula William Ka‘aihue began preparations for a festival in Moloka‘i to raise money for his hula hālau, Hālau Hula ‘Ohana. The event was to be held in Kaunakakai Ballpark and required a permit, which was issued and
then revoked by the Maui County Mayor at the time, Hannibal Tavares. Several churches on Moloka‘i took issue with one of the festival’s main events, the Miss Gay Moloka‘i Pageant, which was essentially a drag pageant. In a press release, the pastor of Kaunakakai Baptist Church cited several passages in the Bible that he said “make clear” that homosexuality and transvestism are sins.
“Through the ’70s and ’80s, nine times out of 10 that decision would have been final,” says Hamer. “But this kumu hula said not this time and he challenges it.
The incredible intersection here is that a young attorney at the ACLU, Daniel Foley, was the one who took that case.” A decade later, Foley would go on to represent the three same-sex couples who’d go on to challenge Hawai‘i’s marriage laws—a first in the United States.
“In a way, this pageant becomes Hawai‘i’s first gay civil rights case,” continues Hamer. “And what I love is that this story emerges not in Hawai‘i’s center of power, in urban Honolulu, but in Moloka‘i.”
On June 22, 1985, the Honolulu Advertiser reported that U.S. District Judge Harold Fong ruled that the pageant was protected by constitutional freedoms of expression, and ordered that the Maui County government issue the permit and let the show go on as planned.
This same article also reported that “for years, Molokai has been known as a community that accepted its known homosexual population. Only newcomers were sometimes surprised at finding an openly flagrant ‘mahu,’ usually a man dressed as a woman.”
In November 1985, the Advertiser published an article with the headline “’G-rated’ pageant fails to daunt Molokai.” The reporter Rick Carroll wrote, “If anyone expected a lightning bolt to split the town in two, they were disappointed. This hot and dusty little town [of Kaunakakai] appears— so far—to be surviving its first gay pageant with aplomb and sophistication.”
O‘AHU QUEEN’S SURF
In the 1970s, following the Stonewall Riots that sparked the gay liberation movement, Queen’s Surf Beach located at Honolulu’s Kapi‘olani Park became the gathering place for LGBTQ+ locals and visitors alike. Lei-making picnics, all-day volleyball tournaments, and impromptu hula shows from the likes of soon-to-be kumu hula Robert Cazimero and Sonny Ching were common happenings, in addition to an annual Pride Picnic.
“You have to remember that this was a time when same-sex relations were still considered criminal,” says Wilson. “And in a place like Hawai‘i, it’s difficult for people whose extended family always have them in sight to be comfortable in their own skin sometimes. That’s what’s so amazing about Queen’s Surf, because people would say, ‘Well, I would go to play volleyball or I would go to roller skate or I went to the picnic or one time they held an art show or a pageant—and it was in the full light of day.’ It just sounds like it became this incredible festival of life where people could be open and free and find their new communities.”
Queen’s Surf was also the site of Hawai‘i’s first organized LGBTQ+ Māhū event, a “gay parade” held on June 30, 1974.
A newspaper reported that the parade’s leaders were “all wearing flowery, violet armbands, held Hawaiian and American flags high on staffs, leading some 25 persons through a sunny Sunday sidewalk crowd in Waikīkī, which appeared mostly amused, sometimes a bit shocked, but very tolerant.” The parade sought to bring “public attention to the need to give gay people full civil rights and end discrimination in jobs and housing and in our laws.”
For various reasons, including the devastating spread of HIV/AIDS, activity at Queen’s Surf began to slow by the late ’80s, but remnants of its past still mark the site. In June 2025, Lei Pua ‘Ala, in conjunction with the Hawai‘i LGBT Legacy Foundation and the City and County of Honolulu, unveiled a plaque that publicly commemorated Queen’s Surf Beach as vital to Hawai‘i’s LGBTQ+ history, noting, “As Hawai‘i has become a beacon of sexual and gender diversity, Queen’s Surf Beach has remained a popular place for queer expression and community.”
with Kapuni, Kinohi and Kahaloa—who were māhū, or of dual male and female spirit. They travelled to Hawai‘i from Ra‘iātea Tahiti sometime in the 1500s, and their kindness, poise, and exceptional healing powers made them instantly beloved amongst islanders.
Preceding their departure back to Tahiti, four human-sized boulders were quarried from a famous bell rock in Kaimukī and transported to the Waikīkī beachfront, where the quartet first made contact, to honor their generosity and spirit. According to the mo‘olelo of Ka Pōhaku Kahuna Kapaemahu (“the healer stones
of Kapaemahu”), before vanishing, the four healers transferred their powers to the stones on a moonless night, never to be seen again.
Wilson and Hamer were introduced to the Kapaemahu stones over a decade ago by Kumu Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, who was the subject of a documentary the couple directed called Kumu Hina. As they drove home from Waikīkī to the North Shore, Hamer recalls doing a double take at a photo he took of the plaque, puzzling over why there was not a single mention of the stones’ connection to its māhū healers—a striking omission that spoke to the importance of Lei Pua ‘Ala’s mission. (A new plaque, spearheaded by Lei Pua ‘Ala and installed in 2023, mentions the healers “duality of male and female spirit,” and includes a QR code that directs people to kapaemahu.info.)
Since then, Wilson, Hamer, and Wong-Kalu have co-authored a children’s book, produced an animated short film, hosted a live hula show, and curated an exhibition at Bishop Museum all dedicated to Kapaemahu. Each iteration of the story that gets told is another seed planted, with Kapaemahu functioning as the bedrock of Lei Pua ‘Ala’s mission. As Wilson sees it, it all started with some questions: “Why was that story of Kapaemahu suppressed? Why was it erased? Why was it invisible to people for so long?” he says. “We had no idea that in trying to figure that out this project would become what it’s become.”
O‘AHU THE GLADE
In the ’60s, The Glade, a nightclub located at 152 North Hotel Street, hosted a “Boys Will Be Girls Revue” in what was then the so-called red light district of Honolulu’s Chinatown. The entertainer Brandy Lee fashioned the glamorous “female impersonation” show in the image of similar variety shows in San Francisco and New York, with the hopes that it would restore some dignity to māhū like herself, who she felt society at the time regarded as “the lowest of the low.”
The “Boys Will Be Girls Revue” ran six nights a week from 1963 to 1980, and was an immediate hit. The rollicking variety show incorporated elements of comedy, singing, stripping, burlesque, and group hula numbers, and attracted everyone from straight military personnel and visiting celebrities to locals of every persuasion. Over time, the nightclub served as a refuge for Hawai‘i’s LGBTQ and māhū community, particularly amidst the violence of an increasingly homophobic Hawai‘i.
In 1963, in the aftermath of McCarthyism, the state passed an “intent to deceive” law that criminalized cross dressing. To avoid arrest, performers—
many who identified as either māhū or transgender women—were made to wear a large pink pin that read “I AM A BOY.”
Wilson and Hamer became interested in The Glade through their work on Kapaemahu. In 1963, when the Kapaemahu stones were uncovered beneath a bowling alley and transported to Kūhiō Beach Park, the accompanying historical plaque made no mention of the healers’ māhū identities. This wasn’t the case when the stones were buried under Waikiki Bowl in the 1940s, so Hamer wondered why not mention it in 1963? “And then we realized, oh my God, it was the same year they passed the intent to deceive law,” he says. “And suddenly the Glade, even though it was what we would now call a contemporary drag show, was intimately connected to what happened to this ancient story.”
The Glade building was demolished in 2023, and is now the Mauna Kea Fish Market. Its owner has been open to Lei Pua ‘Ala’s efforts to preserve The Glade’s history, which includes a plaque out front and a “history wall” in the back featuring images and video installations from the club’s heyday.
“And so when people are buying fish or picking up their produce or whatever, that space will come alive again with that history,” says Wilson.
the caption: “Mr. and ‘Mrs.’ Florincio Loriozo amazed the police yesterday when it was discovered that ‘Mrs.’ Loriozo is a Filipino man who has been masquerading for years as a woman.”
It was reported that the newlyweds were married in Honolulu three weeks prior, before someone alerted the police that there was “something wrong” going on in the shack where they were living, behind the ‘Aiea canefields.
“Investigation by the police revealed both to be men,” noted the article. “In a gingham gown, wearing high heeled slippers and with long curly hair held with hair pins and combs, the man easily passed for a woman. The detectives at first thought Ocho wore a wig. When the combs and pins were withdrawn the coiffure collapsed. The long hair was real.”
The couple was detained, and although they were never formally charged with a crime, Ocho was “given a haircut and man’s clothes,” before they were deported to the Philippines.
That’s where their story ends publicly, though Wilson and Hamer discovered ship records showing that Loriozo and Ocho
returned to Honolulu from Manila just a few months later. And even more remarkably, they were listed as the parents of a 1-year-old girl named Maria, who accompanied them on the voyage.
Wilson and Hamer have no way of knowing how the couple came to acquire Maria, but that hasn’t stopped them from speculating. “Somebody in the Philippines probably thought—I mean, now we’re just imagining—these two people have the chance to give my child a better life in Honolulu as a part of their love,” says Wilson. “So for me, even though the Hawai‘i marriage equality story really begins, in a legal sense, in 1993, there’s examples of this, the strength of this kind of love, much earlier.”
KAUA‘I PAE KI‘I MĀHŪ O
that acknowledged same-sex relationships that got written, literally, into stone,” says Hamer.
Located near the mouth of Wailua River, this row of large stones embedded with carved petroglyphs features the story of Kapo, a sister of Pele who was the goddess of fertility, sorcery, and dark powers.
