Sojourn in the Sun, Part 9: Honolulu Walkabout  01/15 - The Off Season, 2022-2023 - CycleBlaze

January 15, 2023

Sojourn in the Sun, Part 9: Honolulu Walkabout  01/15

Seeing Honolulu as only foot traffic experiences it

OUR DAY BEGINS with breakfast and a transfer flight back to Oahu, for the final leg of our Islands tour.  It's a short flight (the taxi ride to the Maui airport takes almost as long) and all goes well.  We have to wait for the runway, though, as there are two inbound flights that have priority over our takeoff.  Poised so that we can see down the runway through the windows of our plane, I'm surprised to see the second inbound flight descend gradually, float well down the runway without ever actually touching down, then abruptly rev the engines, raise their landing gear, and climb away into the sky.

A missed landing?  Or a practice approach for a new pilot or recertification / annual FAA check ride for a seasoned veteran?  If it was a botched landing there's no meteorological excuse for it: the weather's perfect.  Perhaps a last-second technical problem?  Hard to think what sort of problem might lead to a wave-off, though, when you're only 10 or 20 feed from alighting.  Whatever the true cause I'll never find out, and I'll always wonder.

We take a taxi to our hotel in Waikiki, then assemble for a stretch of the legs through Honolulu.  It's a mix of old (1800's through 1940's) city and gleaming new high rises where even small units sell for millions of dollars.  Our route takes us past the oldest Catholic church in Hawai'i, the State Capitol building, the Aloha Tower, and a Shinto temple among other landmarks.  As I saw on the Big Island and to a lesser extent on Maui, there are many unhoused street residents here as well.  

We're warned on a couple occasions not to venture into Chinatown after dark and when we get there the reasons are obvious.  Never especially up-market it's been hit very hard by the economic downturn resulting from COVID; there's trash and graffiti everywhere to go along with boarded-up, padlocked storefronts.  Elsewhere, though, Honolulu has a different face to present to the world.

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Bill ShaneyfeltOrchid tree

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Old: the oldest Catholic cathedral in Hawai'i.
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New: a gleaming high-rise condominium. I can't even guess at the prices, except "steep".
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Old: we're puzzled by this. Is it a relic of streetcar days, or an early vestige of the tsunami warning system? For once, Google Lens is stumped and produces only highly dissimilar images of more modern tsunami / air raid sirens.
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Old: Washington Place, a stately plantation-style home known for being the place Queen Lili'uokalani was arrested when the Kingdom of Hawai'i was overthrown in 1893. The overthrow was orchestrated by wealthy Caucasians, who had gradually assumed more and more influence and economic power and wanted the place to become a U.S. State.
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New: memorial to Hawai'i's military veterans.
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Old: Statue of Father Damian, who established the well-known facility for victims of Hansen's Disease (leprosy) on Molokai.
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New: the State Capitol, whose architecture includes this open-air atrium as a nod to Hawai'i's volcanic nature.
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Old (and new): statue of Queen Lili'oukalani on the Capitol grounds.
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New, or old? The Honolulu Municipal Building looks like a Franciscan monastery but isn't especially ancient.
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New: a very modern, highly-stylized sculpture outside the Joint Traffic Management Center. The sculpture was completed in 2020.
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Old: a battered typewrite lies rusting in the street.
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New: another glass-and-steel marvel. Its appearance changes with the sky.
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Timeless: a rainbow over Honolulu. Sadly also timeless: bad traffic.
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Old: a (the?) Mission House, which housed early Christian missionaries who had made the trip to Hawai'i in the 1820's and 1830's.
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Another view of City Hall (Honolulu Hale). Dating back to the 1920's I'm going to categorize the building as "Old".
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Old: the tomb of King Lunalilo. The sixth monarch of Hawai'i, he was actually elected by the legislature.
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New(ish): the Supreme Court of the State of Hawai'i.
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Also New: the third statue of Kamehameha. We've now completed the trifecta that began in Hawi and continued in Hilo.
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Old: Iolani Palace.
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Old(ish) the landmark Aloha Tower, built c. 1926. For a long while it was the tallest structure in the islands, and served as a landmark for incoming vessels.
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New: yup, more very expensive (and exclusive) housing for the wealthy.
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Old and new together: a modern skyscraper serves as a backdrop to the Bishop Estate Building that dates from 1896.
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Old: a building once used as a branch of the Yokohama Specie Bank. It was proclaimed "completely fireproof" when it opened because of its sand-filled copper windows. The terra-cotta ornamentation on the round-arched corner entrance and the frieze, with wreathed oculi, garlands, and swags, is of high quality. The medallion rising over the entrance bay depicts this Japanese bank's insignia.
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Old: the Izumo Taishakyo Mission, one of only a handful of active Shinto shrines in the U.S.
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Old, detail: hefty knots above the entrance to the shrine.
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Old: Lum Sai Ho Tong Taoist temple in the Chinatown district of Honolulu. The Society was founded in 1889; this building dates to the 1950s.
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Timeless: two varieties of fowl in the yard of a residence. On the left a Silver Bantam, to the right a leghorn.
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