In my formative years I spent many hours at the old Honolulu Stadium at King and Isenberg, a half-mile from our home. Grand-uncle Fred ("Buck" of Buck's Sweet Bread) had season tickets to the triple-A baseball Islanders, and I went to all my school's football games
(reminiscences
here and
here). The stadium was demolished in 1976 and replaced by a park.
Old Stadium Park has been cleaned up since I walked past it a few years ago. The City has picked up the litter and replanted grass in the bare areas. The homeless tents are gone. The area seems smaller than I remembered; it's hard to imagine that here 25,000 fans could squeeze around a football field or baseball diamond. Honolulu Stadium (aka the
Termite Palace) would not meet building standards anywhere in the world today. Maybe that "charm" is one of the reasons it is fondly ensconced in our memory.
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