“I went from vodka Red Bull to vodka soda to vodka water to sauvignon blanc,” my stylish writer friend was saying as she ordered an espresso at The Manifest on a Wednesday night before the music got too loud. It made all of us laugh because she was so right.
After years of receiving e-mails from an assortment of colorful individuals who reach out via my website, I have to say this past month has been the most rewarding. It’s not usually the case that I engage someone who is asking for help with random companies and such, but on a whim I decided to believe another “producer” that was “making a reality show in Hawaii.” At least this time it was a network I had actually heard of so I decided to help them out.
Electronic dance music (EDM) has come along nicely in the last decade. I remember ta dirty garage music sound I was into when I lived in the UK–a genre that’s since made love with some drum ‘n’ bass to conceive the beautiful hapa dubstep babies this new generation is having so much fun with.
One of the most significant things that will probably ever happen to me in my adult life happened this past weekend. I spent all of First Friday thinking about it and it might’ve even ruined my Saturday night because nothing really seemed that interesting or exciting afterwards.
My face still hurts from smiling all night last week watching Pro, K-LUV and Big Mox on the stage. Usually, at a show the ratio between watching people walk in the door, watching people dance and watching what’s happening on the stage for me is about 60-20-20.
I’m savoring these last few days of the year. Everyone is home, the energy is alive and so much more accepting because people are already happy, instead of looking for other people to make them happy.
Check it out [thestandardhonolulu.com] [dissizit.com] If you’ve ever worked in sales the saying “Under promise, over deliver” has probably been uttered somewhere near your cubicle or in the pit. It’s a pretty good dictum to keep in mind when dealing with clients.
I remember when I used to live in Newquay we’d get so excited for the Association of Surfing Professionals to come to our little town. Cornwall, about 250 miles west of London, wasn’t the most eventful place to live, although we did appreciate the cider, the Manic Street Preachers, scones with clotted cream.
I love a good partnership in the nightlife. The best is when the people partnering up don’t have too much overlap in their reach.
Social Lite / With so many random celebrities and public figures being tagged “Style Icons” (Hayden Panettiere?), the actual meaning of the word has become somewhat irrelevant. Style Icons really depend on what your own personal style is.
Hello, winter. You’re pretty much my favorite time of year here.
I’m not going to lie, APEC was rough. Even after looking through all the road closures and following the multiple (and often redundant) APEC traffic Twitter accounts for rolling traffic updates, I found myself among the hundreds getting stuck more than once.
After many in the nightlife got to know the un-knowable Vane Russo and Nathan Nutter, they were taken from us, creating a void in both personal-style icons and late night where-to options when The Edition shut down. This past weekend the nightclub at The ModernHonolulu quietly opened its doors in preparation for the December 1st Grand Opening.
It was probably a blur, but if any of you had a chance to go inside thirtyninehotel these past few weeks, something might have felt different. The walls on the entire Ewa side are completely black.
Hype. I love that word.
Oh, Kakaako. It’s already happening I can feel it.
In a money-is-the-bottom-line world, the distractions needed to restore calm are almost always art or music for me. Investing the time needed to soak up culture comes and goes, but I can always appreciate the “in your face” approach some artists have taken to create discussion or force awareness and basically pull my head out of the foggy day-to-day.
The countdown to Hawaii International Film Festival has started! It’s in merely weeks!
I don’t try to deny it when someone says I hardly ever get out of Chinatown. They’re right.
Some of you might remember Kevin Koga. One of the earlier DJs at the Wave and Hula’s when they were both pretty much rocking the face off this island, he was also one of the many musicians that needed to get the hell out of here and see what the rest of the world was all about.
“Mark! Mark!
“I saw the whole thing,” I was telling the HPD officer in Fort Street Mall as a bloody villain was being put into an ambulance right behind us. I had spent the entire day in a holding pattern to tell the story and yes, I definitely saw the whole thing.
Welcome back to school, people in school. I would give you the spiel about how I barely notice what month it is save for you guys, but I’m pretty sure you’re sick of hearing that.
You know me, I love the Internet. I’m a serious lurker and don’t really try to hide it.
