Showing posts with label restaurants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restaurants. Show all posts
Monday, January 30, 2017
Ilind.net: Some Honolulu Restaurant History
On Canlis restaurant in Honolulu. I've never heard of this place until I read Ilind today.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
An Opening and a Closing
When Island Chevrolet closed in mid-2009 I took some photos of the empty car lot. It didn't stay like that for long, becoming a base for several food trucks, including the famous Gina's. Now WikiFresh is open in the building.
Meanwhile, Kawate Seed Shop will close its doors permanently on 30 April.
Monday, February 18, 2013
Kunstler: Scale Implosion (and My Own View of Local vs. Mainland-Owned Businesses)
Today's Kunstler column is on a topic--mass retail--I can understand better than the machinations of high finance. Hilo has a Wal-Mart (open since 1996), a Target (opened in summer 2011), and a few other semi-big box stores (Ross, OfficeMax, etc.) Hawaii, this island in particular, has never supported big box stores and chain retail in the same way the mainland (or Oahu) does. In some ways, our retail environment, especially restaurants, has actually become more localized. This deserves a more thorough treatment, but for now, let me say:
Target and Wal-Mart are lucrative in Hilo, but many local businesses are holding their own against them. I haven't been gone to Wal-Mart in years.
We have a larger (appx. 61,000 sq. ft.), fancier Safeway. But KTA has a nearly 100-year presence and strong customer loyalty. Longtime Hiloans remember Sure Save and Food Fair.
Borders is sorely missed, but there are still Book Gallery and Basically Books, as well as CD Wizard, Hilo Bay Books, Big Island BookBuyers, and Still Life Books.
We have McDonald's and Burger King but not many of the casual dining restaurants that Hattie does not like. We have innumerable small places, including two Indian restaurants. (Akmal's, which has existed in one form or another since its beginnings in Frankfurt in 1974, opened in Hilo in 2005 at the strip mall on Lanikaula Street. It was the first Indian restaurant not only in Hilo but on the island.)
http://hawaii2050.org/images/uploads/futures_scenarios.pdf
Scale Implosion
By James Howard Kunstler
on February 18, 2013 9:06 AM
Back in the day when big box retail started to explode upon the American landscape like a raging economic scrofula, I attended many a town planning board meeting where the pro and con factions faced off over the permitting hurdle. The meetings were often raucous and wrathful and almost all the time the pro forces won -- for the excellent reason that they were funded and organized by the chain stores themselves (in an early demonstration of the new axioms that money-is-speech and corporations are people, too!).
The chain stores won not only because they flung money around -- sometimes directly into the wallets of public officials -- but because a sizeable chunk of every local population longed for the dazzling new mode of commerce. "We Want Bargain Shopping" was their rallying cry. The unintended consequence of their victories through the 1970s and beyond was the total destruction of local economic networks, that is, Main Streets and downtowns, in effect destroying many of their own livelihoods. Wasn't that a bargain, though?
Despite the obvious damage now visible in the entropic desolation of every American home town, WalMart managed to install itself in the pantheon of American Dream icons, along with apple pie, motherhood, and Coca Cola. In most of the country there is no other place to buy goods (and no other place to get a paycheck, scant and demeaning as it may be). America made itself hostage to bargain shopping and then committed suicide. Here we find another axiom of human affairs at work: people get what they deserve, not what they expect. Life is tragic.
The older generations responsible for all that may be done for, but the momentum has now turned in the opposite direction. Though the public hasn't groked it yet, WalMart and its kindred malignant organisms have entered their own yeast-overgrowth death spiral. In a now permanently contracting economy the big box model fails spectacularly. Every element of economic reality is now poised to squash them. Diesel fuel prices are heading well north of $4 again. If they push toward $5 this year you can say goodbye to the "warehouse on wheels" distribution method. (The truckers, who are mostly independent contractors, can say hello to the re-po men come to take possession of their mortgaged rigs.) Global currency wars (competitive devaluations) are about to destroy trade relationships. Say goodbye to the 12,000 mile supply chain from Guangzhou to Hackensack. Say goodbye to the growth financing model in which it becomes necessary to open dozens of new stores every year to keep the credit revolving.
