Taste of Kalihi!

[1stwahine]

Block party in Kalihi
“A Taste of Kalihi,” is now happening from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. along Colburn Street near Dillingham Plaza. All are invited to take in the food, games, community and business booths, keiki games and car display. Entertainment is by Brother Noland, Tres Divas, the Royal Hawaiian Band and more. Admission is free. Half of the proceeds will go to the Weed and Seed program; half to the Filipino Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii Foundation. 386-3823. At 7:00 p.m. the largest Electric Slide going be formed on Colburn Street!







Auntie Lynn

[achow]

Re: Taste of Kalihi!

I know about the Taste of Kalihi because my church, New Hope Christian Fellowship-O'ahu is the sponsors.

Alana

[1stwahine]

Re: Taste of Kalihi!

I know about the Taste of Kalihi because my church, New Hope Christian Fellowship-O'ahu is the sponsors.

Alana

New Hope, Philippine Consulate and Kamehameha Schools were Sponsors!

Auntie Lynn

[cynsaligia]

Re: Taste of Kalihi!

i am proud to say that eric and i went to the ToK yesterday. gotta support my stomping grounds (hey, i grew up only blocks away from the former emjay's and pay-n-save site)!

our saturday brunch consisted of plates from loulen's and g's plate lunch or barbeque or something like that (sorry; forgot their name beyond the "g's" part).

from loulen's, a three choice plate for $8.00: pinacbet, pancit and some sort of chicken dish i couldn't name (it wasn't an adobo, menudo or a apritada; it had some veggies in it and had a sauce that was sorta light brown and was thickened, prolly with cornstarch) and dinuguan. the pinacbet and dinuguan were the best part; the pancit was bland and the chicken thing was forgettable.

from g's spot or g's plate lunch or g's bbq or g's grindz or whatever it was called (someone, please inform me of their correct name if you know it) for $7.00: rice, bbq ribs, a cold imitation crab salad, and stuffed asian chicken. the bbq ribs were your typical boiled and slathered with sauce deal. the crab salad was your typical crab salad with carrots, pasta, and nothing else we can remember. the stuffed asian chicken was dry but stuffed with pork, rice noodles, onions, carrots (kinda the same stuffing you'd see in stuffed squid at a vietnamese restaurant).

i never expect community fair food to be great--each vendor is cooking out of their element in surroundings they can't often control. so being what it was, the food was exactly as expected. plus some booths were manned by people who have no clue how to man a booth at an event like ToK. take loulen's, for example. there were five people working the booth, but at any time, two or three people were doing nothing useful, which led to very slow moving lines. there were only five people in front of me when i got in line but it took me twenty minutes to get served, even tho everything was basically "point and scoop"--not like they had to assemble anything.

one of the best things at the ToK was the slush booth. omg...the honeydew melon slush with soft serve ice cream was exactly the sweet and icy treat we needed after our brunch and to cool us off as we checked out the booths. that booth probably made a killing--each slush was about $3.00 but probably cost less than a dollar each to make.

the entertainment that we saw was one really good band that did a lot of seventies music (i never got their name), a singing sophomore punahou student/daughter of a doctor (they made sure to say her parents' names a several times and to point out she's a punahou sophomore), who sang a couple of r&b ballads (i think she's part flip; i didn't get a good look at her) and then a quartet of moanalua students called lady harmonics (i think) who live in kalihi and take part in a kalihi afterschool program. their mentor pointedly introduced them as being a purely a capella group, no backing track, and being from an underprivileged community, as they followed the punahou gir i described earlier l (who sometimes went off-key).

it was a moment i found very typically "kalihi" i suppose--where there is an undercurrent of conflict between kids from the hood whose parents are still struggling to make ends meet versus kids of kalihi-raised parents who have "made good" or kalihi kids who have parents who are somehow lucky/driven enough to send their kids to private schools outside the community that are "better" than, let's say, farrington or st. teresa. i guess that kind of undercurrent is always found in an "entry level" community like k-town.

the car show they had was rather impressive--ford gt40, some lowrider caddies, a '34 ford, shelby ac cobra, mustang cobra, a saleen mustang...

the business booths featured some mortgage brokerages, some crafts, american savings, opportunities to buy condos in the philippines, heavy representation by farrington HS (very cute how they had donna mercado kim's cheerleading outfit--wow! her waist was TINY back then!), and a booth where hawaiian air was offering a free round trip for two to the philippines.

i think i would suggest that the next time, the booths be housed in tents where the outer walls did not extend all the way to the ground. it was a very humid and sometimes rainy day yesterday and the type of tents they had just trapped the heat and made it miserable. as soon as you walked into a tent, you'd want to run out, streams of humidity falling copiously off your sweltering skin.

another nice thing was that they had a very big inflatable jungle gym/play area for the kids.

i'm really glad we went to the ToK and i'll be interested to see how it develops over the years. it was definitely rough around the edges, but what it lacked in finesse it definitely made up for in enthusiasm. it was nice to see the community--poor, often fractured thru ethnic and economic lines--come together to put this out. besides, it gave eric and me an excuse to saunter over to fujiya's afterward for freshly made peanut butter mochi! mmmmmmm!

i did take some video with my flip video cam, but eric's laptop doesn't like the software. i'll share it with you after i get a chance to get to my mac mini at home.