 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Think Tech Hawai'i's Dokomomo Hawai'i program. I am the host of today's program, today's episode of Dokomomo Hawai'i. I am DeSoto Brown from Bishop Museum. I'm the Bishop Museum Historian, and today we've got a guest with us, and we're going to be looking at Polynesian Pop. So let's go to our friend who's joined us here. Michael, tell us your name and tell us what you do and why you're here. Hi, I'm Mike Kanashiro. I'm a mid-century modern enthusiast, and I'm also one of the directors for Dokomomo Hawai'i. I'm here to really just kind of talk about basically my passion and my interest in mid-century architecture, particularly in Hawai'i. I've been kind of following it since I was in college, and always just makes me get excited about it, talking about it, and sharing it with people, and it's just an amazing area of interest. Now, you don't work in the architectural field. No, I don't. Yeah, neither do I, but it's just something that we're both interested in. Yeah. Okay. So one of the words that you used in when you first let me know that we were going to be doing this program is the word kitsch, and to me that's a really loaded word. I don't tend to use it very much because I think it's got so much baggage. What's your feeling about using that word for what we're going to be talking about? Right. Sometimes people associate kitsch with being sort of a lowbrow, sort of word. People just think about it as not classy, or it's popular, but it's not what people want in their style, or the kind of word they would use every day. I think in terms of the creative aspect, and I look at it as in a fun way, the word kitsch is a lot of, it's kind of related to a lot of times with history and the culture that we grew up in, especially with Americana culture where we have a lot of things that are inspired from the past, and things that are really kind of out of this world, like very different, very not your average kind of things you see every day, and it just sort of sparks this imagination and this fantasy. Right. Well, to me, the reason I'm sort of not big on using the word is because it has such a, to me, it has a very judgmental aspect, in other words, there's high class, there's intellectual, there's good, there's sophisticated, then there's kitsch, meaning it's inferior. What you just said is not necessarily that judgmental as much as it is more for playful or intriguing or interesting, but I think there is also a very strong element in when we're talking about Polynesian pop or kitsch, the cultural appropriation of outsiders saying, hey, we're going to just pull this, this, and this from these other cultures and throw them together and create a fantasy. And so on one hand, the type of thing that we're going to talk about today can be seen as cultural appropriation and can be seen as an outsider misusing things, at the same time, the creation of a fantasy, particularly in an architectural sense or when creating a building, there are lots of fun aspects to that. And the whole tiki craze, tiki bars, the really atmospheric interiors that were created, which is a mixture of sort of a space age, popular culture, with very old things or cultural things, very Disneyland-like, and Disneyland comes from that time period. So those two elements are there and they're mixed together. Anyway, let's get started with the first building that we want to discuss, which is what's behind us right now. And now here it is. It's the Waikiki Inn Hotel. You'll tell us more about it, but I was just going to say too that the picture here, which is the really iconic structure of the hotel. The hotel is basically based on sort of the American motel layout of the pool and the two two-story buildings facing onto the pool on this very skinny lot, but the lobby here is what we're talking about. And that was called a hyperbolic paraboloid, and I always take time to try to remember that term. Anyway, tell us about the Waikiki Inn. I mean, that term itself, it's sort of a tongue twister, isn't it? Oh, it is. And it describes this three-dimensional form that is warped in several different ways. So anyway, you can see what it is. I don't have to explain it. Yeah, so this iconic building, I mean, I wish they kept it or sort of a cultural preservation by itself because it just sort of represents the time of Hawaii back in the days in the 50s where it is definitely one of the golden eras of pop culture, like Americana and Hawaiian pop culture, built by George Pete Wimberley in 1953 and opened in 1956. I mean, this building is just kind of the epitome of what you thought about. It's the tiki craze, but also in terms of the stapicism, like Hawaii itself, you're really in paradise. And then, again, you have this beautiful building that kind of merges modernism architecture with traditional architecture together. So it's definitely, by itself, a pioneer in architecture in the movement. And I think in terms of the building, it's kind of glorified in so many books. The one particular book I love is when Kristen's tiki modern because he's got a lot of these pictures in there. But this building has a lot of history behind it. And George Pete Wimberley, the architect himself, he's done amazing things in Hawaii. And this is one of his iconic stuff. And during this time, I think WATG, which is the architect agency, they're actually doing a history behind it, like doing a review of his work. Well, that's very, as there should be. And I think something to point out here is that when this was constructed, it was completely by itself. There were no other big buildings around it. So it stood out a great deal more. However, it