FLUX No. 28 The Good Life

TABLE OF CONTENTS

32 | What Makes Them Tick?

Through a tireless combination of passion, purpose, and perseverance, three entrepreneurs show what it means to live the good life in Hawai‘i. Rae Sojot goes behind the scenes to see what a day in the lives of these individuals is like.

44 | The Staff of Life

If you want a quick metric of the good life, check the price of a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. Editor-at-large Sonny Ganaden explores how Big Island Diary and La Tour Bakehouse are expanding the local economy, improving the price of everyday items, and by extension, strengthening the purchasing power of local consumers.

54 | The Living Projects

Some call themselves intentional communities. Others are considered alternative spiritualities. At times, they have been labeled cults. Numerous such groups have been drawn to Hawai‘i, and more are trying to start here today. Managing editor Anna Harmon examines why.

 Local commodity producing companies like La Tour Bakehouse, which employs 140 people to run its bakery around the clock, are preparing Hawai‘i for a sustainable economic future.

The Staff of Life

Kaua‘iʼs

Christa Wittmier, Life of the Party

Austin Kino, A Sailorʼs Life

Living Well

 John Koga and his wife, Karin, planned a home remodel that celebrated the aged space of John’s childhood home.

Experience the art of living well in Hawai‘i. In this special section, read a survey of contemporary housing, written by Timothy A. Schuler. Also, discover tips for making over your space, and learn about a few artisans and businesses who can help you do so.

ON THE COVER:

Shown on the cover are Paramacharya Sadasivanatha Palaniswami and Natyam Mayuranatha, who are among the 21 monks who lead spartan but fulfilled lives at Kaua‘i’s Hindu Monastery. A monk’s purpose, Palaniswami says, is to find perfection and to learn to abide there constantly. “Only then can you really share that with others,” he says.

BY BRYCE JOHNSON

We may be a quarterly, but we’re bringing stories all the time online.

STAY CURRENT ON ARTS AND CULTURE WITH US AT: fluxhawaii.com facebook /fluxhawaii twitter @fluxhawaii instagram @fluxhawaii

Go behind the scenes and live a day in the lives of some of Hawai‘i’s hardest working entrepreneurs in this video by Jonas Maon. Experience a baker’s hours with Mike Price at Breadbox Hawaii; drop in on Jesse Cruz and Dusty Grable during the lunchtime rush at Lucky Belly and Livestock Tavern; and spend the day cooking seafood with Sean Saiki.

See a recap of what went down at the FLUX Hawaii General Store, a pop-up shop in Abbot Kinney in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice Beach. Presented by Hawaiian Airlines, the FLUX Hawaii General Store featured wares from nearly 70 artisans inspired by Hawai‘i’s modern and diverse culture. Video by Leah Barylsky.

IMAGE

VIDEO: A DAY IN THE LIFE

VIDEO: FLUX HAWAII GENERAL STORE RECAP

In May 2016, I had the perfect springtime wedding, set beneath clear skies and amid breezy tradewinds. The next day, Sunday, followed with a boozy brunch on a lānai overlooking Sans Souci Beach along Waikīkī’s balmy Gold Coast. We took the following day off from work, and toward its end, while discussing what to do on Tuesday, my now lifelong beau turned to me and said with a shrug, “I think I’ll go back to work.”

My partner (who is featured on page 82) and I both own our businesses. We’ve never been good at vacations, or holidays, or weekends in general. When Sundays roll around, we look at each other dumbly, unable to come up with activities to consume the off-hours. In fact, I am writing this on Sunday morning. A few months back, I started gardening, hoping the plants would be needy enough to fill my nights and weekends. But mostly, like my husband, I work.

Both residents and visitors call Hawai‘i paradise, and it is. A quick perusal of social media reveals beaches that sparkle, waterfalls that tumble, and hikes that soar. But life in Hawai‘i is tough, too. Here, cost of living climbs, median wage (after being adjusted for inflation) declines, and traffic drags. About half of Hawai‘i residents live paycheck to paycheck.

Still, for all our misgivings, life in Hawai‘i is good. Like the people featured in this issue, I am determined to make it work in what is called one of the worst states in the country to do business. After all, the good life isn’t found by chasing the Hawai‘i that so many seek, with its endless days of sun and beach, but rather, by relentlessly pursuing a singular, purposeful passion. We islanders have dug in, committing long, often unglamorous hours at the office—whether that is a kitchen with boiling pots of seafood, or a farm saturated with the scent of manure—to create our own pieces of paradise.

Older, wiser individuals warn my husband and me of burning out, and perhaps one day we will. Maybe then I’ll expand my garden. But for now, we whistle while we work.

With aloha,

Lisa Yamada EDITOR lisa@nellamediagroup.com

MASTHEAD | THE GOOD LIFE |

“Since I live in a studio with zero storage space, I implemented floorto-ceiling shelving units to maintain organized living, and got a simple credenza that can hide clutter.”

 Life hacks for maintaining a livable space:

“I use furnishings to enhance my home, like selecting white furniture to create an illusion of openness. Organizing my bookshelf by color and height also has a similar effect.”

PUBLISHER

Jason Cutinella

EDITOR

Lisa Yamada

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Ara Feducia

MANAGING EDITOR

Anna Harmon

DESIGNER

Michelle Ganeku

PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR

John Hook

PHOTO EDITOR

Samantha Hook

COPY EDITOR

Andy Beth Miller

EDITOR-AT-LARGE

Sonny Ganaden

IMAGES

Jonathan Canlas

David Chatsuthiphan

AJ Feducia

Bryce Johnson

Jonas Maon

Megan Spelman

Jayson Tuntland

CONTRIBUTORS

Martha Cheng

Brad Dell

Tina Grandinetti

Kelli Gratz

Austin Kino

Jon Letman

Brittany Lyte

Rebecca Pike

Timothy A. Schuler

Jade Snow

Rae Sojot

WEB DEVELOPER

Matthew McVickar

ADVERTISING

Mike Wiley

GROUP PUBLISHER mike@nellamediagroup.com

Keely Bruns MARKETING & ADVERTISING DIRECTOR keely@nellamediagroup.com

Chelsea Tsuchida MARKETING & ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE

Kera Yong MARKETING & ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE

OPERATIONS

Joe V. Bock CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER joe@nellamediagroup.com

Gary Payne VP BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT gpayne@nellamediagroup.com

Jill Miyashiro OPERATIONS DIRECTOR jill@nellamediagroup.com

Mitchell Fong JUNIOR DESIGNER

INTERNS

Nicole Furtado Aja Toscano

General Inquiries: contact@fluxhawaii.com

“To help remind me my home is a place to unwind, I make sure I have a variety of spaces, both indoor and out, to sit and relax, preferably with company.”

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FLUX Hawaii accepts no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts and/or photographs and assumes no liability for products or services advertised

PUBLISHED BY:

Nella Media Group P.O. Box 38181 Honolulu, HI 96817

herein. FLUX Hawaii reserves the right to edit, rewrite, refuse or reuse material, is not responsible for errors and omissions and may feature same on fluxhawaii.com, as well as other mediums for any and all purposes.

FLUX Hawaii is a quarterly lifestyle publication.

CONTRIBUTORS

Bryce Johnson

Bryce Johnson is continually inspired by the water, the air, and the mountain valleys of his home island, the last especially so while on assignment photographing the monks at Kaua‘i’s Hindu Monastery for this issue’s cover. “Growing up on Kaua‘i, I had always heard of the property tucked in the mountains on the east side, but never had a chance to visit,” says the commercial and editorial photographer of the story “Soul Searching” on page 96. “The sheer beauty of the property showcased the wide variety of skills these monks have, from the design of the temple to the beautifully manicured landscaping. The community is truly a tropical paradise.”

Tina Grandinetti

Born and raised on O‘ahu, but now living in Melbourne, Australia on the lands of the Koorie nation, Tina Grandinetti has written about indigenous surf culture in Australia, apartheid in Palestine, and demilitarization activism in Hawai‘i. On page 18 of this issue, Grandinetti profiled Micah Doane, who formed Protectors of Paradise to preserve O‘ahu’s west side beaches. “On the day I first met Micah, I was actually planning on going out to swim with the dolphins,” she says. “But after speaking with him, I decided that one less body chasing after the pod would probably be a good thing. I went to Kā‘ena Point instead, and there, I saw the pod passing by offshore.

Doane has shown me and many others that sometimes, connecting with the natural world means taking a step back and allowing it to do its thing.”

Rae Sojot

Growing up in a local military family, and living in Hawai‘i, Colorado, Germany, North Carolina, the East Coast, and Tahiti, Rae Sojot developed a passion for telling the stories of people and their unique cultures. For “What Makes Them Tick,” on page 32, she shadowed local entrepreneurs to gain an intimate look of how hard people in Hawai‘i work, and how success, though welcomed, doesn’t come easy. “We often equate success with glamour and the easy life. Therein lies the irony,” Rae says. “It’s no easy life, but for these entrepreneurs, it is a life driven by passion, and therefore all that much more worth it.”

Megan Spelman

As a freelance editorial photographer who splits her time between the coasts of Kona, on the Big Island, and Valencia, in Spain, Megan Spelman enjoys getting glimpses of the amazing people and places she meets while on assignment, including Big Island Dairy farmer Brad Duff, featured on page 44 in “The Staff of Life.” “It’s easy to see Brad’s passion for dairy cows,” she says. “This is one of the last dairies on Hawai‘i Island, where I live, so it was interesting to see where my milk was likely coming from. It is a commercial dairy, but the cows are lucky enough to live in Hawai‘i and have an amazing look out to the Pacific from their fields when they are pregnant.”

Highs and Lows of the Middle Class

How this aspirational social group is faring in Hawaiʻi.

COMPILED BY NICOLE FURTADO, ANNA HARMON & LISA YAMADA

While William Howard Taft was the first U.S. politician to use the term “middle class” in his presidential nomination acceptance speech in 1908, Aristotle wrote of the necessity of such a group all the way back in 4th Century BC. In Politics, the philosopher declared that a dominant middle class, which worked hard but didn’t aspire for too much, and which neutralized the dislike between the poor and the rich, was key to maintaining a constitutional government. (Of course, women and slaves had no political power then, so it was a flawed concept.) Still, today, thought leaders extol its virtues, including Amazon founder and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, who said, “A thriving middle class is the source of growth and

prosperity in capitalist economies.” The rapid rise of an American middle class after WWII soon triggered a sustained fear of its disintegration. As early as the 1970s, conversations arose about the stratification of wealth and the loss of the middle class, what Vice President Joe Biden called the “backbone of this country” in 2009. Though middle class is defined in finite economic terms by percentages of median income, those who identify as middle class do not reference these delineations. Instead, the idea of the middle class represents something less tangible, an American dream that allows for a moderate lifestyle, home ownership, and a secure future. But what does this look like in Hawaiʻi?

THE BUDGET:

$66,374

Annual income before taxes needed to lead an average middle-class life in urban Honolulu.

Lower middle income: $49,200 Upper middle income: $146,900

Lower middle income: $42,000 Upper middle income: $125,00

240% vs . 108%

Between 1948 and 2013, worker productivity increased by 240%, but wages of the average employee grew by only 108%.

In 2015, for the first time in more than four decades, middle-income households no longer made up the economic majority in America (49.9 percent in middle class versus 50.1 percent in upper and lower class), though Hawai‘i bucks the trend, its middle class having grown 4 percent since 2000.

46 percent of U.S. workers earning less than $15 an hour are over 35 years old.

The Resident Alien Act gives foreigners the rights to buy land. Though the Kuleana Act authorizes land titles for all Native Hawaiian tenants living on the land, most never claim it.

Housing: $27,880

Car costs: $8,920

Retirement savings: $4,368

Healthcare: $4,056

Food: $9,346

Entertainment: $2,258

Child care/education: $2,300

Vacation: $3,561

Other: $3,685

Average annual expenditures spent by households earning between $50,000–$100,000, adjusted for inflation, according to a 2013–2014 report by DBEDT on consumer spending in Hawai‘i.

Goods such as textiles and shoes begin to be produced in factories in New England, though the majority of the U.S.

William

IS THE MIDDLE CLASS THRIVING, OR JUST SURVIVING?

Hawai‘i has the 3rd highest median household income in the nation, but also one of the highest costs of living.

$100 feels more like $85 in Hawai‘i, as a result of cost of living.

47 hrs/week

The average amount of hours worked by adults employed full time.

Nearly half of Hawai‘i families live paycheck to paycheck.

1/4

Portion of Hawai‘i residents who had a car breakdown and didn’t have enough money to fix it.

32%

Percent of households that would not have enough in liquid assets to survive for three months at the poverty level in the absence of income.

47

TH

Hawai‘i’s ranking in the nation for home ownership, with 56.6% of residents owning homes in 2015.

MEDIAN SALES PRICE OF A HOME IN 2016

In the U.S.: $221,500

In Hawai‘i: $566,900

In Honolulu: $747,500

MONTHLY COST OF HOUSING

new GI Bill gives millions of veterans returning from WWII money for home mortgages, businesses, and college educations.

The number of subdivision homes jumps to 1.7 million.

LIVING WAGE* AFTER TAXES FOR HOUSEHOLDS IN HAWAI‘I

5 ¹/4 24- hr days

How much a single parent with two children, who is earning Hawai‘i’s minimum wage of $8.50 per hour, needs to work per week to earn a living wage.

*The living wage is the minimum a family needs to not require public assistance in order to avoid severe housing and food insecurity, assuming there are no savings.

Hawai‘i has the 3rd highest housing costs, behind those of New Jersey and Washington D.C.

43% of annual income

How much homeowners in Honolulu spent on housing related expenses in 2014. Renters in Honolulu spent 47.3% of annual income on housing related expenses in 2014.

1/4

Portion of Hawai‘i residents who have worried about how they would pay a month’s rent or mortgage within the last five years.

Hawai‘i becomes the 50th state. Jetliners begin regular air service, rapidly increasing both tourism and the retail and construction industries.

$34.22

The amount a person in Hawai‘i must make per hour in order to afford rent for a two-bedroom apartment at a market rate of $1,780, making Hawai‘i’s housing wage the highest in the nation. The annual income needed to afford this: $71,184.

Hawai‘i has the highest percentage of multigenerational family households at 7.7 percent.

SHELTER

Keepers of Mākua

Micah Doane and his small band of volunteers help protect what so many others enjoy as paradise.

TEXT BY TINA GRANDINETTI

IMAGES BY JOHN HOOK

It’s early morning in Mākua on O‘ahu’s west side, and rain lingers in the valley that rises behind the beach. Out at sea, skies are beginning to clear. A small crowd of people are scattered along the water’s edge, scanning the bay for the sleek curve of a dorsal fin, or a burst of fine mist coughed into the air. Micah Doane approaches the crowd with a customary head nod and “howzit.” In a T-shirt and boardshorts, he looks like any other guy preparing for a morning dive, save for the laminated sheet of paper he holds in his hand. “You guys here for the dolphins?” he asks.

Doane is the co-founder of Protectors of Paradise, an informal group of divers and community members who have stepped up to mālama, or care for, this stretch of the Wai‘anae Coast. “We’re out here today making sure people know that interacting with dolphins can be really bad for them,” Doane says. The paper he is holding has a graphic depicting how the marine mammals rest: They dive and surface in sync with their pod, their eyes still open though half of their brains are turned off.

Mākua Beach has become famous for the dolphins that visit its waters. “[They] come into this bay to sleep, but with so many people and tour boats chasing after them lately, it’s disrupting their resting habits and might be making them less fit to survive,” Doane explains. He and other Protectors of Paradise volunteers spend as many mornings as they can educating divers and tourists on dolphin behavior, and documenting interactions that may put the aquatic mammals at risk. It is just one among a variety of activities they’ve undertaken to meet the area’s growing needs.

Doane can date his ties to Mākua as far back as the late 1800s. His paternal great- greatgrandmother, Malaea Naiwi, moved from Hawai‘i Island into the community of Native Hawaiians who farmed and fished in the area. In the 1940s, the U.S. military evicted the population in order to clear the valley for live munitions training. Cultural sites were destroyed and forests burned. Rooftops of family homes and the neighborhood church were painted with white X’s, then used as target practice for aerial bombardment. “The only land they didn’t touch was the cemetery by the beach, but you can see bullet holes and chunks missing out of the grave markers,” Doane says.

Through the decades, where the valley meets the sea, some Native Hawaiians continued to live in an encampment that they referred to as a pu‘uhonua, or place of refuge. Subject to the threat of eviction, its size fluctuated into the late ’90s, but the presence of this insular community kept the number of visitors low. While the valley was off-limits, the beach was still a primary place where families went to gather food from the sea.

Doane, too, maintained his connection to Mākua. “Because this place is so isolated, there’s always been a lot of illegal dumping going on here,” he explains. As a child, he and his family regularly drove out from Pearl City to do beach clean-ups and to tend the community cemetery (a task now carried out primarily by Uncle Moku Neil, whose family also hails from Mākua).

 As the number of visitors to Mākua Beach on O‘ahu’s west side surged due to social media, Micah Doane formed Protectors of Paradise to help keep beaches clean.

“Having those ties with the area and being raised by descendants of Mākua instilled in us to take care of our land and resources,” Doane says.

The pu‘uhonua at Mākua Beach came to an end in 1996 after a sweep by the city. Over the last few years, Doane has seen a massive surge in the number of visitors, and subsequently, the amount of trash, on the beach at Mākua, which is part of the Kā‘ena Point State Park Reserve. “As social media became more popular, this place became famous for underwater photography because of its crystal-clear waters and the dolphins,” he says. As the number of visitors skyrocketed, spontaneous beach clean-ups were no longer adequate, and Protectors of Paradise was formed. “With each Instagram post, the influx of people grew,” Doane says.

That inundation hit a high point in summer 2016, when thousands of people flocked to Mākua over the Fourth of July weekend. By Sunday afternoon, trash was piled high along the beach. With no facilities onsite, some overnight campers dug latrines in the brush, provoking fears of water and soil contamination. This incident, and others

like it, highlighted the state’s neglect of this stretch of coast—there is only one Hawai‘i State Parks maintenance worker assigned to Mākua and neighboring Keawa‘ula, also known as Yokohama Bay.

