By Cynthia Oi Earlier this month, the proprietors of Tsukenjo Lunch House folded battered wooden doors over the entrance and slid down a buss-up plank to cover the takeout window for good.
By Cynthia Oi To be blunt, the apartment was a dump. The tilted floor was gritty, furry balls scurried from corners, dust filmed furniture surfaces.
By Cynthia Oi Through the hotel window overlooking the Herengracht, one of Amsterdam's famous canals, early morning came alive with a daily rustle from residents sweeping and scrubbing steps and sidewalks while business owners swabbed storefront windows and scoured the pavement before opening doors to customers.
By Cynthia Oi Few proposals evoke more visceral public resistance than a pay raise for elected and appointed government officials.
By Cynthia Oi If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Or so it seems with Hawaii’s indispensable tourism industry.
By Cynthia Oi If all public leaders are to be censured, booted or otherwise punished for their racial prejudices, the halls of government would be sparsely populated.
By Cynthia Oi Producers for Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s news conference this week could have been more mindful of the racket the props on his street stage would generate.
By Cynthia Oi In seven paragraphs, a snowbird couple from a Pacific Northwest state touch lightly and politely on some of the troublesome situations that afflict Oahu.
By Cynthia Oi Even if the Public Land Development Corp. goes the way of the dodo bird, its lingering byproduct will be further abrasion of people’s trust in political leaders to do the right thing.
By Cynthia Oi An exuberance fills the tourism industry as a record number of visitors spent a record amount of money in Hawaii last year, making 2012 the best since 2006.
By Cynthia Oi Scott Caan need not apologize. The “Hawaii Five-0” actor doesn’t have to enjoy living in Hawaii for the few months or so that he’s stationed here to film the TV series, even if the location is key to the show and the show key to his getting a paycheck.
By Cynthia Oi Media critics knocked television coverage of the 57th Presidential Inauguration when broadcasters concurred with what Republican U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander noted as the “peaceful, orderly way” through which the nation transfers or reaffirms its leadership every four years.
By Cynthia Oi Much of Aliiolani Elementary School has changed in the million years since I rambled from classroom to auditorium, library, cafeteria and points in between.
By Cynthia Oi Even when sitting, Mufi Hannemann’s height is evident. His knees barely fit under the table he was sharing with his brother Nephi as the two men waited for their orders of vegetarian chili and other fare at Zippy’s in Kaimuki.
By Cynthia Oi Everyone acknowledges that the plan to massively expand the Turtle Bay Resort to 625 hotel rooms and 750 residences will massively expand the number of minivans, SUVs, convertibles and all variety of motorized vehicles traveling to, from and through the region on its one and only narrow coastal road.
By Cynthia Oi This morning, I measured water into the tank of a coffee maker, shook some grounds into the filter and slid the carafe on to the heating plate.
By Cynthia Oi The man in the white hat weed-whacked, while his companion used a noisy blower to clear away clippings and leaves from the expanse of grass in a corner of Thomas Square.
By Cynthia Oi Perhaps the peace-and-love spirit of Thanksgiving led two politicians important in the creation of the Public Land Development Corp. to temper their attitudes toward the people who disagree with them.
By Cynthia Oi If current trends continue, the grand tradition of family and food and giving thanks may soon be a fast meal, hello, good-bye before the true expression of the holiday season rings in. Cha-ching!
By Cynthia Oi Oh, for heaven’s sake. Just after an all-consuming election had ended, just as politicos had their heads between their knees, taking deep breaths after screen-sifting furiously through the debris of ballot boxes, when — ta-da — a sex scandal surfaces to divert national attention from serious matters at hand.
By Cynthia Oi Sandy brought widespread destruction to the country at a time when political campaigns had grown as tumultuous as the rain, flooding, snow and wind the superstorm hurled across the Eastern Seaboard and points west.
By Cynthia Oi With his libel-slander lawsuit, Ben Cayetano is calling out the cabal that has shamelessly tried to cast him as a crook. He’s saying he’s not going to take the slurs anymore.
By Cynthia Oi The people who keep track of such things estimate that spending for the 2012 presidential and congressional elections will reach a record-breaking $5.8 billion.
By Cynthia Oi Expect conspiracy theories to be revived with reports of a poll Tuesday showing President Barack Obama leading his Republican challenger 51 percent to 47 percent in the great swing state of Ohio.
By Cynthia Oi Despite Jamae Kawauchi’s assertion that Hawaii County is ready for the Nov. 6 vote and the county clerk’s assessment of herself as “pretty competent,” the state Office of Elections doesn’t seem to share the faith.