was really quite small. It looks much bigger and more impressive than it really was in person, and particularly in later years as other big buildings began to be built around it. So the way it looks in these early photographs is quite a bit different than the actual experience. Did you ever actually go inside it? Oh, you mean the... There's the hyperbolic paraboloid lobby. In my dreams. OK, because it actually was quite small. And particularly in the two corners, which came down to touch the ground, which in this picture is in the foreground just in front of that 1955 Chevrolet, that reduced the amount of space inside because there was a very steeply sloping roof that came down to a very narrow little area that you couldn't really use. So, and having actually gone in it, I can tell you, particularly in the architectural photographs, architectural photographs of themselves are very different experience often than the real building is. So as impressive as this is, its utility was not as... It was somewhat compromised inside because of the extreme shape that the roof occupied. Which is not to say it's not a fabulous building, because it is. But the reality also needs to be sometimes, you know, buildings have to be used and lived in so they can't just be fantasy creation. It's a bit more functional, as you said. Exactly, and the rest of the whole structure was. Now, also associated with this, which we don't have a photograph of right at the moment, was the restaurant at the other end of the property. So again, it was very skinny property, two skinny buildings with hotel rooms in it. And a garden in the center. And at the far end, on the ocean, was the swimming pool and the Tahitian Lanai restaurant. Tahitian Lanai restaurant, again, not as space-agey as this. But Polynesian, the food was not Polynesian, per se. But it was a very pleasant experience. They had some separate sort of thatch hale on the property that had dining tables in them as well. And as a little kid, I thought it would be cool to be able to eat outdoors in one of those. So the nights that we went, because I used to, this was one of the places I was taken as a little kid to eat dinner. And at that very early time, there was no Iliqai hotel on the right, and you parked on the unpaved property while facing that. Them were the days. Okay, let's go to the next slide. And we're now going to look at another very typical, very similar type of structure or complex from the same time period as the Waikikiyan, as the international marketplace. That was a shopping center. It still is. There still is an international marketplace. But of course, the current iteration of it is extremely different and has very little connection to the architecture of this original place. And it also made a great deal of use of this fantasy of Polynesia, the Pacific, the structures were open. There were trees, et cetera. Now it's your turn to tell us about the international market. Yeah, so the international marketplace, I mean, it's basically a deliberate landmark of Waikiki. I mean, again, it's again another loss for play itself, another icon. I mean, it's got a lot of the accolades from around the world before. It's iconic in terms of where Don the Beachcomber started. And he is definitely a trendsetter in the world of trying to portray escapism, exotica, and also in terms of the, I think, people that associate with Don the Beachcomber, I mean, the celebrities, everybody just made that place. So it's not just the place itself, it's the people that goes with it. And let's go to the next slide because the next picture is, that's the Don the Beachcomber's restaurant. Don the Beachcomber originally built on this site in 1947. And then he partnered with another person whose name you may remember, I can't think of right now, to actually develop the international marketplace. And he built, obviously, a space for his restaurant on the site. And this is it, facing onto Kalakawa Avenue with this sculpture right in front and center, which is kind of an amalgamation of actual Pacific motifs, turned into something that would never have existed in real life. So going back to who you've talked about, Don the Beachcomber. So he collaborated with, again, George Pete Wimberley. Another Wimberley design using Polynesian style longhouse. This is an amazing feature that I think Pete himself played around. And he did an amazing job with how he wants to make it so true to its form that it just an exaggeration of things, beautiful edges and lines, make it very, very fantasy-like. And Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic's restaurants were the epitome of the creation of that fantasy escapism interior. Let's go to the next picture, which is also an element, very, very... Oh, this is from Kalakawa Avenue. This is pictures from the 1960s. So walking along Kalakawa Avenue at that time, this is the view that you would have had and you would have walked in in the center just to the left of this picture. But there were two matching longhouses, if you will. The one on the left was Don the Beachcomber. The one on the right was just shops. And as you can see in this picture, the one on the right had this very elaborate, carved golden dragon for a jewelry store, which was called Peck. And that is also typical of this time period, the inclusion of Asian imagery as exotica, along with Pacific or Polynesian. This is really, again, what we're talking about is a fantasy. And you put it into context. I mean, I think what we're trying... What I think during the time where people are trying to do kind of a portray is not so much about trying to be true to itself. But actually trying to make