When the weekend ended and the campers dispersed, Protectors of Paradise showed up to pick up the slack, filling trucks with collected waste and debris. Since then, the group’s members have been working to help the community and state find a resolution to this growing problem. “It’s not just the trash,” Doane says. “It’s people abusing the wildlife, turtles getting caught in nets, water getting polluted. There’s unexploded ordinances and maybe even depleted uranium in the valley— the result of military training. It’s one side of the island that gets the last say in anything. It’s been the last priority.”

Paradise or otherwise, Mākua has seen its fair share of abuse over the years. But there have always been the quiet few who have worked to protect it. For Doane, there’s hope in that. “If a few people could have an impact,” he says, “imagine what a whole island could do.”

 The west side of the island is often lowest priority according to Doane, left, who heads over every week to care for the Wai‘anae Coast.

 For more information about Protectors of Paradise, follow them on Facebook.

Weaving Tales

Charlie Pereira is one of the last practitioners of throw net making.

TEXT BY BRITTANY LYTE

IMAGES BY BRYCE JOHNSON

A fishing net can make a grown man weep. Just ask master net weaver Charlie Pereira. He will tell of the devoted fisherman whose wife presented him with one of Pereira’s hand-sewn throw nets as a surprise gift.

“He cried,” Pereira says at the end of the story, pausing to allow reaction time. “Cried!”

It’s Sunday afternoon, and Pereira is at his usual post, a folding chair at the Anahola Farmer’s Market on Kaua‘i, with a bamboo needle in hand and a fistful of fishing line. As usual, he is engaged in equal parts net knitting and talking story. When there’s a lull in conversation, he rattles off anecdotes for his own merriment as much as anyone else’s. Unreeling a string of flashbacks from his 87 years of life, Pereira exudes the ease of a man who has spent the bulk of his days doing the thing that truly makes him thrive.

One of Hawai‘i’s last practitioners of traditional throw net making, Pereira has been weaving nets by hand for three quarters of a century. He was taught by his father, an avid fisherman who was 4 when he moved to Kaua‘i from Portugal in the care of his own father, who had sought employment in the booming sugar plantation industry. Growing up on Kaua‘i’s southern shore, Pereira’s dad learned the art of making throw nets from Hawaiian fishermen. While pre-contact Hawaiians used nets for fishing, throw nets were an import of Asia, brought to Hawai‘i in the late 1800s by Japanese immigrants who were recruited as plantation workers. Locals quickly popularized the practice. When Pereira was 7, his father began teaching him to knit the fishing device by which their family was able to eat.

Pereira still remembers the day he completed his first net. He was 12, and, elated with his creation, he rushed off to test it in the shallows at Nawiliwili. Pereira collected just one fish FLUX PHILES | CHARLIE PEREIRA |

 One of Hawai‘i’s few practitioners of traditional throw net making, Charlie Pereira has been sewing nets by hand for three quarters of a century.

from the sea that day, but he was happier about it than any of his catches since. It was his first unsupervised nab in his first selfmade net.

Before large companies like Matson and Costco globalized the way Hawai‘i eats, fishing was as essential to survival as breathing. More than spears, hooks, or traps, the throw net was the plantation era fisherman’s most promising tool to collect many small- and medium-sized fish in a single grab. But today, the way Hawai‘i feeds itself has been transformed, and the barge— not the net—is now the primary source of sustenance. And in a time when a net can be procured in minutes from any store, there is little incentive to knit one’s own. As such, an ancient skill is disappearing.

From a task that many consider avoidably tedious, Pereira derives a kind of moving meditation that puts him at ease. Measuring 11 feet in diameter, each of Pereira’s throw nets requires four weeks of daily labor. He sells them for $300 apiece, a small price to pay for artistry of this kind. If you want one of Pereira’s nets, you must get your name on his waiting list, of which there are two. And

it’s clear which one you want to be on: “If the person’s nice to me, he gets one real fast,” Pereira explains. “Otherwise, he can keep waiting. One guy has been waiting 10 years!” Pereira guesses his hands have stitched about 80 throw nets, some for hobby and most for income. He’s proud to say that at least one of them is in use on each of the main Hawaiian Islands.

“Everybody wants one of Uncle Charlie’s nets,” Pereira says. As if to signal a warning of his disinterest in modesty, he is fond of wearing a matching T-shirt and trucker hat emblazoned with this slogan: “If things improve with age, I’m getting pretty near perfect.”

Despite this saying, age has made it harder for Pereira to fish in recent years. He is less sturdy on his feet, and he worries a wave might knock him into an impetuous sea. These days, he has all but given up the practice. But his hands, wrinkled like crepe paper and big like shovels, are still amazingly nimble. They pain him every now and again, and when they do, he breaks from the net, taking a few minutes to exercise his storytelling muscle instead. Then he picks up the needle and continues weaving.

 Measuring 11 feet in diameter, each of Pereira’s nets requires four weeks of daily labor to complete.

FLUX PHILES

| PATRICIA LEI MURRAY |

Stitches in Time

Patricia Lei Murray’s Hawaiian quilts have sown stories for more than three decades.

TEXT BY JADE SNOW

IMAGES BY JONAS MAON

“It all stems from the piko,” Patricia Lei Murray says while gingerly seated on her living room couch, a perch where she has spent countless hours poring over a wooden hoop, weaving memories into Hawaiian quilts. Murray compares the center and starting point of each design to the spiritual piko, or center, of one’s own body. “Piko pondering, shall we say, is really the driving force to make a commitment to each quilt and stay on task. It has to come from your na‘au,” she explains, referencing the gut instinct that often denotes a Hawaiian code of ethics. Hawaiian quilting features radially symmetric appliqués of native flora and fauna, made from a single cut on folded fabric, that are stitched to a backing to create an artful scene. Murray first experienced this craft in the 1980s through Kamehameha Schools’ continuing education program, and has dedicated her time to it since, balancing the passion with family and work. Depending on both its size and one’s technique, a single quilt can take years to complete. “I taught time-management seminars to public and corporate clients for 11 years, so finding time for quilting was never a concern,” Murray says. “My motto is, ʻWhat you value, you make time for.’ I quilt every day. I make time for it. It is my daily meditation.”

The septuagenarian describes her prized quilts in the same loving tone that she speaks of her mo‘opuna, or her grandchildren. She can explain, in detail, the name and origin of each finished piece and its components. When quilting became popularized at the end of the nineteenth century, early Hawaiian quilters were limited to available materials, primarily solid colors and heavy cottons. Today, a diverse array of fabrics allows Murray to add depth and texture to her quilts, dynamic creations that tell a story through pattern and stitching. These elements also bear emotional significance to her life, which can be seen as she unveils sentimental keepsakes in her living room: One quilt features a collection of lace doilies from her travels in Paris; another showcases silk ferns, secured with delicate wedding veil tulle. In 2006, Murray reached the pinnacle of her quilting career with a solo exhibit at the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum in Washington; it was the first time the museum had focused an entire exhibition on Hawaiian quilts by a single artist. Among the 30 quilts on display was one called “Ku‘u Hae Aloha Mau,” a Hawaiian flag quilt honoring the legacy of Queen Lili‘uokalani. Although other quilters create similar designs bearing the same powerful symbolism, each takes liberties to add personal elements that distinguish his or her own handiwork, and Murray is no exception. Through each of her flag’s blue stripes, she had stitched, in blue thread, the lyrics to “Ku‘u Pua I Paoakalani,” an added touch so subtle that it is barely visible to the naked eye. The song details the beauty of the queen’s

 “Piko pondering, shall we say, is really the driving force to make a commitment to each quilt and stay on task,” says Patricia Lei Murray, who has been sewing Hawaiian quilts for more than three decades.

garden (named Paoakalani), as well as the young man who delivered flowers wrapped in newspaper to ‘Iolani Palace during the queen’s imprisonment. The delivery kept the royal informed of news outside the palace gates during the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. Murray shares the importance of this quilt with tears in her eyes, recalling the overthrow and the public removal of the Hawaiian flag, a time when women were forced to grieve silently for their lost nation, sewing their pain into quilted flags, which they hung in their homes. Today, Murray’s flag quilt hangs in the gallery of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a symbol of hope and pride for the community.

More than 30 years since she first tried her hand at the craft, Murray remains drawn to

the level of devotion required to make a quilt. She has created more than 125, many of which have been displayed across the country, and has penned two books detailing her awardwinning work. She teaches monthly quilting classes from her home in Honolulu, creates commissioned pieces for quilt aficionados, and rescues unfinished quilts for families eager to see the work of their kūpuna completed. Though millennials have yet to embrace modern-day quilting as meditation, Murray says she hopes the next generation will continue practicing Hawai‘i’s proud art forms: “I would encourage the young people who are interested in any of the cultural arts to be brave, to learn and study, and make it a part of themselves, so that it becomes something they love and are willing to share.”

 Murray’s passion for Hawaiian quilting can be seen in the more than 125 quilts she has created, many of which have been displayed across the country.

FLUX PHILES

Strong Fabric

Dale Hope has spent nearly half a century immersed in the prints of the islands.

TEXT BY REBECCA PIKE

IMAGE BY JOHN HOOK

“It’s so special up here,” says Dale Hope on his Pālolo Valley lānai. His redwood pole house, which looks and feels like a treehouse, is draped with vegetation on all sides. Occasional birdsong interrupts the quiet whirring of palms rustling in the wind. Endlessly inspired by such nature, as well as the cultures of the only home he has known, Dale has spent the majority of his life immersed in the printed and painted textiles of Hawai‘i.

In the 1970s, Dale began working for the garment manufacturing business that his father, Howard R. Hope, started in 1953, the year Dale was born. What began as schlepping fabric bolts at his dad’s factories became a lifetime of singular devotion. Together, they launched menswear label, HRH—short for His Royal Highness, and also his father’s initials—to accompany Howard’s ongoing womenswear brand, Sun Fashions of Hawaii. It would have been simple enough to make this resort wear in perpetuity, but the young Dale was excited by the shirts he and his surfer friends wanted to wear, and so he capitalized on his resources to create several additional lines, starting with T-shirts under the Hawaiian Style brand, and then moving on to aloha shirts under Kahala by HRH. (Kahala had been one of the first well-established aloha shirt brands in Hawai‘i, but it had gone dormant, and Dale was eager to revive it.) In the decades to follow, he went on to create some of the most popular and enduring aloha shirts in the world.

“I’m not really into fashion,” Dale insists. “But I am really interested and excited to talk aloha shirts and create shirts. Aloha shirts are what told the story of Hawai‘i to the world.” His adoration for what he calls “the emblem of Hawai‘i” is lovingly depicted in The Aloha Shirt . Rereleased in 2016, approximately 16 years after he debuted the first edition, the remastered 400-page book is as much a testament to Dale’s passion as it is a living history of what is known as the “Hawaiian shirt” on the mainland. Amalgams of his own rich experiences, and memories of elders in the manufacturing scene, paint a picture of the infancy of the industry as the birth of an art form. Marvelous scenes and lush, hand-brushed prints parallel the text.

Dale is rhapsodic in his description of artists like Elsie Das, who in 1936 collaborated with her brother-in-law, G.J. Watumull, to reproduce Hawai‘i-inspired prints on raw silk shirts, as well as John Keoni Meigs, who painted scenes from exotic Hawai‘i in the many radiant colors of the islands. “I actually got to sit down and talk with these people,” says Dale, who remains in awe of having had first-person history lessons from those who lived during that nostalgic slice of history, when visitors arrived to the islands in increasing droves. The business owner and historian also recalls the late 20th century retailers that propelled the aloha shirt through decades of popularity by creating and selling the finest designs the industry had to offer.

As to what these prints look like, Dale sums up the essence of an aloha shirt as such: “It must have a reverence to whatever it is, some singular essence of Hawai‘i that is your starting point. A flower, a fish, a canoe, a tree. These things have stories. You want to dutifully, properly, tell that story through the shirt.”

 Dale Hope has spent the majority of his life immersed in the printed and painted textiles of Hawai‘i.

 The Aloha Shirt is available at select stores and online at thealohashirt.com.

What Makes Them Tick?

Twenty-four hours in the lives of three local entrepreneurs show what it means to make a good life in Hawai‘i through passion, purpose, and tireless perseverance.

TEXT BY RAE SOJOT

IMAGES BY JOHN HOOK

 Dusty Grable and Jesse Cruz are the forces behind Breaking Bread Hospitality Group, under which they have debuted three culinary destinations in four years: Lucky Belly, Livestock Tavern, and The Tchin-Tchin! Bar, shown here.

It’s 4 a.m. and Mike Price is in the zone, glazing donuts and cinnamon rolls for their debut in the day’s glass display case. Bread is rising in the oven, giving Mike a respite from the meticulous ingredient scaling and dough mixing that he arrived six hours prior to perform. Sauces and gelées are attended to, all of which are made from scratch.

Mike is the one-man baking operation behind Breadbox Hawaii, a Japanese-style bakery tucked away in Manoa Marketplace. With nearly 40 items created on a daily basis—from kimchee muffins to liliko‘i bundt cake—there’s scarcely time for Mike to take a break, much less to make any misstep. A hungry, carb-seeking crowd arrives promptly at 7:30 a.m., when the shop opens, so the trays must be filled and the bread shelves stocked. Mike burns the midnight oil, but he’ll be damned if any loaves get burnt on his watch.

With his broad shoulders, board shorts, and tattooed arms, Mike looks more suited to beach breaks than bakeries. He grew up surfing Sandy Beach, his athleticism echoing in his fluid movement in the kitchen. This Kailua-bred local is no stranger to business. He and his wife, Maria, operate a media production company and also own Baby Awearness, a family lifestyle boutique located above Breadbox Hawaii, where Maria stocks baby goods and provides doula services. In 2015, when Mike and Maria were considering opening a bakery in the space that had previously housed Manoa Bakery, the duo’s entrepreneurial drive made the decision easy. Mike enjoyed cooking and had worked at his mom’s pizza restaurant as a teenager. Maria’s business acumen easily dovetailed with her passion for food. The question wasn’t why a bakery, but why not? Once the lease was freshly inked, Mike became a quick study in all things baking, courtesy of trial and error and YouTube videos. “I basically taught myself how to bake bread in three months,” Mike says, shaking his head. An obscure Japanese breadmaking book also served as a resource. Maria, a native Japanese speaker, would translate the oftenmystifying instructions. “A seed to start the bread? What seed? I had no clue what the recipes would be calling for,” he recalls.

The baking life may appear blissfully domestic to outsiders, but running a bakery demands the lion’s share of the Prices’ time and energy. Personal luxuries like free time have become rarities, anxiety and stress, the common currency. Yet the couple’s hard work and sacrifices are leavened by a sweeter outcome. Breadbox has evolved into a family-centered space for Mike and Maria.

Six days a week, while Mike is on the homestretch working at the bakery, Maria and her sister, Mayu Kawata, rise at dawn to tackle the morning’s household chores— laundering diapers, feeding the dog, waking the kids, and gathering essentials for the day. Once the crew is galvanized, they pile into the car and head over to Breadbox. At this point, the bakery becomes a family affair, with everyone working in concert in the kitchen. As Mike applies the finishing touches to the medley of pastries, Maria and Mayu prep for opening and bag breads. Their older son, Gee, is tasked with writing labels and filling trays. (On weekends, when Mike’s 9-year-old daughter, Azlyn, joins, she shares work with Gee or runs errands at Safeway.) Fourteen-month-old Mickey, however, boasts the best job. Dubbed Breadbox’s official taste tester, he’s happy to double-fist mini French crullers and stuff them into his mouth. It’s a sort of reverse family hour: Instead of gathering over dinner, the family bonds at breakfast amid trays of gleaming pastries and freshly baked bread.

Once the shop’s doors open, Maria takes the helm, her infectious personality a complement to Mike’s frank nature. Though her husband does the hard labor, it’s Maria who provides the panache and good-natured steadiness, when Mike’s lackof-sleep-induced delirium hits, making for comical banter that elicits chuckles from patrons within earshot.

While Maria and Mayu handle the steady flow of customers, Mike slips out to take 8-year-old Gee to school. If the day’s baking is done, he’ll head to the store to stock up on kitchen necessities, or maybe seek out a specialty ingredient for a newly conceived baked good idea. If he’s lucky, like today, he can head home—and straight to bed.

Breadbox’s hours are listed as “7:30–pau,” with pau translating to when the

 Mike Price, the one-man operation behind Breadbox Hawaii, begins baking at 9 p.m. and continues until 6 a.m., when his wife, Maria, their kids, and Maria’s sister come to help prep for opening the 7:30 a.m. opening.

daily inventory is significantly lighter, or as often is the case, completely sold out. With Mayu working the register, Maria ticks off administrative tasks, and makes a quick dash to the bank to refresh the till. Mic-key, situated on Maria’s hip, grins: Instead of French crullers, he’s now occupied with rolls of coins. As the morning progresses, the items dwindle. Maria surveys the glass display case with satisfaction. Only a handful of lonely muffins and anpans—Japanese rolls filled with sweet red bean paste—remain. These are swiftly packaged to donate to the nearby church.

As the bakery’s popularity increases, so too does the work required to feed its ever-increasing fan base. “The exhaustion is real,” says Maria, who was pregnant with Mic-key when plans for Breadbox were first sketched out. He was born around the time that Breadbox debuted. Life hasn’t slowed down since. But the triumph is worth the toil. The family’s passion to provide made-from-scratch, additive-free food has resonated with the community, whom the Prices consider an extension of their family. To them, this is the real success. “Mike always wanted people to feel like they walked into grandma’s kitchen,” Maria says. “It smells good, it feels good, and you know you’re going to get spoiled.”

By mid-morning, Maria and Mayu run a final sweep over the black and white checkered floor before closing the bakery doors. Then they climb the stairs to Baby Awearness for their second shift of the day.

Early sunlight slants through the windows at The TchinTchin! Bar in Honolulu’s Chinatown, creating blocks of diffused color on the brick walls. It ʼ s a hushed but amiable atmosphere, early enough for the restaurant’s crew to exchange morning pleasantries, but still too early for lively conversations. Employees are in the midst of the daily routine: polishing the long bar, sorting cutlery, transferring boxes of supplies. In a corner booth, several servers and managers have assembled, pulling out binders and notebooks. It looks like study hall, save for the tidy row of wine glasses at the head of the table.

