 I'm delighted to have you back for what happens to be our 221st episode of think-take-wise human-humane architecture. And we're broadcasting live in this volume three of Happenings for Reason with only the two of us, because our third one, the Bishop Museum historian and archivist DeSoto Brown is unfortunately down with allergies, so get better DeSoto. Hope you're getting over it soon. So we will having with us our leader, legacy legend, Ron Lindgren from Long Beach, California. Hi, Ron. Hello. Hello, everyone. Good to have you back and myself. Wouldn't you wish I would be back near Munich or I am on the Haltry Terrace on the Hall of Kalani, which is our project we continue to talk about, Ron, right? Yes. So let's switch to the first slide. And again, this is all in the content of us having gotten closer to October 1, which was the reopening of the Hall of Kalani. And me being a frequent runner on that shallow little beach walk there that we're going to talk to how much more shallow that gets pretty soon. And few days before the opening, I saw them, which made me very, very optimistic about according to quoting again, Darryl Hall singing to John Alts, nothing has changed, man, that they were power washing these perforated screens here, Ron, and tell us a little bit more about them. So when we realized that the existing orchids restaurant in the Lewis House really wasn't quite large enough to handle how busy we had all hoped the restaurant would be and that became that case, but also on Sunday brunch, the existing building just wasn't large enough. So we thought of extending out into the lawns, which is a glorious feature to have right at the beach front and see what. And we created some history there because I think anyone who looks at that steel lights frame steel structure, and the partly translucent canvas material that was stretched over it, or actually rolls down from from an open position to a closed position when the weather's bad. It's obviously in addition to an older building so there's some history to provide to the historic Lewis House. So we lucked out in that, in choosing that particular canvas fabric, which was treated with some sort of material that helped to keep it, keep it, keep it look rather fresh and clean for a number of years. It allowed just enough light in so that you were sitting in a glow while you had your seat at the edge of the Lewis House, and right with this gorgeous lawn, and it's few precious pantries, swaying away right next to your, your bill. Absolutely. And with the show quotes up there on the very top left, it's very much like what's our pying mobile and vehicle for thought in several ways for this show here in our vintage. Also 80s from the same era Mercedes SL that has a convertible top and that one you need to replace every so often it's the same thing. What right is the second community grocery store we did which is wrapped with a similar material that had the provocative name brand Ferrari so that my very frugal clients were saying oh that must be really inexpensive. And my son Lenny who used to live close to this grocery store at some point last year said oh it's they took it away it's all naked, but we're happy and relieved equally relieved to see them, bringing it back in your case they didn't replace it at this point they might at some point in the future, but it's it's a little bit the louis lounge is a mason rebuilding its solid and stereotypic. But this addition is very airy and sort of temporary right and sort of more ethereal in its nature so very good choice of material wrong just doing the right job for it. Let's go to the next slide and there is actually two restaurants side by side, and this is getting us by the other restaurant that you tell us its name and its history Ron. Yeah, we're we're looking down at through a sort of covered passage by by building code requirements that passage because it did have and still has a very handsome jewelry store on one side. And that that corridor was so long that we actually had to put glass doors at each end. Of course management has just kept them open. And that's that's worked out fine. And you see the swimming pool off in the distance. When you make a hard right, you find yourself talking to a lovely lady and getting a seat at the house without a key. The house without a key was based on a terrific detective story. In fact, it was the very first Charlie Chan, which was written by Earl Durr biggers back in the 1930s, when he stayed at the holocloni. And the house without a key I'd recommend everyone to get a copy it's available in paperback, and it's still very compelling, surprising twisty murder mystery in Hawaii starting Charlie Chan. Yeah. And quoting from your previous shows, showing and sharing the holocloni with us show quotes in the very top right is the very original condition from back in the days and then to the left is the one from about two years ago how you had created it. And now we're curious to see how after the remodeling it will look like and that gets us to the next slide because by now, it might be completed we probably think it is, but this is a suggestive illustration a rendering from the holocloni's website. It shows us how it's intended to be and let's contemplate a little about that wrong. The, it looks again as if things haven't particularly changed. But I think there's a rather nice addition in the sense that there never was a