According to the version of the mo‘olelo told by Frederick Wichman, Kapo travelled to Kaua‘i with a group of young
women in search of husbands. When they arrived at the beach called Makaīwa, near present day Kapa‘a, they saw eight handsome young chiefs surfing. Kapo joined them in the water and urged each eligible chief to paddle ashore and “drink ‘awa” with a maiden—a common euphemism for sex. But the men were not interested in the young women, and preferred their own company instead. Infuriated, Kapo created a series of giant waves, the third of which toppled the young chiefs and crushed them beneath the water, turning them to stones that were then pushed ashore. These are the Pae Ki‘i Māhū o Wailua, which some Hawaiian scholars translate as “the row of homosexual images at Wailua.”
On a trip to Waialua, in 2025, Hamer and Wilson were thrilled to discover that one of the ancient petroglyphs depicted genitals, “which is very unusual for petroglyphs,” notes Hamer, though he was disappointed to discover that, like so much of Hawaiian history, the signage for Pae Ki‘i Māhū o Wailua no longer contained the word “māhū.” “They totally genericized it, even though that’s the official name on all of the records,” Hamer says. “So again, we’ve got some work to do down over there.” •
“MY
ONLY RESPONSIBILITY IS TO BE MYSELF,
A conversation between HAYLEY CHEYNEY KĀNE and SASHA COLBY
Topics include: polyamory; The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins; chosen ‘ohana; Jamaica Osorio’s Remembering Our Intimacies ; and Miss Universe Brook Mahealani Lee.
AND PRETTY MUCH FUCK ‘EM, YOU KNOW?”
Photos by SIMONE KOMINE Styling by ARI SOUTH
Hair and Makeup by RISA HOSHINO
HAYLEY CHEYNEY KĀNE
(b.1997) is a preventative medicine educator with a degree in physiology who was born in Kāne‘ohe. She is the first openly gay Miss Hawai‘i, which she won in 2024. She lived in a foster home during high school and says she has the appetite of “a teenage boy playing football.” A Gemini sun, Capricorn moon, and Leo rising, her favorite lei is a pīkake pakalana combo.
SASHA COLBY (b.1984) is an entertainer, drag artist, creative, and storyteller born in Waimānalo and based in Los Angeles. She is the 2012 winner of Miss Continental and the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15, but is most proud of being a loving drag mother, sister, and daughter. A history nerd, her not so secret dream is to compete on Celebrity Jeopardy! She is a Leo sun, Cancer moon, and Aries rising, which she knows makes her “a mess,” and her favorite lei is pīkake.
Photo of Sasha by Maxwell Poth
SASHA COLBY: Can I just say, this is the last interview of five I’ve already done and I’ve been fucking haole all day. [Laughter] So I’m glad to code switch right now.
HAYLEY CHEYNEY KĀNE: Let’s go! I can’t get the tita out of me.
SASHA: So, wait, you work in Waimānalo?
HAYLEY: Yeah, I work at the health center.
SASHA: Are you from Waimānalo too?
HAYLEY: No, I have family here, but it’s not like my direct family. I grew up in Kāne‘ohe.
SASHA: Okay, neighbor.
HAYLEY: Yeah, I’m an east side girl. I live in Kahalu‘u. Me and my fiancé.
SASHA: I know, congratulations! I got to meet your fiancé at Wang Chung’s that one night. How long have you and Karmen been together? Tell me that story.
HAYLEY: So we actually, um, started out in a polyamorous setting.
SASHA: Oh, like me!
HAYLEY: Which is why I feel safe telling you. To all of my Christian friends, I just say that we met at the beach.
SASHA: [Laughter] Good, this is real.
HAYLEY: Yeah, she and I started talking in a polyamorous setting and then my other partner and I separated, and then Karmen and I separated because she lost her mom and like, it was just messy. So then we officially started re-dating in February. But she met my other partner first.
SASHA: Okay so it was them two first and then you came in?
HAYLEY: Well, they weren’t dating but she started dating me. My other partner was not attracted to masculine. And Karmen’s masculine.
SASHA: We love a butchie, Mary. [Laughter] My one partner is a cis man and my other partner is non-binary. They’ve been dating for five years and I found two people that really allow me to... because you know dating usually, especially in Hawai‘i, you kind of have to downplay your transness for these boys, who
can be very intimidated or insecure in their masculinity, so you have to overly feminize yourself and put down your queerness. And it’s so nice to be in a relationship where I can be so gay, and so trans too, and just like you know, talk ete to them. [Laughter]
HAYLEY: I’m so glad this came up because I really struggled with my family in Hawai‘i. And then in the polyamorous setting...
SASHA: Mary, they were like, what now? [Laughter]
HAYLEY: Like, you are shunned.
SASHA: Is your family really religious?
HAYLEY: Super.
SASHA: Yeah, mine is Jehovah’s Witness.
HAYLEY: Not like yours. That’s kind of rough.
SASHA: Yeah, that was like, okay, I’m probably not going to talk to you guys. It’s very freeing. Like, okay, I can do whatever I want to do now.
HAYLEY: You know, in Hawai‘i, people are like, “Family is everything and you have to—”
SASHA: Not when your family’s toxic though. I’m not saying yours is, but what happens when it’s not a safe space for you? That’s why chosen family is so important, right? That’s why I have kids¹, because it’s a trauma response to not having a good mother. I want to be the good mother that I didn’t have. That’s what I love about Hawai‘i—the way that we can find our chosen family is really great here. I’m sorry to cut you off.
HAYLEY: No, that’s exactly what I was gonna say. Like without Ari [South]² this year, I really don’t know how I would have been able to make it through. I went to Miss America and they were asking me questions in my interview about the
1 Sasha is a part of the House of Colby and says she has "too many kids to count." Her drag mother is Cassandra Colby.
2 Ari styled this shoot.
election year and how I would deal with being the first openly gay Miss America, and how I have dealt with being the first openly gay Miss Hawai‘i. And I was just like, ‘I have my family; I have my tribe.
“TO ALL OF MY CHRISTIAN FRIENDS, I JUST SAY THAT WE MET AT THE BEACH.”
And I also said that my only responsibility is to be myself, and pretty much fuck ’em, you know?’ [Laughter] But it’s true, finding the people that you know love you for you is so healing, especially when the family that was supposed to love you couldn’t.
SASHA: And I feel like the chosen ones that see the greatness in you that you don’t even see yet, they have so much faith in you that it carries you to achieve so much. How long have you been Ari’s daughter?
HAYLEY: Daughter is recent, but she’s been guiding me since I started running for 2024 [Miss Hawai‘i]. I spent a lot of time with her because we were talking through my vision and then she made my talent dress. She officially hānai-ed me— oh gosh, I want to say it was like right before Miss America—like, November?
SASHA: Good, it gives you that little oomph, yeah? A little push. [Laughter]
HAYLEY: It was nice. Especially because I got kicked out of my house when I was a kid and I was in foster care.
SASHA: Because of being queer? Or things we don’t have to talk about.
HAYLEY: No, it’s just my mom and I never really got along. And she was a single mom in Hawai‘i and my younger sister had cancer which, she’s okay now, but that kind of strain it puts on a parent was... It was just junk.
SASHA: Yeah.
HAYLEY: So having to be a single mom to me was really hard. And then my sister was with her dad, and so my mom was kind of like, I can’t. Like you gotta go, because it was getting toxic. So when Ari took me in it was really healing.
SASHA: I don’t know if it’s private, but do you have a relationship with your mom now?
HAYLEY: Kind of-ish. But, oh, and then when I came out it was like, “Holy shit.”
SASHA: Like back two steps.
HAYLEY: Back seven steps.
SASHA: [Laughter] Back to square one. Like, “Oh nay, I just got her around, yeah? Like, do I break this?” Well, it’s gonna be on the news, Mary.
HAYLEY: [Mimics holding up a microphone] I don’t know how to tell you this mom, but, um, I’m gay. [Laughter]
SASHA: Oh, my goodness. I mean, it’s hard. My father passed away but I don’t have any relationship with my mom. It’s always been hard. I don’t really talk to my family.
HAYLEY: So, you don’t really talk to any of your family in Waimānalo?
SASHA: You know, I talk to my one brother in Waimānalo because my father left me that house on homestead, right across the street from Bobby’s. I live on the mainland now, so I didn’t turn it over. I’m still on the lease [Laughter]. But I have my brother living there. He always takes care of the house and makes sure that the yard is clean, even when he didn’t have to, and so I always just saw him being the caretaker. So I can go there and see them every once in a while. They’re all still Jehovah’s Witnesses but they’re pretty cool now. You know, it’s funny when you win a show on TV or, you get some money, yeah? And all of a sudden… [Laughter] All of a sudden, not that bad, ah?
HAYLEY: How many people were acting brand new when you won?
SASHA: Oh, Mary, all of a sudden everybody needed a loan. And my whole life it was
Hayley with fiancé, Karmen.
like, “When are you gonna get a real job?” I’m like, “Oh, it’s funny that fake job got some real money now.” [Laughter]
HAYLEY: That’s a Marcelo³ teaching if I’ve ever heard one, right? Like, follow your dream, girl. Follow your dream. What a difference between singing in the bathroom mirror as a teenager.
SASHA: I know, yeah? Everything else will happen if you stay true to yourself.
HAYLEY: I loved your answer at Miss Continental⁴ .
SASHA: Yeah, there’s no alternate reality. There is no entertaining any other outcome, it’s only success. That’s the only thing that can come to you. I ran Continental couple times, and I was always scared of question and answer. I didn’t have a voice. I didn’t feel like speaking. Public speaking was hard. Now, you can’t shut me up. [Laughter] But I remember I was always so scared because I wanted to say, you know, the biggest accomplishment was leaving Hawai‘i and getting off of ice. Like I was a utu head from 19 to 23. And like, it was rough. I was homeless running around with dealers and doing all kinds of crazy things and I got clean after I got to Chicago, when I started at The Baton. I was always afraid to say it, because I always felt people would judge me. But the second I said it, I won. And not just that, but all the messages I would get back then, from other queens or just people on meth saying, you make me not want to do it. And then I realized, oh my gosh, the thing that you’re embarrassed about the most is your key to really making a difference for people. So once you get over the shame of people judging you, and you are literally so vulnerable and so honest, it makes people stronger.
