Waikiki During Quarantine

WaialuaNate

Legend (inyourownmind)
Mar 19, 2011
387
222
43
Huggo's will be ok. Old money there. The Kona Inn restaurant is old school with a view. They'll be ok. There's sooo many restaurants along Ali'i Drive I bet 40 - 50 % will close or have already. And that upper Keauhou area above Keauhou Bay with all the restaurants in the malls I bet will fold, leaving only Foodland and the gas station. A few of the old plate lunch places that "locals" go to will come back. A friend out in Ocean View who has the only restaurant down there, will reopen with a smaller menu for the time being and go from there. It's the visitor flow for him with travelers going from Kona to the Volcano's National Park area or the other way from Hilo. Retiree's and locals living down there. My Mom and Uncle bought a bunch of "a'a lava" property down there for peanuts in the 1970's. It will be a while before any sort of visitor count will get down that way.
Isn’t it odd the Fisherman’s Landing has been closed for 25 years? Talk about a view.
 

Waiehu

Legend (inyourownmind)
Apr 1, 2009
350
198
43
Even with a “do not travel here” 14 day quarantine for all arrivals, we are still getting 1,000 arrivals per day. The Hawaii demand is too strong. When they lift the 14 day quarantine I could see daily arrivals jumping back up to 5,000 to 15,000. Our usually daily arrivals are 30,000. Worldwide recession and people will still travel here.
According to the HTA, on Thursday the arrivals total was 1213. When they breakdown the total, only 20 or 6% were coming to Hawaii to vacation.

30% of the 1203 were "out of state visitors" . Of which 262 or 72% to "visit family or friends". 20 or 6% were coming to "vacation".
332 Returning residents
140 Crew members
75 military
151 Transit passengers, making connections out of Hawaii to another destinations
41 for business
111 people relocating to Hawaii
 

Waiehu

Legend (inyourownmind)
Apr 1, 2009
350
198
43
My moms cousin is one of those behind the scene guys. At a recent birthday party my folks said the whose who of movers and shakers(takers) were there. He’s been investigated but says he’s just a simple businessman.

Been working the whole time. Lot of residents want to expand, ADU, or fix up their properties. Either for rental or move family in with them. At the beach now with my son. Waves haven’t really come up yet but he loves getting rolled in the shorebreak. He’s been really sad not being able to see his classmates except on Zoom. Lots of people at Kapiolani Park and Waikiki.
Some years back, when one book came out by James Dooley, there was a lot of people scrambling on Maui to get the book as quickly as possible in order to see if family members or classmates were mentioned. One thing about Maui was that, back in the day, it was such a small community, that one pretty much knew who the major players, "movers and shakers (takers)" were and you saw them on a pretty regular basis.
 
  • Like
Reactions: teeroi

Bob

Michael Peterson status
Apr 23, 2001
2,823
355
83
65
Oxnard
No different than working on any big military defense contract.
I asked a do nothing sixth grader I was teaching what he planned on doing when it was time to work for a living. He said he was going to work for the county. Shut me right up.
 

PJ

Gerry Lopez status
Jan 27, 2002
1,022
733
113
Shrub Oak,N.Y.,USA
First - this is a great thread.

Japanese tourists - 20% of the visitors, 30% of the dollars, 50% of the Oahu visitors. Those are very interesting metrics and the Japanese tourists we have seen in Hawaii always seemed nice. In 2004 when our kids were little we used to go to the beach by slippery wall, inside the breakwater. The Japanese tourist girls would come in pairs, dressed up like it was a fashion show, with high heeled beach shoes. The boys would just go in and swim but the girls always had a floatation device. When my daughter was 6 or so she spent a half day in the water with two of those girls on their floats. They couldn’t speak English, she couldn’t speak Japanese, but they were her big sisters for the day and they had a ball.