sit down bar out of the house about a key. And as one who often travels are often traveled as a single ton on business mostly but sometimes on pleasure trips to Hawaii. When I went when I came to the holocloni to join in on the sunset festivities and the dancing and the music. I sometimes had to just horn in on a four seat table. That's an uncomfortable situation there are those days when you don't want to sit with strangers and make new friends. And you or you got things just a mall over, or you're just feeling a little more anti social. I think it's a fine addition on management's part to have a place to sit a sort of back away from the action, because the real action is from the roofed area out to the ocean, where at sunset tables and chairs are inevitably at least before the pandemic. And it feels solid with happy people ready to applause when the sun sets off to the West. Yeah. And there's one thing that sticks out literally and figuratively speaking what there's actually two things but one thing is the bar you've been talking about. And we've in a little eye winking way put the show quotes up there from our recent visiting Madera and Oscar and Emeyer is swooping sexy curves. They had left the sexiness to the people using your space here the interior architects of the remodeling seem to wanting to do that to to that sort of sticking out bar there. And I, the frequent observer while jogging by before they boarded it up to continue to work while they had reopened the hotel. The structure going together and I have to say, you know, it is light gauge steel clad with something so we will talk about see what it'll ever rise in a little bit. So when the water is coming in there, you know, they might just wash it away. And so, you know, it's not permanent. That's all we try to say, right, this is an interior element that is as easy to be replaced again in the future as it was to be put in there, right. So let's go to the next slide because that's the pool area that's right next to it. And there is that little bit of a which seems a private Holly Kalani Beach but in fact there is no such thing in Hawaii everything has to be public. There's that little alcove from that pretty narrow boardwalk there on the beach. That seems to be a naturally integral part to that sort of landscaping of the Holly Kalani. And again we talked about the pool run before back then show quote up there we talked about that it has been just technically been updated. I should have been waiting for that sort of pinkish water, air mattress getting out of the pool, and have a equally scenic thing as you told us back then that they put this little girl in the pool that made the pool look twice as large, right. So, so that's, that's the water. And we said there is a there's a hidden message or a blue thread through the shows about water happenings for a reason and that gets us to the next slide, and see how what the water is doing outside of your hotel and this is the in the back there this is the the most ever wing of your project. And next to it is which we see in the in the following picture is the outrigger reef and the former shore bird. And here we see that see what a lever rise is not a myth anymore it's actually happening right couldn't be more obvious. So the total provided us this quote from the start the tizer so now it's even out there in the media this was a double page article in the story that ties it from some couple days ago. Let's go to the next slide and look at how that looks like when you walk along your, well this is shore bird again. And, you know this, the palm trees there reminded us of of of gum retraction. I witnessed when they cut down one of these and in the article that the soda provided us they're talking it's eating up the foundation of the outrigger. And I guess that part anyways which we reported about in a show way back then. And also there's this little ironic historic rumor, I guess it's more than that. And then your Holly Pilani run once told me about that sort of interesting neighbor, I guess, relationship that your clients had with Roy Kelly who is the founder of the outrigger hotels, and that this particular guy in front of his property had no beach to begin with and then they were sitting at a table with Dillingham and Dillingham said I might want to give you a beach, and he did. And, respectively, Kelly never paid him for that so we were saying maybe this is a Dillingham slate revenge here of the beach being taken away again. But how is this impacting your project Ron and go to the next slide and you tell us about what you think. When the hotel originally opened and we're talking about 37 years ago. One of the glorious of the hotel is that in some respects that there isn't a beach right in front, and instead in a very almost more interesting way there's a seawall that's been there for forever. And in the first few years, some very high winter storm surges did just sort of just crash right over and right through this walkway and literally 1010s of thousands of people on a busy day walk on that seawall in front of the hotel. It also provides wonderful people watching for people in the house without a key and the orchards restaurant within the Lewis House, just to watch humanity passing forth in all its glorious forms, up and down that seawall. But that amount of salt water that came in early on when the hotel was first open was sort of unexpected on on