HAYLEY: Yeah, wow. That’s some Brené Brown shit, I love it. [Laughter]
SASHA: Damn, I just finished Mel Robbins’ Let Them. ⁵
HAYLEY: Let Them!
SASHA: Let them. Let the parents. Let mother.
HAYLEY: Exactly. But it’s so real because it’s the authenticity that really changes lives, and the vulnerability that comes with that. And I was tearing up watching your answer on Miss Continental because you worked and you put everything, all of you, into this. And that’s really similar to how I felt about Miss Hawai‘i because I was struggling so hard. I was struggling so hard to just be confident and happy about being me, and coming out was the best thing I did for myself.
SASHA: And now you’re so unique in that arena: the first openly queer Miss Hawai‘i. Just showing a different face to other little girls in Hawai‘i that don’t think they can be themselves. It’s so exciting. I love that we both found our way out of the struggle, and it wasn’t until we got to be authentic and unapologetic. Because in pageants, it took me a while. You go into a pageant and you think, okay, what do they want me to be? Like, who am I supposed to be for them? How is Miss Hawai‘i supposed to act? How is Miss America supposed to act? But then once you realize, oh, there’s nobody that can
3 Marcelo Pacleb is the founder of 24-VII Danceforce, where Colby and South both danced.
4 During the interview portion of the competition, Colby said: "I knew that it didn’t just happen that I was sat down at 17-years-old and given videos of Miss Continental from 1984 to 2002 and was sitting there, with my drag mother, telling me 'You can be that. That can be you right there. You have what it takes.' It doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t just happen that I had a three-year drug induced life. I was heavily addicted to crystal meth and I was almost at the end of my rope. I had lost everything and was about to jump out of a window and something told me, check your email. It didn’t just happen that Ginger Grant had called and emailed me that they needed a new young dancer girl, and if I would be willing to move to Chicago. It doesn’t just happen. So I know that my future has always been this purpose, has always been to be Miss Continental."
5 The Let Them Theory, by Mel Robbins, is “a step-by-step guide on how to stop letting other people's opinions, drama, and judgment impact your life.”
be me. I remember I was working at The Baton the year I won Continental, and another Leo—Victoria Le Paige, July 26, same birthday as me—she was my coworker and she won Miss Continental already. She’s an amazing performer. And she looked at me and she said, you know, when you get on that question and answer? I go, yeah. She’s like, make sure when you finally get that microphone, make sure you have something to say. And nobody can beat you at being you. Oooh, that hit. Because you can try being everybody else, or everybody can try being you, but ain’t nobody can beat you when you’re yourself. Oh, I take that all the time.
HAYLEY: Exactly, that’s the stuff that moves mountains.
SASHA: And it sticks in my head 15 years later. You know, you get in your head. When I did Drag Race, sometimes you forget all the things that you were so resilient about in your life. Like, wow, I did so much, and you forget that this is just another fun way of saying I can do it
HAYLEY: I was gonna ask you how you dealt with—and I don’t know if you have any of this—but the I-come-from-asmall-island and I’m-not-used-to-thislevel-of-stage. Like for me, when I went to Miss America, initially, I was super intimidated. I was like, all of these girls and all of these pageants have way more funding, they have way more training. But then when I got there, I was mmmmm [shakes head].
SASHA: They don’t have the mana. They don’t have that ooh-ahh sensation.
HAYLEY: They don’t. I don’t know what their interviews were like, but the judges were crying in my interview. I don’t know how I didn’t make top 7. That’s some shit.
SASHA: I mean, I could already tell how you would be so engaging in the interview. I love that you kind of second guessed yourself and thought like, oh, I don’t know if I’m up to caliber, because that’s very Hawaiian. We love to dumb
ourselves down, especially for the haoles. Acting like, oh, I don’t know, I don’t know if I can do that. Like always asking to take up space. And I don’t know, I guess it was
“THEY DON’T HAVE THE MANA. THEY DON’T HAVE THAT OOH-AHH SENSATION.”
maybe my māhū-ness, but I was like, you’re gonna get it. [Laughter] So I was never intimidated. I kind of always knew. I’m like, fuck I gotta get out of here. The Hawaiians can catch up later, but I gotta go. And I feel like they finally caught up. Like going home now and seeing drag and how it’s not just the kind of drag I grew up on. It’s so creative. And it’s drag kings, bio queens, AFAB queens. It’s really cool to see Hawai‘i embracing what we naturally were. It’s in our blood. Our māhū-ness is in everyone’s blood. It’s in our lineage. It’s part of our indigenous ancient culture. Before Christianity came and said that it was wrong, we were integral.
HAYLEY: It’s true. That book [Remembering Our Intimacies: Mo‘olelo, Aloha ‘Āina, and Ea] that Jamaica Osorio wrote, about reclaiming our mo‘olelo…
SASHA: Send that to me. I don’t have that one.
HAYLEY: I’ll send it to you.
SASHA: Please, I need a new book.
HAYLEY: You just finished Let Them.
SASHA: I know. And now I need something fun, like something more Hawaiian.
HAYLEY: Well, it’s not that fun. It’s very academic.
SASHA: Well, I’m a nerd.
HAYLEY: Oh, you’re a nerd?! Me too! I love a good book.
SASHA: I’m kind of crazy about history. I just know a lot of facts about history and
ancient civilizations. Because of Hawaiian culture, it made me love gods and goddesses and Greek mythology. And then I got into like, why were we obsessed with the British monarchy? And then it made me go down a rabbit hole of colonization and colonialism. And then I went into the fall of Rome. [Laughter] I love it all. I’m such a nerd in that aspect, so I probably will like the book.
HAYLEY: You’d love my papa. He’s a history teacher. And these are the conversations we have for fun. He’s like, I’m teaching you.
SASHA: Literally, my friends are like, oh, here she goes with another fact.
HAYLEY: We would have such a good time at brunch.
SASHA: Yeah we gotta have pūpū-s and Heinekens and talk wala‘au.
HAYLEY: But the mo‘olelo-s are like Hōpoe and Hi‘iaka. Hōpoe is in the lehua groves and the mo‘olelo is actually saying that Hōpoe was Hi‘iaka’s aikāne.
SASHA: Her lover.
HAYLEY: Yeah, they were lovers.
SASHA: I never made that connection because they always say it’s her kid sister. Like Hi‘iaka was to Pele. And I’m like, no, that’s giving butchie.
HAYLEY: Exactly. Because those mo‘olelo were rewritten—
SASHA: Through the lens of a colonizer.
HAYLEY: Because Hawaiians didn’t have a written language, all the people that were telling the oral stories were telling it to people who could write, which were the missionaries.
SASHA: And they never had a word for aikāne. They didn’t have comprehension of that. I mean, they were calling lesbians “witches” back then.
HAYLEY: Right. Because the word homosexual wasn’t even introduced into the Bible until 1940.
SASHA: Let’s. Talk. About. It. [Laughter]
HAYLEY: Yes. Oh, my gosh. We would nerd out so hard. But I’m curious, how did you start getting interested in pageants?
SASHA: Brook Mahealani Lee⁶
HAYLEY: No freaking way.
SASHA: I was at a sleepover with all these boys, Mary. And I was like, I’m going to watch Miss Universe. And so we was watching and they were checking out the girls, and I’m living for Brook Lee. I just love watching pageants to this day. On Instagram, I can just watch reels of girls getting crowned, and it makes me smile. Or girls walking in the pageant, it puts a smile on my face automatically. It’s literally a dopamine hit for me.
HAYLEY: I love that.
SASHA: What was yours?
HAYLEY: Skyler Kamaka. She was [Miss Hawai‘i] 2012. I started running because my mom’s friend is Skyler’s aunty. I was also running because I needed the scholarship money. My mom was like, “I’m not paying for school. If you want to go to school, you gotta figure it out.” And I was like, boom, pageants.
SASHA: It’s the smartest way, really.
HAYLEY: I also just love to be on stage. I just love to perform.
SASHA: Yeah, same. A singer’s going to sing, even if no one’s listening. A dancer is going to dance alone, in the dark. But it’s nice when people get to witness it. And they should be so lucky. •
6 When asked by host George Hamilton of the Miss Universe pageant: “If there were no rules in your life for one day, and you could be outrageous, what would you do?” Lee responded: “I would eat everything in the world. You do not understand. I would eat everything twice.”
Text and photos by MAKANANUI FULLER
March 9, 2025 at 10:12 PM
I am unsure if I'll medically transition although that is so far into a journey I've barely just begun. I have never felt safer than in the company of trans women. I live for the girls, part of me, the part of me that does think of transitioning, lives vicariously through them. Their overtures of laughter has watered parts of me I didn't know existed within me, or parts I thought might have died. I live, and I love, for the girls. Watching the way they move their hair, fix makeup or roll a blunt. The poise, the posture of self exaltation. The humidity of sisterhood in the small four walls of a dressing room. I see their steady hands collectively making the steady pour into themselves. The constitution of self reverence creates the conditions to breathe, it is something beyond air, I can't quite put it into words. Which is probably because words can't do it justice. They are "the stillness between two waves of the sea" as T.S. Eliot puts it. There are those of us who live in the green flash on the horizon.
