Hey, keep it clean out there

If you notice a cleaner, gentler Honolulu Chinatown today, thank the 300 volunteers who descended over the weekend for a massive cleanup project.

In the true spirit of community, people came from around the island to help blot out graffiti and pick up trash.

This was the second Project C.L.E.A.N. (Community Lokahi to Enrich our Aina Now), part of a police initiative to cut crime by empowering residents to take back their neighborhoods.

We can hardly wait to see which area gets the C.L.E.A.N. treatment next.

Mercury cools, cars to cease

Say it isn’t so!

Ford Motor Co. is cutting the venerable Mercury from its product line.

Rolling on America’s highways since 1939, the vehicle named after a Roman god reached its sales peak in 1978 at 580,000. Now its annual sales are less than half that, due partly to an identity crisis, since Mercury buyers apparently have the same shopper profile as people inclined to buy a Ford.

Production of the vehicle will stop at year’s end, but the good news is that Ford will be offering discounts through the summer to clear inventory.

We’ll also still have "Mercury Blues," that great 1949 song written by K.C. Douglas and Robert Geddins that glorified buying "a Mercury or two" and cruising it "up and down the road."