There’s a swell on the horizon. Listen closely and you’ll hear it…AUDIO INVASION 2012.
It’s been a while, but a man donning dresses and surgical gowns, spouting rap-rock assaults over a bed of crunchy guitars, has drifted back into the sunbeam of MTV like a forgotten fleck of light. With the spastic delivery of a fallen patient from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Matt Shultz, lead singer of Cage The Elephant, is channeling the preeminent poster-child of grunge–Kurt Cobain.
Boys, beaches, bags of weed. In 2010, Best Coast blazed onto the music scene with a sealed Zip-lock of 7” singles that led the indie pop duo to roll out a fatty debut record called Crazy For You.
So what do you do if you’re a band who made it big in the L.A. hardcore-punk scene with several critically acclaimed self-titled albums under your belt?
Last Thursday, Foster the People sent news through their publicist that they won’t be performing at Audio Invasion 2012 due to “unforeseen circumstances.” (They’ll return to Hawaii on March 18.) Rumors are their two Grammy noms for Best Alternative Album and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance led to their cancellation. What a let down.
On Jan. 26, members of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART) Finance Committee mostly sat in silence while listening to an earful from Wynnie Joy-Hee of Mililani, who said that she had taken the bus all the way into town at 7am to address the issue of how her tax money is being spent.
HART intends to hire an executive director as early as March 1, 2012. The semi-autonomous agency is currently headed by interim executive director Toru Hamayasu, who is also a candidate for the permanent position The ED’s salary has been estimated to be within the range of $150,000 to $350,000, and HART has allotted $300,000 for the position thus far, Vice Chair Ivan Lui Kwan told the City Council Committee on Transportation on Jan.
Poor communication between the union and the teachers themselves, on top of a general sense of mistrust, were blamed for the overwhelming rejection of the Hawaii State Teacher’s Association (HSTA) contract last week–an unprecedented two-thirds voted against the union-backed contract. The president of the teachers’ union, Will Okabe, quickly took the blame, stating in a Jan.
The “war on terror” has taken a bite out of beach access on Kauai, where the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) has kept five miles of westside shoreline off-limits since Sept. 11, 2001.
A bill that would require bags of roasted coffee sold in Hawaii to list the place where each type of coffee it contains was grown, and its percentage by weight in descending order, was introduced to the state legislature by Sen. Josh Green.
In September of 2011, the Weekly ran a piece highlighting one of Hawaii’s most dangerous invasive threats: the dreaded brown tree snake. Following up on Gov.
HART Board: The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit will meet and take public testimony before convening an executive session. For more info, contact the project hotline at 566-2299 or e-mail [email: info].
[Jan. 18: “Cheap Advice”] Robert Kiyosaki did not talk, or attend.
[Dec. 21: “Underground Railroad”] The anti-rail pundits are right of course.
I propose that President Obama devote the remainder of his presidency to doing something useful, which would be to seek out all the crooks on Wall Street and Washington who have contributed to the sorry state of the economy in this country. Obviously he has not lived up to the expectations of a president and continues to perform as if Saul Alinksy was a member of his cabinet and the United Nations was his political platform.
[Dec. 21: “Underground Railroad”] Traffic follows commercial development.
[Dec. 21: “Underground Railroad”] To all those opposed to the “rail.” You are the very people who will be in gridlock on the freeway, not able to move.
I was delighted to read the new USDA guidelines requiring schools to serve meals with twice as many fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, less sodium and fat and no meat for breakfast. The guidelines were mandated by the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act signed by President Obama in December of 2010 and will go into effect within the next school year.
[Jan. 25: “Kyo-Ya-Ya”] Making an exception on zoning sets a dangerous precedence that will undoubtedly be followed by other properties.
The protests last year of Turtle Bay’s expansion plans highlight the challenge facing us in Hawaii. We need to find a way to balance the need for new, upgraded hotel and timeshare offerings that visitors are increasingly seeking with the desire by nearly all residents to protect the remaining undeveloped areas of the island.
[Jan. 25: “Gridlock”] If the plan is to create a second city in West Oahu, I would consider that to be an urban center.
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