•
EVERY BUTCH QUEEN Poem by Ryan Tito Gapelu
He came from Maui, young and supple—a singer using his body to make his way through O‘ahu. Snake-bite smiled, he danced and bummed cigarettes from us, his “aunties” at karaoke: three fat Poly muffies always faded. We took him shopping, bought him fly shit —Ross-Dress-for-Less snapbacks, backpacks, a pack of Newports and some chucks. He wanted to dance. Every butch queen dreams of being a go-go boy. He dreamed of having a boyfriend—really, he wanted to be loved. He used to post: Still alive. He left Maui, they didn’t want him. Said, “God didn’t want him.” He stayed with us in Waipahū for too short a time. He wanted someone that loved him. Someone safe. Someone who kept promises. Promised to stay and stayed. He used to post: Still alive. He came from Maui. He came to Waipahū. He left for the city. And then he left that city, then the next, and the story goes. Every butch queen dreams of making it in the city. Finding a boy, someone to hold, clinging to each other through failure. He used to post: Still alive. He used to catch bus to and from Town to Ewa to Kalihi to Makiki to Makakilo. And then from Vegas to other places, detours and wrong turns. Until he was down on his feet. Only walking through Skid Row. Only walking through Long Beach. Lost and hurting, smoking batu in motels and cars, alleys and in clubs, bubbling chemical cradles; shelter to shelter.
Every butch queen twists that glass pipe, rocking it slowly, and surging with the wind at your back. Nobody told me you were hurting like I was hurting. No body told me you couldn’t find the way. No one told me you were lying in the electric rumble of your sinew and bone, synapses and electrons firing horsepower fast; the heart can only take so much.
He wanted to dance. He wanted to sing. He wanted to be loved. He needed it. That hand. That hold. That promise. He needed it.
Every butch queen needs it. Every butch queen needs it. Every butch queen needs it.
L I K E I S A I D, G I R L , Y O U Y A
Photos by Marie Eriel Hobro
Topics include: drilling; the highs and lows of micro celebrity; Hilo as refuge; religion; and posting for your inner child.
B . T A E E E
@BB.TAEEE (b.2001) is a construction worker and social media personality1 who was born in Waimānalo and grew up in Wai‘anae. A Libra who “always says my intrusive thoughts,” his favorite meal is the spicy ‘ahi kālua pork plate from Aloha Poke, in Wai‘anae. His favorite lei is pakalana crown.
@JOSHYBU (b.1992) is a bus driver and social media personality2 born in Wahiawa who currently lives in ‘Ewa Beach. A Libra/Scorpio cusp, his greatest fear is spiders and his last meal would be a bowl of pho from Pho & Co., in Kapolei. His favorite lei is pakalana, pua kenikeni, and “anything big and fragrant.”
1/5
“GIRL, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.”
@BB.TAEEE: Before doing construction I was in the Navy, so my thing was if girls are doing it, I can do it.
@JOSHYBU: Oh my God, you served.
@BB.TAEEE: Yeah, I served.
@JOSHYBU: Literally.
@BB.TAEEE: 2019 to 2023. I did a nine-month deployment in the Adriatic Sea.
@JOSHYBU: Do you miss it?
@BB.TAEEE: Absolutely. I slept with the wrong man. Somebody that was not out. And because it got out, and he had a wife, da-da-da-da-da, that kind of story. It all happened in Naples, Italy. I got kicked out March 2023. I drove from Virginia to California, and from California I flew back home. And my dad was like, “I have a job for you, you have to work construction.” And I said, “Perfect, I’ll do it.” I just gotta make money.
@JOSHYBU: I told you when you walked in, I could not do what you do. No way in hell you could never catch me doing that. I would quit. Dust, dirt, dirty fingernails. I couldn’t do it. I chose my career very early on. I got my CDL [Commercial Driver’s License] when I was 21. I’ve been driving bus for 11 years. And I chose my job for a purpose: to be in A/C. Cause I don’t like to be hot. I cannot. That was the main reason. I don’t like to sweat. And even though you work nights, I know you sweatin’.
the ground. So, 40 feet underground. I always say, grab a telephone pole, flip it, and that’s our job. I like the hustle, the relationships. I love getting dirty. I love feeling like I’m working for my money.
@JOSHYBU: I give you props. Like I said, girl, you yanking those streets out there.
@BB.TAEEE: The one thing that my dad told me was don’t think you can come over here sleeping with all these dudes. And that hurt me because I was like, “Dad, that’s not me.” It’s funny now because I lasted longer than him at the job. At first, I was working side by side with him, and I wasn’t able to express… It was more so dimming the light, where you gotta talk like this, you gotta be like this, and he’s done that with me all my life, you know? Eventually, I was able to figure out a way that I can make content at work, because you just gotta get it out there. If it’s your interesting thought, just post. Somebody’s agreeing with you. If you’re at work, everybody’s at work. You know what I mean? Everybody’s doing the same thing. And you don’t see a lot of gay construction workers out there. That was kind of my thing with your content, you don’t see a lot of māhū out there driving bus and really being open, dealing with public transportation or people in public every day.
@JOSHYBU: It’s definitely a challenge. I work with a lot of queer people at TheBus. There’s more than you think. My main thing was I was nervous that it would get back to the higher ups of the company that I was on social media. Because when you’re in uniform, you represent the company. I abide by all the safety rules. No phone in the bus while you’re driving. It has to be off and off your body. But it’s a day in the life with me. This is what I do every day. It’s my outlet. My bosses love it. So many people are like I have a This conversation took place at a cafe in Kaka‘ako on Wednesday, July 7th 2025 at 2:47 pm HST.
@BB.TAEEE: Oh yeah, I’m disgusting. But I love what I do. I drill. At first I was a laborer and now I’m a driller. If you were to look at a telephone pole, that long of a drill gotta go all the way in
car but I would catch the bus to ride with you. Literally. People are like, “Oh my God, I’m looking at every single bus all day long to see if I can see you.” And I’m like, “Girl, catch me if you can.”
@BB.TAEEE: It took a long time, but I can be who I want now, where I want. And my boss, my foreman, he absolutely loves it. I do get in trouble from people screaming, getting out of their car, trying to take pictures with me. I’m at work, girl. I’m trying to collect my coin. You know what I’m saying? And I’m like, I’m so dirty, I’m so dirty. I would hug you, but I’m so dirty.
@JOSHYBU: I feel like when I was growing up, it was always, you’re walking gay. You’re talking too loud. You’re talking very flamboyant. Your hips are swinging too much. You’re screaming like a little sissy. This, this, and that. You’re hanging around too much girls. You’re playing with the wrong toys. And it never goes away. It’s embedded in your mind. All of those bad things that was told to you for so many years, from your closest people in your life. Family, you know? And now to see the complete opposite reaction from people, it’s indescribable.
2/5
“IT WAS LIKE THE UNIVERSE TILTED A LITTLE BIT, AND I SAW A DIFFERENT SIDE OF ME.”
@BB.TAEEE: I started on social media from watching your content, and really, really looking at what I was putting my time into, and at the time it was just scrolling. Like I had nothing else to do. I was bad, you know? Not in the best circumstances.
And the only people drawing me light was you, Kylie, Bretman, Princess3. And every day I’m at work, I don’t know what to do. And it was just that moment where I was watching one of your videos: Let’s yank these streets. Your slogan: Yank these streets. And I was just like, okay, I can post stuff too. But it really, really takes a lot of confidence.
@JOSHYBU: It does.
@BB.TAEEE: Social media has seen a lot of my life. A lot of it. I kind of just vlog my everyday life now. Because after two years, it’s not just happy, it’s also life.
@JOSHYBU: You have to be transparent. You have to be vulnerable. Because people can relate.
@BB.TAEEE: And that’s where I believe I found my—I don’t call them fans, more so moral support. I can only imagine you with the fans.
@JOSHYBU: It’s very overwhelming. But it’s amazing. I’ve met so much beautiful people that… Every time I talk about this, I’m a very emotional person, just know that. I’m a very emotional person. And it’s amazing. It’ll change your life in the blink of an eye.
@BB.TAEEE: It’ll change the way you see life too. Because I definitely was one of those that was very keep to myself. I’m a very one circle person. I wasn’t opening up to anybody. And that let me open up to more people, and really, really attract the people that I needed at the time.
@JOSHYBU: When COVID started and we were just in the house, my mom was the one who told me to download TikTok. I didn’t even care about it. I was like no, I’m going to stay on Instagram. It’s easier for me. I have something on Instagram. And she said you have to do it. There’s so many different videos. So I downloaded it and I just started posting. And it just blew up. I don’t remember what I posted but
3 @kyliexparkk, @bretmanrock, @realprincessmae
it was night and day. Like I went to sleep and I woke up and I was just this person. And I was like wait a minute. And then we planned to go to the Maoli concert at the Shell. And I didn’t know that I was this whatever image that people saw me as, but it was like a meet-and-greet. It was unbelievable. I was sweating. I was so nervous because so much people… I was completely blindsided. Like what is going on? My friends were tripping. And it kind of fueled my fire. Like, oh my God, I’m being my authentic self and people like it. That’s the goal in life. To just be yourself and be likable. And it took off. For me, it was like the universe tilted a little bit, and I saw a different side of me.
@BB.TAEEE: I would say I fell in love reading the comments. It was more so the family aspect, like We love you. Keep on going. The inspiration within that of just keeping going. It was the push. And that was just oh, they love me for who I am. Like I don’t even remember half of the things I was saying. At all.
@JOSHYBU: Me either.
@BB.TAEEE: And it was just like my everyday life. I realized okay, this is my vlogging.
@JOSHYBU: It’s fun. It’s interesting. Let’s show it to everybody else.
@BB.TAEEE: I really wish I had a reality TV show.
@JOSHYBU: Me too.
@BB.TAEEE: Like, if I had a reality TV show just following me… man.
@JOSHYBU: It would be fun.
@BB.TAEEE: Absolutely.
