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Elizabeth Weintraub
Exciting Things to Do in Honolulu Over New Year’s
View of Waikiki towers on New Year’s Eve 2018
If there ever was a person who could come up with exciting things to do in Honolulu over New Year’s, it is Hella Rothwell. She enticed me to fly to Honolulu from Kona over New Year’s, and it was the best New Year’s I have ever spent. Usually I go to bed early. Like 9 PM. Well, there was that one New Year’s with my husband when we first met, but I wouldn’t call that the best New Year’s. Because I had to walk blocks to the car-towing place at midnight in sub-zero temperatures while prancing through snow in high heels. Who knew you couldn’t park on the sidewalk on the West Bank in Minneapolis?
My feet were so frozen I couldn’t feel my foot to hit the shift pedal in my sports car. Not so in Waikiki. Although I did experience a foot-related incident.
View from the 22nd floor at the Hilton Hawaiian Village
Hella had already checked into the hotel by the time I arrived. We had a lot of ocean to enjoy from the 22nd floor but not enough to satisfy Hella. Next year, she says, we’re going to the Halekulani. But this trip was spur of the moment, about a week beforehand. I think you can see how small the beach is there. I last stayed at this hotel in 1979, and the beach was at least 100 feet from the water. Now, due to rising sea levels caused by climate change, it seems about 10 feet from the water.
Elizabeth Weintraub and Hella Rothwell at the Bill Maher show in Honolulu.
After a quick dinner at Red Lobster, we grabbed an Uber to the Blaisdell Concert Hall to see the Bill Maher New Year’s Eve show. Maher was his unusual amusing self. He read a 420 bedtime story based on the Night Before Christmas. Trashed Trump a million ways from Sunday. So it was very enjoyable.
He also brought along Reggie Brown, doing a fine impersonation of Obama. And let’s not forget Bob Saget. Cardigan wearing Bob Saget, who fired off joke after joke about his penis. And whatever else came to his mind. I did not realize he got his start in show business this way. This was the 7th Bill Maher show in Honolulu. I would go to another, yes.
Once we got outside around 10 PM, it was extremely difficult to obtain an Uber. Couldn’t even get the app to load. Some dorky guy next to us obviously got through because he had the look of a smug Uber passenger.
I asked, “Could we ride with you?”
The guy said his fare was $16, and with tip that would be $18, then divided 3 ways would be . . .
Hey buddy, how about I just give ya a $20 and you stop calculating?
His eyes glistened with glee. But turned out he was going the opposite direction, and just about then my app worked.
Aloha Towers at 11 PM, Party of the Year in Honolulu.
We arrived at the Aloha Towers for the Party of the Year to claim our VIP tickets. This gave us access to private bathrooms and our own bar. The vibe at the party was great. Mostly people in their 20’s and 30’s, and extremely diverse. Some of it of course looked like hooker’s night out. And I’m not forgetting the two creepy guys who twerked us against a wall when I bopped one of their butts with my bag.
Encountering twerking college students is not one of the exciting things to do in Honolulu over New Year’s. Speaking as a 65-year-old woman now, I realize there is absolutely no reason to twerk. It’s such a stupid dance move. The chicken dance is better than twerking. Why not just put your head up your butt?
Elizabeth Weintraub at the Aloha Towers Party of the Year.
Upstairs at the VIP section, the bar held few selections. Mostly horrible drinks. Refusing their suggestion to put Pepsi in a Crown Royal, I finally asked for it on the rocks. We also paid a visit to the VIP bathrooms, which consisted of 3 stalls, one of which had a plunger stuck in the toilet.
Whenever you have a line of women in a bathroom in an environment where alcohol is served, there is generally a lot of chatter. I contributed to the conversation by describing how my sister’s girlfriend in Mexico had to relieve herself so urgently that she just urinated through the beach chair. Then she covered it up with sand as though nothing had happened.
Hella perked up, “I never thought of that.”
Everybody enjoyed that story.
That’s about the time I noticed the heel on my shoe was coming apart. I wore the most comfortable pair I had, which meant they were pretty old shoes. Nobody had any glue, but then I had the brilliant idea of using chewing gum. I scored a couple pieces of gum from the bathroom attendant, quickly chewed, flattened it between my palms and stuck it in my shoe. Hey, it worked!