My wife and I have gone to the Moana Surfrider at Waikiki our last three trips to Hawaii. We had always dreamed of staying there and it is a wonderful hotel, the original hotel is grand yet human-sized and as you walk through the lobby into the Banyan Courtyard the noise of Waikiki just disappears. And it's a very welcoming place - somehow it’s grand, beautiful and not snooty all at the same time. We get a room up high in the Diamond Head side new wing right over Canoes, I get a rental board at Koa, a board lockup from Mo at the Moana's pool towel station and we're all set. The room is so close to the water, you can hear kids laughing all day. It's not cheap so my wife spends months stalking the Internet, pricing the room and the plane but for us it's almost priceless. And once we have that room in that place - we don't need anything else.

So anyway my wife follows the Moana Surfrider on Instagram - the stuff the Japanese tourists post on there is amazing - over and over again Japanese post pictures and videos of the Moana with long, long, paragraphs about how good it makes them feel. The English translation is a bit rough at times but the emotion shines through. Those Japanese truly love that hotel and Hawaii. And they get married there, one or two weddings a day usually, on the lawn under our room. Just this morning my wife showed me a Japanese post of a girl 7 years old or so standing in front of the Moana in 2000 and then that same girl in her wedding dress standing in almost the same place in 2019. In another Japanese post this morning a guy posted a video of the Moana, saying he hated Corona because he couldn't go to the Moana.

Federal government bailout of the states - I think the controversy is really the states which had existing unfunded pension liability shortfalls vs states which do not and It looks like the unfunded liabilities are in Blue states. I don't know why the federal aid can't be based on last year's tax receipts against this year’s, similar to how the paycheck protection to small businesses is based on last year’s numbers. This way all the states could receive the aid they need and the states without unfunded pension liabilities would not feel they were paying for the unfunded liabilities of other states. Here in New York we had 6 billion in unfunded pension liabilities before Corona. I know that California’s CALPERS state pension system has had unfunded liabilities for a long time also. I remember Warren Buffet saying 10 years ago that a lot of pension plans projected an 8% annual return on their investments where in the real world you can only get 6% and that was the problem, that they put too little in upfront, pretending that they could get 8%. Incidentally our company pays for a service called “Empower” where our employees can input all of their IRA and 401K assets to see what their retirement income will be and if they are on the right track - it asks a lot of questions about the nature of the assets then shows what you’ll get at retirement. I input all my stuff (it’s a mix of things) and it spit out a number – 6% - my assets x .06. I asked our pension fund investment lady if there was just a .06 in there and she said “Oh no, they use Monte Carlo theory, I have seen their presentation”. I don’t know – looked like 6% to me - same number as Buffet said.

Also on the subject of pensions - our company employs Local 3 union electricians and something interesting with their pension (which is presently funded correctly), if there is ever a shortfall the contractors are liable. We always thought we paid their hourly rates into the union for everything and that was it – we were done – but that’s not so – the contractors guarantee the pension plan. Which is weird. How can I price the job accurately today if I don’t know my true labor cost, if today’s labor cost can actually change years after the job is done?

Our governor Cuomo here in New York (who I think has been doing a great job dealing with this crisis) points out that New York pays out way more in Federal taxes than it receives and that other states receive more than they pay in. It’s not really that some states are better at getting federal money than others, it’s mostly caused by our progressive federal income tax system where the more you make the higher percentage you pay and there are a lot of high earners here in NY. If you look at say interstate 95 from the Bronx to Connecticut it’s 3 lanes either way, like 30 miles long and used by a jillion people. A two lane interstate highway in Kentucky (which receives more federal tax money than it pays out) has much fewer people living around its corridor to pay for it yet here in NY I need that road in order to get things shipped to me so I figure I have to chip in to pay for that road. And the Interstate highway system also keeps our cost of defense low since we can transport our (relatively) small standing army to where it is needed, unlike Russia or China who, without something like our interstate highway system, must maintain multiple standing armies all around their countries. So those things are important to all of us and I think the federal tax system is pretty fair. I don’t think our governor should be complaining about that – I think NY and the other states that have to should just man up and handle their pension liabilities themselves. I hope an agreement can be reached to bail out the states for just the Corona related losses.
 

racer1

Tom Curren status
Apr 16, 2014
12,922
14,982
113
Honolulu, Hawaii
According to the HTA, on Thursday the arrivals total was 1213. When they breakdown the total, only 20 or 6% were coming to Hawaii to vacation.