@JOSHYBU: Social media can also be a very dark place. And it can be very degrading and downgrading. Not everybody is going to like what you do. Ever. You can not please everybody. And when I started social media, I told myself, you have to accept the negativity first. You have to. Because that’s going to come no matter what you do. And then you enjoy the positivity. You have to accept the negativity first though. You know, I’ve been doing social media for three-and-a-
half years now, but I never got as much negativity as I have in the last six months. It’s gotten really bad.
@BB.TAEEE: I can show you this scary text from a random 808 number.
@JOSHYBU: I have DMs. I have threats: “I’m gonna see you… When I see you….” I literally just delete it. But there’s the human brain still thinking I should respond. I’m like people take their precious time, which there’s really not that much of in a day, to comment negatively on something that doesn’t have nothing to do with them. And I’m not gonna even waste my time. I’m just going to delete it.
@BB.TAEEE: Working on Dillingham, there’s been multiple times when people driving by are like, fix your walk. And it’s the scariest feeling.
@JOSHYBU: I used to post my bus route everyday on my Instagram. I don’t do that anymore. It’s scary, especially being openly gay. There’s people out there that don’t like you just because you’re out, open, gay, proud, loud. They don’t like that. It triggers people.
3/5
“EVERYBODY’S LIVING THEIR OWN TESTIMONY.”
@JOSHYBU: I grew up in the church. Every week, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday. I was Christian in the beginning, and Catholic later on in my adult life. I don’t go to church anymore because I feel like, forgive me lord, but they’re the most judgmental. And it’s very hypocritical. My very first tattoo, I have kanji down my back, and it says, “I know I’ve made mistakes, but only God can judge me.” I
was 17 years old. And you go there and all you hear is judgment. From the moment you step in to the moment you leave you’re being judged. Especially going to church and being openly gay. That was such a struggle. I stopped going. It didn’t change my relationship with God. I just didn’t put myself in those predicaments or those situations or spaces. Now I speak with Him on my own.
@BB.TAEEE: I grew up in church but not three days a week. It wasn’t until my adult hardships that really made me truly believe in Christ. Really go faithbased with it because I feel like it takes adult hardship to really have that one cry, and ever since then, it’s been my thing. God wants a relationship with you, not anything more. If you move based off of the Ten Commandments that was written in stone—you know that the Bible is all based off of the testimony—and everybody’s living their own testimony. My church is actually really good. I’m still at this church, New Hope Windward. It’s in Windward Mall, actually. The reason why I still show up, even though I have to go from Wai‘anae all the way to Kāne‘ohe is I’ve never felt judged. I’ve never felt judged yet. For the past two years, I’ve never felt like the Word was going based off of homophobia. Ever since I showed up, I felt like it was God’s calling. 4/5
“THE CLARITY. THE SILENCE.”
@BB.TAEEE: We have the same goal. I go to Hilo all the time.
@JOSHYBU: I’m always there.
@BB.TAEEE: The clarity. The silence.
@JOSHYBU: I want financial freedom. I want to be able to survive. I want to move to the Big Island. That’s what I want. I want to just be free.
@JOSHYBU: As soon as you step off the plane, everything completely changes. I love it. And every time it gets harder to come back home to O‘ahu. The last time that I went up, I emceed a wedding. And I got on the plane back and it was 50 minutes of non-stop crying. I felt like my heart was being shredded because I felt so happy, at peace, and in love there. And here I’m in the hustle and bustle every single day. I drive bus and it’s like flooding: so much people, so much cars, so much accidents, so much incidents. Financial freedom is a goal for sure. I grew up poor. It’s not fun. Especially in a house of eight people, all brothers, it was not easy. Sometimes no electricity. No water. No food. No school clothes. And you know, my parents worked as hard as they could, but it was just so hard to raise
all of us. That’s why I work so hard. You will never catch me slacking. I need to make sure that I’m going to be okay.
@BB.TAEEE: I don’t know where I’m taking this social media thing, I’m just kind of letting all the doors open, but my job has been closing a lot of doors.
@JOSHYBU: You’re young, but just remember that you’re worthy. And you have to know that before anybody else.
@BB.TAEEE: That’s another thing too—I feel like social media really did ruin my love life. You already had Mr. Ramos.
@JOSHYBU: We’ll make eight years in December. At first I would sometimes put him in a snippet of what we’re doing, a soft launch, and people are like, “Oh my God, let’s see.” And I was like, “No, he doesn’t want to be on camera.” We’re complete opposites. He’s way older than me. He’s gonna be 48. His life has changed too. He likes it. He texts me all the time: “Oh my God, these five girls ran up to me and were so happy to see me.”
@BB.TAEEE: I look up to that because for me, trying online dating, or even getting to know somebody, they don’t really come to me as a person anymore. They come to me as a fan, or based off of what they’ve seen online.
@JOSHYBU: Trust me, it will happen.
@BB.TAEEE: Yeah, I know. I ain’t in no rush. I’m very young.
@JOSHYBU: I’m almost 10 years older than you, think about it, and it’s just starting for me. So just keep doing what you’re doing. 5/5
“I’M ALSO DOING IT FOR MYSELF.”
[TW: SUICIDE]
@BB.TAEEE: I can remember the first time I wanted to commit suicide. I was 12. That’s hard. And I can always look back and remember: what if there’s another little boy that wants to take himself for not being accepted for who he is? They can look at me and just be like, yeah, he’s unapologetic. I’m also doing it for myself. I do look back at my own videos sometimes and I’ll be like, yeah, I got it. You’re right. You’re right. But there’s definitely another little boy out there that’s having a hard time and he cannot reach out to his parents and cry to his parents without being judged. And the moment he does, he digs himself into an even deeper hole. And if he can see that I can do it… Because I’ve been everywhere. I’ve been to the psych ward. I’ve wanted to commit suicide. And I know that I’m not going to do it anymore, but I also know the battle. There is somebody out there having a bad day.
@JOSHYBU: For me, I think it just brings me joy to be me. That’s what it is. It makes me happy. Just to be openly 100% loud and proud. And I just feel like I’m not really like everybody else. I’m a little bit different. And I love that. I do like it. It’s very unique. I’m not like everybody else, I’m just me. • This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
IS NOT MY NAME, IT’S MY RESPONSIBILITY
māhū is defined by kūlana and kuleana a kāhea from the na‘au birthed by future generations whose blood is honored grammatically like water transforms; the one who heals, the one who swells salty and sweet.
[re-re-Re-written history preaches a World where we are discarded,
we a bowling alley’s ghost bowels, beach towels with keiki baking like lizards during the pre-fence times, a blue | white | white | white | red standing “guard” when we get too hawaiian for Amerikkka in paradise, a mo‘olelo with the tale cut off and placed on the head like a hat to be mocked for our magic while quietly claimed] these the skins shedding
e hū ē
we writing the stories we body, we breath, we bold, we gather.
learning to weave our narrative the way kuleana dances on the breath and in the eyes and between the hips, fingers sticky with the juices of lau kī and flesh
we gather to feed like fathers, we gather to raise like mothers, we gather to plant the name makua.
and when you call on us, beware: our names are a bloodline chorused in oli our names are a privilege wrapped like malo, tied like kīkepa our names are something reborn tender and certain
we are the ones dressed like pōhaku, the ones who know mounting and riding and coming and coming the ones who know genisis, mau a mau the ones who know to how hold, to carry, to hāpai whole generations the ones who know how to breathe from ka wā kahiko and exhale the future. MĀHŪ
‘I not your aunty, I not your uncle’ ‘ae, he makua māhū wau, a face that comes different ma ka pō. a body that is carried like a ritual for peace a lehua sprouting until somewhere inside the rigorous translations you interpret me a creator and when we respond, remember: kō – we taught us to say our blood in hula when they refused to water us with mele and ipu heke
he – neither woman or man; a mo‘o - kūʻauhau written in hā, honi that pull safe and firm, nahenahe me ikai-kā -he-a kino is a privilege, mana described by na‘au, wide enough to birth if kokapu is something reborn tender and certain he ‘āina wau.
he wahine he wahine he wahine he māhū. he kāne he kāne he kāne he māhū. he mo‘o- he mo‘o- he mo‘o- he māhū. he māhū he māhū he māhū ā.
Māhū is not my name, it is your prayer.
FORE! THE FUTURE
EVERYONE BELONGS ON THE GREEN
This tournament is about creating space, driving change, and inviting everyone to take a swing at something bigger on the green. Join us!
BADLIARS.GOLF
RETRIEVING A GHOST
For two-and-a-half weeks, in the spring of 2025, singer-songwriter Isaac Moreno, who’s better known as Izik, retreated to a secluded house in the mountains of Taumarunui, New Zealand. With his closest collaborators, Izik recorded his third album, Kōwā . Together, they cried, danced, laughed, sang, and ate, eventually producing the 12-track LP released in August 2025. This is a behind-the-scenes look at how the project came together—told through the objects, people, and stories that guided Izik’s journey into the blue.
As told to MITCHELL KUGA
Photos by MICHAEL VOSSEN
We wanted to be able to blast music without worrying about noise complaints. It was literally like having our own mountain. This lodge1 was at the top of this big hill and nobody was around for miles. Yeah, it was fucking stunning.
Have you been to Waimea? On the Big Island? I would say it’s like that. Or I’d say it’s like if you had your own house on top of Haleakalā. Yeah, that’s the best way I could describe it. Because you’re waking up every morning and you’re so high up that the fog is below you—so before the sun rises you’re just in the clouds.
1 Izik discovered the sprawling modernist fourbedroom lodge on Airbnb, and in March 2025 set up a makeshift studio with six friends and collaborators.
