Releasing exclusively in-store and online this Saturday, February 28 at 11am HST.
WAIKĪKĪ - In Reverence
The interweb will tell you Waikīkī is 3.4 square miles tucked neatly into the 96815 zip code. Clean boundary lines. Easy to define. But Waikīkī has never really been containable like that.
Yes, Duke is still standing holding court on the worldʻs most famous natural wave pool. Kapua (Kapiʻolani Park ) opens up green against the edge of the city and foothills of Hawai‘i Iconography of Lae‘ahi. Kalia ( Fort DeRussy ) holds space where old loko i‘a once produced. Kalia stream ( The Ala Wai ) runs steady, often overlooked but always present. These are the markers people recognize.
On any given day it’s exactly what you expect. Cold beer, Quick dipʻs and lunch Lunch by the pool. Shopping bags cutting into your fingers. Sunsets with a sugary drink sweating onto cocktail napkins while mele Hawai‘i drift through a lobby speaker‘s and the lights slowly turn on. For families, it’s a natural playground with city convenience. For young couples, romance. For corporations, an “exotic retreat” wrapped around a dental device convention.
Honestly, all of that is valid in some way. Fulfillment shows up in different forms.
But before the towers and curated storefronts, these wetlands filled Loʻi kalo and Loko i‘a were systems of abundance. Waterways moving life intentionally from mauka to makai. A place favored by Aliʻi and Makaʻāinana alike. Abundance wasn’t aesthetic, it was engineered through relationships of reciprocity.
Aloha ʻĀina is not a trend or one of those concepts that become a new version of its intended use, It’s practice, discipline and a deep love and responsibility to land.
Kupuna-ology tells us the ahupuaʻa of Waikīkī was pa‘a ( re-established ) around the 1500s under Māʻilikūkāhi, extending from the uplands of Manoa to the reefs outside the surf breaks. The physical connection between the mountain and the sea is made by the waters that flowed through Piʻinaio, Āpuakehau, and Kuekaunahi as they enter the ocean. Landscape are given character and story by the named winds and rains: Tuahine, Ala‘eli, Waʻahila, Līlīlehua, Maua, ʻŌlaniu, and Māunuunu. That natural design informed life and all of the things within it.
And that’s where our affection for Waikīkī lives.
Because love it or critique it, this space is layered. Sacred and commercial. Historic and hyper-contemporary. Overbuilt, yes! but still abundant in many ways.
It reminds me of the lāʻi plant. Each leaf marks growth. You can choose lāʻi for protocol and ceremony, or you can use it to shoo flies away from your potluck plate at Kalia. Same plant, Different intentions! The meaning is in your relationship to it.
That’s Waikīkī.
The personal relationship you have with this place is what you make of it. It can be spectacle, It can be economy, It can be memory, It can be reverence.
For me, it’s all of it; past and present existing at the same time.
And that tension? That’s exactly why it matters.
Palimpsest is our new Waikīkī graphic launch that interprets this complex spatial narrative with a contemporary perspective. It draws on the concept of a palimpsest—a manuscript where original text is erased to reuse the page, symbolizing Waikīkī's many layers and evolving interpretations.