It’s 8:30 a.m., and Dusty Grable is holding a wine class. Grable and Jesse Cruz are the forces behind Breaking Bread Hospitality Group, their shared enterprise that, not long ago, was the stuff of dreams, cooked up while the two were working as waiter and cook at Formaggio’s in Kailua. In a mere four years, the duo has debuted three bright stars in Chinatown’s growing constellation of culinary destinations: Lucky Belly, Livestock Tavern, and The Tchin-Tchin! Bar. This year, Livestock Tavern picked up Honolulu Magazine’s Hale ‘Aina Award for Best New Restaurant, conferring upon Grable and Cruz the title “Champions of Chinatown,” a moniker the pair cringes at. For these restaurateurs, the mantle of celebrity still feels unwieldy.

Grable is a bit bleary-eyed from last night’s dad duties to 2-month-old Paisley Bay, but he still looks the part of dapper

 Breadbox is a family affair, and the Prices’ commitment to providing made-from-scratch, additive-free food has resonated with the community.

sommelier professor, dressed in dark jeans, leather wingtips, and a knit sweater. As students sniff, swirl, and scrutinize the wine, he explains technical terms and presents complex scenarios: “What might pair well with, say, a charred sponge cake topped with seared foie gras?” The class is a nine-week intensive that Grable offers, free of charge, to any of Breaking Bread’s 80-plus employees interested in upping their wine game. Grable created the course materials for the class, collating his personal notes into study binders. By investing in the staff, Grable and Cruz help employees build both their skillsets and confidence levels, tools the two believe bode well even beyond their restaurants’ walls.

Bison, the resident canine, shuffles inside to the crew’s delight, indicating that Cruz has arrived. Cruz is a study in quiet confidence, his solid frame a mirror to his talents in the restaurant world. He and Grable are two sides of the same spinning coin—while both are humble, dedicated visionaries, Cruz serves as the steady, reserved counterpart to Grable’s enthusiasm and zeal.

Cruz generally spends mornings touching base with his kitchen managers, confirming preparations for the imminent lunchtime rush and subsequent dinner service. A recent surge in hiring interviews and plans for a catering component have also demanded swaths of time. Today, though, a solo strike mission to a Waimānalo plant nursery is in order: Cruz wants to refresh Tchin-Tchin!’s living wall display. “It’s nice to get out of Chinatown,” he says, getting into his car with a trace of a schoolboy playing truant. He turns up the music. Even driving is fun. The past few years, Cruz rarely went beyond Honolulu’s concrete jungle—save for weekly workout treks up Koko Head Crater or visits with family in Makakilo. Maintaining the multiple restaurants has been thrilling and exhausting in equal measure, and similarly demanding of time.

While Cruz is out buying plants, Grable wraps up the wine class and checks the restaurants’ activity—Livestock Tavern is next door to Tchin-Tchin!, and Lucky Belly is across the street—before settling into a series of potential employee interviews. Flipping the switch from businessman to family man is no easy feat, but whenever a pocket of time bubbles up, he takes advantage. Today, after the interviews, he slips home to his two-bedroom apartment on the corner of Nu‘uanu Avenue and Beretania Street—a brief twoblock walk away—to hang with Paisley Bay and Grandpa Paul (Grable’s father), who has brought lunch. Cruz, too, enjoys quick family moments: His mom stops by every day at lunchtime, and his daughter, Kelsie, 18, works at the restaurants as a server.

By noon, Livestock Tavern and Lucky Belly are in high gear, satisfying the lunchtime crowd until both restaurants close at 2:30 p.m. to prep for dinner service. The Tchin-Tchin Bar!, not yet open, is still warming up, its telltale red carpet primed for display at the downstairs entrance in a few hours.

Between lunch and dinner service, the day crew passes the baton to the evening shift at “family dinner”—the weekly shared meal during which employees sit down and, like their company’s namesake, break bread together. The chefs take turns making the meal, and tonight Cruz is in the kitchen.

 When Grable, standing, and Cruz opened Lucky Belly, the two were often the first to arrive, at 7 a.m., and the last to leave, at 3 a.m.

He has prepared local comfort favorites: large pans of chicken long rice, lomi tomatoes, and kālua pig. A convivial intimacy fills Livestock Tavern’s dining room as the staff laughs and mingles. It’s a sweet interlude before the night’s inevitable accelerando. Amid the tinkling of silverware and conversation, Cruz and the head kitchen manager review the upcoming fall menu. Grable confers with the beverage staff. There’s always work to be done.

Aristotle’s concept of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts is in live, vibrant display come evening, when all three restaurants are open and humming like well-oiled machines. Grable moves fluidly—troubleshooting, assisting, encouraging—between the three venues. A back stairwell connects Tchin-Tchin! to Livestock Tavern, where Cruz is positioned at the invisible threshold between the kitchen and the dining room floor. He’s “calling the wheel,” a term used for the person who keeps a constant finger on the restaurant’s pulse, syncopating the speed and flow between the front of the house (hosts, servers, bussers) and the back of the house (line cooks, prep cooks, dishwashers). Cruz executes the role with calm precision and elegance, and the crew follows en suite. The kitchen reverberates with steady, consistent energy, producing 200 meals over the next three hours. It’s a nightly orchestration, well tuned and well earned. “We are a team,” Cruz says.

Around 10 p.m., the fervor of Chinatown’s dining scene eases to a slower, contented pace. “We used to be the very first people in and the last people to leave,” Grable says. “When [we] first opened Lucky Belly, it was typical for us to arrive at 7 a.m. and leave around 3 a.m.” But like all good leaders who learn the importance of delegation, the pair now trusts others to take the reins—an act that has been a bittersweet growing pain for the two partners, who are still adjusting from their early roles of waiter and cook to feted players in Chinatown’s restaurant vanguard. “Your thoughts are always occupied with work,” Grable says. “Heck, you even dream about work. You never stop.”

Outside, a short downpour of rain has ceased, and a patch of clear sky has opened up above the corner of Hotel and Smith streets. Under the stars, Cruz and Grable head home. 

It’s past 11 p.m. when Sean Saiki arrives at Cafe Maru, the karaoke bar on Kapi‘olani Boulevard that he and his partner James Jay Choi opened last year. It boasts a decidedly Asian clientele, and has a genial vibe akin to a Cheers bar scene— except, instead of beers and football, it’s melona soju and K-pop videos. Saiki blends in well with the laidback crowd. His look is relaxed, insouciant even: casual scruff, a cranepatterned shirt, a black In4mation cap. The entrepreneur has an unassuming manner that lends itself to his quiet charm, both of which downplay his frenetic, wildly diverse array of pursuits. Urban apparel company? Check. Karaoke bar? Check. Dance clubs? Check. Seafood boil restaurants? Check.

Friends hint that Saiki possesses a Midas touch when it comes to the success of his endeavors. But he has a more pragmatic answer: hard work. Each morning, Saiki consults his to-do list and scrolls through the text messages that streamed in while he was sleeping: “Ice machine not working,” “Liquor commission came in last night...we got a warning,” or the infamous, “It’s 9am...are you still coming to meet me?” For a businessman known for his nightlife legacy, the party goes round the clock.

The bulk of this day has been spent at the newest Raging Crab location in ‘Aiea, which Saiki owns with another partner, J.C. “Moto” Chow. For Saiki, the title of boss isn’t necessarily glamorous. He pitches in as cook, cleaner, and even errand boy when supplies run low. But Saiki doesn’t balk at this grind, even if it translates to spending 10 hours toiling in a hot kitchen, like earlier today. Growing up on his parents’ Waimānalo plant nursery, manual labor was par for the course. When Cafe Maru first opened, Saiki often tended bar or washed dishes in the back. Tonight, though, operations are running smoothly. Saiki can momentarily relax with a beer. After midnight, Honolulu’s club scene warms up for its weekend ritual of frenzied, uninhibited fun. Saiki strikes out

 Bison spends his days lounging at The Tchin-Tchin! Bar until Cruz takes him home before the dinner rush.

to familiar territory: The District nightclub, his latest nightlife venue created with fellow Element Group partners. It’s a scene to be seen. The District acolytes flock outside the entrance, shooting hopeful glances to the grim-faced bouncers who might grant them swift passage into the inner party sanctum. At the front of the club, Saiki patiently waits for his friends. There’s no boisterous announcement or braggadocio that an established nightlife promoter could employ. Instead, he carries an air of quiet optimism. “I usually wear just a T-shirt,” Saiki says, despite the club’s collared-shirt policy for patrons, “otherwise security sometimes won’t recognize me.”

With slight nods to staff who unhook the velvet ropes, Saiki slips into the club. Inside, the party is loud and orgiastic. The District “Dimes,” the name given to cocktail servers, weave through the masses with sparkling batons and bottle service. Deejay Osna throws down tracks to a lusty, uproarious crowd. This is drunken bacchanal at is finest, wildest hour. And this is the world that Saiki has known and guided intimately for the past 20 years.

It was Saiki’s passion for fast cars that became the starting point for his nightlife career. “My first job was tinting,” he says. “I thought I was going to tint cars for the rest of my life.”

When Saiki and some friends created an apparel brand, Kaizo Speedgear, he started organizing events to promote the line. Turns out, he had a talent for throwing parties. Tapping into that entrepreneurial lodestar, Saiki parlayed those skills into opening his own bars and nightclubs.

The revelry at The District is still at full strength an hour later. If Saiki is working, it’s difficult to tell. He checks in with security, bartenders, and servers in discreet, systematic fashion. From the elevated stage behind the deejay, Saiki surveys the glittering spectacle with what appears a trace of fondness. For him, there is genuine pleasure in seeing people enjoying themselves.

Around 2 a.m., when Ginza, another of Saiki’s clubs, starts heating up, club-goers migrate a few blocks over to its location. He walks over as well, and once inside, seems pleased. Though the popularity of Honolulu nightclubs inevitably rises and falls, the collective euphoria of Ginza’s crowd feels eternal. “I’m addicted to the challenge of making something from nothing into something successful,” Saiki says. That after six years, Ginza is still packing a crowd on Saturday nights is a testimony to Saiki’s skills. “I know everything about this place,” he shares in a rare display of pride. But it’s not the packed crowd he is referring to. It’s the actual physical space. Saiki had an active hand in Ginza’s buildout—from sound and lighting to floor schematics—so whenever problems arise, Saiki doesn’t call a repairman. He’ll try to fix it himself. “He works harder than all of his employees,” says his girlfriend, Kiani Yamamoto, who Saiki met five years ago when she was working at one of his clubs. Saiki says her keen eye for all things “cool and creative”—a trait he claims he is missing—has been key in growing his business endeavors. With his project portfolio ever expanding,

Saiki says he must work harder and smarter. Nowadays, he adds, it’s “less hangovers, and more early meetings.”

Saiki heads back to The District, where the Hot Dog Steve food truck offers vital pre-hangover nourishment to a grateful crowd: bacon-wrapped hotdogs. Hot Dog Steve is actually Saiki’s dad, but Pops is off for the night. It’s about time for Saiki, too, to retire home. Maybe he’ll cruise the Internet to wind down—real estate is a new venture of his, and he likes checking property values online.

After a night of partying, club-goers finally stumble home to sleep. Saiki, too, says his goodbyes to friends. It’s 4 a.m.

A few miles away, in Mānoa Valley, Mike Price is monitoring bread baking in the brick oven. Another day begins.

 Sean Saiki arrives to Cafe Maru around 11 p.m. to check on one of his several bars and nightclubs, which also include The District and Ginza. Earlier, he had spent the day working in the kitchen of his newest Raging Crab location in ‘Aiea, shown above.

FLUX FEATURE

The Staff of Life

Big Island Dairy and La Tour Bakehouse compete to produce staple goods and contribute toward creating a market of self-sufficiency in the islands.

IMAGES BY MEGAN SPELMAN & JOHN HOOK

TEXT BY SONNY GANADEN

The reason cows weren’t part of the scenery when Captain Cook first met Hawaiians might be because, like many things, cattle didn’t fit in a canoe. In 1793, British sea captain George Vancouver attempted a clumsy remedy, arriving on Hawai‘i Island with a gift of several longhorn cattle for high chief Kamehameha. They were called pua‘a pepeiaohao, or “pigs with iron ears,” as Hawaiians had never seen horns. The king placed a ban on harming them, and within a few generations, the slopes of Mauna Kea were overrun by herds. Over a century, the culture of the Hawaiian cowboy, or paniolo, emerged on all islands, in addition to a cottage dairy industry. By the 1970s, 100 percent of Hawai‘i’s milk supply came from Hawai‘i cows. A few decades later, that number shrank drastically, and today, in every community besides Hawai‘i Island, merely 20 percent of the milk supply is produced by local cows.

For centuries, milk has served as the sustenance of childhood and the promise of a hopeful future. In fact, milk from cows was integral to the development of civilization, and its availability, along with other staples like grain, became an indicator of wealth. (The ancient Egyptians amassed harvests in grain banks, using the crop as a currency for several millennia.) The notion continues today, when the availability of staple goods such as these often serve as useful, colloquial metrics of one’s standard of living: While gasoline prices fluctuate in relation to powers outside of local control, the price and quality of items like bread and milk speak volumes about the efficiency of local government, the health of the private sector, and quality of life. Nobody asks about the median household income in conversation. If you want a quick metric of the good life, you ask: “How much is a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread?” If you can afford a decent sandwich and a latte for $10, good living is not far off.

Relying on external sources for perishable commodities (interchangeable goods that spoil at an established rate) such as milk means that Hawai‘i is susceptible to the volatility of global trade. We’ve all heard how it could get worse: With an estimated 90 percent of food being imported for 1.4 million residents, the islands have only 10 days of fresh produce and dairy should cargo ships stop arriving. When it comes to food products,

the market, and hence availability, are often confined by economics. The dollar doesn’t go very far in Hawai‘i, which has a cost of living that is 85 percent higher than others; here, nearly half of adult residents live paycheck to paycheck. Still, jobs have been steadily increasing in Hawai‘i for several years, and the jobless rate is at an all-time low. In the 2016 fiscal year, the state had a record-setting $1 billion general treasury cash surplus, primarily because of tourism. But tourism waxes and wanes, and it is through industries that don’t rely on it that Hawai‘i will move toward a more sustainable economic future. Still, not everyone wants to be a dairy farmer or baker, roles with famously odd hours and unique smells. But these are the sorts of jobs that have traditionally provided middle-class wages in first-world nations. In Hawai‘i, an isolated archipelago with a considerably high quality of life, farming and baking are the sorts of commodity-producing careers that have become devalued with the ascendance of a tourism-based economy. For the last several decades, both industries have been dominated by a few local companies that provide stable, well-paying jobs. But by becoming serious contenders in local commodities production, two other Hawai‘ibased companies, Big Island Dairy and La Tour Bakehouse, are expanding the local economy, the affordability of everyday items, and by extension, the purchasing power of local consumers.

COW ISLAND

In 1929, five years after the introduction of mechanical refrigeration to Hawai‘i, C.W. Reynolds, the Industrial Secretary of the United States, created a report to assess the development of dairy across the islands. “Ask the dairymen of Wisconsin or Minnesota what the results would be if they could be given a succession of twelve months like June,” Reynolds wrote of Hawai‘i’s picturesque climate. “Give Hawaii knowledge of dairying held by these two states and anticipate the answer.” The secretary was under the impression that Hawai‘i could experience massive yields in its expanding dairy industry. The retail cost of a quart of milk was 30 cents, delivered to your home or office in a milk bottle, capped with a paper cap, what locals called a “pog.” The

If you can afford a decent sandwich and a latte for $10, good living is not far off.

 Big Island Dairy, whose general manager, Brad Duff, is shown above, is helping to expand the local economy.

industrial secretary advocated for 20-year leases to allow for the development of long-term irrigation plans for dairies, and referenced developing creameries in New Zealand and Japan, which had similar populaces that were becoming accustomed to dairy products. By the writing of the report, the territory had mandated that milk be served with public school meals, creating a built-in demand for the product.

By the 1960s, dozens of farms across the islands produced all the milk consumed locally. Farmers fed their cattle the dried stems and stumps of pineapple and dietary fiber from sugar industry byproduct. As a result of disagreements between processors like Meadow Gold and small family farms, called the “Milk Wars,” the state passed a law in 1967 that dictated the price at which milk is purchased from farmers, but not the price at which it is sold to consumers. Cattle husbandry, in the dairy industry and in paniolo contests, had become ingrained in local culture. In 1976, the winner of the national hand-milking contest, held annually in Sacramento, California, was a local guy, Mr. Walter Carlos, who pulled an impressive 13.6 lbs. of milk in a single sitting.

Around the same time, the cost of land and feed was becoming burdensome to local dairy farmers, who begun to rely on mainland corn and grain. Meanwhile, the cost of freight from the U.S. mainland had decreased dramatically, and the speed of ships had increased. Hawai‘i began importing milk in 1985, and not long after, dozens of dairies across the islands were shuttered. In 2004, when Foremost Dairy closed, Meadow Gold—originally Dairymen’s Association, Ltd., a cooperative of a few family farms across O‘ahu—became the only pasteurization and distribution facility in Hawai‘i, with one site in urban Honolulu, and the other near the airport in Hilo on Hawai‘i Island.

Today, a gallon of local milk can cost nearly $8, which is more than double the average price of milk in other U.S. states. Prices are dictated by an iniquitous alliance of factors: the state-regulated purchase price, the lack of dairy farms on the islands, and the vagaries of the market across the sea. As a result of the federal Jones Act, vessels that transport cargo or passengers between two U.S. ports must be built, crewed, and owned by Americans, meaning that refrigerated containers making a beeline from California to Hawai‘i with perishable milk are operating without international competition. And when feed or fuel costs increase for Northern California dairies, where Meadow Gold purchases most of its “pool” of milk, which includes milk from local farms, so too does the price of milk.

Nearly an hour’s drive up the coast from Hilo is the 2,500acre Big Island Dairy in ‘Ō‘ōkala, the largest local dairy in present production, and one of the last two large-scale milk producers in the state. Father-son owners Steven and Derek

 For years, Meadow Gold has been the only pasteurization facility in the state, but Big Island Dairy, pictured, hopes to become a rival with the completion of its own facility.