our part certainly on my part, and it killed a lot of the of the grass that had grown right up to the seawall itself. The only separation between people and the holoclonic property property originally were some sort of low bushes that you could look over. In time. Thank God the bushes grew even higher because people would just walk right through the bushes. That's, you know, that's the nature of people on on holiday they feel, you know, there, it's why it's their Hawaii. Now, we've got, you know, the real effects of climate change showing up the slide before shows how just how endangered and how endangered structurally that portion of the adjoining hotel is by the rising seawater and the winter storms that will drive water in and on to that property. Yeah, I remember the bushes that you were talking about and I've only been in Hawaii for a decade nearing a decade next year. And I remember when they put this plywood, you know, this thing up there and and what's behind that let's diagnose that more and go to the next slide and see what that actually is. And it's actually bags of dirt that are covered with this black membrane and we can go to the next slide and remember what we saw in the previous slide. What they cover it up is something that we don't get particularly excited about right what is that. What's the final layer of the berm. It's it's actually an artificial grass. And of course, artificial grass can be made to look extremely real, you'd actually have to go down and chew on some of the blades of grass to realize sometimes that it isn't real, but it's it's sort of obviously not real. So now we have this berm rising up from the pool terrace and from the lawns that run between the house without a key and the orchid's restaurant. And yet there's some soil on there. There's some bags, sand, perhaps. Then there's some fabric material that I suppose they's meant to help protect and keep the bags of sand together, and then all topped by this unfortunate artificial grass, which is a little too green, a little too vivid to be real. I do not think that when the next really big storm comes in in the winter, all along the house of the coast of white key that those that kind of a berm will even stand up to the force of the waves, given that the water levels are higher from 37 years ago. And even though that being higher is a matter of an inch or maybe two, that turns out, when you consider the whole worldwide situation, a huge increase in the danger in what can happen when winter storms pour water over that temporary barrier. And of course it can't be a temporary barrier. That problem is with us now, and with the Halaklani and all of their neighboring hotels forever is going to have to be some very clever engineering with aesthetics in mind to create something that, first of all, won't separate the hotels from the ocean experience and being able to see the horizon. And, you know, as I say, that, and also it's showing the fact that the 130 year old how tree that fell is also lying there, perhaps being a part of the barrier. The grand old tree which which was a wonderful feature and always always in magazines and advertisements and travel posters and so forth. At that age it finally gave up the ghost, but it isn't dead it's growing it's growing, you know, new growth out of the tree, but somehow, I don't find it all that attractive as a vestige of what this glorious tree that used to spread out over the house without a key terrace, and over the nighttime stage, where the music, where the musicians played, and where the Hawaiian dancer held court nightly. Maybe has to go as well, when someone can. Yeah, maybe a positive twist would be and I think that's the way they try to justify this said you know it got up to that age that it just needs to lay down all the time but that's a little bit of an ironic right so the two together really is are kind of a set scenario there that needs to be worked on absolutely wrong I agree. So, but let's go back in and look at the hotel in a way that we actually have never looked at it before. And that gets us to the next slide and I want to pull you out of your comfort zone which you know is you like that. This is my my provocative thing I'm going to throw at you is the term decadence. And that has to do certainly allow myself to say has to do with the era you were designing this project which was the 80s and the show quote number five shows the guy who was running America at that time that was Reagan and run at Reagan itself was the impersonation of that decadence of just, you know, you know, doing it, no matter what, the more the better, we are America we can do it. Don't worry about anything. And it reflected in what you could see on TV and what me as a young German guy was was, you know, how America was depicted, starting at the top left with the TV series Dallas from the late 70s until the early 90s and this is JR Ewing who had a Mercedes SL and then to the right of it which we see her number two is Jonathan and Jennifer Hart as hard and hard, who had one or actually a couple that was from 79 till 80 mid 80s when you were building it. And even more shocking at the very top right. This is a gift of my dear friend Stefan our ticky basement expert who gave me for my last years birthday this book about our Mercedes SL and the image number three to the left of it we might even like less because this book cynically says even Donald the