A Local Connection

Hawaii Kai workouts: appealing scenery

Because Hawaii Kai was planned a little over a half-century ago, its design is much more appealing than the ramshackle layout of older sections of Honolulu. The roads, shopping, and recreational areas, interspersed with lagoons and canals, make it an attractive place to live.

In fact, Hawaii Kai resembles my new home town, Foster City, which was planned in the mid-20th century, created from landfill, and has increased in desirability over time. (The populations of about 30,000 are also similar.)

Foster City: view from the bridge on July 4th

Hawaii Kai: Hanauma crater in back

We're old enough to remember the area before it was developed. From 2004:

Hawaii Kai is now a prosperous community of million-dollar homes, but I remember when it was a dry, hot expanse of dirt roads, bushes, and tangled foliage, home to pigs and chickens.

The “pig man” would come to our home in central Honolulu and pick up a week’s supply of our table scraps, which had been ripening in a three-foot steel can, and take it to his hogs. He would show his gratitude by inviting us to an annual luau at his farm. The food was plentiful and tasty, but the powerful stench emanating from the pens and the large horseflies buzzing about the dishes weren’t esthetically pleasing. Then again an eight-year-old didn’t know what "esthetics" meant or that they were supposed to matter.

For hours I would watch the hogs, who rolled around in a nameless mixture of mud, slop, and waste material. The new residents of Hawaii Kai roll around in BMW and Lexus SUVs and would be horrified to have the pig man as their neighbor. I hope he sold his land at a good price to Henry J. Kaiser, the visionary industrialist who developed the area.