something even more out of this world. It's just people wouldn't think about having dragons and Polynesian roof tops together. Except in this time period, they did. Yeah. Let's go to the next picture because here's something else that was very much a part of that whole ambience. And this is the Banyan Tree. The Banyan Tree was already on the site. The Banyan Tree is still standing today. That's one of the very few things that's left in the current version of this structure. And it had a treehouse in it. So there's a picture of the treehouse. And right as you, again, walked in off the street, this is what you saw. The treehouse got used for a variety of things that was used, first as a private dining room for Don the Beachcomber, so you could book it for a couple and have a special romantic dinner. Then it got enlarged and it was turned into a radio station. In this picture, it's actually a radio studio with a DJ inside it, live on the air. I think it's an amazing feature of the place. I mean, and you think about it, the, it's, you know, we've been to the original Eastern Marketplace. And I think I was like, probably, I came here as a soldier, so when I got here, I was like, wow, this is amazing. It's like a heart, I mean, the whole building itself, I think it's central. You know, it's like, the roots are connecting towards this little building, you know? And you can see like the modern features, like you know, older ceiling windows. I mean, that by itself is really cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and also the current international marketplace has a little standalone version of this as an homage to what used to be there. When the international marketplace first opened, it had, the interior was all open. So buildings were on the edges looking into a central open space. By about 1970, all of that got filled in with additional structures, and then even more were built at the back. And the problem with that was that they were no longer in keeping with the original feel or appearance of this original architecture. And it was so crammed that you didn't necessarily even see where you were supposed to walk, right? The other problem is, and this is true of both of what we've just looked at, maintenance is key. And once something starts to get old fashioned and it doesn't get maintained anymore, starts to go downhill, that's when people justify the demolition, right? And that's what happened here. Okay, let's go to our next slide and Hamlet's Restaurant in Waikiki, tell us about it. Okay, one of my favorites. And by the way, did you ever see it in real life? I have not, so I'm in the generation, I get this millennial generation, we don't have a chance to see all this, but when we get to see like Wolfat, for example, which we're gonna talk a little bit more, but Candles, I mean, I just heard beautiful like stories about it, especially with friends from the California when they came to visit and they remember this place because this is a sort of an upscale kind of restaurant. It was very upscale. You think about like Hale Kalani's Orchid. Oh yeah, this is right. But in a dramatic way. Very much. Very dramatic and it's got basically all the features you can think about if you wanna be in a tropical paradise full of luxury, wouldn't say white table cloths, but maybe it was white table cloths. It was, it was, yeah. And servers, waiters, they basically have everything that you want in that. And the architecture itself is beautiful. I mean, Polynesian inspired and you have all your tropical modernism elements like the lava rock walls and a lot of woods. It's just an amazing space. Yeah, and when you walked in, there was a ceramic, a 50s style ceramic sort of abstract fountain wall with water dripping and orchid plants. And let's go to the next picture because that's the interior. And so there are your white table cloths. This was a very high end restaurant. And it already had a following by the time this was built, it was already established. But then this dramatic restaurant was really the culmination of this entire thing. You can see that again, we've got a very high ceilinged long house style interior, totally easy breezy as my, as our friend Martin would say. Full vertical louvers at the end there for treatments to come in and out. Very wonderful place and very special place. And I only went there a few times because it was very, yeah. Okay, next picture. And this is a different approach to exoticism. This of course is a Chinese restaurant called Lao Yi Chai stood in Waikiki. And it is a mixture of modern and Asian elements to us. So the Lao Yi Chai is not what you call like your modernist buildings. I mean, it's more historically, culturally iconic because it's one of those first buildings and interior where the Chinese restaurants, you think about Chinese restaurants, I think this restaurant basically like decorate this place to the top, like to the brim. And it was situated between Cui Heo and Kala Kawa. And P.Y. Chong was the entrepreneur that built the place. And he wanted to kind of reflect some of the glamorous China Hollywood style. Absolutely, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, and he did, I mean, he really did it justice. I mean, I've seen all these pictures, I mean, I wasn't there, but it's just beautiful. Like it's really intricate or neat details. And I will tell you, P.Y. Chong, going against his cliched characteristics of being a Chinese businessman was not careful with his money. And in fact, he went bankrupt because he spent so much money on this and because he spent so much money on promotion and decor and it was to his discredit, unfortunately. Looks like he's very