Dear Friends, I am happy to report that, thanks to your kokua, the Weekly has paid the Star Advertiser in full. We received more than 200 donations via PayPal, snail mail and even envelopes slid under our office door, many including uplifting notes of praise and encouragement.
It’s fitting that our cover story about the Disney Kingdom’s first Hawaii development, Aulani at the Ko Olina Resorts, hits newsstands during the week of Columbus Day–our national holiday in honor of the myth that America was discovered in 1492. In these Islands, where westernization nearly wiped out the indigenous people who remain our poorest, unhealthiest, least educated citizens after more than 200 years, the groundbreaking of a new luxury resort is usually viewed as enriching corporate interests in the name of economic benefits that never seem to reach those who need it most.
Honolulu Weekly is changing editors this week. Our editor of the past year, Lucy Jokiel, will be leaving us to pursue a variety of new adventures, including doing research for a book about her experiences in China and playing with her three wonderful grandkids (with one more on the way).
Support the Weekly……so that we can keep supporting you. Your donations ensure that Honolulu gets the best coverage of Art, Food, Movies, Entertainment, and Local Issues.
On July 27, the Weekly published, “Kukui Plaza Prostitutes—While prostitutes cruise Kukui Plaza, the neighborhood takes action.” An accompanying photo of the Kukui Plaza complex was labeled, “Beware, there be hookers here.” The headline incorrectly suggests that Kukui Plaza is responsible for Kukui Street’s prostitution problem. There have been no reports of prostitutes within the Kukui Plaza complex.
[June 1: “Dog Slaps Man”] The Weekly regrets using the headline “Dog Slaps Man” in last week’s Diary section regarding the alleged altercation between MauiTime publisher Tommy Russo and the A & E Television crew who is associated with Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman. Chapman was not involved in the altercation whatsoever–as our headline falsely suggests.
In the April 20, 2011 article “The Foreclosure Fiasco,” we erroneously stated that 1) attorney Marvin S.C. Dang, who served as vice chair of the Hawaii Mortgage Foreclosure Task Force, was a lobbyist for Bank of America but did not publicly disclose this fact when he was asked to serve on the task force and that 2) Dang sent letters to BofA execs to announce he is lobbying the House and Senate for the bank.
In the April 27 Honolulu Diary, we erroneously misquoted Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Mark Rectenwald in his first speech to the 2011 Legislature. It should have read: “There are many more people facing eviction, collections actions, foreclosures, loss of jobs or benefits and related problems such as divorce or domestic violence,” said Rectenwald, who identified a common theme facing “broadened expectations” of the judiciary: Our citizens want a justice system that works to resolves disputes in a timely and fair manner.
A person driving a Honda Odyssey in Kailua thought it OK to drive up to a Honolulu Weekly stand and take a large stack of papers–for birdcages, perhaps? A street artist who makes his living on the sidewalks of Waikiki, spray paints a 3-D shoreline and Diamond Head with current issues of the Weekly taken from Waikiki kiosks.
A few months ago, I decided to follow the path of several successful local professionals I had interviewed for an article in Island Scene magazine, published by HMSA, my former employer. These mavericks have embraced their second acts, a growing trend among “mature professionals” (like me) to choose “refirement” over retirement.
Gosh, is election season over already? After nine months inside the spin cycle, I’m sure we’re all a little bit dizzy, which makes this a great time to talk about books.
Have you seen the City Council’s fireworks-ban bill? The new restrictions would be the most severe at least since Eileen Anderson was mayor, and maybe ever.
Dan Boylan, the recently retired professor and longtime political pundit, went on the record with Columbia Journalism Review last week with a few observations about this election season and the way it’s being covered. Along with some refreshing reminders–that despite media obsession over it during this cycle, Hawaii politics are notably less negative than those in many other states–Boylan offered that “We’re talking too much about civil unions and not enough about education.
I like leaf blowers. I’m sure I’m in a tiny, tiny minority there, but there’s something about them that speaks to me.
This week, everyone’s talking about President Obama’s new national policy on oceans, which was unvieled Monday afternoon Hawaii time. Call it a hopeful guess, really–we’re putting the paper to bed at four o’clock Monday, and have no idea whether people will be talking about the new framework come Wednesday morning.
First, an apology. During Gov.
Regardless of what you’ve heard, Honolulu has not become a one-newspaper town. Despite its efforts to convince us otherwise, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser is just one of many newspapers serving this community.
Our story last week about the changes in Hawaii’s journalistic landscape–and a note here about how those changes affect readers of the Weekly–brought in a strong response from readers. We so appreciate your support, and more to the point, your patience as we continue to work out the kinks in our distribution schedule.
Readers clearly noticed last week when the Weekly arrived very late Wednesday to most of our distribution points. We received many phone calls and e-mails wondering what had happened.
It’s weird, isn’t it? Either way, Honolulu will have to adjust to life without the Honolulu Advertiser. Whatever else one thinks of it, the Advertiser was the newspaper of record in Hawaii for at least a generation, and it documented life in these Islands every day since long before David Kalakaua entered politics.
As noted here recently, we’ve had a lot of staffing changes at the Weekly over the past month, and our annual Food & Drink issue presents the perfect opportunity to announce the most recent: We’re happy that Martha Cheng has joined the Weekly as Food & Drink editor. Cheng’s writing, which has been appearing here for the better part of two years now, has generated a lot of interest from the food and “foodie” communities, and we’re excited to have her with us in a leadership role.
Your newspaper has been in a process of transition in recent weeks. At the beginning of the month, we bid aloha to Adrienne LaFrance, who had been Managing Editor since 2008.
This week we begin our two-part preview of the special election to fill the remainder of Neil Abercrombie’s term in Congress. On May 5, we’ll focus on the three best-known and most heavily-funded candidates.
Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin / Frank Fasi, whose public memorial service is this morning, was among many other things a fierce critic of the Joint Operating Agreement that from 1962–2001 governed the business operations of the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The legendary former mayor often portrayed himself as a victim of unfair reporting, but self-servingly or not, he long maintained that our dailies were two sides of the same coin, and that Honolulu needed more vigorous competition in its daily newspapers.
Our cover story this week profiles the three Hawaii residents who were selected from the many nominees to our first-ever Local Heroes celebration. Jointly sponsored by Honolulu Weekly and Kilauea Lodge in Volcano, Local Heroes was designed as a thank-you to the many islanders who work hard in relative obscurity to enrich and improve the lives of others.
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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