When the sun came up it would burn the fog, it would part, and this river would show itself. And I would stare at it every fucking morning, just fucking crying for no fucking reason. They were happy tears. It was a lot of crying because I just felt like I’d been working towards that moment for five years and it felt like everything that went wrong in the past five years made sense, because it got me to that fucking place. If I didn’t listen to those signs: To just stop and hold on. You don’t need to create right now. There’s no rush for you to create an album. Chill the fuck out. Go surf, go be in the water for
five years. Paddle around, swim around, connect. If I had fought all of those urges and just created an album, it would have led me somewhere else, but just being there for those two-and-a-half weeks, it made me realize that everything felt right.
On this project, we got to be 100% ourselves and it was so much fun. Everybody in the house was queer except for Brandon— but I wouldn’t even say, ‘Except for Brandon,’ because Brandon has a very soft quality to who he is and I don’t see him as being just this straight man. And we’re all screaming and yelling and gagging. This is the first time where I was fully present while recording an album. Because the first two albums, not that I wasn’t present, but there were a lot of times where I was falling asleep on the couch, where I wasn’t really actively part of the process, and that’s just how it is in the studio sometimes. It can be very sterile, and it just doesn’t feel like anything’s flowing. Whereas here, we had the lodge for two-and-a-half weeks but we finished the album in eight days.
Ruta Lauleva: friend and doula who was there “for the vibes,” says Izik. “But I was also literally birthing an album.”
Michael Vossen: photographer
When I met Brandon [producer BHaru] in 2020, it was my intention to go back to Aotearoa later on that year, to record with him and to work on stuff with him and stay there. I mean a big reason why I went there was to work with him. And from 2020 to 2025 it felt like there was a ghost of myself still in Aotearoa that was kind of just wandering around. So a part of the reason why I really wanted to go back was to kind of merge that ghost of myself 2 with this person that I am now. I think a lot of that was accomplished with the lyrical content, and the ways that I’m singing—feeling this resolve in the way that I was delivering the vocals. And not caring so much about over-perfecting the production of it. Just letting things live how they were coming out.
I feel like the old me would have been more focused on Does this sound good? We should Melodyne [audio editing software] that vocal because that sounded flat or This doesn’t sound good, I cracked. But this was more about capturing a moment and letting go of the side that puts unneeded pressure
on myself to create something perfect. When perfect has never been my fucking aesthetic.
I think that old version of me needed to see where I am artistically at this point in my life, and that’s why it was so important for me to go back. Because Covid was so abrupt I never got to have closure for that person. I think as you move through life and as you transform naturally, you’re able to have those closure moments along the way. But because of 2020 and how fucking crazy it was none of us really had a chance to make peace with whatever the fuck we were doing.
2 It was Izik’s first time back to Aotearoa since spring 2020, when Covid restrictions forced an abrupt departure.
Anywhere I go, I always stop into an antique shop and I look for postcards 3. These are some postcards that I feel resonated with me on the trip.
This is a kiwi because I love birds. There’s so many birds on this album. We saw hawks. We saw tūī birds, falcons. Just fucking crazy birds.
Whales were a big thing for me when I was planning to get out this time around. I really wanted to see a whale.
These cassettes 4 are actually from my grandma that we found while we were cleaning the house. My grandma was a singer. She was a musician. She played ukulele, the upright bass, and piano. My grandma definitely is a big reason why I do music, and this album is the first time that I’m actually singing mele Hawai‘i. That was something that she always wanted me to do, but I was so focused on trying to be Mariah Carey that I didn’t care. This album is kind of a full circle moment with that, just knowing that she
was there while we’re recording it, it felt really good to sing and record that song [“Ho‘olehua”].
And then these are cassette tapes that I found at op shops in Aotearoa. I was just looking for things to inspire me. I got into playing a pan pipe last year. They’re like little flutes. And then the Moog synthesizer was a really important part of my album. So I found this cassette tape and it’s just a bunch of Moog instrumentals, or like different songs that are played on the Moog.
But what the album actually moved into being about is the wā—the space that you create and how you fill it5. That’s what the album is about. It’s about 2020 happening and me being on one path and then being, like all of us, shoved into a whole different timeline. And all the things that I used to love and do changed so drastically. I started surfing everyday, and different shit became important to me, and other things that I was so passionate about just kind of faded away. So the album is really about how that moment in 2020 scooped out the wā, and then how I filled it in.
What we ended up actually doing was creating our own wā with the album because it starts with “Taumarunui Song,” which is a place in Aotearoa, and then ends with “Ho‘olehua,” a place on Moloka‘i. So it creates the wā between here and New Zealand.
Blue was a heavy theme throughout the whole recording process. I wanted everything blue. My nails were blue. The clothes I was wearing were blue.
It was all shades of blue because what I was trying to create was a spectrum. But whenever I would talk about the spectrum, I wasn’t doing this: [expands hands horizontally]; I was doing this: [expands hands vertically]. So that’s why this brochure6 caught my eye because this was in one of the art museums and it’s about longitude. I wanted the songs to kind of start up here and then get deeper into the blue.
6 5
This is the tracklist7. And this is how I wanted the tracklist to go: these songs were kind of in this lighter shade of blue, that lived up in the air, a little bit lighter. And then it hits a midway point with this song and that’s when you kind of get into the depth of the ocean. So this is kind of like the sky to the ocean. That’s the spectrum that I was really working with, and the content of the songs kind of reflect that.
I paid for everyone to be there. I worked my fucking ass off 8 .
I tried labels before and they don’t do shit for you other than to tell you what you can and can’t do. And I loved the label I was on. But they had no idea what to do with me because I’m not a reggae artist. And I’m gay. I’m fucking very gay. Like, I don’t want to fucking sing at the Spam Jam.
I want to hustle and struggle because at the end of the day I got to make my own fucking decisions. I don’t have somebody telling me this isn’t going to sell or this isn’t gonna make money. That this doesn’t make sense or you’re not gonna get on the radio. I don’t give a fuck. It’s a great thing if it does happen, but I didn’t start making music for that reason. I did it so that I wouldn’t kill myself. It’s therapeutic for me. It’s a way for me to transmute all of the fucking shit in my life and turn it into something else. So it’s worth all the struggle and the hard work to get there and to be able to call my own shots and create my own shit. And do it my way. •
8 The making of the album, including the process of getting everyone to Aotearoa, was entirely self-funded, primarily through Izik serenading patrons at places like Hideout Waikīkī and Monkeypod Kitchen, where he’s kept residencies.
The Lei Portrait
From the House of Benton and the nightlife collectives Māhū Mix and Mixed Plate, to the legendary performers of The Glade nightclub, Lei captured some of our favorite chosen ohana.
Studio
PHOTOS
BY
Clockwise from top left: Sonja, Dolinda Ko, Sheri Shane, Jerrine Jeffries, Alexis, Terry, Zalei Kamaile, Kristina aka Kahana, Kay, Tina (with her dog Yuki), Linda Brown, Javon Sarte, Angie, Lindsey Isadora Lau, Shina Rae, Valerie DJ Michael, Wendy, Muskie DeMarco, Melissa Wong
Starting in 1963, the “Boys Will Be Girls Revue” ran for six nights a week at The Glade Nightclub, formerly located in Honolulu’s Red Light District in the heart of Chinatown. Though the show ended over 35 years ago, performers and patrons of The Glade still meet for a bi-weekly pā‘ina at Magic Island Beach Park, where food, laughter, and even the occasional surprise performance are in full effect. “We had our group, our own family, and we took care of each other,” said Brandy Lee, the show’s founder. “And if something happened to us, we had nobody to go to. Nobody to run to. We had only each other. That’s all we had to depend on.”
(More info about The Glade can be found on page 65.)
THE GLADE
Makeup by Jerrica Benton, lei by Jordan Lee
HOUSE OF BENTON
A long time member of the House of Ashton, Jerrica Benton adopted her first drag daughter, Sativa, in 2018, and officially started her own drag family in the process: the House of Benton. She’s since adopted two more, Blessica and Melanina, and the quartet can be found sharing the stage together throughout O‘ahu. “They really do give me the daughters that I've never had,” said Jerrica. “I tell them things that I went through as a young queen, and I hope one day they have kids so that our genealogy can continue. But right now I told them you don't need kids. Just enjoy being a queen.”
Clockwise from top left: Blessica, Jerrica, Sativa, Melanina
Clockwise from top left: Pi’ikeamaikalani, Be Ho Castle, Kaimana, Vai aka A.i.T., MO NANi MO LOVE, Noah Swanson, Kalikopuanoheaokalani Aiu, Kitú, Jin Kwak, Hera, Laritza La Bouche, Enoka Phillips, Pamela Ganado, Naníki Teresa, Makananui, Vincent Bercasio, DJ GoyaGirl
“We're trying to take over the whole Pasifika, pretty much.”
Since its inception in 2022, the O‘ahu-based collective Māhū Mix has organized events both on and off the dance floor centering māhū, trans, and queer people of color—or what the group lovingly refers to as PasifiQueers. That energy inspired an overlapping but distinct nightlife collective called Mixed Plate, which teamed up with Māhū Mix in 2025 to feature the celebrated DJ Lady Shaka. “Obviously we're a safe space for queer folks, but we're also trying to branch out to all Pasifika people because everyone is so talented here and I feel we need to be more visible,” said Kaimana, one of Mixed Plate’s founders, who’s also known as DJ CYBERSP1C3.
ALL IN THE PHAMILY
Through her pop-up, Anh Chi Em Bakery, Diana Pham has created a spirited gathering place for her family, both biological and chosen.