30% of the 1203 were "out of state visitors" . Of which 262 or 72% to "visit family or friends". 20 or 6% were coming to "vacation".
332 Returning residents
140 Crew members
75 military
151 Transit passengers, making connections out of Hawaii to another destinations
41 for business
111 people relocating to Hawaii
It's a piece of paper that is filled out when you arrive. The only thing they check for is a local ID, so that only makes "returning residents" as concrete that they are actually returning residents. And the crew members. Everybody else, I would be skeptical that they aren't ALL tourists. These people don't want to write "vacation" as they know they will get hassled with daily calls and emails. People will write whatever they think will get them out of the 14 day quarantine, even though all arrivals including returning residents are supposed to quarantine.

If I was military, I wouldn't say I was here for vacation - I would just put military. "For business" sounds like tourists. "Relocating to Hawaii" again, tourists - there's no way to prove that you ended up becoming a resident. "Transit passengers" that's tourists - unless they are checking connecting tickets this might be the best way to avoid getting daily calls / emails about quarantine.

And we don't have breakdowns on the 30K daily arrivals pre covid, so the ratios might be the same.
 
Last edited:

Subway

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 31, 2008
13,497
10,110
113
LBNY
First - this is a great thread.

Japanese tourists - 20% of the visitors, 30% of the dollars, 50% of the Oahu visitors. Those are very interesting metrics and the Japanese tourists we have seen in Hawaii always seemed nice. In 2004 when our kids were little we used to go to the beach by slippery wall, inside the breakwater. The Japanese tourist girls would come in pairs, dressed up like it was a fashion show, with high heeled beach shoes. The boys would just go in and swim but the girls always had a floatation device. When my daughter was 6 or so she spent a half day in the water with two of those girls on their floats. They couldn’t speak English, she couldn’t speak Japanese, but they were her big sisters for the day and they had a ball.

My wife and I have gone to the Moana Surfrider at Waikiki our last three trips to Hawaii. We had always dreamed of staying there and it is a wonderful hotel, the original hotel is grand yet human-sized and as you walk through the lobby into the Banyan Courtyard the noise of Waikiki just disappears. And it's a very welcoming place - somehow it’s grand, beautiful and not snooty all at the same time. We get a room up high in the Diamond Head side new wing right over Canoes, I get a rental board at Koa, a board lockup from Mo at the Moana's pool towel station and we're all set. The room is so close to the water, you can hear kids laughing all day. It's not cheap so my wife spends months stalking the Internet, pricing the room and the plane but for us it's almost priceless. And once we have that room in that place - we don't need anything else.

So anyway my wife follows the Moana Surfrider on Instagram - the stuff the Japanese tourists post on there is amazing - over and over again Japanese post pictures and videos of the Moana with long, long, paragraphs about how good it makes them feel. The English translation is a bit rough at times but the emotion shines through. Those Japanese truly love that hotel and Hawaii. And they get married there, one or two weddings a day usually, on the lawn under our room. Just this morning my wife showed me a Japanese post of a girl 7 years old or so standing in front of the Moana in 2000 and then that same girl in her wedding dress standing in almost the same place in 2019. In another Japanese post this morning a guy posted a video of the Moana, saying he hated Corona because he couldn't go to the Moana.