By Cynthia Oi When congressional nominee Tulsi Gabbard announced that she would kindly save Oahu taxpayers some money by resigning from the City Council in time for her substitute to be chosen in the general election, she opened the floodgates to politicians new and old.
By Cynthia Oi Few things aggravate the masters of wealth and power in Hawaii more than allowing land, harbors and coastlines to lie unproductive, meaning not generating hard cash in some way or another.
By Cynthia Oi The young woman looked up briefly before she stepped from the sidewalk to cross Punchbowl Street, but as soon as she noted that the car in the lane nearest her was slowing, she went head down again. Her thumb worked furiously on the device she held in her hand.
By Cynthia Oi To imagine what Oahu will look and feel like through the next decade or so, consider a handful of projects and initiatives the island will soon encounter.
By Cynthia Oi As election day creeps closer, news media units like this one perform their civic duty, providing voters with information about who is running for what office and why.
By Cynthia Oi In the 1990 movie “Pretty Woman,” a rich man played by Richard Gere zeroes in on the most effective way to get snooty sales clerks at a Beverly Hills boutique to be nice to his heart-of-gold-prostitute girlfriend who had been given the bum’s rush during a previous Rodeo Drive shopping expedition.
By Cynthia Oi Eyes wide, brows lifting beneath the sweep of salt-and-pepper bangs, the woman was flustered by the suggestion that she would enjoy visiting Honolulu.
By Cynthia Oi Compared to large-scale land dealings on Oahu — where urbanizing 1,550 prime agricultural acres forms compounds of acidic conflicts involving profit-intent developers, powerful government agents and community groups — friction over 3.4 brushy acres in Haleiwa seems unexceptional.
By Cynthia Oi In 1961, the Hawaii State Legislature determined that a lack of adequate controls had caused the development of Hawaii’s limited and valuable land for short-term gain for the few while resulting in long-term loss to the income and growth potential of our State’s economy.
By Cynthia Oi We are one state, the governor says, which is true, but out of true.
By Cynthia Oi Shortly after the president endorsed marriage equality, a blogger posted the news headlined “Obama says same-sex marriage should be legal; world doesn’t end.”
By Cynthia Oi A couple of weeks after a sand-replenishment project in Waikiki was completed to the cheers of tan fans, tourists, hoteliers and shore-based businesses came a federal assessment that 70 percent of beaches on three of Hawaii’s major islands are slowly but surely eroding.
By Cynthia Oi U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye is four years away from a reelection campaign, if he chooses to try for a 10th term.
By Cynthia Oi Pity the poor staffer in the mayor’s office who had the miserable task of telling the boss that a consultant’s “data error” had messed up the ranking of possible landfill sites.
By Cynthia Oi Debates among candidates more often than not seem to be a twisted form of entertainment for political junkies.
By Cynthia Oi Oversensitive types might take offense that a new group of business chiefs in Hawaii presumes “to educate the residents of Oahu” about the benefits of the city’s rail project.
By Cynthia Oi Trust the City Council to take a long and winding road to the straightforward issue of banning single-use bags at checkout counters.
By Cynthia Oi The Hawaii Democratic Party did itself and voters no favor in rejecting Laura Thielen’s request to become a member in good standing so she could run for office under its banner.
By Cynthia Oi Good for Cynthia Thielen. The Windward Oahu representative wasn’t having any of Rep. Sharon Har’s health and safety argument, the mirepoix that’s become the base in the stew of rationalization for legislation the public might find distasteful.
By Cynthia Oi Women are giving Texas Gov. Rick Perry a hard time.
By Cynthia Oi Dressed in black, semi-baggy shorts and a crisp white short-sleeve shirt, the young man sheepishly directed motorists through an 8-foot-wide puddle of brown water stretching like a moat across the entry to the parking area for a small cafe.
By Cynthia Oi A massive development on the Ewa Plain will help meet a demand for housing as Oahu's population increases by 120,000 through the next two decades, its builder says. Its opponents contend the master-planned Ho'opili will flood the residential market with excess supply because population will not grow as projected and the kind of housing proposed won't be what buyers want and can afford, nor is it in a desired location.
By Cynthia Oi That old jingle that went “Ala Moana, Hawaii’s center, the center of your world” kept running through my head when Sears announced it would close its store there.
By Cynthia Oi Hundreds of Virginia citizens this week told their lawmakers they oppose a bill requiring that women undergo a vaginal probe before considering an abortion.
By Cynthia Oi A map with the 1996 news clipping is crude by today’s dazzling graphics standards for publications, a simple rectangle showing Oahu with a marker pointing to a magnified area on the island’s southwestern shore.