Whitesides, who also own a 6,400-cow dairy in Idaho, purchased the dairy in 2012 in hopes of modernizing the operation and increasing Hawai‘i’s local supply. Seen through a window in the dairy’s administrative office is the milking parlor, where cows queue themselves into respective metal holders while a worker brushes iodine onto their teats, then gently applies a milking machine, which detaches itself like something out of a science fiction film when its pressure monitor senses that the cow is done for the session. “It’s a double parallel rapid release parlor, ready for the 21st century,” says Brad Duff, the dairy’s general manager, who is from Iowa. “The goal is to make these cows as comfortable as possible, which an experienced dairyman can tell by the sheen of their coats, by the affect of their demeanor. Most of these cows are milked three times a day, and we ship 24,000 gallons a week.” Big Island Dairy has room to grow to its allowed 2,000 cows, but presently it milks only 1,200—a tenth of the size of the mega milking operations throughout the American western states, which have an economy of scale that allows them to cut costs.

The environmental results of massive agribusiness, particularly cattle, are becoming known. A smaller number of cows means a smaller carbon footprint, but it also means a lower sale price. In other economic sectors, this could mean that a local producer is cut out of the market. But milk, like bread, is a perishable commodity, and the shorter the period between cow and consumer, the more viable the product. All of Big Island Dairy’s 4 million gallons produced each year go to a single plant for processing: Meadow Gold, which still handles pasteurization and distribution from its facilities in Hilo and Honolulu. This means that 80 percent of the milk sold on Hawai‘i Island is truly local, having been milked from cows on island, pasteurized and packaged there, and then distributed to several island grocery store chains, including Costco. To compete with the milk coming from California, Big Island Dairy must be obsessive about its cows. “Some healthy, recently calved

cows produce as much as 120 pounds of milk per day,” Duff says. “Though the goal is about 80 pounds per head.”

Per federal and state regulations, the lives of dairy cows are highly regulated. Everything else is determined by the market. “If the market dictated that we needed to produce organic milk, we’d do it,” Duff says, explaining that organic milk means that cows eat only organic feed. “As is, people aren’t willing to pay upwards of $16 a gallon.” To offset the cost of feed, Big Island Dairy attempts to grow much of its own. Over 350 acres are dedicated to corn, which ferments in a large, cylindrical plastic bag 3 meters high and is later mixed with a variety of other imported feed. The lot fronting the dairy’s administration building is abuzz with the construction of a new pasteurization facility. Once it ʼ s completed, Big Island Dairy hopes to become a rival to Meadow Gold, which may lead to lower costs for consumers.

On the day I visit the dairy, flocks gather where the feed is stored in a setup that resembles a series of handball courts filled with grain, a version of bird heaven. In the barn, a metal skidsteer continually sweeps the length of the pen, pushing fresh droppings through grates. “They eat, they drink, they give milk, they poop; these are the certainties of a cow,” Duff says. It’s a wonder of modern farming that milk survives rigorous testing from a variety of federal, state, and independent agencies, which mandate that entire silos of milk be dumped if a test shows contamination.

The fight over the smell of wafting manure, as well as the risk of contaminated runoff, is being played out on the south shore of Kaua‘i, where another local dairy is attempting to open. In the post-sugar era, the state invested in tourism to replace a century of an agricultural economy, which included the dairy industry. The gorgeous and historic southern shore of Kaua‘i, like South Maui and the coast of Kailua-Kona on Hawai‘i Island, became an exclusive visitor zone, with world-class golf courses dotting its coastline. Here, in 2013, Hawai‘i’s richest resident, Pierre Omidyar, the founder

of eBay whose network of investments constitute a significant bloc of nongovernmental organizations, purchased 557 acres in Maha‘ulepu Valley in hopes of building a dairy through his organization Ulupono Initiative. According to Ulupono Initiative, the dairy could produce 1.2 million gallons of milk per year, using a sustainable, pasture-based system. The proposed development has its detractors, however, and has been challenged in court on two separate occasions, first by Kawailoa Development, which owns the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort and Spa, in 2014, and then by a group called Friends of Maha‘ulepu in 2015. Kawailoa’s award-winning Poipu Bay Golf Course, built on former agriculture land after a protracted battle in state courts, is directly downwind of the proposed dairy. From the perspective of residents who want fresh, affordable milk products, it remains debatable whether a golf course is better for the community than a pool of manure.

A BAKERY IN THE SKY

Once it is milled, grain—the foundation of any good bread—can be stored for months. “There’s a reason bread created civilization,” Trung Lam says from the 60,000-square-foot La Tour Bakehouse located on the second floor of the La Tour Plaza on Nimitz Highway. Much like the missionaries who settled in the islands who found themselves without that familiar taste of home, Trung’s father, Thanh Lam, an immigrant from Vietnam who arrived to Hawai‘i in 1984, was dismayed by the lack of fresh bread available for his Vietnamese grab-andgo sandwich shop Ba-Le, which he had opened in Chinatown, Honolulu with his wife and business partner, Le Vo. More than 130 years prior, another immigrant baker to Hawai‘i, a Scotsman named Robert Love, found himself in the Kingdom of Hawai‘i. By the time Love opened his bakery in 1853, there was money to be made baking the hardtack that was eaten aboard whaling ships. The Love family expanded the business over decades, and went on

to dominate the wholesale baking industry across the islands, offering hundreds of wellpaid jobs to residents. Today, as the state’s largest supplier of freshly baked breads, Love’s continues delivering everything from sliced bread to Hostess cupcakes across O‘ahu and to neighbor islands via tightly scheduled air transport, while frozen, thawed, and sometimes re-baked bread appears in fast food restaurants and grocery aisles.

“I want to be like Love’s,” Thanh Lam told Honolulu food critic John Heckathorn in 1986, two years after opening Ba-Le. To meet their sandwich ingredient needs, Thanh, whose sons Trung and Brandon were 5 and 3, respectively, at the time, had begun baking baguettes in the back of the shop, creating a freshness that added to the popularity of Ba-Le’s bánh mi, a sandwich that fuses French bread with the Vietnamese flavors of fresh cilantro and do chua (pickled daikon and carrots). The bread became locally famous, and orders for the baguettes began spilling in from other restaurants. By the time Trung and Brandon were in their 20s, there were 24 Ba-Le shops operating across O‘ahu, run by members of the Lam family or workers promoted from within.

In 1996, to keep up with orders, Thanh built a bakery near the O‘ahu Community Correctional Facility on Dillingham Boulevard. Fifteen years later, with Trung, Brandon, and local baker and pastry chef Rodney Weddle, Thanh expanded again, this time on the site on Nimitz Highway, where Dole Pineapple once packaged its pineapple products for global distribution. He renamed the building La Tour Plaza, and installed a massive bakery on the second floor that he called La Tour Bakehouse to reflect a turn toward artisanal breads. On the first floor, co-owners and lessees opened a variety of businesses, and the Lams opened La Tour Café, a casual, European-style spot serving bread fresh out of the ovens upstairs. The Bakehouse employs 140 people and runs its bakery around the clock, supplying artisanal bread or dough to hotels, supermarkets, and restaurants across the state. It also stocks the 19 Ba-Le restaurants and three La Tour Café locations across the island.

“Everything about operating in Hawai‘i is expensive,” says Trung, who can reasonably be described as the company’s chief operations officer. “We can save money through automation, and through smart

business practices.” They do so with massive 21st century ovens and calibrated machines that knead and cut dough precisely, so as to allow dough to rise or fall according to specific recipes. To compete in a market that literally feeds Hawai‘i, La Tour Bakehouse has had to learn the lessons of innovation and cost-reduction quickly, which, in turn, benefits the consumer.

The ubiquity of daily bread has meant that for centuries, bakeries, and bakers themselves, are the heartbeat of community. Bread is much more than the staff of life; it is the host of the spirit, and what is metaphorically broken during a peace treaty. La Tour Bakehouse is built on a global truism: that freshly baked bread is life-sustaining and delicious; and day-old bread is stale and inferior. Everyone from the day laborer to the company boss can afford something fresh off the bakery menu. Baking is a job that requires good spirits, good shoes, and in return, should deliver a livable wage—historically, in Hawai‘i and around the world, it has. The islands’ reliance on frozen bread and imported milk roughly tracked the reliance on a servicebased tourism economy, which, while capricious, is currently booming. But in order for the islands to be self-sufficient in the 21st century, there must exist opportunities for employment in commodities production, as well as in the service industry.

The American Dream was never the sole property of Americans, but of the vast majority of humanity. Whatever it is, the Lams have achieved it. Gallons of milk and loaves of bread—these are the daily items that make up the moments of our lives across the economic spectrum. Whether these products come from our community, and how much we pay for them, matters.

Residents in the islands are often reminded of the issue of food security when purchasing groceries, or lunch. A few weeks after my visit to the dairy, I attempt to get an affordable, all-local lunch for under $10 at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. At Ba-Le, I order a $5 veggie bánh mi, which is made with bread I know was baked hours previous in the dark of night, and then stuffed with vegetables sourced from local farmers. A short walk away, I order a latte made with coffee beans grown on Hawai‘i Island, pricier than the house blend, for $4. Holding up the line, I pester the cashier to find out where the milk comes from.

In order for Hawai‘i to be self-sufficient in the 21st century, there must exist opportunities for employment in commodities production.

 La Tour Bakehouse, which was founded by the father of Trung Lam, shown above, employs 140 people and runs its bakery around the clock, providing freshly baked artisanal bread to consumers across O‘ahu.

The Living Projects

Some call themselves intentional communities. Others are considered alternative spiritualities. At times, they have been labeled cults. Numerous such groups have been drawn to Hawai‘i, and more are trying to start here today. But why?

TEXT BY ANNA HARMON

IMAGES BY JAYSON TUNTLAND, DAVID CHATSUTHIPHAN, & JOHN HOOK

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MITCHELL

FONG

 For members of the Source Family—founded by Jim Baker, a party-loving businessman inspired by the mysticism of Punjabi Sikh Yogi Bhajan—Lanikai was connected to Bethlehem and Egypt, creating a portal to the “other side,” according to Isis Aquarian.

On August 25, 1975, Jim Baker, aka Father Yod, aka YaHoWha, who sometimes considered himself God, and at other times realized he was merely a man with a following who believed him to be divine, jumped off Kamehame Ridge on O‘ahu’s east side. A number of his wives, who had joined Baker at the launch site overlooking Rabbit Island, begged him not to make the leap—it was to be his first attempt at hang gliding, and the 53-year-old had received no prior preparation or practice. He pushed off anyway, and after a heavy drop and short glide, he landed hard on a nearby beach. His companions rushed to his side and brought him, breathing but in pain, back to a house in Lanikai.

These enchanting, long-haired people wearing mostly white garb were members of the Source Family, and the followers of The Eternal Now, started in Los Angeles by Baker—a U.S. Marine-turned-restaurateur and spiritual leader—at his eatery on Sunset Boulevard, The Source. Here, the party-loving businessman pioneered holistic organic fare that he said was inspired by a trip to Samoa, where he saw a population suffering due to a diet of processed foods imported from the United States. Wanderers were drawn to the restaurant for work, and it was here that Baker started hosting his own Sunday classes and meditations that were spins on the mysticism he had experienced in Los Angeles while studying under Yogi Bhajan, the Punjabi Sikh who introduced Kundalini yoga to the United States. Over several years, this loose group of staff and devotees turned into a tightknit community, living communally and delving into magic, meditation, marijuana, mushrooms, rock and roll, and sex rituals. At the helm was Baker, influencing the twists and turns of their spiritual adventures.

By 1974, at which point Baker had become YaHoWha and had traded monogamy for 13 wives, the group of roughly 100 to 150 was living in a crowded space in the Hollywood Hills. Source Family children were born

at home and were homeschooled. Authorities began to look into the group after a baby arrived to the hospital with a staph infection, and other children, it was discovered, were not attending local schools. Having visited Hawai‘i on a honeymoon with his third wife, Robin, in 1968, Baker sent all Source Family mothers, children, and a few of its male members first to Moloka‘i, then to Maui, in order to avoid prying eyes. The new arrivals were also tasked with looking for the collective’s new home.

Baker told anyone who would listen of this imminent relocation to Hawai‘i. He painted a picture of a self-sufficient future with large orchards of mangos, macadamia nuts, and limes; a dairy operation; a boat for fishing; an alternate power system. Once established on Maui, the group would set up a profitable retreat. His devotees also spread the word. A letter addressed to “Dear Friend” and signed “I. David Warren, Ph.D, for The Brotherhood of The Source” mentioned that they would take “precautions for our own protection … if law and order should ever break down.” The letter called it “The Ultimate Community.”

A few months later, all members of the Source Family had relocated to Kaua‘i. “Beyond its natural splendor, Father was convinced that during giant geological shift and world wars to come, Kauai’s mountains would rise rather than sink, and the Hawaiian islands, being further away from the continents than anything else on the planet, would be spared nuclear fallout from the mainland,” writes Isis Aquarian, the community’s historian, and one of YaHoWha’s wives, in The Untold Story of Father Yod , YaHoWha 13, and The Source Family . “Since [the] island was mostly rural and undeveloped, we imagined it would be the perfect place for us to live together without being hassled by authorities.”

But when the Source Family arrived on the Garden Isle in the end of 1974, the island’s population was already fed up with Taylor Camp, a commune in Kalalau where squatters from the mainland, avoiding the draft or searching for meaning, lived, often in

the nude, in elaborate treehouses. Baker tried to counter being associated with the “dirty hippies” by proposing to the local newspaper that the Source Family rid the islands of Taylor Camp residents. But the conspicuous attire and bizarre spiritual language of Baker and his associates, as well as their inability to find employment or feed themselves, estranged them from Kaua‘i residents. “We came to realize that perhaps we were not the gods we’d been named after,” Isis writes. “We were human, vulnerable, on our own.”

Unable to survive the surprisingly harsh conditions, the Source Family relocated to San Francisco while Baker traveled the world, searching for a more satisfactory home base. He came nearly full circle, settling in Hilo on Hawai‘i Island in June 1975. This time, those who joined him found work and acceptance, and also bonded with the Love Israel family, a similar new religious group that was residing in the town. But while many of the Source Family followed their god to Hilo, the broader group had begun to disband.

One member, Mercury Aquarian, had moved to O‘ahu’s east side community of Lanikai, where he was pursuing competitive hang gliding. On July 30, Baker decided to visit Mercury, who was living with a small contingency of wives and children. The Mokulua Islands resonated with them immediately. “We instantly sensed that the energy between the islands was a portal to the ‘other side’ and was very sacred,” Isis writes. “We were told that the lines of the earth align from Lanikai to Bethlehem to Egypt, creating a pyramid/triangle. There is an ancient saying among Hawaiians that this area is the navel of the planet.”

It was here, in this temporary home overlooking the ocean, where Baker

 On August 25, 1975, Baker attempted to hang glide from a launch site on Kamehame Ridge overlooking Rabbit Island, and died three days later as a result of injuries he sustained in a crash landing on the shore.

spoke of dissolving the group. Having sold his restaurant and depleted the assets, financially supporting his needy extended clan was becoming increasingly difficult, and he felt it was time for them to make do on their own. Or maybe he had wearied of his elaborate leadership role and the rituals he had created. Whether hang gliding was a way to shake off the shroud of age, or to move on to another plane of being, Baker accomplished both. Three days after Baker crashed on that east O‘ahu shoreline, he died at the house in Lanikai of complications resulting from the rough landing. For another three and a half days, members kept his body there, chanting over it as had become their tradition. 

The 1960s and ’70s saw a boom in the formation of alternative spiritualities across the United States. Some groups practicing them lived communally, like the Source Family. Often, their founders mixed Eastern mysticism with Christianity, and appropriated practices and terminology of indigenous populations, like shamanism. Others revolved around ancient astrological beliefs, or encounters with aliens. A number of academics associate the start of this expansion of new religions with the time shortly after World War II, when the world began to rapidly globalize, and Americans at home and abroad increasingly encountered Buddhism, Hinduism, and yogis swiftly debuting in India. Along with this increased exposure to other belief systems, the injustices of the Vietnam War and the aspirations of the Civil Rights Movement spurred the U.S. population to question the status quo, and to search out better ways of being, and living.

In 1968, Victor “Vic” Baranco founded Morehouse. Like Baker, Vic was a former U.S. Marine and businessman searching for greater meaning, and preaching his discoveries along the way. When Brian Shekeloff, one of Vic’s longest companions, met him in 1967, he saw someone “with the demeanor of a slick salesman,” “a flashy thug” who “spoke something that sounded like a mixture of Existentialism and Buddhism,” as Shekeloff describes in an online essay titled “How I Met Vic.” Shekeloff had come with his wife to one of Vic’s gatherings to work on their marriage, and despite his initial impressions

of the man, he was drawn to his charisma and guru-like understanding of female-male relationships. Soon, Vic’s philosophy diverged from mysticism, focusing instead on the present experience. “I am perfect, you are perfect, and the universe is perfect” became his mantra.

In 1968, Vic and his first wife, Susie, with whom he cofounded the organization, bought a home with several followers in Oakland in an attempt to live communally. Thus, the original Morehouse was born, named for a spin on Vic’s teaching that the world is already good, so more must mean better, something those in the house would strive to perceive. They painted the place purple. “We think it only fair to let people know that they are entering an unusual situation,” explains the Morehouse website. “Besides, it’s a fun color.” Alongside other devotees around California who started their own purple houses, Morehouse members explored and documented the best ways to live together, enjoy sex, and be responsibly hedonistic (pursuing pleasure not just for oneself, but for all). “Don’t do anything you don’t want to do” and “serve the world unselfishly and profit by it” became mottos for members, and remain so today. By 1976, Morehouse preached the importance and machinations of the female orgasm, which Vic publicized by way of a three-hour demonstration with a female student. By this time, the group had a central house in Lafayette in northern California, along with other abodes that came and went, like the Venice Morehouse in Los Angeles. These communes functioned by democratic rule, which required complete agreement amongst members (one way in which Vic excused himself from daily leadership roles). To get things done, like building a pool, the residents threw parties that all attended. The group became so confident in its practices that it started providing courses on sexual pleasure, relationships, and communal living, even offering a Ph.D. from its More University from 1979 to 1997. Vic’s second wife, Cynthia, who goes by Cindy, joined him at the organization’s helm in 1976 and helped structure the courses. In 1988, Vic, Cindy, and a few other Morehouse members moved to O‘ahu. They renovated a decrepit sugarcane shack in Pupukea on the North Shore, adding a pool and an annex, and painting their new home, Morehouse Hawaii, purple. They were

“I am perfect, you are perfect, and the universe is perfect” was the mantra of Vic Baranco, the founder of Morehouse, a group that explores communal living, sexual pleasure, and responsible hedonism.

friendly with the community, but were quickly embroiled in a legal battle—in January 1989, upon searching the house, police found “approximately fifty units of the drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in a Bible.” The Barancos got off scot-free due to a mistrial, and any noted scandal in Hawai‘i stops there. While other Morehouse locations remain as active communes that host gatherings, the O‘ahu house seems to have receded into the horizon of the group, becoming more of a retreat for core members, a stopover for those traveling through, or an occasional gathering place. It is hard to learn anything about this location beyond what is shared on its Facebook page (the most recent post was in 2015) or the Lafayette Morehouse website. What is mentioned is that Vic Baranco died in Hawai‘i in 2006; Shekeloff met his wife at the house in the 1990s and died there in July 2014; and Cindy Baranco called Pupukea home through 2015, and still resides there at least periodically. (I reached out to Lafayette Morehouse about the Pupukea house multiple times, and to a few Hawai‘i residents associated with it. The only individual to respond was a woman on the North Shore who said Lafayette Morehouse doesn’t operate in Hawai‘i, only California, where its communal house is located, and where the group’s classes are based.)