Federal government bailout of the states - I think the controversy is really the states which had existing unfunded pension liability shortfalls vs states which do not and It looks like the unfunded liabilities are in Blue states. I don't know why the federal aid can't be based on last year's tax receipts against this year’s, similar to how the paycheck protection to small businesses is based on last year’s numbers. This way all the states could receive the aid they need and the states without unfunded pension liabilities would not feel they were paying for the unfunded liabilities of other states. Here in New York we had 6 billion in unfunded pension liabilities before Corona. I know that California’s CALPERS state pension system has had unfunded liabilities for a long time also. I remember Warren Buffet saying 10 years ago that a lot of pension plans projected an 8% annual return on their investments where in the real world you can only get 6% and that was the problem, that they put too little in upfront, pretending that they could get 8%. Incidentally our company pays for a service called “Empower” where our employees can input all of their IRA and 401K assets to see what their retirement income will be and if they are on the right track - it asks a lot of questions about the nature of the assets then shows what you’ll get at retirement. I input all my stuff (it’s a mix of things) and it spit out a number – 6% - my assets x .06. I asked our pension fund investment lady if there was just a .06 in there and she said “Oh no, they use Monte Carlo theory, I have seen their presentation”. I don’t know – looked like 6% to me - same number as Buffet said.

Also on the subject of pensions - our company employs Local 3 union electricians and something interesting with their pension (which is presently funded correctly), if there is ever a shortfall the contractors are liable. We always thought we paid their hourly rates into the union for everything and that was it – we were done – but that’s not so – the contractors guarantee the pension plan. Which is weird. How can I price the job accurately today if I don’t know my true labor cost, if today’s labor cost can actually change years after the job is done?

Our governor Cuomo here in New York (who I think has been doing a great job dealing with this crisis) points out that New York pays out way more in Federal taxes than it receives and that other states receive more than they pay in. It’s not really that some states are better at getting federal money than others, it’s mostly caused by our progressive federal income tax system where the more you make the higher percentage you pay and there are a lot of high earners here in NY. If you look at say interstate 95 from the Bronx to Connecticut it’s 3 lanes either way, like 30 miles long and used by a jillion people. A two lane interstate highway in Kentucky (which receives more federal tax money than it pays out) has much fewer people living around its corridor to pay for it yet here in NY I need that road in order to get things shipped to me so I figure I have to chip in to pay for that road. And the Interstate highway system also keeps our cost of defense low since we can transport our (relatively) small standing army to where it is needed, unlike Russia or China who, without something like our interstate highway system, must maintain multiple standing armies all around their countries. So those things are important to all of us and I think the federal tax system is pretty fair. I don’t think our governor should be complaining about that – I think NY and the other states that have to should just man up and handle their pension liabilities themselves. I hope an agreement can be reached to bail out the states for just the Corona related losses.


That was way too logical and well written I’m going to need an errBB appropriate version k tx ;)
hey you guys should come down to the beach. Small groups ok, beaches are huge right now with all the sand they Pumped in the last few years
 
  • Like
Reactions: the janitor and PJ

griffinsurfboard

Duke status
Oct 31, 2004
25,653
6,905
113
Palm Coast , Florida
Visit site
According to the HTA, on Thursday the arrivals total was 1213. When they breakdown the total, only 20 or 6% were coming to Hawaii to vacation.

30% of the 1203 were "out of state visitors" . Of which 262 or 72% to "visit family or friends". 20 or 6% were coming to "vacation".
332 Returning residents
140 Crew members
75 military
151 Transit passengers, making connections out of Hawaii to another destinations
41 for business
111 people relocating to Hawaii
Thanks for the info !

Not good news but inspiring for those in charge to get things going quickly .

Racer could have bought our house for 1 m , what a great place -
 

racer1

Tom Curren status
Apr 16, 2014
12,922
14,982
113
Honolulu, Hawaii
We had always dreamed of staying there and it is a wonderful hotel, the original hotel is grand yet human-sized and as you walk through the lobby into the Banyan Courtyard the noise of Waikiki just disappears. And it's a very welcoming place - somehow it’s grand, beautiful and not snooty all at the same time. We get a room up high in the Diamond Head side new wing right over Canoes, I get a rental board at Koa, a board lockup from Mo at the Moana's pool towel station and we're all set. The room is so close to the water, you can hear kids laughing all day. It's not cheap so my wife spends months stalking the Internet, pricing the room and the plane but for us it's almost priceless. And once we have that room in that place - we don't need anything else.
Magical place.
 

