Down the street from our place is Honolulu’s notorious Chinatown. Once the first and only stop for Chinese immigrants and laborers in the 19th century, Chinatown’s colorful history has transformed it from a seedy prostitution and gambling den during the greatest generations of World War II (many from that generation onced lined up by the hundreds to visit their favorite girls at such places named Club Hubba Hubba) to a trendy shopping and nightclub spot where homeless, hipsters, and drug dealers all co-mingle in a slight disharmony. And don’t forget the Chinese and Southeast Asian immigrants who step over and around mentally ill drug addicts to shop for choice produce, exotic fruits, and some of the freshest chops, slabs, and chunks of, well, just name it. Roast ducks slowly drip their goodness in the window of a hole in the wall restaurant, tropical fish glare back at shoppers while on ice, and slices of durian fruit can be smelled a block away. Very few things are like Honolulu’s Chinatown. Small indeed but it packs a tasty and visual (sometimes stinky) punch!
Ola Magazine, the in-house magazine of the Hilton Hawaiian Village, tasked me to document Chinatown so as to entice daring hotel guests to drift downtown and visit the exotic side of Honolulu.
The spread, published this month, can be seen here in pdf form.
How do you whitewash the “exotic” and make it interesting for the average tourist couple to visit? Like the Asian shoppers, you just jump over the homeless, avoid the drunk hipsters, and politely decline anything for sale by Kimo the dealer.
Overall, Chinatown is a fun place to photograph. Its not as bustling as New York’s but its interesting none the less. To photograph can be a challenge as language and misunderstandings can easily follow. At some spots I asked to shoot at, I was met with suspicion as many thought I was expecting a bribe or a kickback for “advertising.” Once people opened up, they easily allowed me to enter their worlds and see/smell/taste only insiders might.
Sweet gelatinous chicken feet in a brown soy sauce, Filipino balut (fertilized eggs…oh so good!) , fresh local lychee. Cheap Chinese made sandals, jade jewelery, a steaming hot bowl of Vietnamese pho. Fresh cut flowers, hand made leis, a legit massage. Its all in Chinatown if you look and step over the calloused outside.
Yes, the poor thing…destined for a wok, soy sauce, and a pair of chop sticks! Ooo la la!
So gone are the whore houses, the thousands of sailors, and bad art galleries have replaced shooting galleries. Gone are the good ol’ days.
My father, stationed at Schofield Barracks in the 1950s, told me the prostitution was gone (historically, the State, which ran the brothels for the military, did close the sanctioned businesses of the brothels by the end of WWII) said the vice was still around and everywhere. During the year he was stationed here, his claims range from having a pistol shoved in his face after racing to rescue a damsel in distress to escaping out of a just a bit too small window above a bathroom to avoid a thrashing by drunk sailors. Said, “I’ve only thought it was in the movies that I would see a grown man thrown through a plate glass window.” Hawaiian police with yard long batons, flying beer bottles, tattoo parlors…ahhhh…what life must have been like…