Surfer, homeless populations shift when parks close down

On Monday, a week after Point Panic reopened from being being closed, along with the rest of Kakaako Waterfront Park, to remove homeless campers and conduct cleanups and repairs, I bicycled over to check it out. There hadn’t been any waves all week, so I didn’t anticipate seeing the usual flock of bodysurfers enjoying this spot.

What I feared was an incursion by homeless folks, who have swiftly returned to the waterfront park after previous closures. I worried they would see the Panics reopening as an opportunity to re-establish a toehold along the waterfront, especially when the brawny and vigilant bodysurfers weren’t there.

The Kewalo Basin and Kakaako Gateway parks also had been closed, and reopened along with Point Panic on Oct. 30, but the rest of Kakaako Waterfront Park is being kept off-limits indefinitely.

As I bicycled, I passed a line of tents, tarps and derelict cars occupying the curbside strip on Coral Street makai of Ala Moana Boulevard. This didn’t seem to bode well.

More tents and trailers stood along Ilalo Street, near the entrance to the closed parking lot of Kakaako Waterfront Park, but these belonged to “Hawaii Five-0,” which was filming there. When I got to Panics, the ocean, seaside promenade and grass were empty, except for 10 or so tanned senior citizens gathered on benches, folding chairs and tailgates by a scrawny tree at the edge of the parking lot, talking story. The “tree boys,” an informal club, have been hanging out at Panics since at least the 1970s.

A red plastic fence divided Panics from the rest of the waterfront park. A sheriff sat in his car at the Ewa end of the Panics parking lot, which was open for visitors. I was relieved not to see any tents, litter, or broken pipes or light fixtures.

It always feels good to come down to the sea. Small, barely breaking waves rolled diagonally through the Panics lineup, heaving and feathering in the brisk tradewinds. Across the boat channel at Kewalos, the waves were also empty, but a line of fishermen stood with their poles on the jetty where surfers usually launch their boards.

The air smelled of salt, oil and fish, taking me back to childhood trips with my family to Fisherman’s Wharf. The Kakaako waterfront parks had not yet been developed; the air and water of Panics and the adjacent Flies were polluted by a tuna cannery and a municipal dump.

Even then, in the 1960s, there were people living in Ala Moana Beach Park.

We kids had to watch out not to step in human excrement when playing hide-and-seek.

In 2006, the city evicted about 200 campers from the Ala Moana park. “And Hawaii started talking about homelessness,” Lee Cataluna recalled in a 2016 Star-Advertiser column; the state then opened up a temporary shelter program in Kakaako “and we know how well that solved the problem,” she wrote.

WHEN evicted from one park, many houseless people shift to the next. Surfers do the same.

In October, when Kewalos was closed, a tough-looking stranger sporting long, bleached-blond dreads and an aggressive style suddenly appeared at Suis. He chatted and took turns with Scottie, a skilled young surfer, and paddled around and dropped in on the rest of us.

“Who is that?” I asked Scottie.

“I don’t know his name, but he usually surfs Kewalos,” Scottie said.

I asked the stranger about the Kewalos closure. “We was walking in,” he replied with a shrug, “but this morning, I heard there was sheriffs down by the water arresting guys. So I decided to try over here.”

I’m grateful the state reopened Kewalos before he got attached to Suis, but I remain uneasy, the closures having demonstrated how interconnected we all are, and how we share the fallout from the island’s scarcity of affordable housing and urban waterfront space.