Grinds & Da Kines For Your Weekend
TAYLOR CAMP: THROUGH THE EYES OF THE LOCALS ‘The Edge of Paradise’ screens Saturday at KCC theater
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ost Kauai people remember TGIFR!DAY Taylor Camp as a place reviled, a punchline to local jokes or a invasion by pakalolo-smoking, longcode word for the ‘60s and ‘70s cultural haired-hippie/surfers living in a cloth-
ing-optional, pot-friendly, treehouse village on the beach at Limahuli. SEE LOCALS, PAGE 2
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Week of Friday, November 29, 2019 | Vol. 7, No. 48
Several Kauaians share their remembrances of the Taylor Camp experience in the documentary film “The Edge of Paradise,” to be shown at the Kauai Community College Performing Arts Center Saturday at 6 and 8 p.m.
Check da Scene
Courtesy John Wehrheim / Special to TGIFR!DAY
2 | TGIFR!DAY | Friday, November 29, 2019
Locals
Continued from Page 1
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nd if they haven’t seen “The Edge of Paradise” — Taylor Camp, Kauai, 1969 - 1977, they may think of this documentary film in the same way. But the story of Taylor Camp is not just a bunch of hippies frolicking on a beach. It’s a story about the Vietnam War, free speech, the environment, campus riots, civil rights, bloodshed and racial tension, while at the same time it’s also an intimate local story, told by a cast of Kauai folk, about a period of social and economic upheaval on the island. Early in the film comes Calvin Kuamo‘o, a full-blooded Hawaiian and former Ranger. Calvin spent his time In Vietnam parachuting behind enemy lines along with a Chinese American and a Vietnamese Montagnard — a hill tribe whose people resemble Hawaiians. Calvin’s partners could speak Vietnamese and, in the instant of first encounter, the enemy would trust them, seeing them as locals. “They would think we were OK and we would turn around and kill them. There’d be bodies all over,” Calvin said. “I carry that wherever I go. And when I came back from Vietnam I had so much nightmares, but when I went to Taylor Camp I found healing.” Billy Kaohelauli‘i explains, “I didn’t need to go to Taylor Camp. I had
••• WANNA GO? “The Edge of Paradise,” a documentary regarding Taylor Camp from 1969 to 1977, screens at 6 and 8 p.m. Saturday at Kauai Community College Performing Arts Center. Tickets $15. Online tickets at taylorcampfilm.bpt.me. ••• TGIFR!DAY
my place in Poipu. But we wanted a place to go out in paradise. Everybody was looking for paradise in those days. But really, the reason I went out there was to take LSD. Everybody was on LSD and living free. Enjoying life.” Eduardo “Mala” Malapit, a former mayor, prosecuted the original Taylor campers, and then, as mayor, he led the campaign to shut down the camp. “They started hitchhiking, sleeping down the beach, they were planting marijuana all over the place,” Malapit recalled. “People just didn’t like the hippies because they were different.” One of the great ironies, and funniest moments, in the film is when we learn that Malapit’s younger brother, Bill “Kung Fu” Malapit, was a well-established member of the Taylor Camp community. Retired Fire Chief David Sproat said, “Many a time we were called when the cops were arresting Bobo Hawk, to make sure she didn’t get hurt resisting arrest. One time the cops threw her naked in the trunk
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Oh my God, naked people! Back then nobody saw that.” Sandy Ka‘auwai Recalling her experiences during summers spent on the North Shore as a youth, upon seeing Taylor Camp residents
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of their car and hauled her off to jail.” “You wouldn’t think that some hippies going camping would have such an impact on the island but it did,” said Georgia Mossman, a reporter for The Garden Island. “That nudity was like walking into someone’s house and spitting on the kitchen floor. The paper didn’t take an official stand, but we were willing to print things that were bad about them.” Bobo Ham Young’s grandfather, Henry Tai Hook, employed a lot of Taylor campers pulling kalo in his Wainiha patches. “Long hair never bother us because we had long hair, too,” Bobo Ham Y0ung recalled. “ But they weren’t clean, they didn’t care about us, they were bringing disease, and we started getting angry. One night on the Anchorage dance floor it was the locals and the hippies and anyone that was hippie got lickins. Forget the dance. We were doing another dance.” “But the hippies were smart farmers,” he continued. “We got some really good pakalolo strains from them — hash plants, the primo, the good stuff. Oh, that was the best!