Waiehu

Legend (inyourownmind)
Apr 1, 2009
350
198
43
It's a piece of paper that is filled out when you arrive. The only thing they check for is a local ID, so that only makes "returning residents" as concrete that they are actually returning residents. And the crew members. Everybody else, I would be skeptical that they aren't ALL tourists. These people don't want to write "vacation" as they know they will get hassled with daily calls and emails. People will write whatever they think will get them out of the 14 day quarantine, even though all arrivals including returning residents are supposed to quarantine.

If I was military, I wouldn't say I was here for vacation - I would just put military. "For business" sounds like tourists. "Relocating to Hawaii" again, tourists - there's no way to prove that you ended up becoming a resident. "Transit passengers" that's tourists - unless they are checking connecting tickets this might be the best way to avoid getting daily calls / emails about quarantine.

And we don't have breakdowns on the 30K daily arrivals pre covid, so the ratios might be the same.
When traveling for business, when I was doing "contract" work, filled out that darn form more times than I can count. Could be that they are traveling with a "military" ticket supplied by the Military and this is how their classification is "military". The girlfriend of our next door neighbors son is in the Air National Guard on Maui and just recently got deployed to the Mainland for training. Traveled on a commercial Airline on a ticket supplied by the Guard. When she returns in a few weeks, same ticketing, so I would think that she will be counted as "Military", She was required to quarantine for two weeks on the Mainland.
As for the "visiting family and friends", it was graduation time, so I would not be surprised that family was coming to Hawaii for this. As well as students from Hawaii attending school on the Mainland and returning temporarily for a visit.
Maybe, I am just a bit more trusting that these numbers are somewhat accurate.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: teeroi and racer1

Waiehu

Legend (inyourownmind)
Apr 1, 2009
350
198
43
First - this is a great thread.

Japanese tourists - 20% of the visitors, 30% of the dollars, 50% of the Oahu visitors. Those are very interesting metrics and the Japanese tourists we have seen in Hawaii always seemed nice. In 2004 when our kids were little we used to go to the beach by slippery wall, inside the breakwater. The Japanese tourist girls would come in pairs, dressed up like it was a fashion show, with high heeled beach shoes. The boys would just go in and swim but the girls always had a floatation device. When my daughter was 6 or so she spent a half day in the water with two of those girls on their floats. They couldn’t speak English, she couldn’t speak Japanese, but they were her big sisters for the day and they had a ball.

My wife and I have gone to the Moana Surfrider at Waikiki our last three trips to Hawaii. We had always dreamed of staying there and it is a wonderful hotel, the original hotel is grand yet human-sized and as you walk through the lobby into the Banyan Courtyard the noise of Waikiki just disappears. And it's a very welcoming place - somehow it’s grand, beautiful and not snooty all at the same time. We get a room up high in the Diamond Head side new wing right over Canoes, I get a rental board at Koa, a board lockup from Mo at the Moana's pool towel station and we're all set. The room is so close to the water, you can hear kids laughing all day. It's not cheap so my wife spends months stalking the Internet, pricing the room and the plane but for us it's almost priceless. And once we have that room in that place - we don't need anything else.

So anyway my wife follows the Moana Surfrider on Instagram - the stuff the Japanese tourists post on there is amazing - over and over again Japanese post pictures and videos of the Moana with long, long, paragraphs about how good it makes them feel. The English translation is a bit rough at times but the emotion shines through. Those Japanese truly love that hotel and Hawaii. And they get married there, one or two weddings a day usually, on the lawn under our room. Just this morning my wife showed me a Japanese post of a girl 7 years old or so standing in front of the Moana in 2000 and then that same girl in her wedding dress standing in almost the same place in 2019. In another Japanese post this morning a guy posted a video of the Moana, saying he hated Corona because he couldn't go to the Moana.