Today, residents at the Lafayette home teach about aging gracefully in communes and about the sexual potential of menopause, in addition to their staple courses. Other Morehouse locations, including the original one in Oakland, and another founded in Atlanta in 1989, continue to follow the model set forth by Vic and his gang. The organization’s longevity may be accredited to Vic’s limited role in daily communal operations, and to his choice to preach relationships instead of divining spirituality. Its staying power could also be due to the fact that he shared the helm with his wives, including Cindy, who continues to shape Morehouse philosophies to this day.

Such communities aren’t only products of the 1960s and ’70s. In the early 1980s, when conservatism and consumerism were rising in reaction to previous decades, a failed actor, aspiring dancer, and trained hypnotherapist gathered his own following in Los Angeles. Born Jaime Gomez, he went by the name Michel. To those who joined his group, which came to be known as Buddhafield, he was The Teacher. Later, in Austin, he changed his name to Andreas. Today, on O‘ahu, he identifies as Reyji.

In 1985, Will Allen became one of Gomez’s avid students. That year, Allen had returned to Los Angeles from Texas, where he had majored in film at Southern Methodist University. When he told his parents he was gay, they kicked Allen out of the house, and his older sister Amy, who now goes by Emiliana, invited him to Buddhafield. “Constantly, you were being fed. Your soul was being fed, with love, and with inspiration, and awe,” she says in Holy Hell , the documentary about the group that her brother made after he left Buddhafield. Gomez led his followers to frolic in the ocean, dance in the forest, and experience vivid spiritual encounters through his touch. They meditated, did yoga, and aspired to be beautiful—externally as well as internally. Their bonds, as well as the group’s finances, were strengthened by members living together in houses of up to eight, sharing expenses, responsibilities, and social lives. “It was a sort of microcosm of a community, and we loved it,” Allen says. “It was an experiment without us realizing it. … It was getting deeper and more involved, and we were all a part of that creation.” Gomez was the epitome of a modern guru. “He wasn’t some little old man with a grey beard in a dhoti, he was wearing Speedos and Ray-Bans and dancing to contemporary music,” says former member Radhia Gleis in Holy Hell. The

teacher slowly tightened his control over the group, denouncing sex and romantic relationships, selectively offering coveted spiritual encounters, demanding financing for—and participation in— elaborate theatrical performances for which there were no audiences, and requiring everyone to meet with him for one-on-one regression hypnotherapy, or “cleansing” sessions, which cost $50 each. Throughout this time, Allen was one of Gomez’s closest devotees.

By 1990, there were between 100 and 120 members in Buddhafield, and Gomez was feeling the tension of having been labeled a cult leader. “The group think, the isolation, having a leader tell you what to do—they all have to be present to be a cult,” Allen says. “We used to laugh knowing we had all these things. We thought we were on top of it.” The sociological classification of a cult is a religious or social group with deviant or novel beliefs and practices. Today, the preferred academic terms for such organizations are “alternative spiritualities,” or “new religious movements,” broader categories that avoid the negative connotation of “cult.” The latter also implies that they may manifest mainstream religions, such as the trajectory of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

To evade prying eyes, Gomez flew with a select few, including Allen, to Maui, where they vacationed and searched for a new location for Buddhafield. “It was the weather,” Allen says of Gomez’s attraction to Hawai‘i. “He’s a sunbather, he’s a swimmer.” But unable to find a suitable spot, in 1991, Gomez instead relocated the group to Austin, Texas, a liberal city with economic opportunities for its members. Over the course of 15 years, members followed his direction, which became increasingly bizarre as he exploited his

 In 1988, Baranco and other Morehouse members moved to O‘ahu, renovating a decrepit sugarcane shack in Pupukea on the North Shore and painting it purple.

power and pursued physical beauty. Loathe to have any children in the group, Gomez insisted that pregnant members get abortions. According to the documentary, he even had members test plastic surgery procedures on themselves before he underwent any himself. But everything came crashing down in 2006 when a member sent an email to group members, accusing Gomez of sexually abusing male disciples. In the months and years following, more than a dozen men in Buddhafield came forward to corroborate the claim. The group imploded as its members resisted and then confronted this new knowledge. Gomez denies the accusations to this day.

Some of the men threatened to press charges if Gomez didn’t give up his role of teacher and guru. Other members insisted he stop his work. To bring an end to everything, they decided to send their fallen leader away. “There was a girl in the group who always lived on the islands, and she knew O‘ahu very well,” Allen says. “She said Lanikai is the best place you’ll want to live.” They found a house in the neighborhood to rent, and 12 faithful disciples accompanied Gomez to Hawai‘i. Allen, feeling obligated to his teacher, was among them.

According to Allen, there were numerous reasons to come to the islands. For one, it was a place of spiritual acceptance without judgment. “A lot of people have come here before to find themselves, or are looking and searching,” he says. For a few months, Allen helped Gomez get settled, while coming to terms with the fact that the leader had also sexually abused him for years. “I had compartmentalized it, I never spoke about it, I was never able to come to terms with it or call it abuse at the time,” he says. Allen extricated himself from Gomez’s companionship, and found solidarity in Honolulu’s gay community. A couple years later, he moved back to the mainland.

Over the last two decades of his life, Allen had served as Buddhafield’s de facto videographer, and he decided to turn this footage into a documentary. To film the ending of the story, he returned to O‘ahu, where he and other former

members thought Gomez was pursuing a normal, quiet life with his few remaining followers. But back in Hawai‘i, Allen realized his former teacher was again recruiting, bringing local residents into his fold via his participation in Kailua’s holistic yoga community. “That was really shocking for everyone,” Allen says. “We would have stopped him a long time ago if we felt he wasn’t going to stop himself.”

In 1974, hundreds of followers of James Warren “Jim” Jones relocated from San Francisco to the South American country of Guyana. A decades-old religion rooted in equality and Christianity, The Peoples Temple had been labeled a cult, and Jones led the intercontinental move to avoid potential persecution. He chose Guyana because its official language was English, and because its socialist government seemed more aligned with his principles. The group obtained land and attempted to grow its own food, catch rainwater, and establish a selfsustaining religious community. This community became known as Jonestown, the now infamous site where more than 900 inhabitants downed cyanide-laced Kool-Aid in an act of mass suicide in anticipation of U.S. officials cracking down on the compound.

Like Guyana, Hawai‘i has been perceived as a sanctuary where individuals can find freedom from persecution, with the ideal land on which to create a sustainable community, and neighbors who are open to different spiritualities and daily practices. And like California, Hawai‘i has also become a hub of new-age spirituality, drawing people searching for holistic health and alternative lifestyles. Millions of vacationers to Hawai‘i have perpetuated the picture of the islands as a welcoming paradise where money, in the form of fruit, grows on trees.

Right now, on the website of the Fellowship for Intentional Community, which is dedicated to planned residential communities in which members support each other and pursue shared visions, there are 46 intentional

communities looking for others to join them in Hawai‘i. Most don’t yet exist. One listing on the site welcomes circus performers to a decades-old group living on Hawai‘i Island. Another is looking for members to help establish a location in Puna, where residents would reject consumerism and follow in the footsteps of Jesus. A third hopes to start a community for transgenders, with Hindu god and goddess Ardhanarishvara as its spiritual center. Its online profile explains that Hawai‘i is the perfect place for the community, an island paradise with a Polynesian culture that honors transgender persons.

But these communities have a hard time getting off the ground. (Most on the Fellowship for Intentional Community site seem to have gone stagnant.) Maintaining them is another struggle. Such lifestyles require wholehearted devotion, a fair amount of funding, and shared goals—difficult with different politics, spiritual stances, personalities, and ideas of employment. Perhaps what aspiring communal inhabitants need to do is review the Morehouse philosophy. Perhaps they need a unifying faith. Perhaps they need a leader. Then again, perhaps not.

At the house in Lanikai, in the days before his ill-fated hang gliding attempt, Jim Baker surrounded himself with his wives and spoke of his unforeseen death. “He had told us that when he did go, it would be to prepare our next home on Sirius, the brightest star in the galaxy,” Isis writes. After the family notified the police of Baker’s passing, the Honolulu Advertiser ran a story about his death and the group’s three-day posthumous ritual. On the same page, alongside this piece, was an unrelated article about a literal celestial body, titled, “New star shines its light on Hawaii.” Its brightness had increased suddenly, so that it was, for the first time, visible in the night skies.

 The Speedo-sporting, Ray Ban-wearing former leader of the spiritual group Buddhafield, Jaime Gomez, relocated to O‘ahu after being attracted to the temporal weather found in the isles.

Living Well

Experience the art of living well in Hawai‘i. In this special section, read a survey of contemporary housing, discover tips for making over your space, and learn about a few artisans and businesses who can help you do so. Shown here is Lavaflow 1, a home on the Big Island designed by Craig Steely.

New Kids on the Block

Since Ossipoff and the midcentury, new technology has enabled designers to create impressive, eco-conscious spaces.

TEXT BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

When the Honolulu Museum of Art mounted the exhibition Hawaiian Modern in 2007, it solidified Vladimir Ossipoff as Hawai‘i’s preeminent architect. Famed for his sensitivity to place, Ossipoff designed more than 1,000 buildings in and outside of Hawai‘i during the middle of the 20th century, including Punahou’s Thurston Chapel, Outrigger Canoe Club, Honolulu

International Airport, the IBM Building, and dozens of private residences, his most famous being the Liljestrand House, set high upon Tantalus, an accepted masterpiece of midcentury modern design.

Especially in his residential work, Ossipoff, who was born in Russia and grew up in Japan, popularized the notion of blurring indoor and outdoor space, and of designing for Hawai‘i’s climates, creating a tropical modernism that fused Eastern and Western influences into something distinctly Hawaiian. Here was a foreigner who, nonetheless, captured something true and inalienable about this unique place.

Today, bolstered by the unflagging popularity of midcentury modern architecture, both locally and worldwide, Ossipoff is name-checked in books, retrospectives, and casual conversation, dominating lists of Hawai‘i’s best architecture, and inflating the prices of homes he is even rumored to have had a hand in designing. Ossipoff looms so large in Hawai‘i’s consciousness that he tends to overshadow the designers currently shaping its built environment. Some worry that fetishizing his work will

 Craig Steely’s Lavaflow 5, built on a remote Hāmākua Coast pasture, displays a modern sensibility but respects the land by having a small footprint. Image courtesy of Craig Steely.

overshadow the fact that architecture has come a long way in the past 20 years.

“I think Ossipoff is great,” says architect Craig Steely, who splits his time between Hawai‘i and San Francisco. “But for people to think that that’s as good as it gets, I think that’s a mistake.”

As it was in the 1960s, Hawai‘i’s built environment is being radically reimagined. For some, the soaring towers redrawing the city’s skyline exemplify architecture’s enslavement to the elite. But a survey of contemporary housing throughout the islands reveals a diverse roster of highly creative architects who, whether they call Hawai‘i home or not, are looking past the vaunted touchstones of the 20th century to find inspiration in both pre-contact Hawaiian architecture and the gritty urban fabric of 21st century Honolulu.

GLASS, STEEL, AND CONCRETE

At first glance, the clean, volumetric homes in Steely’s Lavaflow series have little in common with the thatchroofed hale, but the seven houses, including Steely’s own (Lavaflow 2), were inspired by the structures of early Hawai‘i. “Really, what it was about was protecting yourself from the rain and the sun—with whatever was available,” Steely says of early Hawaiian architecture. “And I still go back to that premise when I’m doing the projects I’m doing. The less you can build the better.”

Steely first came to Hawai‘i in 1998. A year later, he bought his own slice of Hawai‘i Island, just south of Pāhoa, and designed a small,

finishes outside versus inside. Image courtesy of Craig Steely.

sparsely furnished outpost for himself and his family amid a lava field (the first four of the Lavaflow series houses on Big Island were in such locations). Since then, he’s become passionate about educating the public on the value of good design. He gets annoyed when people attempt to conflate “historic Hawaiian architecture” with “plantation style,” i.e. stick-framed houses with deep eaves and hipped roofs. “Plantation style is essentially East Coast architecture that was brought in by the missionaries,” he says. “At its most benign, it’s just transplanted. But at its worst, it’s really a symbol of exploitation.”

Steely’s homes make heavy use of concrete and display a modern sensibility that has earned him repeated exposure in the pages of modern design magazine Dwell. Yet they respect the land by sitting lightly upon it, oriented to take advantage of natural breezes and equipped to capture rainwater.

Thanks in large part to Ossipoff, the idea of blending indoor and outdoor space has become commonplace in Hawai‘i, but Steely tries to emphasize the lānai as the primary living area by selecting higher-quality finishes outside versus those utilized inside. He believes even his use of certain modern materials honors

the Hawai‘i of old. “In a way,” he says, “the concrete houses and the steel houses have more to do with old Hawaiian architecture [than plantation-style houses] because we’re building with fewer parts.”

Building technologies also have evolved since Ossipoff’s time, allowing architects to design longerlasting structures. “Materials have gotten so much better,” Steely says. Architects can, for example, design a luxury residence that’s completely off the grid, which is what Steely is doing on a remote site along the Hāmākua Coast. The home’s massive, triangular roof is covered in solar panels that will

 Steely’s Lavaflow 4 emphasizes the lānai as the primary living area by utilizing higher-quality

generate all necessary electricity, while rainwater is directed to an interior courtyard, and then stored in an underground tank for future uses like irrigation.

Others are using technology to push architecture into new places, designing structures that weren’t possible 20 years ago. For example, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, one of the best-known architecture firms in the United States, designed a guesthouse and art gallery for a historic residence along Diamond Head Road. As a counterpoint to the existing home, a wood and stone masonry house designed by C.W. Dickey with wide roofs and deep eaves, the architects created a three-story, glass-enclosed studio joined via a glass bridge to the art gallery—an angular, double-curved volume clad in copper tiles that reinterprets Hawai‘i’s ubiquitous doublepitched roof.

Nate Smith, the project manager who oversaw the construction, says it was one of the most complex projects he has worked on, due to the complex geometries of the double-curve. “It was like building a football,” he says. But even such sophisticated architecture, if it’s good, is subservient to the site, says Robert Miller, who led the

design of the project, known as Waipolu Gallery, from Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s Seattle office. Despite its bold shape, the gallery allows visitors framed, unimpeded views of both Diamond Head and the ocean simultaneously. “Diamond Head becomes a piece of art, and the ocean becomes a piece of art,” Miller says. “It just happens to be changing as you’re watching it.”

TRICKLING DOWN, TRICKLING UP

Currently, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson is involved in a much larger residential project: Ae‘o tower in Ward Village, which broke ground this year. Honolulu’s new high rises have drawn both support and ire from the public, but they also have increased the visibility of architecture in Honolulu, where so much high design is hidden behind copper gates or impenetrable thickets of bamboo. Smith sees promise in the premium that Kaka‘ako’s developers have placed on design, and is counting on it having a trickle-down effect. “As you move from oceanfront back a block, you hope that [developers] don’t lose that level of [detail] and sensitivity to culture,” he says. “You hope that you get

 Left, Steely’s Lavaflow 7, located amid five acres of dense ‘ōhi‘a forest; top right, Lavaflow 2, on a cliff overlooking the ocean; bottom right, Lavaflow 1. Images courtesy of Craig Steely.

 Technology is allowing architects to create structures that weren’t possible two decades ago, including Waipolu Gallery, a residential studio and gallery near Diamond Head designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, one of the top architecture firms in the United States. Image courtesy of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson.

something special, that you can sit in that window and feel like somebody thought this through and wasn’t just trying to make a buck.”

A couple miles from Kaka‘ako, on a weedy residential lot in the McCully-Mo‘ili‘ili neighborhood, a very different experiment is underway. Currently under construction, Hau‘oli Lofts is a modest yet thoroughly modern nine-unit condo building that stands in sharp contrast to the highly curated, master-planned mini-city being built along the waterfront. The project is the brainchild of Wei Fang, cofounder of the designadvocacy organization Interisland Terminal, who enlisted Tadpole Studio, a four-person architecture firm based in Honolulu, to design it. Carefully slotted into the dense, urban community, the building embraces Hawai‘i in surprising ways.

Often, when architects talk about creating a “Hawaiian sense of place,” they evoke an older, purer Hawai‘i. But Bundit Kanisthakhon and Janice Li, who founded Tadpole Studio in 2001 in Bangkok before moving to Hawai‘i, looked to Honolulu’s urban fabric for inspiration for Hau‘oli Lofts. In its design, they incorporated elements from the surrounding neighborhood, including a decorative square concrete block detail reflecting that of an adjacent apartment building and thin concrete sunshades inspired by the façade of the Okahara Saimin Factory next door.

Hau‘oli Lofts presents a sort of trickle-up approach that feels democratic

and egalitarian, an acknowledgment of the existing community and the simple intelligence that is sometimes embedded in the city’s seemingly insignificant buildings. “It’s lasted this long,” says Kanisthakhon of the concrete block he and Li incorporated. “The neighborhood uses it. Why not learn from them?”