young Donald Trump who we hope is not coming back in a couple of years, at least not in the position he was some years ago now. So this role, basically is is about is about decadence but the bottom ones show us a different twist as Alex foley alias Eddie Murphy and the original Beverly Hills one in front of one. And then the two gentlemen at the very bottom left is Magnum PI alias Tom Selleck and Rick all right to the right of him. And they both share something with you Ron, because they, at least in the screenplay and you and real are Vietnam veterans. And there are certainly not the people of the same wealth and power of the one at the top, and of the same decadence, but you guys give it a different twist and let's look at that different twist because we've been talking about the interior, not just the common areas but of the core of the hotel and of hotels which is guest rooms. And now the first time ever on stage, thanks to you Ron. Next slide is the original interiors also of the hotel rooms, starting with the sweets and tell us about. I want to say that this era was was the time when greed is good. We decide, and I decided and my talented interior designers decided that decadence could be good and could actually be seen as a luxury. But it isn't too over the top. And I think the pictures that we're looking at these happen to be special sweets that were commissioned to Vera Wang of the fashion designer, who fact is hardly anything but she hasn't got put her design hands on now. Her design at the Hale Klani was, I think, a fine example of her taste of sort of a luxe, but tropical look, and you're looking at a master bedroom and a suite on the left. And at the right, you're looking at an adjacent dressing room, which is not afraid to be a bit decadent, and it certainly is luxurious. And I appreciated their appearance very much when I saw them in place for the first time. Although I never quite had the cash to stay overnight in the Hale Klani suite at $4,000 a night. Yeah, we came up with two also good terms that were glamour and glitter, right? These are terms that fit well in what we're seeing versus maybe gaudy. And these days we would say gaudy and the 80s were very gaudy, but glitter and glamour is really, you know, describes it pretty well. And let's go to the next slide and see how the bathrooms have been accentuated. And you told me that at the very bottom left in this sink area, there is Leslie Wielbeck, right, with these wonderful lighting fixtures left and right of the mirror. Yes, the interior designer was really interested in glamour. And again, if it's held in some check, that glamour would read through and would be a part of the hotel's identity as a luxury resort hotel. And so we see mirrors and glitter and sparkle and for women to work on their makeup before hitting out for an evening elsewhere in Waikiki, this was an ideal situation. Next to it Vera Wang kept a little bit more moody in terms of her color schemes, but she was creating a large bathroom large enough for four, frankly, I'm not sure why four would be in the tub at the same time. But as you're there, you're looking out through the open, open lanai doors, and you can see nighttime Waikiki and the wonderful glitter of the city beyond and the looming darkness and the mass that you that you can experience of diamond head crater. Yeah, and let's get to the next and last slide for today, which shows us once again, the more normal so not the sweets but the normal guest rooms but they're anything but normal but they're very tropical exotic and not as heavy, right and oversaturated as the ones that we are afraid are the current ones. Right one. The original interior design was done by an architect from Seattle, who has done a lot of interior work result design, many fine buildings in the Pacific Northwest. The picture on the lower right shows diamond head sort of fitting in with what the room appears to be the character of the room. The furniture is very light. The pieces don't really match each other it's like maybe the room has grown and you they've taken some furniture out and replace it with others very light residential scale and notice the touches of live orchids and they brought in the tropics. I mean they were lucky to have the famous crater off in the distance, but even those rooms that didn't have a crater had the tropicality within the room. And we'll be looking at what, what, at least I think and perhaps Martin and DeSoto and I have found that the new new renovated rooms have have lost that character for reasons we're not sure to the lower right is another part of the suite, but the one reason we wanted to show it was when we will be looking next week at the typical newly renovated room. In contrast, what Vera Wang did was she use furniture that is overtly has overt Asian touches as you can see, and that there are strong color contrasts. And there's a large living plant shown on the right, which relates to the happy situation of having a living palm tree from swaying back and forth out over the line I will be seeing will be seeing a different sort of room that's been proposed, not proposed, but built and paid for next week. And we have our questions about that. Absolutely. And with that, stay tuned for that. We're at the end of another exciting show. And until next week, where we start exactly there Ron, stay as a gloriously glittery and glamorous as you Ron. Bye bye guys.