passionate about. He was, but it kind of ruined him. Okay, before we go on and we've got one more building to talk about after this, we're gonna talk about a little bit about Wofat Restaurant, which is downtown, which is in a similar vein to this, a more modern building. It's not, certainly not a traditional Chinese building, but it has elements that we see here, the upturned eaves, the overtly Chinese decor on the outside. Wofat has been empty for a long time. You were saying that there is the potential that it's going to be, we hope. So there's a, we've heard the news that there was gonna be a rejuvenation of Wofat itself because a lot of people has kind of fallen in love with the story behind Hawaii 5.0 and they wanted to see whether they can bring a little bit of Hawaii back in history. And I think Wofat has that opportunity to do that. They, I think what is right now is I think it's slated for renovation and I think it's about to start really soon, the end of the year. And they're gonna do sort of a, I think this is kind of like in the works, like a hotel, a couple of rooms with hotels, a restaurant and a bar. So hope that they maintain the integrity of the place. I do too, and the building is right for it. And if it's done right, I have my fingers crossed that that will be a success. Absolutely, yeah. Because the building is deserving of it. Yeah. Okay, our last building that we're gonna look at is actually not just one building, it is the Cocoa Poms Hotel. The Cocoa Poms, which we don't happen to have a photo of, had a very, again, dramatic lobby like what we saw in these other buildings. Very high-peaked roof, the sort of longhouse-ish model, open, but with space-age modernist elements, this big dramatic chandelier, et cetera. The, these, this picture here shows what we'll call the King's Cottages, which were the high-end freestanding bungalow rooms, the less expensive rooms where, again, the typical two-story walk-up, old-fashioned kind of just basic building. This building, unfortunately, this entire complex ravaged by Hurricane Iniki in 1992, has been closed ever since. Many different attempts have been made to revive it. We'll see what happens, but. I know that the revival itself, it just, it's whole because there were a lot of interest in pursuing, to buy the property, but it is an expensive property itself, and it comes with a lot of, like you said, maintenance, or just trying to gut the place out and try to make the place like it is before. But this is a very, here's another iconic place, right? This is where the dreams, where dreams are made of, the Hawaiian dreams, you know? People, when they think about Hawaii, they think about Cocoa Palms. I think this is a global icon. All the other buildings we saw, I'm glad that you ended up with Cocoa Palms, because this is a real journey. It's very famous for having been where Elvis, the finale of the Elvis film, Blue Hawaii, was filmed, and that's, people still know that, and it was an absolutely magnificent setting for that, but of course, and it's all fantasy. Well, our last picture is this one coming up next, and here really is the epitome of what we're talking about. And one of the phrases that I read a long time ago was, Hawaii is paradise with American plumbing, meaning you don't have to rough it, you're gonna live in luxury, and they're still exotic touches. So this is one of the bathrooms in the King's Cottages that we just saw. This use of the giant clamshell is totally iconic. The giant clamshell was sort of the accessory for that time period for Exotica, and the fact that this is being used for the utilitarian purpose of being a sink is kind of the ultimate of either disrespect or kitsch, or whatever you wanna say, but it also is indicative of the time period in that, these are now in danger. You can't just yank them up out of the ocean floor and put them in your bathroom. Of course, yeah. And so this is something you could not use a real one. Of course, there could be imitation ones, and that's what we would probably do today if this was to occur, but this use of this natural, tremendously exotic, bizarre object to be part of your experience is very much what we're talking about. And in this particular respect, you're never gonna be able to replicate the bathroom that we see here because it's impossible to use the shells again, but also because, as you said, the Cocoa Palms property, unfortunately, is encumbered with a lot of baggage in terms of the zoning, in terms of inundation zones for tsunamis and stuff, and things like that, and flooding. Those are all considerations that make it difficult to bring this back, and there also is a lot of competition now. When this was the big hotel on Kauai, there wasn't a lot of competition. It was the only thing like it there. There are resorts now that I'll do it, and it also doesn't have direct access to a beach because the highway is between the hotel and the beach. So the Cocoa... Makes it a real spot. Yeah, well, the geography a little bit. Right, so all of these factors suggest that a return to what we saw originally for the Cocoa Palms is not gonna happen. At least not the same. Well, that brings us to the end of the show. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for being here, and we had some fun stuff to talk about. And again, to remind people, Doko Momo is an organization to preserve and document the mid-century architecture. We have a local branch, and that's what we do here. Thank you. Okay, everybody, thanks for joining us. That's the end of Doko Momo Hawaii for this week, and we'll see you again on Think Tech in the near future. Until then, I'm DeSoto Browns, saying aloha.