Then there is the matter of the American customers themselves. The WalMart shoppers are exactly the demographic that is getting squashed in the contraction of this phony-baloney corporate buccaneer parasite revolving credit crony capital economy. Unlike the Federal Reserve, WalMart shoppers can't print their own money, and they can't bundle their MasterCard and Visa debts into CDOs to be fobbed off on Scandinavian pension funds for quick profits. They have only one real choice: buy less stuff, especially the stuff of leisure, comfort, and convenience.
The potential for all sorts of economic hardship is obvious in this burgeoning dynamic. But the coming implosion of big box retail implies tremendous opportunities for young people to make a livelihood in the imperative rebuilding of local economies. At this stage it is probably discouraging for them, because all their life programming has conditioned them to be hostages of giant corporations and so to feel helpless. In a town like the old factory village I live in (population 2500) few of the few remaining young adults might venture to open a retail operation in one of the dozen-odd vacant storefronts on Main Street. The presence of K-Mart, Tractor Supply, and Radio Shack a quarter mile west in the strip mall would seem to mock their dim inklings that something is in the wind. But K-Mart will close over 200 boxes this year, and Radio Shack is committed to shutter around 500 stores. They could be gone in this town well before Santa Claus starts checking his lists. If they go down, opportunities will blossom. There will be no new chain store brands to replace the dying ones. That phase of our history is over.
What we're on the brink of is scale implosion. Everything gigantic in American life is about to get smaller or die. Everything that we do to support economic activities at gigantic scale is going to hamper our journey into the new reality. The campaign to sustain the unsustainable, which is the official policy of US leadership, will only produce deeper whirls of entropy. I hope young people recognize this and can marshal their enthusiasm to get to work. It's already happening in the local farming scene; now it needs to happen in a commercial economy that will support local agriculture.
The additional tragedy of the big box saga is that it scuttled social roles and social relations in every American community. On top of the insult of destroying the geographic places we call home, the chain stores also destroyed people's place in the order of daily life, including the duties, responsibilities, obligations, and ceremonies that prompt citizens to care for each other. We can get that all back, but it won't be a bargain.
Target and Wal-Mart are lucrative in Hilo, but many local businesses are holding their own against them. I haven't been gone to Wal-Mart in years.
We have a larger (appx. 61,000 sq. ft.), fancier Safeway. But KTA has a nearly 100-year presence and strong customer loyalty. Longtime Hiloans remember Sure Save and Food Fair.
Borders is sorely missed, but there are still Book Gallery and Basically Books, as well as CD Wizard, Hilo Bay Books, Big Island BookBuyers, and Still Life Books.
We have McDonald's and Burger King but not many of the casual dining restaurants that Hattie does not like. We have innumerable small places, including two Indian restaurants. (Akmal's, which has existed in one form or another since its beginnings in Frankfurt in 1974, opened in Hilo in 2005 at the strip mall on Lanikaula Street. It was the first Indian restaurant not only in Hilo but on the island.)
http://hawaii2050.org/images/uploads/futures_scenarios.pdf
Scale Implosion
By James Howard Kunstler
on February 18, 2013 9:06 AM
Back in the day when big box retail started to explode upon the American landscape like a raging economic scrofula, I attended many a town planning board meeting where the pro and con factions faced off over the permitting hurdle. The meetings were often raucous and wrathful and almost all the time the pro forces won -- for the excellent reason that they were funded and organized by the chain stores themselves (in an early demonstration of the new axioms that money-is-speech and corporations are people, too!).
The chain stores won not only because they flung money around -- sometimes directly into the wallets of public officials -- but because a sizeable chunk of every local population longed for the dazzling new mode of commerce. "We Want Bargain Shopping" was their rallying cry. The unintended consequence of their victories through the 1970s and beyond was the total destruction of local economic networks, that is, Main Streets and downtowns, in effect destroying many of their own livelihoods. Wasn't that a bargain, though?
Despite the obvious damage now visible in the entropic desolation of every American home town, WalMart managed to install itself in the pantheon of American Dream icons, along with apple pie, motherhood, and Coca Cola. In most of the country there is no other place to buy goods (and no other place to get a paycheck, scant and demeaning as it may be). America made itself hostage to bargain shopping and then committed suicide. Here we find another axiom of human affairs at work: people get what they deserve, not what they expect. Life is tragic.