The building is also uniquely Hawaiian in another sense: Nearly every piece of the structure has been manufactured on O‘ahu. The concrete slabs were cast in Kapolei, the

windows in ‘Aiea, and the metalwork and cabinetry were fabricated in Kaka‘ako. Kanisthakhon compares it to food: “We use local ingredients,” he says.

Of course, Ossipoff also famously used local carpenters. But today, Hawai‘i has a thriving community of young artisans that Tadpole hopes to grow. “Without that, this island is going to keep relying on the craftsmen that come from the mainland,” Kanisthakhon says. “There’s not going to be any homegrown design or details.”

EXPERIMENTAL HOUSING

One thing that hasn’t changed in the past 50 years is that the right client can make all the difference.

(Howard and Betty Liljestrand spent 10 years looking for the property that would eventually become their home.) Several years ago, Collaborative Studio’s Cathi Ho Schar was hired by one of the most unusual clients she had ever met. His name was Mark Ariyoshi. Ariyoshi, a designer himself, had recently moved back to Honolulu

 Janice Li and Bundit Kanisthakhon of Tadpole Studio are designing a modest yet modern nine-unit condo building in the McCullyMo‘ili‘ili neighborhood, based on their Honolulu apartment.

Images by John Hook.

from Tacoma, Washington. His family owned a lot in Kaimukī, but the existing cottage on the land was falling apart. He wanted to build a new house, but he also wanted his efforts to benefit the community. So he turned the building of his home into a design competition.

“Mark was really strategic,” says Ho Schar, who also teaches at the University of Hawai‘i School of Architecture. “Private residences are typically very inward focused, self-centered, [but Mark] had a mission statement for his home. It wasn’t just, ‘I want a house for myself.’ It was, ‘I want a house that has a research potential to [explore] how you can integrate modern, sustainable, affordable design in Hawai‘i.’”

Collaborative Studio won the job and scrutinized every possible construction method, eventually designing a wood-framed house that is anything but traditional. They engineered the house to use 30 percent less lumber, strategically spacing out the studs and wood trusses. They raided Re-use Hawaii for reclaimed materials, including 2,000 square feet of Punahou School’s old gym floor, and they left much of the unfinished plywood exposed.

The resulting architecture is sparse but appealing. It’s clean and bathed in natural light, but also warm and singular in its idiosyncratic character. The structure also demonstrates that a low-tech home can be high-performing: With just ceiling fans and operable windows, the home stays

cool, even during Kaimukī’s hot summers. [Disclosure: The author’s father-in-law worked on the project.]

More importantly, the house, which has won multiple awards, was built for just $350,000, a fraction of what an architect-designed home often costs in Hawai‘i.

Although Ariyoshi was an atypical client, according to Ho Schar, his vision was representative of an evolution that is reshaping the architecture profession, both in and outside of Hawai‘i.

“You can’t be talking about style if you’re dealing with homelessness, affordability, traffic, coastal resilience, global climate change,” Ho Schar says. “That’s the conversation now. The industry had to move. The public mindset had to move.”

For younger designers, like the students Ho Schar

teaches at UH, these issues have formed a sort of grim reality that has inspired a new, more civic-minded generation of architects, many of whom hope to improve the quality of life for all who call Hawai‘i home, not just the mega-rich.

Newcomers are also adding nuance to how the world perceives Hawai‘i’s culture. “The last generation began to really appreciate Hawaiian culture for what it was,” Craig Steely says. “The younger generation has grown up with that appreciation for Hawaiian culture, but they also have an appreciation for Pacific Rim culture. They identify with stuff from California, they identify with stuff from Japan.”

Despite these evolutions, or perhaps because of them, no architect working in Hawai‘i yet enjoys the level of

prestige achieved by Ossipoff. But it may only be a matter of time. “There will be [another Ossipoff],” Nate Smith says. “There has to be. History will tell you that there will be.”

And yet the world has changed. It’s gotten smaller and more stratified. In Hawai‘i, half a century of development has taken its toll—on the environment and people—and architects are increasingly concerned with helping solve some of society’s greatest challenges. For many, what matters most are the ideas and the values that drive a building’s design, and the degree to which it transcends the physical to become an exploration of a place and its people, and the relationships between the two.

“That’s what architecture is,” Steely says. “Beyond that, it’s just building. It’s just a house.”

 Mark Ariyoshi challenged Cathi Ho Schar of Collaborative Studio to come up with an affordable and sustainable design for his Kaimukī home, shown left and above. Images by John Hook.

Latent

Possibilities

How to renovate a space on your own, with John and Karin Koga.

TEXT BY LISA YAMADA

IMAGES BY JONAS MAON

When John and Karin Koga decided to renovate John’s childhood house in Mānoa Valley in 2014, they were faced with the daunting task of what to do with the family home. Built in 1963, it was part of Manoa Acres, a residential subdivision that was pioneering at the time, with power lines that ran underground, a feature unique to the five-acre area. “But as time went on, [the

house] became somewhat of a hoarder’s home,” John says. “And it had a lot of walls. … I remember the house always being dark growing up.”

Still, John, who is a visual artist, saw the potential of the aged house. “That’s the hardest part, seeing what you might do with it instead of just knocking it down,” he says. “I think a lot of old homes have good shells. … The quality of materials used back then, like redwood, will last forever.”

The husband and wife planned a remodel that would celebrate the home, and, most importantly, create a functional, livable space for the entire family, including their two children and John’s brother. “Form followed the function,” Karin says. “We knew we were going to have a multi-family house, and that we wanted a separate studio space for John to work in. But you also want it to feel really good.”

With this vision in mind, John and Karin designed the new space, and brought on a general contractor and draftsperson to complete the work. The yearlong renovation resulted in a home that breathes, with an open-space design flooded with light and air. It has a museum-like quality, but without all the fussiness, in which every item has its place. This is on display, in the most enviable of ways, in the kitchen, where dinnerware sits alongside ceramic bowls made by John’s mother, all organized neatly on exposed shelving. Says Karin, “There’s a place

 “The more light and airflow in a home, the richer your life is going to feel,” says Karin, who insisted on having sliding glass doors in the sitting area.

 The Kogas’ renovation included an art studio for John, who makes the upstairs space available to Mariko Merritt, an artist who fashions small ceramic goods under her line Beachcake.

for everything, and because there’s a system in place, it automatically helps everyone to be organized.”

As an artist, John has a conceptual ability many might not have, but he believes that anyone can independently achieve his or her dream home.

“Working with an architect is going to add a lot to your cost,” he says. “I think anyone can design on their own with a draftsperson, but you have to be willing to put in the time and understand what you want.”

HERE’S WHAT THE KOGAS LEARNED:

1. ASSEMBLE A TEAM. If you’re going to remodel your own home, you’ll need a contractor and a draftsperson to render your ideas into architectural drawings. These will then need to be submitted to the county’s Department of Planning and Permitting. Be prepared to wait anywhere from a few months to a year for approval, depending on the complexity of the project.

2. GET A VISUAL. The Kogas were able to see their vision with sketches John made. He even built maquettes, miniature 3D models, out of cardboard. Once the home was emptied for remodeling, John used painter’s tape to outline where fixtures like sinks and cabinets would go. “Once we put the tape on the ground,” Karin says, “I could walk around and know immediately what was going to work and what wasn’t.”

3. UNDERESTIMATE YOUR BUDGET. The Kogas went over their budget due to change orders, which can result from any unforeseen additions or deletions to the original scope of work. “Set your budget below what you can actually afford—and I mean significantly lower—and don’t tell your contractor,” Karin says.

4. VISIT THE SITE. Translating your vision can easily go awry from conception to completion, so monitoring the progress is essential. “John came every day to check on the work,” Karin says. “There were small things he would catch, like which way the door opens.”

5. SPLURGE WHEN NECESSARY. Spend more on things you use a lot, and less on areas that are less frequented. “We spent a lot of money on our faucets, but I love our faucets,” Karin says. “If you get really good quality, they’re going to function better, and you’re going to like them longer.”

6. LIVE A LITTLE. Sometimes, Karin says, you just don’t know whether you’ll like or dislike something until you live with it. “John insisted on keeping the beams on the ceiling brown, then once we moved in, we realized they needed to be white. Sometimes you just don’t know until you move in.”

Artful Spaces

How to enliven spaces with art, as curated by Kelly Sueda.

TEXT BY LISA YAMADA

IMAGES BY JOHN HOOK

As an arts consultant to some of Hawai‘i’s most influential businesses and individuals, Kelly Sueda has a relentless desire to see his clients deepen their appreciation of the arts. “Sometimes when people look at art, their reaction is, ‘I don’t get it, therefore I don’t like it,’” says Sueda from the Park

Lane lounge at Ala Moana Center, where he’s flanked by artworks from Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Serra, which he obtained for the Park Lane residences’ permanent art collection. “But once someone tells you a story about it and the concept behind it, all of a sudden there’s a complete paradigm shift.”

Sueda came into his career of curatorial work by way of painting. Known for his landscapes—thick lines of paint emphasizing shadow and contrast—he was commissioned in 2003 to produce a painting for the office of a developer who wanted to start an art collection. An avid collector himself, Sueda offered to lend the developer a hand. Sueda had obtained his first artwork upon earning a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of San Francisco, when his father, prominent Hawai‘i architect Lloyd Sueda, offered to buy him a car as a graduation gift. Instead, the aspiring collector requested a painting by contemporary artist Christopher Brown.

Today, Sueda’s personal collection, housed in his sprawling Ossipoff-designed home atop Wilhelmina Rise, includes work by some of his favorite artists, including a floor-to-ceiling print

 The most important aspect of buying art is to make sure you love it, advises Kelly Sueda, who knows the story behind each piece he has purchased for his home.

 Sueda sits beneath “Molecule Men,” a two-color screenprint by Jonathan Borofsky.

 How a person hangs artworks can express as much as the artwork itself. In Sueda’s bedroom, figurative work lines the walls.

by Jonathan Borofsky and a vibrant lithograph by Roy Lichtenstein. Art, he says, can change the dynamics of a space. “A place with white walls and high ceilings can feel very naked,” Sueda says. “A [client] might not realize something is missing until you slap something awesome on the wall.”

SUEDA OFFERS THESE HELPFUL HINTS FOR CHOOSING ARTWORK FOR YOUR OWN COLLECTION, REGARDLESS OF YOUR BUDGET:

1. LOVE IT. “This is most important. Though some people buy art as an investment, there’s no guarantee of what it will be worth later.”

2. LEARN MORE. “If you’re going to invest your money in something, you better know who the artist is at the very least. You wouldn’t buy a stock if you don’t know anything about the company.”

3. THOU SHALT NOT COVET. “I love Ellsworth Kelly, but I’m not going to buy a $5 million painting. Instead, I might buy a work on paper. This allows me to enjoy the artist’s work at a price I can afford.”

4. LET IT FLOW. “When hanging art, especially works on paper, the ideal scenario would be to allow for some air to circulate between the frame and the wall. If the frame is suctioned flush to the wall, it creates its own microclimate in the space, and the work can start to mold.”

5. QUE SERÁ SERÁ. “The only place good for artwork is like Arizona or New Mexico, where it’s super dry. In Hawai‘i, if you want to live with art, you’re just going to have to live with the living organisms that are there. Almost everything can be fixed.”

6. TELL A TALE. “Good art can go with good art, so it doesn’t matter if it’s a landscape next to a photograph. How a person puts the artwork together tells a story about them.”

Go Green

How to enhance home or office spaces with container gardens.

TEXT BY GRACE MARTINELLI, LILIKO‘I CREATIVE

IMAGES

BY

TAHITI HUETTER

For renters, container plantings are quick and easy ways to personalize spaces. They are also perfect for covering up areas that can’t be cleaned, replaced, or removed—instantly improving overall design and creating inviting, personalized environments. Potted plants even enhance creativity within homes and offices: Research has found that the presence of foliage can help workers reduce stress and generate ideas. Listed below are some helpful hints for getting more green in your life.

1. ARRANGING: Group containers, as well as the number of plants in each container, in odd numbers: three, five, seven. The eye can automatically spot even-numbered plantings, while odd-numbered plantings appear more organic and natural.

2. COLOR: Use specific plant colors to accent different areas of your home, taking into consideration desired ambiance or the time of day each area is in use. If the space is enjoyed in the evening, or is located in a shady spot, feature plants with white flowers or highlights. To accentuate plants with leafy green foliage, incorporate plants showcasing shades of red like burgundy or maroon. Hot colors like orange, yellow, and bright pink are more stimulating, while purple, blue, and pale pink have a calming effect. Green, silver, and white set the most peaceful tone.

3. HEIGHT: Use pots of varying heights, or one taller statement piece. Filling the entirety of a large container can require a large amount of soil, but often, plants don’t need it all. Instead, cover the bottoms of each container with packing peanuts (a great way to repurpose materials that would otherwise end up in landfills), which act as drainage and keep the pots lighter.

4. PLANTING: Start with the main plant—she’s the leading lady, and usually the largest. Then, add supporting characters in hues that either complement or contrast their leading lady, beginning with a plant that has an interesting texture, rather than a flower.

5. WATERING: Plants in pots generally need to be watered more frequently than those in the ground, especially when first planted. Place plants that have similar watering needs together. For example, low-water plants like succulents, cacti, and bromeliads should be in the same container, while higher-water plants like ferns, colocasia (taro), and caladiums should be grouped together.

 A graduate of the New York Botanical Garden School of Professional Horticulture, Grace Martinelli is a sustainable garden and floral events designer based on the North Shore of O‘ahu, where she specializes in botanical furnishings for weddings, events, private residences, and hotels. For more information, visit lilikoicreative.virb.com.

Alakea Construction

Innovative, conscious design since 1985.

COURTESY OF ALAKEA CONSTRUCTION

Alakea Construction Services is a fullservice general contractor specializing in custom luxury homes and

innovative industrial and commercial projects. Since 1985, the Alakea team has provided unlimited ground-up construction, including heavy civil site work, engineered structural framing, and high-end finishes—all with environmental consciousness and sustainability at the core.

From elegant beach houses and versatile tenant improvements to multimillion dollar office improvements and technological upgrades, Alakea Construction Services is committed to keeping all projects on schedule and within budget, while providing

superior quality, design, and customer service. In recent years, the company has progressively increased its customer base with expansion throughout the Hawaiian Islands, operating projects on O‘ahu, Maui, Lāna‘i, and Hawai‘i Island. Alakea’s passion for building and attention to detail continue to yield quality projects.

 For more information, visit alakeaconstruction.com.

PHOTO

Straight Edge

Furniture designer Dae W. Son believes the right design is the simplest one.

TEXT BY KELLI GRATZ

IMAGES BY AJ FEDUCIA & JOHN HOOK

From curved, natural edges to polished details, the beauty of Dae W. Son’s solid wood furniture comes together like pieces of a puzzle slowly revealing a larger picture. For the 33-year-old craftsman, it’s about putting function before form. “When I was a kid, I didn’t bother playing with the toys I had,” he says. “I was too busy taking them

apart and trying to figure out how to put them back together again.”

On a rainy day at his warehouse in the industrial Kalihi area, Son is as agile as he was when he was a boy, stepping lightly over the construction debris and maneuvering with ease around a 10-foot sliding table saw. He pulls up a chair for me amidst gigantic slabs of locally sourced wood, then a gorgeous coffee table catches my eye. “That one’s made of monkeypod,” he says of the piece. “Monkeypod wood is the most readily available wood here on O‘ahu. It’s everywhere. We like to use it because it’s sturdy, good quality, and not too expensive, compared to other dense woods like koa or ‘ōhi‘a.”

It’s hard for Son to pin down his inspiration for design to just one thing. As a young adult, he was drawn to the challenge of creating something tangible, something functional, yet beautiful on its own. But it wasn’t until he met Thorben Wuttke, founder of the Honolulu Furniture Company, while working at a local bar downtown in 2012 that Son realized his passion for woodcraft could be a viable career. And just like that, fantasy morphed into reality.

In the years since, Son (who, in full disclosure, is the husband of FLUX Hawaii’s editor, Lisa Yamada) founded

 For more information, visit woodhi.co.

 Dae W. Son, shown in his woodworking warehouse in Kalihi, creates one-of-akind pieces that reflect the natural landscape of Hawai‘i.

 Despite having no formal training in design or furniture making, Son creates pieces that resonate with buyers on a personal level.

Wood Hi, which specializes in custom hardwood furniture for residential and commercial projects. Despite having no formal training in design or furniture making, Son is able to create pieces that resonate on a personal level with buyers—many of whom, as a result, become repeat customers. He has fashioned items both large and small, including communal tables for multiple La Tour Café locations, fixtures for Quiksilver stores on O‘ahu, Maui, and Big Island, and small teak ofuro stools for Japanese soaking tubs at the Ritz Carlton Residences in Waikīkī.

“Dae asks questions to fully understand the scope of work,” says

Brett Hill, president of Brett Hill Construction, which has contracted Son for multiple projects, including the teak stools and a 10-foot walnut table to serve as the centerpiece of a private wine cellar. “It is his attention to detail, attention to schedule, willingness to collaborate, and fair pricing that impresses me most.”

Despite his success, Son continues to be a “student of woodwork,” learning as much as he can from his contemporaries (and of course YouTube), but always trusting his own eye over trends. His style is symbolic of the natural landscape of Hawai‘i, both organic in conception and sensually alluring in creation.

“When people come to meet me, they are looking to be inspired,” Son says. “I’ll show them pictures of different pieces until I get a sense of what they really want. But then I’ll always tweak a couple things, make it my own. It’s very important to me that things have their own identity. If they want something that everyone else is going to have, they can go to Pier 1 or Inspiration, but if they want something that’s going to outlive themselves, they come here.”

A Midcentury Modern Man

Restorer John Reyno combines skills in industrial arts with a passion for minimalist design to give new life to salvaged furniture.

TEXT BY KELLI GRATZ

IMAGES BY JOHN HOOK

Inside John Reyno’s beachside estate in Kailua, midcentury aesthetic reigns supreme. A welder, designer, and collector, Reyno has a living room that features a carefully curated mix of salvaged and restored furniture created by legendary designers—there’s the Charles and Ray Eames lounger, the Eero Saarinen tulip table tops, the Hartmut Lohmeyer for Wilkhahn

sofa. Found just through the sliding glass doors is the backyard, where Reyno’s latest score—a rusted Walter Lamb chaise lounge—sits under a tree. “This era of design really speaks to me,” Reyno says. “Everything is so refined, not throwaway stuff. When you really look at it, you realize all the little subtleties.”