Live and let live.” “My brother Joe and I were in the police department together,” said Bill Ka‘auwai. “Joe was the first to work out in Haena when the hippie movement started, and then I joined him. We didn’t know much about marijuana back then, and we had six big plants growing in the courtyard of the Lihue police station so we would know what it looked like. There was this one hippie guy that I had just booked and as he’s walking by I see a plant swing back and there’s no leaves on it. All the leaves are in his hand. So I grab him and booked him again for illegal drugs.” “Our family was from that side of the island, so every summer we’d camp for a month at Haena Park,” said Nalani Ka‘auwai Brun, Bill’s oldest daughter. “We were just little kids but we could go down the beach on our own.” “We’d tell our mother we were going to pick shells but really we’d be going to see what the Taylor Camp guys were up to,” Nalani’s younger sister, Sandy Ka‘auwai, said. “The first time I went to Taylor Camp, Nalani told me we’re going
to see naked people! Oh my God, naked people! Back then nobody saw that!” “We’d just have the biggest giggle fest,” continued Nalani, “hiding in the bushes, covering our eyes with our hands, pretending not to look but really looking through our fingers. It was full-on anatomy 101 for a bunch of little kids.” “We’d usually try to go at volleyball time,” Sandy said, laughing, “when everything was flipping and flopping. It was a confusing time.” Mitchell Alapa described it like this: “One night we stole a car, drove to Taylor Camp. We saw a whole bunch of surfboards so we started loading them up. We drove off with 15 surfboards on top of a Chevy II Nova. Now I joke with the people from Taylor Camp about the things I use to do. They were the first people I ever saw naked, really enjoying themselves — being free.” Sam Lee, retired state Department of Land and Natural Resources land agent, was responsible for surveying, evicting and then burning Taylor Camp to the ground. “Those of us who wore pants and shoes and socks and collared shirts to work every day probably felt envious of those folks who just lived, lived such a life, such a great life. For me, evicting the campers was not a happy experience. There was no joy in doing what we had to do, and the campers understood that we had a job to do and I was resigned to making it as painless as possible for them.” Feeling what a lot of people feel these days, Billy Kaohelauli‘i concluded, “Life is hard now, not simple like at Taylor Camp. Simple living is
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TGIFR!DAY | Friday, November 29, 2019 | 3
FIND ‘BEAUTY’ IN EVERY MOMENT OF LIFE, THROUGH A POET’S WORDS
it good, bad, challenging, in••• notion that poetry, unlike any we can imagine. In her book, Hirshfield spiring or bordering on those Ed and Yuriko Justus opother form of written work, unknown reaches our minds erate Talk Story Bookstore has to be precise in the words strives to find the beauty in every moment of life — be constantly yearn for. in Hanapepe. chosen. It was an interesting thought, and in this manner, poetry then can be likened to a painted work of art — except the medium is not oil, acrylic or watercolor. It is a painting made by the careful selection and placement of YURIKO & ED JUSTUS our written language and the SPECIAL TO TGIFR!DAY colors of our imaginations and experiences. very year there is a Kauai and hear her thoughts on Hirshfield’s “The Beauty” is Writers Conference. One poetry and the creative spirit. a testament to this process, of the featured authors We found her 2015 book Shops, Restaurants & Services at Ching Young Village: and she adeptly approaches “The Beauty” to be an exwas poet Jane Hirshfield, a wide range of subjects: the known also for her passion for cellent encapsulation of her Na Pali Properties Hanalei River Healing Activity Shack nature of our reality, our daily history, environmentalism and range, style and voice. lives, and worlds both unseen One of the points she science. We were invited to an Northside Grill Hanalei Surf Backdoor Aloha from Hanalei made during her presentation and seen, from the smallest opportunity to hear her read Ohana Shop Hanalei Strings Aloha Juice Bar quark to the widest horizons from a selection of her works, at the conference was the
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4 | TGIFR!DAY | Friday, November 29, 2019
CHECK DA SCENE
DENNIS FUJIMOTO TGIFR!DAY
Sal Ochoa, Gary Pacheco Richard Texeira, Stuart Cain, Jerry Moore, John Gordan
Savanna Adams, Roxy Adams, Christina Adams - San Diego
KILAUEA CHILI A BLAST T
Oasis, Yoriko Bancroft
Patrick O’Connell, Stephenie Brown
Louis LaFratta, Ashlee Haraguchi, Justin Novele, Bill Troutman
Jordan Kahananui, Donna Gushiken, Ed Blanchet, Eldren Rabago, Dennis Apilado
Wendell Sandobal, Mo Nakahara, Sid Belmonte, Kiki Alexander, Gary Smith, Howard Yamaguchi
Exra Woodard, Madonna Sablan, Conrad Schmidt, Tiger Sablan-Schmidt, Carla LaFratta, Sonique Sablan-Schmidt, Graciela Lopez
he North Shore Lions Club hosted its first Fall Roundup Sunday at the Porter Pavilion at Anaina Hou Community Park in Kilauea. “We didn’t have our annual Pancakes and Hula,” said Lion Gary Pacheco. “We gotta make up, so we’re offering chili — all-kine chili, including beef, vegetarian and chicken, with all the extras, like cole slaw, cornbread muffins and even tortillas. And no forget the juice — Cas Schwabe from Akamai Juice made it.” The chili lunch was enhaced with yard games and a nonstop lineup of entertainment provided by the Kilauea Social Club and BlueFinger. Other sponsors for the fundraiser included Sal’s Salsa, Jennifer Coutts, Title Guaranty and Gather Federal Credit Union. “Next year, we’re having pancakes in the spring, and chili in the fall,” said Lion Richard Texeira.
Jaime Schoenhals, Hayley Nielsen