The older generations responsible for all that may be done for, but the momentum has now turned in the opposite direction. Though the public hasn't groked it yet, WalMart and its kindred malignant organisms have entered their own yeast-overgrowth death spiral. In a now permanently contracting economy the big box model fails spectacularly. Every element of economic reality is now poised to squash them. Diesel fuel prices are heading well north of $4 again. If they push toward $5 this year you can say goodbye to the "warehouse on wheels" distribution method. (The truckers, who are mostly independent contractors, can say hello to the re-po men come to take possession of their mortgaged rigs.) Global currency wars (competitive devaluations) are about to destroy trade relationships. Say goodbye to the 12,000 mile supply chain from Guangzhou to Hackensack. Say goodbye to the growth financing model in which it becomes necessary to open dozens of new stores every year to keep the credit revolving.
Then there is the matter of the American customers themselves. The WalMart shoppers are exactly the demographic that is getting squashed in the contraction of this phony-baloney corporate buccaneer parasite revolving credit crony capital economy. Unlike the Federal Reserve, WalMart shoppers can't print their own money, and they can't bundle their MasterCard and Visa debts into CDOs to be fobbed off on Scandinavian pension funds for quick profits. They have only one real choice: buy less stuff, especially the stuff of leisure, comfort, and convenience.
The potential for all sorts of economic hardship is obvious in this burgeoning dynamic. But the coming implosion of big box retail implies tremendous opportunities for young people to make a livelihood in the imperative rebuilding of local economies. At this stage it is probably discouraging for them, because all their life programming has conditioned them to be hostages of giant corporations and so to feel helpless. In a town like the old factory village I live in (population 2500) few of the few remaining young adults might venture to open a retail operation in one of the dozen-odd vacant storefronts on Main Street. The presence of K-Mart, Tractor Supply, and Radio Shack a quarter mile west in the strip mall would seem to mock their dim inklings that something is in the wind. But K-Mart will close over 200 boxes this year, and Radio Shack is committed to shutter around 500 stores. They could be gone in this town well before Santa Claus starts checking his lists. If they go down, opportunities will blossom. There will be no new chain store brands to replace the dying ones. That phase of our history is over.
What we're on the brink of is scale implosion. Everything gigantic in American life is about to get smaller or die. Everything that we do to support economic activities at gigantic scale is going to hamper our journey into the new reality. The campaign to sustain the unsustainable, which is the official policy of US leadership, will only produce deeper whirls of entropy. I hope young people recognize this and can marshal their enthusiasm to get to work. It's already happening in the local farming scene; now it needs to happen in a commercial economy that will support local agriculture.
The additional tragedy of the big box saga is that it scuttled social roles and social relations in every American community. On top of the insult of destroying the geographic places we call home, the chain stores also destroyed people's place in the order of daily life, including the duties, responsibilities, obligations, and ceremonies that prompt citizens to care for each other. We can get that all back, but it won't be a bargain.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Alexander Cockburn: Is the Foodie Frenzy Finally Fizzling Out?
Here.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/13/farewell-gastro-porn-is-the-foodie-frenzy-finally-fizzling-out/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/13/farewell-gastro-porn-is-the-foodie-frenzy-finally-fizzling-out/
Monday, December 05, 2011
Kunstler: Suspended Civilization
Note: I added a link to a recipe for cinghiale ai frutti di bosco, should you want to make it yourself.--P.Z.
Suspended Civilization
By James Howard Kunstler
on December 4, 2011 6:23 PM
Question du jour: why is Jon Corzine still at large? In what fabulous Manhattan restaurants has he been enjoying plates of cockscombs and lobster with sauce hydromel and cinghiale ai frutti di bosco, while less well-connected citizens of this degenerate republic have to order their suppers from the dumpster in the WalMart parking lot where they have been living lately.
Is there still an Attorney General in this country? Will somebody please follow Eric Holder down a hallway and see if he leaves a trail of sawdust on the floor. Or did congress just retract all the fraud statutes by stealth in the same way that the Federal Reserve handed out $7.7 trillion in bailouts back in 2008 (much more than the generally accepted figure of the $800 billion TARP) without anyone finding out until three years later when some Bloomberg reporters rooted the numbers out of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filing. And by the way, what is the US Federal Reserve doing handing out billions of dollars to the Royal Bank of Scotland? Was Scotland admitted to the Union by stealth, too? Or did Jamie Dimon just buy it as a birthday present for Barack Obama, who likes golf.
