Non-Hipstamatic Hawaii: Waikiki Beach

With the proliferation of camera equipped smartphones, we see point-and-shoot images go from uninspiring to evocative. Images processed by Instagram at The Trad or in camera through Hipstamatic here take on more character. The images that simulate vintage snaps really catch my attention, and I can no longer look at overlighted, hyper-real pictures -- which we once considered acceptable lo these past 30 years since the advent of cheap photography -- with any amount of satisfaction.

Which is why I thought I'd share a few genuine vintage shots of Honolulu that an historic architect friend of mine recently shared with me.

We have a series of images of the south shore of Oahu. Immediately below is a view looking west towards Waikiki from what is now the Outrigger Canoe Club. In the distance you see the iconic Royal Hawaiian, lovingly called "the Pink Palace".

And a closer view of the same hotel from Waikiki Beach itself. My guess is this beach fronts the Moana Surfrider.

The Royal Hawaiian, the Moana, and the Hilton Hawaiian, the lagoon and original bungalows of which are pictured below, represent some of the most venerable of Old Waikiki luxury tourist accommodations. At these resorts you can experience century old traditions such as high tea, sunset hula, and elegant dining - where, contrary to Waikiki convention, you may still be denied entry without a jacket and tie.

Today as in days past, one can find scenes like this, where tourist girls can pour out of their hotels to receive surfing or paddling lessons from the beach boys of Waikiki.

Not to be confused with the california rock n' roll group of the same name, the Waikiki beach boys have a long standing tradition which continues to this day of serving as ambassadors of beach culture to the visiting Mainland masses. Master swimmers, surfers, paddlers, and fishermen, they epitomized the idea of the Hawaiian waterman. It may sound like a frivolous existence, but on an island which derives much of its livelihood from visitors who flock to places like Waikiki, the role of the beach boy cannot be overstated.

I leave you with a final shot, decidedly un-Hipstamatic, of the legendary beach boys, from an era gone by but not forgotten.

Mid-Sixties Europe

I had promised to revisit my parents old pictures from Europe and here they are. Paris and Amsterdam, obviously. In 1965, Dad trained on jumbo jets with KLM and Mom visited at the tail end of his stay there. They did the Continent before returning home. Dad tells me that the red Karmann Ghia he owned while there was sold, and the guilders they got from its sale were repatriated home to pay for the house they were building in Manila.


Although my Dad's favorite European vacation is to Spain, which they still do annually, he has many fond memories of the Dutch. He admired their efficiency. He liked the cleanliness and the quiet way they worshipped in the Protestant churches. And I think he liked the way they dressed. Dad was on extended stay for the airline and by the time Mom got there, he was thoroughly Europeanized. Dig the pegged trousers, Florsheims, and Renaud sunglasses. This is how they dressed for a drive in the country in Europe at the time. So much for plus ca change.  The more things change, the more things change, no?


Here they are in Paris. Notice how, like everyone else there to bask in the shade of the Eiffel Tower they are dressed for tourism of a different kind than we today are accustomed to. Mom must've gone to the hairdresser every day on that trip.


























I'm not going to rant about how the modern style of travel is atrocious, because it's such an uncontroversial truism that to argue the point is banal. I will also not sound a call for a return to this style of travel, simply because I wouldn't want to be walking around in a jacket and tie on vacation. Instead I invite you to appreciate a different time, a different place, and accept my representation that, at one time, before OnceWereBachelorhood had mostly buried the elan and sprezzatura of my Mom and Dad, they indulged some stylish days.

Christmas at the Lodge

Once in a great while the OnceABachelor must drop his offspring with the Grandparents and make a brief escape. With the Christmas season starting, my beautiful wife and I did just that, with a trip to our favorite "resort" hotel: the Lodge at Koele, on the Island of Lanai. My law partner and his wife (both of whom were my closest high school classmates) came along for the good times. It was certainly a quick vacation worthy of the Epic Life we should all try to lead.

The Lodge was where my bride and I had our honeymoon, and it is where my law firm holds its annual retreat with the wives. This Christmas marks the first time I've come back For No Good Reason. We flew in on a small Cessna Caravan in which the two of us were the only passengers, and on the way to Lanai I got a view of Honolulu you rarely ever get on the big jetliners. Contrast the cityscape with the cliffs of Lanai, and you get an idea of what the latter island is all about.

We arrived to find the hotel bedecked in Christmas ornaments, trees, and holly. The only thing missing, of course, was the snow, but the brisk highland air would do. Our room, as always, was cozy but far from small, with a view of the pond and immense banyan trees.

The Lodge is hardly a big resort hotel. Never crowded, it is small enough that its staff know you by name, even before you arrive. The illusion is similar to a ride up in the First Class cabin, where you are given personalized attention. This, combined with the authentic hunting lodge ambiance, make Koele my favorite hoteling experience. The Lodge is a very masculine place, all wood and leather and stone, boasting artifacts ranging from Polynesian to Asian and African.
Aside from the Lodge's great hall and two dining rooms, there are four other rooms of importance. The first is a semi-octagonal game room equipped with billiards, shuffleboard table, chess and backgammon tables. Next is a library, another octagon, with several conversational areas. There is a music room with a grand piano. These rooms all have stone fireplaces that are useful since upcountry Lanai's nighttime temperature often dips into the fifties.
And of course, the Lodge has a small, well stocked bar with excellent wait staff, all of whom, again, know your name. It is quiet and the other guests, all feeling that they are in on the same juicy secret that you are in on, are always friendly. It is a whispering kind of bar, but it is so inviting that we've been known to turn whole afternoons to haziness in there. My libation of choice for the weekend was the Lodge's special Mai Tai. Not always a fan of tart sweet cocktails, this one I felt was appropriate for the Pineapple Isle.