Reyno’s love for collecting and restoring items stems, perhaps, from his childhood. “We grew up really poor, living in a two-bedroom house with six kids, and things were always cramped,” says the 51-year-old. “My mom would take us trashpicking so we could afford to buy food, but as incentive, she would let us keep some of the stuff we found. I would bring home lawn mowers, bikes, and would take them apart and put them back together.”

He began tinkering with metal while in a high school shop class. Shortly after graduating, he and his twin brother started their own welding shop in Costa Mesa, California. For 23 years, the

 For more information on Reyno’s work, find him on Instagram @hawaii_modern.

 A few of Reyno’s favorite restorations include an Arteluce Triennale floor lamp, a Hans Olsen television settee, and a Richard Schultz petal table.

siblings worked long hours, until Reyno decided he needed a change of scenery.

“We both just got burnt out,” he says. “I wanted to move somewhere warm and tropical, but still safe, and thought Hawai‘i was it because it was still in the United States.” So in 2007, the brothers sold the shop, and Reyno moved to O‘ahu, where he began flipping houses and building upon his skills as a carpenter.

Then, two years ago, just as Reyno’s personal life was settling down, he slipped off his roof while replacing trim, breaking both of his ankles. Reyno was bedridden for months, and still walks with a limp today, yet it was during this time that he developed an interest in

midcentury modern furniture.

“I suddenly had all this free time, so I got really into looking on the Internet for gems I could pick up,” he recalls. “I would send my girlfriend out on these crazy missions to get pieces because I physically couldn’t. I became obsessed. I would be sanding and cutting wood, even in a wheelchair!”

For the last few years, the designer has scoured estate sales, yard sales, swap meets, Craigslist, and even the side of the road, for what he calls “good bones.”

“People always tell me how surprised they are to find stuff like this here,” he says. “But people from all over come to Hawai‘i, and [when they leave,] their stuff all stays here.”

Some of that stuff winds up in Reyno’s beachfront workshop, where broken and discarded pieces of furniture wait to be taken apart and reassembled. After they get their new lives, the pieces may be handed off to an awaiting client, or be posted on Reyno’s Instagram, where he shares his handiwork. A few of his favorite restorations are an Arteluce Triennale floor lamp, a Hans Olsen television settee, and a Richard Schultz petal table. “I would love to be a part of educating people about this era of design,” Reyno says. “There are some really cool options available in furniture if you can be creative enough and patient enough.”

Let There Be Light

Geoff Lee sheds light on fixtures forged in fire.

TEXT BY KELLI GRATZ

IMAGES BY JONAS MAON

Punctuating Kailua’s humble industrial center on Hamakua Drive is the warmly illuminated facade of ‘A‘a Hawaii, where light fixtures, suspended by steel cables from three to 30 feet long, rise and fall as if in rhythm with the ocean. From a distance, the pendants seem to defy gravity, creating light and color through refracting bubbles, insets, and rings.

The processes by which Geoff Lee created these fixtures can be traced back thousands of years. The art of glassblowing originated in the Middle East, then was perfected in Italy, where Venetians mastered the craft. These Italian artisans were the first to create perfectly clear glass, called cristallo , refining their techniques and tools from the island of Murano in order to create pieces that were bigger, thinner, more colorful, and incredibly intricate. Such techniques continue to influence many glassblowers today, including Lee, who is the owner and creative director of ‘A‘a Hawaii.

It is a magnificent sight to see someone maneuver a blowpipe into a pot of hot, liquid glass, and then blow into it to form a glowing, translucent vessel. “I’ve always been fascinated with fire,” Lee says. “Glass offers the ability to literally play with fire. It was too fun not to pursue.” Born and raised on O‘ahu, the Korean-Jewish artisan was first introduced to the molten craft at the age of 16 while attending Punahou School. He studied the art form of glass at the University of

Wisconsin, then took a year off to pursue an apprenticeship in Seattle with internationally renowned glass artist Benjamin Moore. Here, Lee was introduced to both old-world Venetian techniques and commercial productions by artists like Preston Singletary, Dan Dailey, and Lino Tagliapietra. After finishing his undergraduate degree in Wisconsin, Lee continued his education at the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, and even studied abroad at Centro Studio Vetro in Venice, Italy before coming home to the islands to get his MFA at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

After working under his former UH professor Rick Mills, Lee set off on his own in 2004, launching Island Glassworks. He created colorful glass creations of all kinds, from vases to plateware to decorative ornaments, and even offered glassblowing workshops to the public. But rather than focusing on too many types of work and risking getting burnt out, Lee decided to hone in on what he saw as the burgeoning industry of custom lighting. In 2014, Lee rebranded Island Glassworks as ‘A‘a Hawaii, named for the type of lava that is fast flowing, and today, his creations can be found in homes around the world.

For Lee, lighting is all about taking art and making it functional. “I’m so inspired by the light that surrounds us here in Hawai‘i,” he says. “The goal is [finding] how to recreate that.”

 For more information, visit aa-hawaii.com.

Archipelago Hawaii

Refined island design for sophisticated environments.

Luxury and functionality—expect both when working with Archipelago Hawaii. Since 2007, Archipelago’s talented design team has created beautiful spaces that are always tailored to homeowners’ needs. With expertise in design and knowledge of the latest products and trends, the team at Archipelago is a complete design resource that crafts stunning

and luxurious interiors that inspire you and function for your personal lifestyle. Meet with Archipelago’s design experts today to learn how they can transform your house into your dream home.

 For more information, visit archipelagohawaii.com.

PHOTO COURTESY OF ARCHIPELAGO HAWAII

Echo & Atlas

Discover a carefully edited selection of home essentials inspired by West Coast casual sophistication and infused with European elegance at Echo & Atlas. This high-end boutique carries international brands like Mud Australia, a handmade porcelain line, whimsical decor from Neptune Glassworks, as well as treasures like vintage art featuring classic Hawai‘i scenes.

 Echo & Atlas is located at 1 North Hotel St. For more information, call 808-536-7435.

The Art of ‘Ohe Kāpala

The process of ‘ohe kāpala (bamboo stamping) dates back to the early migration of Polynesian settlers to Hawai‘i, when the first seedlings of this sacred plant were brought to the islands. These intricate stamps were traditionally used in the final stages of kapa (bark cloth) decoration, inspired by repetitious patterns found in nature and created exclusively by hand.

Designer Manaola Yap transforms the traditional Hawaiian stamping technique of ʻohe kāpala, sharing repetitious patterns found in nature to honor the art of his ancestors in modern-day textiles, décor, and contemporary fashions to adorn the body and home. Manaola Hawaii celebrates culture-conscious creativity with designs intended to cultivate and protect the mana (power) of the wearer and the spaces they adorn.

 For more information, visit manaolahawaii.com.

Cuba Libre

A visit to Cuba offers a look at a country closed off from modern technology for more than five decades.

TEXT AND

IMAGES

BY JONATHAN CANLAS

Cuba is a mecca for anyone with an affinity for classic cars. In 1959, Fidel Castro imposed sanctions on U.S. imports, and the United States followed suit, placing an embargo on Cuban imports and exports, and severing ties with the country in 1961. For the next five decades, Cuba remained a country cut off from most modern day technology. Here, there is rarely a place where Internet is available (if you do find it, expect dial-up speed) and most people carry around old Nokia phones or flip phones.

 Though Cuba is without any of the modern technology to which most Americans are accustomed, the country is full of life and a mecca for classic car lovers.

 Performers like this are everywhere in Cuba, trying to make more for themselves than the hand they were dealt—or even rationed—by the government.

 Taxis, both legitimate and illegitimate, are everywhere. A flag, like the one pictured on the taxi above, is an easy way to mark that the driver is usually dedicated to picking up American tourists only.

 Boys prepare to play baseball on a busy street corner in Havana.

In 2015, diplomatic relations were restored between Cuba and the United States, culminating in a momentous visit by President Obama—the first American president to visit the country since Calvin Coolidge in 1928—in March 2016. Though travel to Cuba is still technically restricted, it was loosened to allow for 12 categories that range from journalism to education, which are broad enough that most Americans can qualify to visit.

I traveled to Cuba in February 2016, before commercial passenger airlines began flying there direct, and brought a vintage Rolleiflex from 1964. Though many problems persist (the average monthly salary is about $20 a month), I saw a city full of life. One of the amazing rewards of visiting a country stuck in the past is that parks and alleyways are buoyant with shouts from kids playing outside, and the streets are full of classic cars dating back to before the embargo. While this old way of living may largely disappear now that the country is more open to tourism, certain things won’t. When I ask some locals if they hoped to get new cars, almost all said no; they’d stick with the cars that have been in their families for more than 50 years.

 The Malecón promenade is symbolic of Cuba’s present, a mix of new beauty and decay along the coast of Havana.

Soul Searching

The monks of Kaua‘i’s Hindu Monastery live a quiet life of prayer, meditation, and asceticism in pursuit of divine consciousness.

TEXT BY JON LETMAN

IMAGES BY BRYCE JOHNSON

In 1969, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami set foot on the Garden Isle of Kaua‘i. Widely respected in the Hindu world, Subramuniyaswami trained in Sri Lanka under Jnanaguru Yogaswami, a famed mystic. But it was the lush forests of Kaua‘i that so captivated Subramuniyaswami, who would, one year later, found Kauai Aadheenam, a 382-acre

Hindu monastery on the banks of the Wailuā River. This monastery, which began as a cloistered retreat, has become well-known internationally over the last 15 years. (Despite its remote location, the monks maintain a popular quarterly print magazine, Hinduism Today, which was founded in 1979 by Subramuniyaswami and reaches Hindus around the globe with its online

“Perfection isn’t measured by intellect or emotion. The perfection is our soul, ” says Paramacharya Sadasivanatha Palaniswami.

 Twenty-one monks from six nations lead a spartan but fulfilled life at Kaua‘i’s Hindu Monastery, including elder monk Palaniswami, left, and Natyam Mayuranatha, right.

 The lush forests of Kaua‘i captivated Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, who founded a 382-acre Hindu monastery on the banks of the Wailuā River.

version.) Here, beneath the shadow of Mount Wai‘ale‘ale, 21 monks from six nations— India, Malaysia, Canada, Singapore, France, and the United States—lead a spartan but fulfilled life, adhering closely to the Tamil culture, traditions, and theology of South India and Sri Lanka, and remaining true to the ideals of simplicity, austerity, and goodness, as defined by Subramuniyaswami.

“Perfection isn’t measured by intellect or emotion,” says Paramacharya Sadasivanatha Palaniswami, a monk with a long gray beard, whose saffron-colored robes indicate his elder rank. “The perfection is our soul.” A monk’s purpose, Palaniswami says, is to find perfection and to learn to abide there constantly. “Only then can you really share that with others,” he says.

Strict disciplines help the monks achieve what Palaniswami calls “divine consciousness,” a state of being where one is keenly aware of the presence of a higher power. Monks awake before sunrise, emerging from modest 10-by-10-foot concrete block structures called guha (cave in Sanskrit) in order to be present for prayers at 5:30 a.m., during which they meditate and recite japa , or mantras, with prayer beads

(penance for being tardy to prayer includes having to do another monk’s chores for the day). Afterward, monks join their kulam , or work family, to fulfill daily duties that may include groundskeeping, tending to dairy cows, managing finances, or, in Palaniswami’s case, editing and publishing Hinduism Today. A vegetarian lunch is prepared exactly at 1:08 p.m.—a sacred number in Hinduism—using crops harvested from the property farm.

Kaua‘i’s Hindu monks don’t talk about their pasts. They don’t go to birthday parties or revel in Super Bowl Sundays. They don’t marry. But they do aspire to live with compassion, understanding, and love, and to transform the world with goodness. For Palaniswami, the monastery is a counterbalance to the tumult of the secular world; it’s a place where love, tolerance, temperance, and asceticism reign.

“Once you’ve … embraced, with both arms, the life we have on this island, and the life we have in serving our faith and exploring the depths of our own humanity and our own consciousness, [you realize] it’s a pretty good trade-off,” Palaniswami says. “You couldn’t invent a life that is more perfect.”

 The Kaua‘i Hindu Monastery is open 9 a.m. to noon daily. For more information, visit himalayanacademy.com.

Drinking in the Moments

Ken and Yumiko Hirata make shochu on O‘ahu’s North Shore.

TEXT BY MARTHA CHENG

IMAGES BY JOHN HOOK

It all began with a joke. Twenty-five years ago, on a vacation to Hawai‘i, Ken Hirata tasted slightly fermented poi, and quipped to his friends that he could make shochu out of the sticky purple mixture. It was a funny thing to say for a product developer in Osaka with no previous experience making the Japanese spirit.

And yet, a decade later,

the idea again seized him. Hirata has no explanation as to how or why, just a simple notion: “I thought it would be fun if I could make shochu in Hawai‘i.”

The joke became a quest. He begged Toshihiro Manzen, a shochu master whom he admired, to take him on as an apprentice. It was like a kung fu movie, Ken remembers. First he wrote a letter; then he started showing up at Manzen’s distillery in Kagoshima, Japan. Manzen rejected him more times than Ken can remember, until one day, Ken and his wife, Yumiko, happened upon Manzen in a small bar. “We started talking about many things,” Ken says. “And then he finally accepted me. Maybe he was drunk.” While apprenticeships usually last 10 to 15 years, Ken explains, he was nearly 40 years old when he began his, and after three years, Manzen said that if Ken didn’t make his own shochu soon, he would be too old to start.

It took Ken five years to open his Hawai‘i distillery—a simple structure he and Yumiko built down a dirt road in Hale‘iwa—and to produce his first bottle of shochu under the Hawaiian Shochu Company label. But he didn’t make his first batch as he originally envisioned.

 The shochu-making process can be an arduous one; during the two-month production cycle, the koji must be checked every three to four hours.

 At their North Shore facility, Yumiko and Ken Hirata carefully perform the techniques Ken learned as an apprentice of master shochu maker Toshihiro Manzen in Kagoshima, Japan.

“We went to talk to some Hawaiian groups, and asked them permission if we could use taro to make shochu,” Ken says. “Unfortunately, they all disapproved of us using taro to make an alcoholic beverage. We don’t want to do any disrespectful thing to Hawaiian culture.”

Instead, Ken turned to Hawai‘i’s sweet potatoes, which have a starchy, dry flesh ideal for making shochu. His current batch is called Three Islands, after the trio of islands from which his sweet potatoes were sourced: Big Island, O‘ahu, and Moloka‘i. Ken’s shochu emerges as clear as vodka, but with a subtler, smoother, slightly sweet finish. It’s about 30 percent alcohol, somewhere between sake and whiskey in proof.

When thinking of Japan, most people think of sake. But it is actually shochu— which can be made from rice, barley, or sweet potato that is fermented and then distilled, unlike sake, which is only fermented—that is the more popular drink there. Most shochu made in Japan, however, is mass-produced in stainless steel tanks, and its fermentation, which takes place in air-conditioned rooms, is controlled by computerized monitoring systems. Ken wanted to learn from Manzen because “he tries to work with the nature, not to try to control the nature.”

Ken follows the same principles and techniques of his master. During the two-month production cycle in Hawai‘i, Ken and Yumiko tend to each step of the shochu-making process. They sleep on a

wooden platform above the koji room, and get up every three or fours throughout the night to check on the koji—the cultured mold responsible for turning starches into sugar, kickstarting the shochu-making process—which is cultivated by mixing it with steamed rice. Next, they add the koji rice to mashed sweet potatoes, fermented in 100-year-old ceramic vats that have been passed down through generations of Manzen’s family. Throughout the fermentation process, Ken and Yumiko monitor temperature and humidity, until the mash is ready to be distilled into large wooden barrels, where it ages for up to six months.

Ken calls his production a “micro micro-distillery,” as it produces only 3,000 bottles every six months. He and his wife do everything themselves, from production to selling bottles directly from the warehouse, where they work, sleep, eat, and live. In addition to waking up throughout the night to check on the koji, Ken and Yumiko work continuously from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m., performing tasks such as washing or steaming rice, chopping sweet potatoes, making the mash, distilling. “And the majority of the time, I’m cleaning,” Ken says. “I’m like a janitor— sanitizing, cleaning. Contamination is the worst thing that can happen.”

Of the minutiae of shochu making, Ken says: “They are small things.” But they all matter. Shochu making is no longer a joke; it is now Ken’s life. He says of the entire process, “I feel like it will enrich my life in the end.”

 Ken Hirata uses Hawai‘i sweet potatoes to create his shochu that is as clear as vodka, but with a subtler, smoother, slightly sweet finish.

 For more information on Hawaiian Shochu Company, find them on Facebook.

Life of the Party

Christa Wittmier remains the inimitable social maven of Honolulu, even through her continuing battle with cancer.

TEXT BY SONNY GANADEN

IMAGES COURTESY OF CHRISTA WITTMIER

As one of the innumerable people that made a cameo on Christa Wittmier’s blog, I once thought myself cool because Christa had taken my picture. Over the course of the last decade, Christa’s omnipresence in Honolulu has earned her multiple mononyms. A woman of exuberant energy and talents (writer, marketer, deejay,

community organizer, documentarian), she has become not “the person from the paper,” or “the lady managing the liquor sales,” but Christa, CW, or SuperCW.

For her countless friends, Christa has captured some of the most enjoyable moments of young adulthood in Hawai‘i. I first met her, I think, on the dance floor of

“I realize people see me as too hype, too overhappy, too cheesy. It’s just that there’s so much happening here, and I couldn’t wait to share it with everyone.”