This is what life in the USA is like nowadays: shit happens and shit un-happens, and you find out about it years later. Only a desperate and hopelessly degenerate nation would choose to live this way, in a law-optional society, in which money means everything, and yet nobody even knows what money is (or where it goes, and what it does when it goes there.)
Jon Corzine has not revealed the destination of the loot (somewhere between $600 million and $2.5 billion, estimated) that vanished from the "segregated" accounts of his many clients at MF Global. The rumor is that it went to cover a rude margin call from Jamie Dimon's bank, JP Morgan, after JC took some unfortunate positions in European sovereign bonds in a bad month. Beyond the question of why Mr. Corzine is not in jail (as a flight risk, just like DSK) is how come the Department of Justice has not so much as issued a statement saying that they were looking into the matter, so as to reassure both the victims and the financial markets that this is not a culture that just makes shit up as it goes along - i.e. that we have predictable rules and formal procedures for doing stuff.
The clowns and villains who run America have accomplished something really epic: they have vanquished meaning. Nobody knows what anything means anymore. Anything goes now. All bets are off. It's not reassuring. It leads to bad things happening like blood in the streets. When nothing means anything anymore, some people will actually strive, make an effort, to reestablish meaning in practical economic and political life, because civilized life is impossible without it. So, in those historic moments when civilization is suspended, people will work like hell to restore meaning. Sometimes though, like Germany in the 1930s, you discover that the suspension of civilization is itself intoxicating, and you ride with that for a while.
Things are really flying apart now, and just in time for Santa Claus. The European bond rollovers are about to come in fast and furious during the season of Advent and nobody can make their interest payments. They will be skipped or postponed and promised for "next Tuesday," and yet the bizarro universe of credit default swaps will not be triggered - is there a counter-party on God's green earth who could afford a pay-out? Of course not. It was all a charade. So we'll just learn that there actually is no "insurance" on all this paper. Yesterday's "hair-cut" will be tomorrow's "throat cut" as the middle innings of suspended civilization play out.
There are heroes as-yet-sung-and-unsung in America, people who prefer reality over reality-TV, people with a taste for meaning in life, which often requires the recognition that some things are true and some not so true, and you're better off with what's true. What appears to be true is that the old order is finished and a new disposition of things is coming along. The Long Emergency will beat a path straight to the Great Re-set. Sign up for it. Roll up your sleeves. There is so much to do in this country. If you are young, especially, it's all waiting for you.
Suspended Civilization
By James Howard Kunstler
on December 4, 2011 6:23 PM
Question du jour: why is Jon Corzine still at large? In what fabulous Manhattan restaurants has he been enjoying plates of cockscombs and lobster with sauce hydromel and cinghiale ai frutti di bosco, while less well-connected citizens of this degenerate republic have to order their suppers from the dumpster in the WalMart parking lot where they have been living lately.
Is there still an Attorney General in this country? Will somebody please follow Eric Holder down a hallway and see if he leaves a trail of sawdust on the floor. Or did congress just retract all the fraud statutes by stealth in the same way that the Federal Reserve handed out $7.7 trillion in bailouts back in 2008 (much more than the generally accepted figure of the $800 billion TARP) without anyone finding out until three years later when some Bloomberg reporters rooted the numbers out of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filing. And by the way, what is the US Federal Reserve doing handing out billions of dollars to the Royal Bank of Scotland? Was Scotland admitted to the Union by stealth, too? Or did Jamie Dimon just buy it as a birthday present for Barack Obama, who likes golf.
This is what life in the USA is like nowadays: shit happens and shit un-happens, and you find out about it years later. Only a desperate and hopelessly degenerate nation would choose to live this way, in a law-optional society, in which money means everything, and yet nobody even knows what money is (or where it goes, and what it does when it goes there.)
