Here I am surrounded by all the usual problems.
The city is strapped for money and is proposing that all city employees take unpaid vacation one day out of every two weeks. The schools are also struggling and have been scheduling unpaid days off as well for teachers.
Affordable housing is desperately needed but a group in Chinatown have mounted a protest against a project planned in their neighbourhood. Not that they’re against affordable housing, mind you, but this housing is for people with serious drug and mental illness problems, which will cause added problems in an area already struggling to keep itself afloat economically.
Elsewhere, community groups are mounting protests against a planned luxury development.
And chickens are ambling around at my feet.
Not, not Vancouver or even a Vancouver of the future. I’m meandering around Oahu (yes, I know — a lot of travelling lately, but I promise I won’t leave town again for a long time) bopping from Waikiki yesterday to a campground on the northeastern end of the island today.
You try to go on holiday, but it’s hard not to see the world through an urban-issues lens all the time. It’s my first time in Oahu so I get to do what I can never do in Vancouver, see a city with fresh eyes.
It’s fascinating to see that just a few streets away from the high-rise hotels and high-end shopping at Waikiki, there are blocks and blocks more of modest apartments, more than a few of them concrete-block construction.
Those places are a reminder of how even the most resort-like resort is inevitably surrounded by much more real-life neighbourhoods. That’s especially true in American-style downtowns, where there are still a lot of lower-income areas because the middle-class decamped long ago to suburbs.
Waikiki and downtown Honolulu don’t appear to be surrounded by actual slums, not like ones I saw doughnutting St. Louis’ downtown when I was there many moons ago, but there certainly are modest neighbourhoods walking distance away.
We were thrilled, as a result, to find a pretty regular street close to Waikiki (our home for two days — you have to try everything once) where we could get plate lunches to eat at picnic tables (the Rainbow Drive-In), a Portugese doughnut shop (Leonard’s), a string of vintage stores selling more faded Hawaiian shirts than you can imagine, eco-woodworking shops, another string of restaurants ranging from low-cost Japanese/Hawaiian to Italian to ramen.
Not written up in any tourist books and, from the look of it, completely unknown to tourists, but Kapahulu became our favourite street for whatever we needed. Just go to the east end of the Waikiki strip, turn left, go up a few blocks and you’re there.
Of course, to get right away from the Waikiki vibe, you can do as we did and head up to the north end of the island. It’s a reminder of how Third World and agricultural Hawaii can feel at times. It’s also a reminder of the kind of natural beauty that has drawn people here, even before the hotels and margaritas arrived.
We’re staying at the Malaekahana campground near Kuhuku, a place that seems to be mainly frequented by diehard surfing enthusiasts, many of them with children in tow. It’s got the usual tenting sites, but also a few tiny cabins that are about the size of large tents, some slightly larger old cabins that look pretty rundown, and a couple of yurts, all facing a beautiful cove that has barely any other signs of human habitation on it. The
There’s not much to do around here, unless you want to visit the Mormon-run Polynesian Cultural Centre in La’ie to the south or gorge yourself on giant shrimp in Kahuku, served from shrimp trucks next to the lagoons where they’re raised.
Now that I think about it, it’s almost time for that shrimp lunch. I should head out. It’s a hard life. But someone has to live it, even if it’s only for a few days before I head into another exciting round of transit reports and debates over electoral reform.
(I await Bill Lee’s erudite research on ancient customs in Oahu or current urban dilemmas to help fill out my trip.)