 Christa remains excited about the Hawai‘i she fell in love with while stationed in Honolulu in 2002.

thirtyninehotel in Chinatown, or it might have been at a beach party, or through a date. In the spring of 2007, a friend and I installed an art show at a tattoo shop, and the totality of our marketing plan consisted of getting Christa to post the flyer online, and then getting her to show up. It worked. The place was packed with revelers seeking free cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Christa got to Hawai‘i the way many transplants do. “I needed to escape from Tacoma, Washington,” she says, speaking from her Honolulu apartment. To do so, at age 19, she enlisted in the U.S. Navy without seeking the counsel of her sister or parents. Stationed on bases in North Africa and Europe, and on a variety of ships, she performed a variety of computer-related work. While serving on a base in England that monitored the Atlantic from 1998 to 2000, Christa created a website to archive her free time and the interesting humans her gregarious nature attracted. Her website, supercw.com, was born. In 2002, she was stationed in Honolulu. She spent her afternoons and weekends at Sandy Beach, where her long blonde hair touched the sea spray, and the doors of her VW van were open to anyone nice. She fell hard. When her military position ended, she was in relationships with a bassist in a reggae band, and with the island itself. She declined to reenlist, despite a perfect record.

Over the next several years, supercw.com traced the awakening of an urban Honolulu scene, while Christa herself occupied a variety of office jobs. As the scene moved away from club nights in Waikīkī hotels to dance parties in historic Chinatown, with the opening of thirtyninehotel in 2004, followed by half a dozen clubs in the following years, Christa introduced the town to new bands, events, and styles via images and captions that she uploaded weekly. In 2007, predating the social media onslaught and the tagging of images online, supercw.com blew up. That year, the now-defunct Honolulu Weekly held its annual “Best Of” contest, and SuperCW won the year’s best website by a ridiculously large margin. Ailing from a decline in readership, the Honolulu Weekly hired her to write a nightlife column—a print version of her blog— which she named The Social Lite. For five years and four months, she never missed a week.

The best reads—the inside jokes, puns, bizarre humor—were still on the blog. “I tried to update the site in a way that was funny, but not in an obnoxious way [like] putting puppy faces on people or emojis everywhere,”

she recalls. She looked for subjects to photograph and promote. Subjects, in turn, looked for her. If you were an event planner, fashionista, art director, social justice organizer, or a corporate sponsor, your party sucked unless Christa was there. When the Weekly disappeared in 2012, Christa moved her column to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and retitled it Supercity.

Today, a review of supercw.com shows Christa with real superhuman ability: Getting to a place, transposing through any form of door security, snapping a picture at the apex of the event, and disappearing in a flash to catch the next spot. Like a violation of physics, or magic, her blog shows her at multiple events that occurred simultaneously on the island. Here, all of yesterday’s parties are still happening online. Her efforts did not go unnoticed. Through them, Christa became the marketing director for a liquor distribution company, which allowed her to direct national marketing budgets toward aspiring women, bands, and community programs. “Parties that aren’t misogynistic and terrible—that’s my thing,” she explains. She became a deejay. She organized social events for the Pow! Wow! art collective. She threw events for government officials, Hollywood producers, and visiting deejays. The website captured it all, in addition to the birth and often hilarious demise of numerous local clubs. She also collaborated with people whose previous parties were disasters,

or supported rivals who have openly criticized her omnipresence, which is especially surprising to those who live on an island. “I remember walking into some bars, and I could feel the record skip,” she remembers. “I didn’t care. I realize people see me as too hype, too overhappy, too cheesy. It’s just that there’s so much happening here, and I couldn’t wait to share it with everyone.”

It all came crashing down in May 2015, when a

routine medical checkup led to Christa being diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer. Traversing into the land of the sick, everything changed. “The first two weeks are terrifying, the absolute worst—you’re always waiting around, waiting for the doctor to see you, waiting for a test—just too much waiting with your mind racing,” Christa remembers. “A journal was the first thing I did.” The journal evolved into the Aloha Cancer

Project, an online resource she created with friend and fellow cancer survivor Daniel Gray, who owned SoHo Mixed Media Bar on Pauahi Street until 2013. She wrote a how-to outline for those recently diagnosed with cancer. Her doctor declared “all trouble areas completely resolved” in September 2015, then confirmed it again in March 2016. A few months later, in July, she was scheduled to present a TEDx talk about perseverance.

Days before, new tests showed that her cancer had metastasized to other organs. Instead of canceling, she filmed her presentation in advance, and went to treatment. She recites these facts quickly in person, dispelling any horror with another story of a remembered party, of the next event crew to look out for.

Christa is nowhere near ready to leave the party. In the summer of 2016, between brain radiation and hormone and light therapy, she took vacations in France and New Zealand. Per the usual, she responds to emails in a snap. She is filming a documentary. She continues to write for the paper, for her blog, and to pen notes of encouragement to others. She is planning pool parties, receptions, yoga fundraisers, and more trips around the world. She is creating business plans for marijuana dispensaries, which cater

to those, like herself, who require pain medication. She adopted a middle-aged salt-and-pepper-colored dog named BooBoo to accompany her to radio interviews and doctor appointments. “Everything is here,” says Christa, whose long blonde hair has been burnt away. “My friends have become my family. There’s nowhere in the world like this place. Believe me, I’ve seen it.”

Exiting her apartment, I’m plied with a mixtape CD, an Aloha Cancer Project journal, and several flyers. The next day, I read her Supercity column in the paper. This week’s installment is about a nightclub she had visited between treatments that most had written off as corny, with lame music. “It’s one of those places you can go with no plans or no friends and most likely still be all good,” she writes beneath an image of

diverse young people clearly enjoying themselves. “You will make friends. If you feel like you don’t fit in anywhere, this could be the place for you.”

 Despite being diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2015, Christa remains a perpetual force of positivity in Hawai‘i’s community.

 For more information on Christa’s Aloha Cancer Project, visit alohacancerproject.org.

Bar Leather Apron

Experience handcrafted artistry at this downtown Honolulu bar.

With six available seats at the bar and 19 seats in the lounge area, Bar Leather Apron provides an intimate bar experience in downtown Honolulu, minutes from Waikīkī. From its location on the mezzanine level of the Topa Financial Center, award-winning bartender and owner Justin Park and his staff offer an ever-changing menu of classic cocktails and bespoke creations, as well as beer, wine, and an expansive collection of premium spirits. Seasonal, local ingredients are featured in daily specials. Try the E Ho‘o Pau Mai Tai (crowned “World’s Best Mai Tai” at the Don the Beachcomber Mai Tai Festival in 2015) and the bar’s signature BLA Old Fashioned, which utilizes Japanese Wasanbon sugar, a fine-grain sugar grown in the Shikoku prefecture, in the recipe.

 Reservations are strongly encouraged and can be made by emailing info@barleatherapron.com.

A Sailor’s Life For Me

A young Native Hawaiian connects with his ancestors aboard Hōkūle‘a, Hawai‘i’s most famous voyaging canoe.

TEXT BY AUSTIN KINO

IMAGES COPYRIGHT OF POLYNESIAN VOYAGING SOCIETY AND ʻŌIWI TV (2014)

In Antoine de SaintExupéry’s book The Wisdom of the Sands , the writer advised a man who wished to build a boat: “Don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Since the day my dad first took my brother and me into the crashing waves of O‘ahu’s south shore, I have been an ocean person. Over time, my curiosity to explore beyond the shoreline

grew, along with my interest in my Native Hawaiian heritage. I learned in school that the Polynesians, my ancestors, were the greatest explorers of Oceania, based on their ability to survive epic ocean voyages and to skillfully navigate routes to distant lands using only their knowledge of nature’s patterns.

It was in my final year of high school at Kamehameha Schools when a friend invited me for an evening sail on Hawai‘i’s most famous voyaging canoe, Hōkūle‘a . Stepping onto the deck, I felt like I had crossed a symbolic threshold. No longer was the history of my ancestors a thing to read about in my schoolbook or a sight to see in pretty paintings, but rather, it was alive. I knew then that I wanted to be a part of the Hōkūle‘a ‘ohana. I volunteered to help with the constant maintenance that a sailing canoe requires and met generations of crewmembers who treat the famed wa‘a, or canoe, not as a vessel, but as an extension of one’s own family.

Advancing from a volunteer on land to a voyager aboard Hōkūle‘a is never guaranteed.

Considering the level of danger out at sea, knowing how to sail safely is the number one priority, and each individual is trained by doing. As someone who is a slow learner, I had to grow tough skin before

 To follow Hōkūle‘a ’s voyages, visit hokulea.com.

I could start growing my sea legs. Getting accustomed to the bilingual nomenclature on a voyaging canoe was a vexing task. When asked to “huki” (pull) the jib halyard to raise Hōkūle‘a ’s sails, or “alu,”(slack) the mizzen sheet, I realized that it takes but a second to identify the amateurs from the crewmembers, the pollywogs among the shellbacks. I clung to my peers as I joined a cohort of other young Hōkūle‘a sailors who were beginning to study celestial navigation, our training consisting of everything from learning meteorology and Earth and space science to spending many hours on or in the sea in order to gather our own observations of nature’s cycles.

In 2013, I was asked to be a part of the team of apprentice navigators who would crew Hōkūle‘a ’s first leg—a voyage from Hawai‘i to Tahiti—that was to kick off a three-year journey around the world. I vividly remember one evening on that trip to Tahiti, eight days in, and approximately 1,000 miles away from

Hawai’i Island. I was lying on the deck of the canoe as she surfed through the Pacific Ocean, while the winds howled at 20 knots, and overhead swells rocked the vessel. In the midst of the tremors, I looked up to the stars, and felt a great peace wash over me. For the first time, I realized what a great adventure I had embarked upon. I felt more connected to my ancestors, who once gazed at these very same stars, than ever before.

The Hōkūle‘a has since sailed with dozens of crews across vast oceans, finding port throughout the Pacific, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, and numerous other countries. It is now in its final year of the worldwide voyage that seeks to mālama honua, or “care for our Island Earth.” Over the course of this journey, Hōkūle‘a will travel more than 46,000 nautical miles to reach 26 countries, 85 ports, and 12 World Heritage marine sites.

Captain Billy Richards, a crewman of Hōkūle‘a ’s first voyage to Tahiti in 1976, is one of many passing on knowledge

to a new generation. “People ask me how much it takes to build a voyaging canoe,” Richards said at a recent training class at the Sand Island port in Honolulu. “I tell them, ‘Your life.’ People see these canoes, and don’t realize the maintenance, the hours, the time invested in them, the relationships necessary to sail—almost all of it completely voluntary. These canoes have taken and given us so much more.”

The opportunity to learn celestial navigation has defined the majority of my adult life. Being recognized as an apprentice navigator has given me a seat at the table, and the chance to glean wisdom from world-renowned practitioners. In each journey that I’ve been fortunate to take part in, my goal has remained the same: honor my teachers, care for my community, and do what is necessary to protect the wa‘a that has given me a window to the world.

FLUX Hawaii

General Store

Recap

From September 1-5, more than 3,600 people stopped in to the FLUX Hawaii General Store, presented by Hawaiian Airlines, with nearly 37,000 social media users directly engaging through Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Visitors shopped wares from nearly 70 artisans inspired by Hawai‘i’s modern and diverse culture.

MAHALO TO OUR PARTNERS FOR MAKING THIS POSSIBLE:

Creative Industries Hawaii, DBEDT, Hawaiian Airlines, Klick Communications, and Starwood Hotels & Resorts.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts in Hawai‘i: After Hours

SHERATON PRINCESS KAIULANI

Four exciting entertainment options set the tone for a memorable evening in Waikīkī. Start with the captivating Polynesian performance “ Te Moana Nui – Tales of the Pacific, ” featuring authentic music and dancing that weaves legends of Polynesia with Old Hawaiʻi. Feeling a bit nostalgic? Catch the electrifying Fourever Fab as they jam out favorite hits from The Beatles. For a good laugh, the hilarious AlohaHa Show showcases live comedy paired with animatronic characters, impersonations, and unique robotics.

And the poolside Splash! Bar and Bento is the perfect place to unwind during late-night happy hour.

MOANA SURFRIDER, A WESTIN RESORT AND SPA

The Banyan Courtyard continues a 115-year tradition as a favorite gathering spot for visitors and kama‘aina (locals) to enjoy daily and nightly live performances of acoustic guitar, contemporary Hawaiian music, and more. Don’t miss Mele at the Moana, live concerts by Hawaiʻi’s hottest musical talents, on the last Friday of every month.

THE ROYAL HAWAIIAN, A LUXURY COLLECTION RESORT

A Royal Hawaiian Luau, ‘Aha ‘Aina, Waikīkī’s only oceanfront dinner and show, is a culinary and sensory celebration in grand Royal Hawaiian style. It is held Monday evenings at The Royal Hawaiian’s Ocean Lawn, with the breathtaking backdrop of Waikīkī Beach and Diamond Head. After the show, visit the oceanfront Mai Tai Bar

for a quintessential island evening experience. Sip a Royal Mai Tai under the stars while the sound of the rolling surf blends harmoniously with sweet tropical music.

SHERATON WAIKIKI

To amp up the evening, head to RumFire Waikiki restaurant and bar in the Sheraton Waikiki to experience liquid aloha (featuring the largest selection of vintage rums in Waikīkī—101, to be exact), innovative Pacific Rim of Fire menu selections, entertainment, and dancing in an indoor-outdoor setting overlooking Diamond Head and Waikīkī Beach. RumFire brings a new level of excitement and energy to its already hip and happening venue on Waikīkī Beach with more than 10,000 feet of pure energy and excitement.

 Call Waikīkī reservations at 808-921-4600. Ask about validated parking and happy hour specials.

A Secret Hideaway

Seeking: All fun-loving couples eager to escape to the intimate zen retreat that is Aqua Bamboo Waikiki. Must love lounging during cabana time in the outdoor sanctuary, splashing amid a saltwater pool, and sipping signature beverages while enjoying a weekly reception of live island music. Benefits of this dream relationship include getting to know a tranquil, Asianinspired, boutique hideaway filled with thoughtful amenities and warm aloha hospitality. An ideal date at this dream destination? Imagine grabbing a few beach towels and chairs to spend time on the shores of Waikīkī before heading down the street to shop at the newly opened International Market Place, featuring a myriad of hot new labels and restaurants (highly recommended). Are you finally ready to take the plunge and snag that quiet getaway you’ve been talking about forever but could never find the right moment? Well, your time is now. Rendezvous at the Aqua Bamboo Waikiki, and turn those missed connections into memories shared.

 For more information, call 866-406-2782, or visit aquabamboo.com. Serious inquiries only.

O‘AHU’S BEST:

Hyatt Regency

Waikiki

Celebrating 40 years of aloha.

When its doors opened 40 years ago, Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa became one of the world’s most popular destinations in Hawai‘i. With exceptional personalized services, acclaimed entertainment, and lavish amenities, the hotel quickly established itself as the heartbeat of Waikīkī.

Today, the spirit of aloha is a legacy that the establishment continues with its commitment to maintain the highest standard of service, greeting guests at every turn. As with the past 40 years, Hyatt remains a driving force, setting the trend for what is modern and intuitive to the needs of all travelers. With a $100 million investment

last year, each of the 1,230 newly designed guest rooms at Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa are proof of the hotel’s unwavering belief that every detail makes a difference. From 55-inch televisions, clean designs, customized bathrooms, and enhanced connectivity— perfect for the free Wi-Fi—the rooms are furnished with all the elements that matter most to today’s travelers. Additionally, guests can still find some of the best amenities in the area, and conveniently, all on property. With Waikīkī’s first resort spa, Na Ho‘ola, world-class shopping, the bi-weekly Waikīkī’s Farmers Market, headline entertainment from local greats like Taimane Gardner, and exceptional Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine at Japengo, Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa remains a central part of the story of Waikīkī.

Unheard Stories

Reflections on finding a future in forgotten dreams.

TEXT BY BRAD DELL

ILLUSTRATION

BY MITCHELL FONG

One of the last stories I ever heard was from this guy Maseeh, a source for an article on Muslim immigrants. He spoke about moving to Hawai‘i from Iran, about not knowing a lick of English, and about how this made him unable to take part in conversations for more than a year. I couldn’t imagine the loneliness that must have caused. My sympathy morphed into empathy the next morning, in May, when I lost my hearing.

Waking up to my alarm sounding muted, my hearing muffled, is distressing. Being told by doctors three weeks later that this deafness, of which they don’t know the cause, is permanent, and will only get worse, is devastating. My first anxieties weren’t about my social life or general wellbeing, but about how I would continue my job of writing profiles—portraits painted with words. To me, a proper profile is gathered by sitting down with someone and listening. I tell subjects that I’m not interviewing them, we’re just “talking story.” Because that’s how you get to know a person best—you get them to tell their stories. I crave those stories, and I crave writing them down. Now, I can no longer hear them.

I drafted my first profile two years ago, for a media literacy class assignment at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. The subject I chose was a grouchy modern European history professor who had lived through much of what he was teaching, having been raised west of the Berlin Wall in the aftermath of WWII. During our interview, he revealed that he had late-stage cancer, yet refused to quit teaching. This information wasn’t public knowledge, but he gave me permission to print his profile in the school paper. The realization that someone trusted me enough to tell their story was thrilling. I found myself daydreaming about that rush every day. I dropped my secondary education major, joined the school’s journalism program, applied for magazine

internships, and sought mentors for my writing. I was all in— profile writer or bust.

Then suddenly, I was deaf. Plans for a surgery that might have given me back my hearing fell through, rubbing salt in the wound. I became a recluse for two months, passing my days watching Netflix (captions on). I felt I had lost my passion and, as a result, my self-worth. It seemed I had reached bust.

During this time, I came across a pile of artifacts from my elementary school days. Digging through it, I found composition books filled with embellished stories I’d written about my own life and doodles of book covers for fantasy epics I planned to write but never had the patience to finish. I began to realize that, at the heart of things, storytelling is my true passion—it always has been. My love for storytelling was born in my childhood, on the wooden patio of my Tennessee home after family dinners. As dusk faded and fireflies floated through the air, my sister and I bombarded our parents with questions about their pasts, asking to hear their funniest stories. I would retell these tales to my friends, usually to prove that my parents were cooler than theirs. When I was old enough to consider careers other than being a spy or Jedi, my dream jobs revolved around stories. I wanted to tell the narratives of the deceased as a historian, to write fiction as a novelist, to help others with their own storytelling as an editor.

Lately, I’ve begun to focus less on my crushed dreams, and more on my forgotten ones. Profile writing is one way of immersing myself in my passion, but it is not the only option. I may study to be a historian, or enroll in creative writing classes and try penning a novel. As long as I’m telling stories, life is good. Maybe I’ll even write my own.