On a warm, almost summer Saturday morning, on a side street in Kaka‘ako, Elizabeth Pham is unmissable. “Welcome! Welcome!” she shouts, dressed in a red, white, and blue shirt that reads “American Mom,” a fake flower lei wound around her bun, and tied around her waist, an apron embroidered with “Anh Chi . Em Bakery,” the name of her daughter’s popup. Occasionally, those lured in by Mommia (a nickname she gave herself after her kids started calling her husband “Daddio”) find themselves at Diana Pham’s bakery for the first time. They stop in front of the table set up on the sidewalk, arranged with pastries on bamboo platters and in colorful plastic baskets. “Are you hungry?” her brother, Thaddeus, who is helping out, asks the browsers. “You can say no, or you can say yes. We’re here to support you.” Newcomers take their time deciding among the spread that includes classic Vietnamese treats like bánh bò nứơng, the spongy, stretchy sweet tinged jade green with pandan, or patê sô, puff pastry turnovers filled with a meatball of pork and shiitake. Once people have made their choices, Mommia insists on a selfie with them. “Thank you for supporting!” she says as she waves goodbye with a Hang Loose mitt that she fashioned out of a mop slipper. Thaddeus guesses she takes thousands of photos each week at the pop-up.
But most of the people who stop by, who pull up plastic red stools at the low tables arranged around the family, are friends, and regulars, and regulars who have become friends. Those regulars include students at the ceramics classes at Fishcake, the hybrid boutique, rotating food cafe, and art studio where Anh Chi . Em sets up in front of: one brings flowers each week (today, pua kenikeni); another made the figurine of Mommia Pham that sits on a table by the pastries. There are also friends who, when it gets busy, know how to jump behind the table and ring themselves up, or even other customers, when the family is distracted (usually by other regulars). Leilani Stacy, who pulls up a stool with the ease of a regular, says it’s the kind of place that reminded her 96-yearold tūtū of “old Hawai‘i.” Or as her tūtū once remarked, “The people are friendly and all know each other!”
Diana’s partner, Raquel, who also helps out, has dubbed it “adult day care,” a name that has stuck among those who come weekly to gather,
Text by MARTHA CHENG
Photos by JOHN HOOK
eat, and chat. It wasn’t intentional, Diana says. “It just turned into that.” But she’s used to being around a lot of kith and kin. Both her parents came from large families: Her father was one of five children, her mother one of 13. Growing up, “it was always a full house,” Diana says. Thaddeus remembers their home filled with their parents’ friends, “so I think we’re used to it, and me and Diana try to emulate that.” (Their three younger siblings, though, “went the opposite way,” Thaddeus says, “where they really value being alone.”)
Diana dove into baking when she became sober about 13 years ago, while she was living in New York and leading customer service teams for e-commerce brands. What she thinks was at first a way to soothe the sugar cravings when she stopped drinking became a creative outlet. She enrolled at the Institute of Culinary Education, earning a pastry and baking arts diploma through weekend classes over the course of a year and a half. When the pandemic hit, Diana and Raquel began questioning life in New York: “Why don’t we live where we’re closer to people we really care about, and closer to nature?” Diana remembers asking.
In 2023, Diana and Raquel joined Thaddeus in Honolulu, where he had been living for more than two decades, and they invited Mommia soon after. Unmoored from her previous corporate career, Diana worked briefly at Koko Head Cafe, but she found herself missing the snacks she grew up eating in Southern California, where she’s from, and which is also home to the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam. She combed the internet, YouTube, and old Vietnamese cookbooks from the library to learn recipes like bánh da lơ . n, a pandan and mung bean steamed layer cake made with tapioca starch and rice flour; and rounds of bánh bò, steamed coconut rice cakes, dyed like Easter eggs, and paired with a sweet and salty sesame seed powder for dipping. She enlisted her mom to be a taste tester. Making Vietnamese food “makes me feel connected,” says Diana—to her mom, and to her heritage that she says she hadn’t fully appreciated growing up as a first-generation kid. She had been used to making cookies and other American sweets, but until the past few years, “I had never thought to tap into where my parents are from, or the huge impact from growing up near Little Saigon,” she says. “Learning it online or by myself was kind of meditative. I think a lot of people think that my mom taught me how to make these, but it wasn’t really that.”
In November of 2023, she launched Anh Chi . Em, popping up first in Kaimukī, at the bookstore Da Shop, before moving to its current location in front of Fishcake on Saturdays. Home to a handful of pop-ups, Fishcake told Diana that they didn’t have any more room inside and offered her a space on the sidewalk, which worked to her advantage. From there, Mommia can wave to everyone walking on the street or driving by. She has stopped construction workers, a tour bus driver, and a postal worker, who would always buy something to take home to his wife. “We joke we’re street people,” Diana says. “We sell stuff on the street. We’re just used to being outside.” Diana picked up tiny tables from thrift stores and reupholstered them with a print of bright fruits and flowers. Around
them, she put out plastic stools at about squatting height, to emulate the street food stalls in Vietnam.
The Saturday pop-ups have become a gathering place, and one that leans queer. Stacy says she first started coming when her partner attended Fishcake’s ceramics studio. “It’s funny,” she says. “We’re queer and had been seeking community here in Hawai‘i, but didn’t realize we’d find it by eating pastries.”
“My brother’s queer,” Diana says, and “I’m queer, and so because we’re both gay, every space we’re in is gay. Also, my brother works in public health, and he inherently builds community.” Thaddeus had originally come to Honolulu in 2002 to take care of the dolphins at the Kewalo Marine Laboratory, and from there worked at the since-shuttered bookstore chain Borders at Ward Centre (“as one does” after marine biology, he says grinning).
A co-worker told him he’d be a great HIV counselor. His colleague’s instinct was right. Thaddeus found the work “really matched my ethics and skillset” and since 2011, he has worked for the Hawai‘i State Department of Health in the Harm Reduction Services branch. He connects naturally with new faces, whether it’s comparing notes with someone who has just come off the Hanauma Bay Rim trail or admiring the freshly-inked tattoo of a woman buying a pastry (Fishcake is also home to a tattoo parlor).
But it’s not only Thaddeus. Diana, after all, ran customer service in her previous career, and Raquel was a social worker, now a therapist. I’m here to ask them questions, but they are asking just as many of me— my history, my work, my hopes, my weekend plans. Through it all, the gregariousness of Mommia punctuates the air, with every ring of her bell, every entreaty for a selfie. Ryan Shields, a regular who at one point jumps in to help ring up purchases, says he’s here every Saturday morning when he’s not working on Hawai‘i Island because the Pham family “creates such a warm and accepting community. And it’s really heartwarming to see their mother so openly and lovingly accept and support her two queer children.”
Another loyal patron stops by for the spicy tamarind iced tea. She loves it so much that she buys four at a time each week. I can see the appeal. It is spicy and sweet and sour, startling the senses awake as the day grows warmer. I imagine it is a recipe born out of Vietnam’s own heat and humidity, but I discover it’s a Mommia creation: lemon, mint, tamarind, and tea blended along with four different kinds of chilies, whatever varieties she finds at the Chinatown markets (which means some weeks, it’s astonishingly spicy). Not all the treats at Anh Chi . Em are traditional—a few are inspired by Diana’s family memories. Diana gestures to the jasmine tea tins scattered around the table. “My dad really liked these,” she says. She made a jasmine tea cake in homage to him, along with strawberry jam crumb cakes, the sort of sweets she remembers he liked to eat with his coffee. Diana has a picture of her mom and her dad, who died in 2013, on one of the tables, next to a framed embroidery of Anh Chi . Em Bakery’s logo, made by a friend. The name, Diana says, is literally “older brother, older sister.” In Vietnamese, she says, it means family. •
KIAWE Poem by Kai Gaspar
The first time I walked away from Iesū was toward frilled mu‘umu‘u and backstrap heels the congregation never like boys wear because māhū are at the core of Satan’s way.
I misted my pulses with the powder-sweet haikina Grandma Virgie gave me during a Low Sunday lū‘au, then traveled north to Kailua town bathing in the haze of an ‘Ole moon.
Auntie Patrice welcomed ‘hey ho!’ and showed my mother glamour shots from Honolulu. Auntie opened her hale to teach Noble Truths she said would give me whatever I wanted. I asked if anyone could walk The Middle Way in style like Sylvester’s. She said ‘yeah, can,’ unrolled sweet mats, then spread the brush clusters that satisfy hungry ‘apapane.
While we lashed the ashy bark for lei, I heard the future call of a pū-blowing kāne. The video bodhisattva looked like the reverend who said dung-eating māhū stay opposite Ke Akua’s purpose.
I asked if the butsudan auntie gave me in her town of good anchorage would make money come. Auntie said ‘going come.’
On the drive south, my mother said she couldn’t believe auntie would spotlight those Honolulu shots—so tacky.
I thought auntie looked like Jane Russell, real outlaw kine. But my mother said even through the sepia, auntie’s stretch marks were purple. When she crushed a mongoose at Keauhou junction, the lazuli bracelet her ipo broke came undone at the repair.
I placed carnation, flax, and tangerine in the esteemed loke lau’s heart notes. I chanted namu myōhō renge kyō until a peeping uncle accused me of demon worshipping. He threw my backstraps over Kainaliu’s cliff.
I asked my mother if The Middle Way led to scoffers of Ke Akua’s fragrant sacrifice. She didn’t know. She asked if I thought Auntie Patrice was leading us to fellowship. I didn’t know.
During climactic conditions, I found Iesū up a suckering kiawe that hung with pod sugar and flowers. Iesū called me so close I could see under his malo in the ‘Ole moon’s fast light.
I asked Iesū—can I abide in you while cruising unharmed over kiawe’s thorns? He said I changed up and strutted in dark that would overcome me.
I asked—can I abide under the half-leaf bats who survive on attacks from the rear? He said gropers in dark ought to walk like him, away from crude teasing.
Iesū was over me at Hōnaunau’s rodeo where shy ‘ōpe‘ape‘a birth twins upside down. Hōnaunau where enchanters with maka uliuli seek their own company.
