50 Pictures to Unveil HNL Vices

So this is my new addiction: An obsession with fixed road bikes.  I spend hours filtering through the internet to find some information on bikes and how to build one.  Much like my interest in restoring an old Impala and chop it up one day, I'd like to get into bikes, creating and riding.  My dream told me to get a slim road bike frame, throw on some breaks for a newbie, throw on an orange tire on the front with a carbon racing 3 spoke rim, a sea-foam front-fork-thing, bright grip tape on old school bull horns, take it out for 6 months until I am fully comfortable without a brake and relying solely on the fixed gear method of braking: reversing on the pedals.  We found a community center in HNL that lets you volunteer a couple hours, work on a bike, build it completely and keeping the bike after you've built it.  A great way to get into biking and learning the ins and outs of each part (after graduating college, we have to keep learning things to expand the mind otherwise we become stagnant and comfortable into the molds we have created.  Never stop cultivating knowledge, never stop learning new things).  I flipped through pages and pages and pages of online bike blogs (a bunch listed on the right if you're curious).  My attention was glued like eyes to the tv...

Somebody once told me that we all decide to spend money in places that differ from others.  Some people spend money on clothes, some people spend money on purses, some people spend money on diamond rings, some people spend money on plasma tvs, some people spend money on expensive cars, some people spend money on fixed gear bicycles.  We have all been conditioned to live lives of consuming nice products; I wonder if one day I'll ever get out.  Owning a bike shop or a botanical shop or a graphic design shop or a clothing shop and teaching people how to build their own bikes or learn their own trades in a non-threatening, non-pretentious manner would be a dream come true; a fulfilling way to live life helping others.

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In Hawaii they have these bike racks that look like sleek, grey, immobile bikes plastered to the concrete.  But on a closer look, they are bike racks in the shape of bikes; I wish every city allotted city spendings on street art like Seattle does.  

In these interesting cases, people have graffitied on these cemented bikes for extra effect.  The mind wanders as to what extent these bikes can be decorated to.  I love it when there is personalization in public areas; it fashions a feeling that personal privacy shouldn't matter so much - we tend to keep to ourselves a lot more nowadays - and how maybe we could reinvent public spaces as personal and social spaces of interaction again.   Spaces that hold conversations, the exchange of ideas and a meeting place for like-minds.  Online forums scattered around the internet are old and archaic, populated by comments left years ago.  What happened to this great form of community?  We need to organize these public spaces again and also adding a little color to the streets wouldn't hurt nobody.

Even the crosswalks here are dripped with fancy prints.  These slight nuances will have great influence in these next few week's worth of artwork produced here.  Creating art here has been very productive and prolific.

The view is always this nice here in sunny Waikiki, unless the volcano on the other island has been spitting volcanic smoke and dust out its spout all morning, then the skies would be filled with vog.  Its pending loom was near.  Not to mention terrifying.

Nice little gathering of stores like a safe from the chaotic streets of HNL, run by rings and rings of prostitutes.  Under all the shopping and dining and tour packages is a layer of muck, the dregs of disaster.

You would think that this paradise place is just that - a magical paradise resort with nothing to worry about.  There is definitely two sides to every story.  I've given the beautiful Honolulu a second look:  

This place is beautiful at the same time as it is ugly.  

This picture I think captures the essence of Honolulu:  When the relaxing feeling you get when you see this brightly painted, refreshing, aqua blue valet curb is put juxtaposed to this fu@kin' fantASStic porno magazine located at the korean-owned Speedmart around the corner of Seaside Ave.  I thought the porn magazine would be funny for the Korean women to order for their Speedmart every Sunday to appease their porno magazine hungry market.  You see the beautiful tourist attractions and tourist traps for packages and vacation deals as well as prostitutes and bums and immigrant workers taking service jobs to appease the tourists.  You see the poor tending to the rich; servers, valet runners, retailers, dish washers, taxi cab drivers and angry angry tourists not satisfied with their services.  Salesmen caught by their ties, strangled by years of hustling that make the eyes turn dull and aches of life become life-like.  The streets are filled with shopping, 80% Japanese parachute kids wandering store to store trying to find the perfect item of obsession.  The hookers sprinkle the streets like sprinkles on a cupcake; plentiful and vulgar and sometimes disgusting to look at.  It's like a Vegas but with a lot more plants, at least the palm trees look happier here.  The rich keep shopping while the poor sweeps the streets and perform for pocket change.  

Cops have a hard time here too, they don't get respected much by the people of the streets.  But we had our own adventure in mind.

Then I realized where I was, sitting inches away from the keyhole by the shifter... it was that charcoal-gray Saab again.  It wasn't an adventure anymore, it was a drastic nightmare that dragged on for hours.  North Shore better be worth using the crazy lady for her car again (no one is smiling because no one is happy to see her again).

My usual defense mechanism to the annoying hepatitis-c virus of a medusa is to stay quiet, keep to myself, and pretend I'm tired all the time; that'll get her to not talk to me much and make this trip go by a lot faster.  I kept my mind on the nature around me.  

"It's so beautiful!  It's so much energy!  I love dancing!  my cousin is half irish, half italian... a quarter this, a quarter that... I jumped over a fence yesterday... today is a week from the day we met and we were dancing and I lost my sandals... you guys have so much energy... here listen to a hundred stories back to back.... listen.... you aren't listening... blah... blah... blah" is something along the lines of what she would mutter.

We turned up the music.  Nice! We also drowned out her stories, now I can finally relax...

I kept mostly to myself, enjoying the new scenery on the way up to North Shore; a lot less prostitution, a lot more enjoying nature and the nice clouds.  I got lost in my thoughts clouded by bright clear skies.  The atmosphere was really relaxing, I enjoyed taking a break from the consumerism that swarms Waikiki.  

Then everything straightened itself out, it didn't matter who's car we used to get to North Shore, the important thing is that we got there and it was a spectacular sight.  Shark's Cove, like the Mediterranean but instead of trade ports it was tide pools and snorkeling spots.  Haha not really, but it did take my breath away.

it felt so 'surreal' being here... (what does that even mean?)

The sunset littered with pink and lavender clouds, cutting into the aqua horizon, glazing the rocks with deep shadows, skimming the mirror image water.

still a bit crooked,

just right.

This is the reason why I love this place, the facades of paradise and the prostitutes didn't matter anymore, this feeling washes all of that out.

* * *

To address the corporate, money-making, tourist-trap economy of Honolulu, that is just the way the city makes it's dough.  At least I'm glad the tourist industry is keeping Hawaii afloat amongst all the recession waves.  Every city has its sins, and Honolulu's sins are all buried by masks and layers of facades and cakes.  

The fake paradise; still a place I would love to be around.  Someone said it was like Asia, without all the loud ass Chinese people talking over each other making a storm but instead quiet and pensive Japanese parachute daughters and sons scourging the land for cute souvenir stores, the Duty Free Store, ABC stores, and Starbucks (well I added the parachute offspring bit myself).  I'll keep stealing the brown cane sugar from Starbucks so we don't have to buy any.  We kill pots of coffee a day. 

Just living life and finding vices,

Namekomozuku: seaweed with mushrooms bathing in a chilled, sweet vinaigrette.  Slimy seaweed with greens, yum.  A sneak peak at one of my prolific creations awarded to those faithful readers who read to the end, or luckily caught the last line of photos.

-Aloha.

-12FV, RFV.

-Misses California madly.