Tuesday, November 8, 2011

APEC is Upon Us

Usually when I get back to Waikiki town, I take the route along the beach than spin back to the Ala Wai. Well, that's what I did tonight and Kalakaua Ave. (the main drag) as you enter Waikiki was cordoned off for security reasons I presume. APEC. I surmise there's a little bit of word play on "OPEC." Asian Pacific Economic Countries. Anyways, the barricade detours and shifts the traffic onto Kuhio Ave. Kuhio Ave. is like "middle street." Greater Waikiki has a one-way street running along the beach and a parallel street also one-way in the return direction running along the Ala Wai canal. Kuhio Ave. runs in the middle of the two main streets with two-way traffic. Anyways, Kapiolani Park, at least, the section directly across from the Waikiki Zoo is also off-limits. The soccer moms must be pissed. Or, perhaps the kids practice on another parcel of the park. Dunno for sure. It's just that the street that runs between the zoo and the park is closed to traffic and in the same motion to the parking lot. That's another, dunno for sure. As soon as I got near that section and spotted the barricades from that distance I made an immediate left turn and swung back 180° to Ala Wai Blvd. Oh, I almost forgot, the section of the main drag that's closed that I mentioned in the beginning of the post is where the only service station in Waikiki is located. As in, cannot get gas in Waikiki. Still I think the temporary inconvenience should be tolerated by the residents. No easy feat since Waikiki is the home of the biggest bunch of complainers in the state bar none. They of course represent the vocal minority. Or is it the majority as of this writing? I'm the last local person living here. Hmmm. The stupidity of it is that most of these residents have lived in Waikiki only a few years than in a few more years from now they'll pack up and move to another state and city and start up complaining about this or that as is their M.O. While they were here, they probably never made it down to the beach. Just savored the fact that the live next to Waikiki beach. Now I might rant intermittently. Okay, perhaps, more than intermittently. But that's on a blog. There were many major cities bidding to have the APEC event held in their municipalities. Obama who grew up in Honolulu most probably influenced the decision to hold the APEC summit here. It's not only other cites were in contention, but other pacific rim countries themselves wanted to host the APEC summit. Obama, the President of China, et. al. actually arrive here on Friday or the weekend. That should mean even more street closures. Impromptu kinds.

4 comments:

Kay said...

You and I must be on the same wavelength. I have a post scheduled to go up at midnight about APEC also. I guess we're not impacted much on our side of the island. We're leaving off going into town until next week. It's great that you're being tolerant of the upheaval. This is a once in a lifetime event. Maybe you could remind your neighbors of that? Nah... never mind. I can't even tell my neighbors to stop feeding the darn pigeons.

RONW said...

Kay- APEC is possibly the biggest international event that Hawaii has ever hosted. I haven't checked island history but I'm pretty sure it is. With the neighbor feeding the pigeons .... that's a hard call. Right or wrong you risk setting off a complaint contest with the party. It's on the impossible side but if you could get the neighbors together and make a group complaint, er request, that may be a better option. The reason I say this is that getting people living in the same apartment building to cooperate is an exercise in frustration. When they do though, it works. Still, you gotta be nice to the person behind the disturbance.

blournalist said...

Funny, the similarities, even though our parts of the world otherwise probably couldn't be more different.

Around here, being pretty much an easy one-hour flight from NYC, we tend to get a lot of folks who fall in love with how damned quaint it all seems, buy their 40-acre spread, build themselves the full Martha Stewart experience right down to the exactly correct type of swan in the kidney shaped pond, then leave after a couple of years when the beautiful weather they just assumed would accompany the view never does come.

In the meantime, they got involved and voted and left their mark. Thank you. Thank you for that.

RONW said...

blournalist- Agreed. When these know it alls or know more about Waikiki than me or I'll ever know, start voting, they sure leave their mark.