There is no quicker way to set unreasonable expectations than
by calling someplace paradise. It makes you vigilant; ready to find and tear at
the seams to see what’s behind the manufactured curtain. Maybe it’s better that
way though, nobody admires the oblivious.
The marginalization, fetishization, and then commercialization of natives and native culture is nowhere more apparent than in
Hawaii. Observe the gentrified hula ʻauana, available for your viewing pleasure
at malls and boardwalks, distilled to coconut bras and grass skirts for easy
printing on postcards and beer bottles.
Consider the beachfront high-rise; built to enable the literal
stratification of wealth, top level units are bought at a premium by those who
fail to recognize that proximity to sand and surf is desirable, and not the inverse
found in their city high-rises counterparts. Moreover, they foster an ironic immobility
and incomplete isolation, their façade of exclusivity shattered every time you set
foot on the street with the rest of us human detritus.
The dichotic standard of beauty of skin tone for whites and others;
the general shallowing that a universal focus on physique has (though I may be
projecting here); ABC Stores.
You know what more than makes up for all that though? Poke.
Holy fuck that shit is delicious.