And lest you think the weekend was all about the indoors, the Lodge has a spectacular grounds, too, including a large koi stocked pond, a greenhouse, bamboo forest, an occasional flock of wild turkey (which seemed abundant this year), a 9 hole putting course (not to mention a world class golf course I've never seen (I'm not a golfer, but I'm told it's called the Experience), three croquet pitches and a huge bowling lawn. My wife indulged me a cigar under the eaves of its church (what other hotel has an active Congregational church on its own grounds?). We taught our wives how to shoot shotguns at a nearby sporting clays course. Turns out we married natural born killers. The only thing we didn't do was our traditional midnight cocktail raids to the hot tubs (our numbers were meek).

I really wanted to sing the praises of the Lodge and I feel I have failed to do that sufficiently. All I have done is summarize it. How should I put it. It is a place we truly love. In writing this, I realize that what I love about this place, besides the memories we make, are the spaces it gives us to occupy. It's not a hotel you pass through. It's one you inhabit.

Merry Christmas to all. May you be with your loved ones occupying places close to your heart.

*Click on the painting at the top to visit the website of Lanai artist Mike Carroll, who painted this image of the Lodge.

Bring Lawyers Guns & Money, the Shit Has Hit the Fan

If you don't already know, I'm an attorney - a combat attorney, to be precise. It helps that my partners are my most trusted friends, but it also helps to get away to discharge firearms with them. We do this several times a year on the Island of Lanai, where we go after deer or mouflon sheep, which are similar to bighorn. Also after Thanksgiving, we institute what we call the No Fly Zone, a high-spirited bird hunt with game as wide ranging as pheasant, grouse, and pigeon.

This year we changed it up and went to the Kenai Peninsula in southern Alaska for a moose hunt and salmon fish. To put it bluntly, we collectively threw up a brick, shooting no moose and catching no salmon worth keeping. But we sure did achieve our goals: maximum fun far from the nerve-jangling courtrooms. We ranged far and wide for moose, even finagling a hot tip from a local as to where best to find them. The tip proved honest as we spotted lots of moose and caribou, but none that were legal to harvest. We also bent lots of fishing rods and reeled in lots of pink salmon, but this late in the season and that far from salt water, they weren't particularly grill-worthy. We were after the silver salmon, which were very rare indeed but prized for their tasty flesh at this time of season. This OnceABachelor did manage an amazing feat: hooking a 30lb king salmon, also out of season, which I had to return to the fast running river on which our cabin was located.

The cabin itself was the vacation home of an Anchorage attorney who generously loaned it to us for a week, through his aunt, who is married to the friend of one of our party. She gamely stayed with us to act as den mother, doing the cooking and cleaning. This turned out to be a good stroke of luck because she was able to coordinate the emergency tow with heavy equipment when our rental 4-wheel-drive got stuck 12 miles from the main road in a bog. If it wasn't for her, we might have been forced to spend the night in 40 degree weather or walk out in the dark.

Additional thanks go to Clint from Sterling Towing for bringing his impressive flatbed tow vehicle out through the mud and rain and then driving it backwards up two slick hills to tie up to our truck at 1:00 a.m.

And permeating the whole trip was the possible encounter with Alaskan brown bears. Everywhere we went we were grimly reminded by the locals of the increase in bear encounters, sightings, and attacks. The week we arrived in fact, a brown bear found its way into traffic in downtown Anchorage (near the courthouse, ironically) where it was struck by a car. Joggers and hikers have been mauled. Because of this sobering reality, Alaskans more often than not can be found armed. We spotted joggers wearing holsters, and people walking their dogs with rifles slung on their backs. No one looked twice when one of us walked into a Home Depot wearing his .357 on his hip. Luckily, we saw no browns, although I did spot two black bears. My partner even took a shot at one from an impossibly long range on Skyline Trail after a harrowing hike one mile up.

So my son was thrilled to hear about all of the guns we brought along, and peppered me with questions during each phone call home. He was uncontrollably curious when he saw my gun case loaded into the back of mom's vehicle when she picked me up at the airport. Once at home, he insisted that I identify each weapon and describe it in detail. This is Uncle Jeff's 30-06 with variable scope, this is Uncle Rick's magnum, which he calls the Hog (and which we fired in a redneck "holler" out in the woods). And this is daddy's trusty 30-30 lever action, which is not big enough for hunting in Alaska but plenty good for personal protection there. It is black and brown and has a thumb operated hammer, just like the "practice" gun I brought home for you from the Sportsmen's Warehouse in Anchorage. You can imagine how happy he was to be given this gun, especially when I pulled it out of the same gun case that transported all the grown-up weapons. And you can also imagine how much I look forward to teaching him proper firearms safety with it. No joke.

Incidentally, think twice about leaving your wife and son for a 10 day trip. It had better be worth it, because you will miss them uncontrollably.

Images from top to bottom: (1) an Alaskan Amber ale on the back deck of our cabin; (2) moose cow in Soldotna, AK at a popular though undisclosed hunting spot; (3) the same herdlet of caribou we spotted 2 mornings in a row; (4) spincasting psychiatrist on the Russian River (he'd rather be fly casting, but TSA broke that rod); (5) fishing off our own backyard; (6) flatbed towtruck belonging to Sterling Towing, off road on Mystery Creek after midnight; (7) spotting from our truck before hiking in; (8) target practice with the Hog in Soldotna; (9) my son with his new practice gun.