Fireworks at the Aloha Towers on New Year’s Eve 2018.
When the fireworks began, we headed back up the steps to the VIP section. We almost made it to the balcony but a guard stopped us. I’m not sure why. But it caught the attention of a guy at the table we squeezed in on. It was dark. I turned to the guy at the table, just to be polite, and said Feliz Ano Nuevo.
Well, that upset him greatly. He was Hawaiian. He whined about it. Hey, it was dark. Then he asked where we were from, which is a loaded question. Hella lives in 3 places, and I have two houses. I’m not sure we even answered his question. A few minutes later, the guy butted into our conversation again and nudged us: the next thing a person would ask, he said, was where was he from?
Did we care? Ha.
After the fireworks, we went back downstairs to the fun bar. The Gordon Biersch Brewery had hot Latin music. We danced for about another hour or so. Around 2 PM, we thought it might be a good idea to head back to the hotel. Although, we did consider going to the Buddhist Temple to get a cleansing with 6,000 people after midnight. It would have been worth it just to get a golden frog amulet. But too far and too long a wait.
Along the way back to our hotel, I tossed my shoes in the trash in an alley.
Elizabeth Weintraub and Hella Rothwell at Halekulani House Without a Key.
On New Year’s Day, we crawled out of bed around 9 AM and hung out on the balcony watching the waves roll in. Hella had made a reservation for us at the House Without a Key Restaurant in the Halekulani Hotel. She craved a Ramos Fizz. Sounded good but I recalled that I preferred a Silver Fizz. The bartender struggled a little to find the recipe. Hey, these drinks should come back.
We began our descent on the Waikiki shopping district. I needed a new pair of shoes since I’d thrown mine away. That’s when we discovered a strange phenomena occurred at more than 60 merchants in this area. We stopped in Michael Kors. This is where the sale clerks tried to pressure us into participating in the wildest marketing scheme ever. Fukubukuro. You just have to read about it.
Elizabeth and Hella at the bar at Michel’s at the Colony Surf.
While I know it looks like all we are doing is drinking, it wasn’t all alcohol all of the time. When you’re on vacation, you do sometimes enjoy a cocktail at lunch. Not to the point where you can’t get out of beach chair and urinate in the sand, though.
We had not one glass of champagne. So we rectified that situation by ordering a bottle with dinner. Michel’s at the Colony Surf is a French restaurant, a long recognized tradition in Honolulu. In fact, Bill Maher, we came to learn, was there the night before. Dining at the bar meant individualized service and undivided attention.
My 5-course tasting menu was fabulous, too. Big Island abalone with wild mushrooms. Maine lobster in corn risotto. A duck salad. Some kind of Kauai shrimp. Followed by the most delicious lamb chop in a port wine demi glace. Ending with a coconut gelato and poached pears.
Elizabeth Weintraub at La Mariana Sailing Club in Honolulu
Unfortunately, the following day was time to return to Big Island. My flight left at noon, which meant we had a bit of time to squeeze in one more event. There so many exciting things to do in Honolulu, and my good fortune (even without that golden frog amulet) was having a native like Hella to show me around. She insisted we do lunch at La Mariana Sailing Club on our way to the airport.
The interior of La Marina Sailing Club is an amazing mix of Old World Hawaiian.
This is a place where the waitress does a curtsey. They had just received a shipment of fresh asparagus, and it was so delightful. I ordered the grilled maui-mahi just to get the side of asparagus, prepared with garlic. We watched geckos, enjoyed the view of the water, the bobbing sailboats and absorbed the environment.
In all, I can honestly say I did not look at my phone for two days. No phone calls on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. It was as though I could be a normal person. And not the intense Sacramento Realtor that I really am. What a wonderful way to spend New Year’s Eve.
Waikiki’s Fukubukuro is a Jaw Dropping Marketing Strategy
At Michael Kors, Fukubukuro is a practice of selling surprise “luxury” merchandise, discounted to retail.
Jaw dropping is not the expression for Fukubukuro but it will suffice. I must have been living under a rock to have never encountered this marketing strategy before. In fact, if I hadn’t witnessed this phenomenon with my own eyes, I would not have believed it existed. I would think they were making it up. But it’s an honest-to-goodness retailing strategy that will blow you away.
