Travel: Doing the hula with 'Aunty'

By ROBERT N. JENKINS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 5, 2003

[Times photo: Robert N. Jenkins]	PARADISE FOUND: A long way from his Manhattan office, magazine editor Reid Bramblett cools off after hiking to this waterfall pool in the Kahala Forest Reserve on the north shore of the island of Hawaii.

[Photo: Richard Grant]	FINDING REFUGE: (At left and below) These statues stand guard by Hale o Keawe, the thatched structure resembling one that held the bones of a Hawaiian king. On the ocean’s edge, the structure was recreated at Puuhonua o Honaunau, or the Place of Refuge, a National Historical Park. Centuries ago, the 180-acre site was a royal residence and a sanctuary for those who had broken ancient laws. Now it is a peaceful place where visitors can contemplate Hawaii as it was before the Europeans came.

[Times photo: Robert N. Jenkins]

[Times photo: Robert N. Jenkins]

TAKE HOME A SHIRT: David Bailey is surrounded by some of the 5,000 or so aloha shirts in his Honolulu shop. Bailey’s Antiques and Aloha Shirts calls to mind the head shops of the 1960s but is crammed with kitsch: antique Zippo lighters; Pee Wee Herman, Spuds McKenzie and Taco Bell chihuahua dolls; plastic and wooden hula girls; used blue jeans. Still, this is a shrine to the aloha shirt. Bailey has them dating to the 1930s and priced from $300 to $5,000, depending upon the condition and the print. Those from the 1960s sell for up to $200, and about 2,000 new reproductions of popular designs are priced under $20. “It is wearable art,” Bailey says. “About half the shirts we sell are being framed for display.” A former professional hang glider, the Californian left the jewelry business — “Very cutthroat, and I could do the math” — and 22 years ago opened his first shirt shop near Waikiki. To accumulate his stock, he spends “half the day on eBay. . . . About 20 dealers drive the price of aloha shirts; I’m one of them.” His top sale? Bailey has a photo of him standing with Nicolas Cage, who is wearing his just-purchased $9,000 shirt.

	STEMMING THE FLOW: The outline of a palm tree is shown in this hardened lava, which flowed around the tree at Mauna Ulu, on the Big Island, in 1969. [Times photo: Robert N. Jenkins]

	LEAVING A SIGN: These petroglyphs, carved into lava a few hundreds yards from the Pacific on the northwest shore of the island of Hawaii, may be 1,000 years old. Archaeologists are unsure of their purpose — a message to the gods, directional aids for travelers, family history ... ? [Times photo: Robert N. Jenkins]

Hawaiian Insights

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