Jon Corzine has not revealed the destination of the loot (somewhere between $600 million and $2.5 billion, estimated) that vanished from the "segregated" accounts of his many clients at MF Global. The rumor is that it went to cover a rude margin call from Jamie Dimon's bank, JP Morgan, after JC took some unfortunate positions in European sovereign bonds in a bad month. Beyond the question of why Mr. Corzine is not in jail (as a flight risk, just like DSK) is how come the Department of Justice has not so much as issued a statement saying that they were looking into the matter, so as to reassure both the victims and the financial markets that this is not a culture that just makes shit up as it goes along - i.e. that we have predictable rules and formal procedures for doing stuff.
The clowns and villains who run America have accomplished something really epic: they have vanquished meaning. Nobody knows what anything means anymore. Anything goes now. All bets are off. It's not reassuring. It leads to bad things happening like blood in the streets. When nothing means anything anymore, some people will actually strive, make an effort, to reestablish meaning in practical economic and political life, because civilized life is impossible without it. So, in those historic moments when civilization is suspended, people will work like hell to restore meaning. Sometimes though, like Germany in the 1930s, you discover that the suspension of civilization is itself intoxicating, and you ride with that for a while.
Things are really flying apart now, and just in time for Santa Claus. The European bond rollovers are about to come in fast and furious during the season of Advent and nobody can make their interest payments. They will be skipped or postponed and promised for "next Tuesday," and yet the bizarro universe of credit default swaps will not be triggered - is there a counter-party on God's green earth who could afford a pay-out? Of course not. It was all a charade. So we'll just learn that there actually is no "insurance" on all this paper. Yesterday's "hair-cut" will be tomorrow's "throat cut" as the middle innings of suspended civilization play out.
There are heroes as-yet-sung-and-unsung in America, people who prefer reality over reality-TV, people with a taste for meaning in life, which often requires the recognition that some things are true and some not so true, and you're better off with what's true. What appears to be true is that the old order is finished and a new disposition of things is coming along. The Long Emergency will beat a path straight to the Great Re-set. Sign up for it. Roll up your sleeves. There is so much to do in this country. If you are young, especially, it's all waiting for you.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Restaurants in Hilo
Domino's Pizza in Hilo recently reopened under new ownership, soon after the Kona branch reopened. And according to the sign pictured below, Bueno Burrito is soon to open in the Keawe Street space that housed Subway, which moved down the street.
Morgan's Deli, across the street from The Lyman Museum, has apparently closed.
20 March update: Bueno Burrito (969-9955) opened just this morning. It's open Mondays through Saturdays, 9 A.M. to 9 P.M.
Morgan's Deli, across the street from The Lyman Museum, has apparently closed.
20 March update: Bueno Burrito (969-9955) opened just this morning. It's open Mondays through Saturdays, 9 A.M. to 9 P.M.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Harry's
http://wallstfolly.typepad.com/wallstfolly/2006/02/harrys_at_hanov.html
Update: I've added Wall $treet Folly to the Economics and Fionance section of "The Ever-Evolving List of Links" post (click on "All Links" in the sidebar). Like Dealbreaker it takes a detailed look at the Wall Street subculture.
Harry's official site.
Update: I've added Wall $treet Folly to the Economics and Fionance section of "The Ever-Evolving List of Links" post (click on "All Links" in the sidebar). Like Dealbreaker it takes a detailed look at the Wall Street subculture.
Harry's official site.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Comfort Food, Various Links to Purveyors of
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2007-03-22-comfort-food_N.htm?csp=34
http://www.smacnyc.com/
http://www.wichcraftnyc.com
Miami Rice Pudding
Rice to Riches
http://www.cereality.com http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2004-12-08-cereal_x.htm
http://www.springwise.com/food_beverage/dessertonly_restaurants/
http://www.nyr4d.com/
http://www.chikalicious.com/
http://www.epicurious.com/gourmet/blogs/foodeditors/2006/12/dessert_bars_ia.html#more
West Egg Cafe
--------------
Lickity Split Chocolate
http://www.smacnyc.com/
http://www.wichcraftnyc.com
Miami Rice Pudding
Rice to Riches
http://www.cereality.com http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2004-12-08-cereal_x.htm
http://www.springwise.com/food_beverage/dessertonly_restaurants/
http://www.nyr4d.com/
http://www.chikalicious.com/
http://www.epicurious.com/gourmet/blogs/foodeditors/2006/12/dessert_bars_ia.html#more
West Egg Cafe
--------------
Lickity Split Chocolate
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