Let me share the story. My friend and fellow Realtor Hella Rothwell and I met up in Honolulu this year to celebrate New Year’s Eve. I flew over from Big Island where I’ve been winter-vacationing from Sacramento, and Hella arrived in Oahu to visit her daughter for the month from California. I will share photos and the tale of our exciting New Year’s Eve in Honolulu in another blog. Today’s blog is about Fukubukuro, the ancient Japanese custom of ripping off the vulnerable luxury addicts.
After a leisurely brunch at House Without a Key at the Halekulani, we decided to traipse through the stores of Waikiki. We don’t have stores like this in Sacramento. At Michael Kors, we spotted the Fukubukuro bags you see pictured above. On each bag, the employees marked a retail price followed by a discount price. Like $800 value, $404 sale. The contents of each bag remain a surprise and is part of the marketing strategy. One employee enthusiastically referred to it as “Christmas all over again!” Because you don’t know what’s inside the bag.
I really could not believe my eyes and ears. I asked the Michael Kor’s salesperson:
So, you’re telling me you have last year’s merchandise inside these bags. Nobody knows what they are buying because it’s a surprise. And you’ve found a way to get shoppers to pay luxury prices for something they probably don’t want or need. Further, you’ve set the retail price and they don’t know if that’s an actual retail price because you just made it up? Is that right?
Yes, isn’t it incredible? Big grins.
You’re shitting me, right? I think it’s crazy. Nuts. Insane. Hasn’t anybody ever told you that?
He ignored me.
This is the same strategy employed by Trump. Fabricates outrageous shit and then ignores reality, acting like it’s normal when it is not.
Was I the only sane person in that store? Who would pay $400 for an unknown thing? Moreover, why would anybody take a retailer’s word that the actual value is $800? And even if it was $800, 50% off would not make me hand over my Chase Sapphire if I didn’t know what I was getting. Fukubukuro is a foreign concept to me.
I am probably not their targeted audience. I’m pretty fussy about what I buy. For example, first, I need to desire the product over the discount. I would not buy a piece of luxury crap just because it was on sale.
Somehow, they made the discount more desirable than the product.
Truth is evidently a 50%+ discount, whether it’s real or not, is enough to make people buy luxury goods, even when they don’t know what they are getting. Their audience doesn’t care what they buy as long as it’s on sale. This is so bizarre to me. What is happening to the world? Hey, maybe I wish I could find a way to apply this concept to selling Sacramento real estate. Hmm?
Maybe I could wrap a house in Christmas paper, tied with a big bow, and tell buyers it’s 50% off by doubling the value and then applying a discount. How do you think that would go over in Sacramento? The catch is they’ve got to buy it sight unseen. Oh, wait, there is a scam like that. Ha, it’s called foreclosures. But at least you can drive by a piece of real estate. You are not allowed to peek inside these bags.
I bet the salespeople were happy when Hella and I left Michael Kors. Nobody wants a loud mouth pointing out the emperor is wearing no clothes. In my world, Fuku does not mean “good fortune or luck.” Because I believe the enunication itself conveys the true message. Just say it out loud to yourself.
When the Only Thing Left to Do is Climb the Fence
We suspect many Sacramento Realtors climb the fence when necessary.
Here is the thing, if a Sacramento Realtor does not want to climb the fence, then she should not put her lockbox on a gas meter behind the gate. Further, for sellers, if you think that by locking your gate you are keeping intruders out of your yard, think again. Maybe you’re keeping wild turkeys at bay, but if somebody really wants to get into your yard, they will. Like even a gym-challenged Realtor who is 5-feet tall. I studied the situation. Yes, anybody can probably scale that fence, if she was smart about it. Determination counts, too. I am typically a pretty determined person. Tell me I can’t do it, and I’ll do it.
A client asked if I would withdraw her listing from MLS last week. We had sold her home for $15,000 over list price because at the time we received an offer, she was ready to take her home off the market. You know human nature and how some buyers are, right? Sometimes they don’t want the home until they find out they can’t have it. Which is how this particular home ended up selling for $15,000 over the sales price. I figured the appraisal would come in low, but also believed the appraisal would at least meet list price and we could renegotiate later, if we had to.