909s
Photos by Vincent Bercasio
Styling by Jacky Tang
Hair and Makeup by Risa Hoshino
Produced by Aja Toscano
OFF NIMITZ
Models: Parish Cherry
Pono Cummings
DJ GoyaGirl
Spencer House
Momo King
Jin Kwak
Lanie Punani
Draedon Sayaboc
Keoki Tavares
Photo Assistants: Bao Hoang and Cole Turner
Hair and Makeup Assistant: Tamiko Hobin
Projections: Alec Singer
Location: OurSpace
ANOTHER MAN’S
TREASUR E
Office trash as your next statement piece? Lei maker Ben Yim turns puka-studded scraps of printer paper into delicate works of wearable art.
At first glance, the materials used by lei maker Ben Yim seem familiar enough: the golden burst of ‘ilima, with two strands circling each other like a double helix; or the ivory of wabi-sabi puka shells, seemingly jagged to the touch. Shoppers strolling through Ward Centre, where Yim can often be found sitting on a bench outside of Nā Mea Hawaiʻi, making lei, will sometimes approach him to compliment his beautiful shells. “And I look at them and I go, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, my dear. It’s not shells,’” he tells me, grinning. “It’s paper. And they look at me like, ‘What?’”
The paper he’s referring to isn’t the refined ruffles of crepe paper lei, or the flower-shaped cardboard cutouts of kindergarten craft day. Instead, it’s the perforated, puka-studded trim of continuous form office paper, which had its heyday in the 1980s. Using the holes as guides, Yim overlays two strips of trim into X-shaped accordian-like discs that he then strings onto ribbon, essentially transforming trash into wearable art. He’s dubbed the style “lei palapala”—palapala refers to any sort of document— and though he didn’t invent the style of lei he is one of the forms most distinguished practitioners. Nā Mea Hawai‘i and the ‘Iolani Palace gift shop both sell Yim’s lei, which come in a variety of styles and colors but are typically finished with his signature touches: kukui or kamani nuts that Nā Mea Hawai‘i’s founder, Maile Meyer, would otherwise toss. Perhaps most
notably, in 2022, Yim’s lei was featured in an art show at Arts and Letters Nu‘uanu titled Where I Live: Houseless in Honolulu, which featured the work of five houseless artists.
“As soon as I saw his work, I realized that he had both the eye and the hand,” says Noe Tanigawa, who curated the show alongside Josh Tengan. “And that’s clear when you look at the detail and the way he finishes the lei—he has a clear awareness of the start and the finish, and I believe he got this through a childhood growing up spent learning lei, being around flowers, and making lei with his family.”
When I meet Yim in April 2025 it’s where he spends most mornings: sitting on the shaded bench facing the entrance to Nā Mea Hawai‘i, a gift shop whose name translates to “the things of Hawai’i.” He has the comportment of your sassy uncle, regal in a purple aloha shirt that he’s paired with his yellow paper “‘ilima” lei, with one shoe kicked off due to a flare-up of gout. The shirt was a gift from the manager of Noa Noa Hawaii, located a stone’s throw from where we’re sitting. “I told her I have an interview and she said ‘Oh, for a job?’ And I said, ‘No, for a magazine,’” Yim tells me. “She said, ‘Come into my store, I’ll give you a shirt.’”
Since 2023 he’s become a fixture of Ward Centre, nodding to the security guards, who all know him, and occasionally engaging with passersby. “What are you looking for?” he asks a couple of tourists, before pointing them through the automatic doors. “When they have that confused look, I tell them where to go,” he says. Later, towards the end of our interview, a tall, much younger man walks by. “Oh, daddy,” Yim purrs under his breath, laughing. “He’s so cute.”
spoke to remarked upon, including Meyer, who founded Nā Mea Hawai‘i in 1996 and was Yim’s first stockist. She sees him as an informal extension of the shop, part-greeter, part-watchman. “He is adorable, always watching if people are taking anything coming out of the store. Or greeting them,” she says. “We have a pair of eyes from someone who really cares.”
I ask Yim where he plans to spend his days once Ward Centre is demolished, soon to be replaced by two luxury residential towers, and he smiles. “Wherever Maile goes,” he says.
Yim became houseless in 2017, a couple of years after retiring from Maui Divers Jewelry, where he worked in the visuals department. “At first it was a dare, to try and see if I could survive,” he says. “Because I wasn’t going to pay somebody else’s mortgage. $1400 for a studio?” He shakes his head in disbelief.
Throughout the years, Yim has lived on different side streets in Kaka‘ako, cultivating traces of a community while sticking mostly to himself. “I grew up with some rough people but when I first was homeless I was not streetwise,” he says. “I learned very fast how to be streetwise.” He describes himself as a “friendly loner,” though his capacity for conversation has deeply aided his survival. Since fall 2024, he’s been sleeping behind the secured gate
“I LEARNED VERY FAST HOW TO BE STREETWISE.”
At 76, there’s a youthful twinkle behind Yim’s eyes that multiple people I
of a nearby church, at the invitation of the minister there. “I’ve known him since I moved in the area and I always talk to him and he’d always talk to me,” says Yim, adding that he looks forward to the free breakfasts the church serves every second Saturday of the month. “The only thing is I gotta walk down to the beach to shower, which is all right. I do that every morning and go swim at the same time.”
Before Yim moved there, sleeping on the street could be dangerous. One night, he was startled awake by another houseless man threatening to shoot him if he didn’t hand over his phone. He woke up later that morning without a phone, feeling defeated. A woman who lives in the neighborhood, who he chats with regularly, asked Yim what was bothering him. She returned a few hours
learn? Here, have some paper. Sit down.’”
To Kihewa’s delight Yim was a quick study, not only picking up the basics, but building on it. “The first time I saw it, I liked it,” says Yim, who was drawn to how lightweight, colorful, and accessible— free, if you can find the right source—the materials were. “I said, ‘Wow, this is me.’” He attributes his aptitude with paper to
“‘OH, I’M SORRY, MY DEAR. IT’S NOT SHELLS. IT’S PAPER.’ AND THEY LOOK AT ME LIKE, ‘WHAT?’”
later holding a box, which Yim assumed was food, maybe cookies. But when he opened it he was shocked to find a brand new phone. “She said, ‘You just go [to AT&T]. I arranged everything,’” he recalls. “You meet some really, really nice people.”
Yim learned how to make lei palapala around 2015 from a woman named Dorothy Kihewa, who was three years his senior and passed away earlier this year. He met her at the Ala Moana Center food court, where Kihewa would hold gatherings for retirees like herself. “We used to have a major potluck,” says Shirley Ponciano, who joined the group in 2017 and notes the sprawling gatherings were technically against mall policy; nearly every day from 8 a.m. until closing, Kihewa’s group would turn the food court into their party room. Large portions of outside food were served and some tables would kanikapila, or have impromptu jam sessions, while others did arts and crafts. “But the security guards all knew us because Aunty Dorothy was the mayor of the food court,” Ponciano says, laughing. “And we had one whole row of tables from Honolulu Cookie Company all the way to Cinnabon, so there were a lot of us.”
Yim wandered into the group one day and stood near Kihewa, transfixed. He had never seen lei like that before. Eventually, “I looked at her and I said, ‘I like learn,’” Yim recalls. “She goes, ‘You like
being a third-generation lei maker who grew up in the floral business. In the ’60s, after getting out of Stevenson Middle School (and later, Kaimukī High School) he would take the bus to Waikīkī, where he would help his mother make lei and floral arrangements at her shop, Margie’s Reef Towers Flowers and Gifts. Later, as an adult, he made lei for the Miss Hawai‘i Pageant and for esteemed hālau like Kawaili‘ulā and Keolalaulani Hālau ‘Olapa O Laka, and served on the King Kamehameha Celebration Commission as a floral designer. He takes some of the rules of traditional lei making and applies them to lei palapala, like the length, which hangs just above the bust. Elsewhere, he’s innovated completely new styles, like a textured spiral effect that mimics the diagonal lines of a colorful cigar lei. “You gotta play with the paper,” he says. His favorite style is the all gold “‘ilima,” which he gave three strands of to Hawai‘i’s last princess, Abigail Kawānanakoa, during her memorial at ‘Iolani Palace in 2023 (due to preservation efforts, fresh flowers are prohibited on palace grounds).
Specifics on where lei palapala originated are hazy, but Kihewa told Yim that it’s been around since the ’60s, when businesses started using continuous form office paper more frequently for invoicing. He used to get it at work and for
a while, someone at Y. Hata & Co. Ltd. would save Yim bagfulls of discarded trim, but the paper has rapidly become obsolete. Recently, he started buying the paper in bulk from a company on the continent and getting boxes shipped to his storage facility. After tearing off the trim, he donates the rest of the paper to a teacher who uses it in her art classes.
Yim says he considers his lei art, just not something that would ever be displayed in a gallery. So he was shocked when curators Tanigawa and Tengan approached him about being in a show. “The show itself was kind of a splash of water in the face,” says Tanigawa, “because it was materials and techniques and works that you wouldn’t encounter in a normal art show.” A writeup on the show in Midweek, titled “They’re ‘Houseless’ and Happily Artistic,” prompted a concerned and slightly awkward phone call from his niece. “My family didn’t know I was homeless, and thank God they live on the mainland,” Yim says. “Except for one person, and that one person came across [the article].”
Yim does eventually want to live off the streets. His eyes brighten as he tells me about his fiancé, a sergeant in the military whose deployment keeps interfering with their plans to marry. “When he comes back he’s buying a house,” he says. He’s also received invitations to live with his siblings, who’ve all moved to different areas of the U.S. due to Hawai‘i’s high cost of living, but he’d prefer to be houseless here. Hawai‘i, after all, is his home.
“I can go to the mainland to visit, but for living, uh-uh,” he shakes his head. “I gotta come back to my island. It’s in me.” •