Federal government bailout of the states - I think the controversy is really the states which had existing unfunded pension liability shortfalls vs states which do not and It looks like the unfunded liabilities are in Blue states. I don't know why the federal aid can't be based on last year's tax receipts against this year’s, similar to how the paycheck protection to small businesses is based on last year’s numbers. This way all the states could receive the aid they need and the states without unfunded pension liabilities would not feel they were paying for the unfunded liabilities of other states. Here in New York we had 6 billion in unfunded pension liabilities before Corona. I know that California’s CALPERS state pension system has had unfunded liabilities for a long time also. I remember Warren Buffet saying 10 years ago that a lot of pension plans projected an 8% annual return on their investments where in the real world you can only get 6% and that was the problem, that they put too little in upfront, pretending that they could get 8%. Incidentally our company pays for a service called “Empower” where our employees can input all of their IRA and 401K assets to see what their retirement income will be and if they are on the right track - it asks a lot of questions about the nature of the assets then shows what you’ll get at retirement. I input all my stuff (it’s a mix of things) and it spit out a number – 6% - my assets x .06. I asked our pension fund investment lady if there was just a .06 in there and she said “Oh no, they use Monte Carlo theory, I have seen their presentation”. I don’t know – looked like 6% to me - same number as Buffet said.

Also on the subject of pensions - our company employs Local 3 union electricians and something interesting with their pension (which is presently funded correctly), if there is ever a shortfall the contractors are liable. We always thought we paid their hourly rates into the union for everything and that was it – we were done – but that’s not so – the contractors guarantee the pension plan. Which is weird. How can I price the job accurately today if I don’t know my true labor cost, if today’s labor cost can actually change years after the job is done?

Our governor Cuomo here in New York (who I think has been doing a great job dealing with this crisis) points out that New York pays out way more in Federal taxes than it receives and that other states receive more than they pay in. It’s not really that some states are better at getting federal money than others, it’s mostly caused by our progressive federal income tax system where the more you make the higher percentage you pay and there are a lot of high earners here in NY. If you look at say interstate 95 from the Bronx to Connecticut it’s 3 lanes either way, like 30 miles long and used by a jillion people. A two lane interstate highway in Kentucky (which receives more federal tax money than it pays out) has much fewer people living around its corridor to pay for it yet here in NY I need that road in order to get things shipped to me so I figure I have to chip in to pay for that road. And the Interstate highway system also keeps our cost of defense low since we can transport our (relatively) small standing army to where it is needed, unlike Russia or China who, without something like our interstate highway system, must maintain multiple standing armies all around their countries. So those things are important to all of us and I think the federal tax system is pretty fair. I don’t think our governor should be complaining about that – I think NY and the other states that have to should just man up and handle their pension liabilities themselves. I hope an agreement can be reached to bail out the states for just the Corona related losses.

Love the Moana. My Dad was a member of the OCC and that part of Waikiki was a big playground for me as a child. I still try to make it down to The Banyan Court at the Moana for a beer or three when staycationing in Waikiki. Once in the Banyan Court, one almost feels like they have returned to the days of the past in Waikiki, the Hawaii Calls radio show and all. At times, you can be pleasantly surprised. As in the time we were there at the same time a very Local wedding reception was taking place at the Moana. Robert Cazimero was in attendance at the wedding, sat down on the piano near the stage area and put on an impromptu solo concert for about forty minutes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: PJ and teeroi

Waiehu

Legend (inyourownmind)
Apr 1, 2009
350
198
43
I hear you and want to be trusting too, but people will do whatever they want to enjoy a Hawaii vacation.
I am sure that is the case for some. But, are some returning residents as guilty? Case in point deals with the first reported case on Molokai. Resident returned from Vegas, was told to quarantine for two weeks. Two weeks pass and he returns to his place of work, one of the main grocery stores on Island. When diagnosed, turns out he was seen partying at the beach multiple times during his "quarantine". Guess my point being, it is not just the "tourists" who cannot be fully trusted, as we have members of our own communities that are guilty of the same conduct.