1. Most neighborhoods have at least one place that’s (according to lore) haunted. What the haunted place in your neighborhood (or in the neighborhood where you grew up), and what’s the story?
See the story in #2 below (haunted and stupid combined).
2. Most neighborhoods have at least one place where some kid (according to legend) did something daring, dangerous, and most likely stupid. What’s the place in your neighborhood (or in the neighborhood where you grew up), and what’s the story?
Can't remember the name of this church right off hand. It is located near a former cane field that is now surrounded by an agricultural forest. For the most part this church is not known to be haunted.
About 25 years ago my kid brother and his friends went up to the church after a party one night and fooled around inside the structure and in the cemetery next to it. They had broken into the church and vandalized it. My brother told me that some kind of haunted spirits came after them. He said one person was levitated and thrown in a truck. The others were scared and ran out of the church and property. I forget most of the details of his story, but needless to say these young teens (at the time) got out of Dodge on their vehicles and went home.
While they were at home, many of them could not sleep and had other emotional problems for days. One day they had to confess to someone and upon doing so had to get the situation remedied. So they had to meet the caretaker of the church, an older Hawaiian man and got a Hawaiian blessing to chase the spirits away from them and apparently make everything “pono” again. After that they were apparently ok.
My brother told me the story in vivid detail but generally doesn’t like to repeat it. A picture of the church that I took in 1995 appears above.
3. Most neighborhoods have some lame building (like a bank or a gas station) where there used to be something much, much cooler. What’s the place in your neighborhood (or in the neighborhood where you grew up), and what’s the story?
I am still saddened that one of my favorite theaters of all time, the Cinerama on King and Punahou Streets in Honolulu closed in 1999 and became a Checker car parts store. That is the theater that I spent many of my college and later years watching first run movies such as Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.
Another set of theaters that have closed are the old Waikiki #3 theater and the newer Waikiki #1 and #2 theaters. The Waikiki #3 was built in the 1930s and finally went out of business in 2002. I saw a lot of movies there including the re-edited Star Wars (1997) and many others. Last movie I saw at the Waikiki #3 was Lilo & Stitch.
All of the theaters mentioned here were single screen venues with very large screens, generally good, comfortable seating and fantastic sound for their time. The Waikiki #3 is especially known for its décor that featured palm trees, fake clouds and a real organ that if you were lucky enough, some guy was playing while you waited for the movie to start.
The Waikiki #3 was torn down and ritzy tourist trap shops were put in its place.
The Waikiki #1 and #2 opened in 1970 and closed in 2003. Those huge twin screen theaters remained vacant until this year when it was announced that they’ll be gutted and placed in its interior will be the largest Ross’s discount clothing store in Hawaii.
Fact is I miss most of the single screen, movie palace type theaters. The old New Royal Theater in Waikiki was razed many years ago and today a big concrete hotel sits on that property. The old Kuhio Theater in Waikiki was a nice single screen venue, that was split into 2 screens in the 1970s and torn down in the 1990s to make way for another development.
Such is the pace of progress….
4. In most neighborhoods of our youths, there are a few places that almost always cause us to say, “That’s the place where I _________.” What’s one such place in the neighborhood where you grew up, and what’s the story?
Back in my college days I spent way too much time hanging out in the darkroom and our college newspaper office putting the paper together in the old fashioned way without the use of any desktop publishing system and using chemicals to develop film and print pictures from that film of what we took. Plenty of hours, too much time to be efficient in today’s computer world. The college paper is still around in the same place today but of course everything is computerized.
5. Where in the neighborhood where you grew up would you most likely run into someone today who knew you when you were a kid?
If I go back to my hometown people are bound to run into someone they know at the post office or the local grocery store.
No comments:
Post a Comment