Turns out, due to lovely HVCC, we got saddled with some yo-yo appraiser. He decided he could not figure out how to adjust the comps to allow for using updated homes that were smaller and on smaller lots. He didn’t know how much to allocate for those minor kitchen remodels, so he ignored those comparable sales. As a result, the home appraised for $50,000 less than the sales price. It was for an FHA loan, too, so it had a case number, which would be pulled for the next FHA buyer. Any new FHA buyers were stuck with the low appraisal.
The seller promised to leave the gate open so I could retrieve the lockbox. Sure enough, the gate was locked. The fence was a bit over 6 feet. Yup, a situation where I would have to climb the fence.
If you’re ever wondering about which way to nail the boards on a fence you’re building, consider this. If the vertical posts are on the outside, you would provide a stepping place for a person to put her foot before heaving herself over your fence. However, this fence had the good side facing out and the bad side on the inside. There was no place to put my foot. I don’t do pull-ups for an exercise and therefore could not pull myself up the fence. Free-weights, that’s the ticket.
I could have called the seller, but that would have entailed waiting 30 minutes or more for her to get over there. I could have gone back to my home office and come back another day, but what the hey, I was already there. My outfit consisted of sheared corduroy pants, an Eileen Fischer silk shell, topped by a Merino wool sweater. My shoes? A cranberry patent leather with heels. Did I let that unsuitable ensemble stop me? I walked around the home but found no good access points.
The fact that the neighbors might call the police did cross my mind. But like a driver who often spins U-turns in the middle of the street by offering the excuse, “Hey, I’m allowed because I’m a real estate agent,” I figured that excuse would also work for crawling over a fence. If I needed more of an explanation, I suppose I could also add that I sell a lot of Sacramento real estate. Surely, the police would have pity on me then.
I finally decided to climb a juniper tree in the corner. Put my toe on a protruded nail halfway up and literally pulled myself to the top of the fence by using a tree limb as support. The important thing here was I elected to rest after I was perched on top of the fence. I didn’t care what passersby thought. Too busy enjoying the satisfaction that I could actually climb the fence. Catching my breath, too.
Getting down was actually pretty easy, and I didn’t scratch my shoes or tear my clothes. Best of all, my display key for my lockbox was still intact in my pocket. Bonanza.
The next time this happens, I will do the smarter thing. The smarter thing, instead of trying to climb the fence, is to go to a neighbor’s house and borrow a ladder.
This blog was previously published elsewhere 7 years ago and is provided for your reading enjoyment as Elizabeth makes her way back to Kona from New Year’s in Honolulu.
You Will Not Find a Fiberglass Marlin in Honokohau Harbor
Captain Chuck offers deep sea fishing on Fire Hatt.
When we decided to go fishing in Hawaii, I did not think about a fiberglass marlin. I thought it would be a quiet activity. The kind where you rent a private boat, go out to sea and sit with a rod, watching your bobber bop about in the waves. That’s fishing. Maybe you catch something, maybe you don’t. The fun is in watching the bobber in anticipation of snagging a fish. It’s a bonus to reel in a fish.
Probably the biggest fish I ever caught was in Maine. Bluefish. The summer of 1988. Couldn’t eat those fast enough. Some of those fish weighed 25 or 30 pounds. Once you got them into the boat — they were fighters — you had to club them over the head with a hammer to keep them from biting you or jumping back into the water. That was excitement.
But nothing compares to sportfishing in Kona, Hawaii. We could have caught a 500- to 900-pound marlin — that’s how big those fish are — or a huge ono or mahi-mahi. The reels are as big as your head. The lures are the size of bowling pins. This is a totally different league from the days of toting around my ice-fishing pole with a string and bucket of minnows. If you’ve ever noticed a fiberglass marlin in a restaurant, that’s a good replica of these fish.
Elizabeth gets strapped into the CHAIR to fish for marlin.
We rented the Fire Hatt, a 43-foot boat owned and operated by Captain Chuck Wilson out of Honokohau Harbor. Delightful guy retired from the fire department and who still teaches men and women of the fire department in Roseville, CA. His deck hand, Adam — an easy name to remember — was instructional and amusing to boot. Adam strapped me in the “chair” and showed me what to do when the reels “went off.”
