The sprawling Diamond Head Arts & Crafts Fair is the sole fundraiser by the nonprofit Hawaii Recreation and Parks Society. It has grown to 220 vendors, all screened to ensure their products are made in Hawaii.
Diamond Head Arts & Crafts Fair
Where: Kapiolani Community College
When: 9 a.m.- 2 p.m. Sunday
Cost: Free admission
Info: “Diamond Head Arts and Crafts Fair” on Facebook
“You can’t have shoppers and not have food,” said Roger Watanabe, one of the craft fair’s organizers and a longtime city-county Parks and Recreation employee, now retired.
There will be bentos, sushi, Spam musubi, hamburgers, fried saimin and many other local favorites, food committee member Jayson Chun said.
Of the 220 booths, “we are having about eight food booths at this craft fair … run by our Hawaii Recreation and Parks Society volunteers,” Chun said. He rattled off local favorites that will fuel fair-goers — fried rice, meat sticks, banana lumpia, a top-selling barbecue chicken plate and andagi and “anda-dogs” (hot dogs surrounded by andagi dough and fried).
One of the crowd favorites “is a fried rice omelet,” Watanabe said. “Even the staff tries to get to these guys’ booth for the local-style fried rice omelet … because those go out in the first hours of them opening,” he said. “It’s good stuff.”
Other big draws are the baked goods prepared by Kapiolani Community College culinary arts students.
To wash all that food down will be fresh-squeezed lemonade, both traditional and flavored.
Food items range in price from $1 to $7 for plates, helping keep cash in people’s pockets for all that shopping.
Proceeds from food sales go to the Hawaii Recreation and Parks Society, “which helps us to support recreation activities within the state,” Chun said. “We are a statewide organization, and this is the fundraiser for our organization.”
Sunday’s event will be the 24th annual for the organization. Longtime attendees know that the craft fair is always the second Sunday in November.
“Twenty-something years ago the second Sunday in November really was pretty early for Christmas shopping, but now the big-box stores, in August and September they already are putting Christmas things out,” Watanabe said.
The fair’s 9 a.m.-to-2 p.m. hours are long enough to attract thousands, Watanabe said, and while many attendees wish it extended later into the afternoon, “the next day, for many of our crafters, it’s a workday. They need to rest.”
