WaikikiStories?

Of Manhattan it is often said, "There are a million stories in the naked city." For Hawaii's tourist Mecca, Historic Waikiki will settle for a thousand. Backed by several artists, writers, teachers and activists, the site is a treasure trove of information and everyday remembrances.

Perhaps inspired by the Flash-based 1,000 Nights in Manhattan project (but with less sex), the real gem is a map of Waikiki with dots marking the place where personal histories were made. From the old Coco's Coffee House to the west and The Jungle to the east, already dozens of stories have been told. Proclaims the site, "951 more to go..."

Do you have a Waikiki story?

I lived in Waikiki for several years, and also got into the biggest trouble of my teen years in that neighborhood as well. I'm sure I could come up with something. The crazy lady who tried to exorcize me at the McDonald's on Kalakaua Avenue? The time the security guards at The Ilikai chased my friend and I down twenty flights of stairs?

Even if you don't have a tale to tell, the site has even more to offer.

Check out this helpful map of Waikiki surf breaks (so that's where Cunha's is!). Or the quick timelines for the islands as well as Waikiki proper, from Captain James Cook and Kamehameha I to the present. There's also the beginnings of a site dictionary and even a bit of e-commerce.

A bit of trivia? Check out the picture accompanying the story about the demolition of the old Kaiser Hospital. Gaye Chan, one of the founders of Historic Waikiki, wrote to me a while ago after finding it in this 1999 entry in my web journal. So this is what Gaye's been up to!

Comments

Is this the Gaye Chan who taught photography at UH?

hey, nice pineapple! I just noticed it :)

That's a neat site.. but it's just begging for a CMS. There I go again..

Thanks. My step-brother (who came in second in the Star-Bulletin's UH logo contest a while back, by the way) designed it. Now to establish the HawaiiStories Department of Shameless Commerce...

I agree, though, the Historic Waikiki site could get pretty messy pretty quickly the way it's set up now. Every story "dot" (and every other page, for that matter) is a flat HTML file in the root directory - and they want to collect a thousand of them?

The Flash-based 1,000 Nights in Manhattan site must have taken forever to build out, but it's presentation is so elegant. I couldn't imagine trying to do that with a basic imagemap.

Actually, with ActionScript, creating a Flash site like that wouldn't be too difficult compared to hand-maintaining it with HTML. Everything could be in a database, and points generated and plotted automatically.

Hmm, perhaps that's how I should develop my skills..

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