No sooner did we troll about 2 miles out than, whammo — a bite! By all appearances, it was a 200-pound blue marlin! I began to envision the fish mounted on our family room wall, right over the sofa. That wall is long and bare. It’s the only spot in the house with nothing on the wall. Probably because it’s been waiting for a marlin to go over it. You think? My husband disagrees. But suddenly I am consumed by mental images of a big honkin’ marlin over our sofa. I can’t explain the urge.
Did you know that the fish you often see mounted on the wall in seafood restaurants — those marlins with the long bills — are not real? I did not. This is like finding out there is no Santa Claus. That wall mounted monstrosity is actually a fiberglass marlin. What sportspeople do is take the weight and measure the length of the fish they actually catch, and they give those dimensions to the place that manufacturers your custom marlin. Most people, unless the marlin’s tail is wrapped or otherwise damaged, those people throw the marlin back and buy a fiberglass replica! It’s the marlin catch-and-release practice.
So, there I was, imaging this gigantic work of art hanging on my wall in the family room when all of a sudden, the line went limp. Just like our ragdoll cat Jackson. All floppy like. The fish was gone. Just as well, I hear. Because it takes about 90 minutes to reel in a fish — gives you a good workout. But that would have been fun, nonetheless. As it was, we enjoyed yachting, shooting photos of dolphins, and hearing stories about Britney Spears when she was onboard, how Adam deems it a pleasure not a job to work as a deck hand (and I believe him — I feel the same way about being a Sacramento Realtor) and about Captain Chuck’s wife, the former rodeo queen. You can’t go wrong with Fire Hatt. I recommend the experience, whether or not you get that big marlin.
Still, I could get a big fiberglass marlin. Does not have to MY marlin. That’s the part that has my husband worried. I say I am just wondering about it. He says he knows how my brain works. First I develop a thought and the next thing he knows that thought has become a reality. I say he should be happy to be married to a woman who is able to conceive a great idea and then put that idea into action — because for many people, that is not an ability they possess. He is one lucky guy.
This blog was published elsewhere on this day in 2011 and is reprinted here while Elizabeth is celebrating New Year’s in Honolulu.
Hou’oli Makahiki Ho Means Happy New Year in Hawaiian
View of Diamond Head from Mauna Surfrider club floor room, December 2014.
Later on today, I am flying from Kona to Honolulu for a Hou’oli Makahiki Ho celebration with my friend, Hella Rothwell. Every year, Hella comes to Oahu to visit her daughter and grandchildren at Christmas time. It seems like the last 3 years we have met up in Hawaii so I suppose it’s becoming a tradition. I wish I had known Hella when I spent time in Honolulu in 2014, when I shot the photo above of Diamond Head from the club floor at Moana Surfrider. But c’est la vie. What matters is we’re doing it again.
We met up last year around this time when I spent a few weeks in Ka’anapali (so I never have to do that again) and grabbed the Maui Ferry to Lanai. I tried to talk Hella into spending more time on Lanai this year, but somehow that backfired and she talked me into going to Honolulu instead. She lured me with free tickets to the annual Bill Maher show, and then we’re dancing the night away at the Party of the Year at the Aloha Towers. Hella probably wouldn’t like it if I told you how old we are, but let’s just say I’m 65 and she is older. Ha! At our age, we’re lucky to be vertical at midnight. And hopefully we won’t land in jail.
New Year’s Day we have reservations at the Halekulani for brunch. We tried to get into La Mer but of course it was booked solid. Unlike the my 2014 Waikiki trip when the restaurant was fairly empty. Of course that night was December 18th, far cry from Hou’oli Makahiki Ho celebrations on December 31st. We hope to lie around on the beach, what’s left of it, and catch up on work. It will be interesting to see how all of this pans out.
You see, Hella also sells real estate. She sells real estate in Hawaii, in Carmel and in Northern California, just not in Sacramento. Nope, Sacramento real estate is my territory. I met up with Hella in 2015 when she helped us to buy a house in Hawaii. We’ve been friends ever since. Sometimes, with certain people, you just click.
I’ll post a few photos and let you know what happened when I get back to Big Island. Until then, I’ve set up a couple blogs for your reading enjoyment in my absence, which I hope you will enjoy. Hou’oli Makihiki Hou. It is pronounced:
“how-oh-lee”
“mah-kah-hee-kee”
“ho.”
Go ahead and try it.
