A few weeks ago I wrote about how companies and places in the islands arrived at their names. As regular readers of my column know, I often have plenty of leftovers. Here’s another helping.
Pearl City
Yes, there used to be pearls in the harbor 200 years ago before agricultural runoff doomed them, but the city was named in an Oahu Railway and Land contest around 1890. The train planned a stop there, and “Pearl City” was the winning answer. “Lehua Avenue” was the other winning entry for the main street.
Originally, Pearl City was the area makai of today’s Kamehameha Highway, the peninsula that extends into Middle Loch. The wealthy of Oahu had homes on the water, and the Pearl City Yacht Club held parties and sailing contests. Duke Kahanamoku was a member, and Shirley Temple was made honorary commodore.
ABC Stores
Founded by Sidney Kosasa as S. Kosasa in Kaimuki, it later became Mister K stores. When they shifted their business to Waikiki, and being a convenience store, they picked the name ABC because it was easier to remember.
Town & Country Surf Shop
This shop was named because its Pearl City shop was halfway between Honolulu and the North Shore. T&C founder Craig Sugihara only wanted to make enough money to be able to surf when he opened in 1971.
W&M Bar-B-Q Burgers
Wilfred and Myra Kawamura opened the restaurant in 1954 on 9th Street and Waialae Avenue but have moved it next to City Mill in Kaimuki. Myra’s barbecue sauce is their secret.
University of Hawaii
The College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts was founded in 1907 in a temporary location at Beretania and Victoria streets. A plaque there marks the site. In 1917 it became the College of Hawaii and later the University of Hawaii.
Wigwam
The first Wigwam store in Hawaii opened in 1958 in Dillingham Plaza in Kalihi, where Savers is today. The chain had eight stores in the islands at one time and 35 in Washington, California and Arizona.
Pay Less Drug Stores bought out the Wigwam chain in 1971. A wigwam is an American Indian dwelling, and the chain took that name because the first store in Seattle began in a tent.
Buzz’s Original Steakhouse
Former Canlis Restaurant maitre d’ Buzz Schneider opened Buzz’s Steak and Lobster in 1962 in Waikiki. He left the restaurant to his partners and, a year later, bought out the Lords of Lanikai restaurant where he started Buzz’s Original Steakhouse Kailua in 1963.
The restaurant was successful, and Buzz decided to expand to Aiea in 1965. In 1975 the restaurant moved to its present location at Kuahao Place in Pearl City. Schneider sold out to his first wife, Barbara, in 1986 and retired to the Big Island.
If you look closely at Buzz’s logo, you can see six paddlers in a canoe under the name. This is because many paddlers worked at Buzz’s.
Columbia Inn
“The Columbia name sounds patriotic and American, but it came from Colombian coffee bags,” Gene Kaneshiro said. “My dad used to say that good coffee and good restaurants go together.”
In 1964 Columbia Inn moved to the “Top of da Boulevard” — 645 Kapiolani, next to the newspaper building. The site it occupied had been the Times Grill since 1939. The Times Grill was the predecessor of Times Supermarkets.
50th State Fair
The 50th State Fair was once called the 49th State Fair. The fair dates to 1930 when the Chamber of Commerce held an exhibition of Hawaii products at the old National Guard Armory downtown.
Over 30,000 attended.
The Honolulu Jaycees took over sponsorship in 1937. In 1949, in anticipation of statehood, it was called the 49th State Fair. When Alaska was admitted to the Union as the 49th state and Hawaii as the 50th in 1959, the fair’s name was changed to the 50th State Fair.
Longs
Brothers Joe and Tom Long founded their empire in Piedmont, Calif., in 1938 and helped institute the idea of self-service in the retail drug industry. Low prices, excellent service and a tradition of “treating others as we, ourselves would like to be treated” brought quick success to Joe and Tom’s first store. They opened another store 10 months later.
The first Longs in Hawaii, and the ninth in their chain, came in 1954 and was at the corner of Hotel and Bishop streets. Bishop Street had always been known for hosting the corporate headquarters of many of Hawaii’s giants. Fort Street was the main shopping street. No large retailer has ever been successful on Bishop Street, except Longs.
Tripler Army Medical Center
Tripler came into being in 1907 on North King Street in Kalihi as Fort Shafter Hospital. It replaced an earlier Army facility at King and Sheridan streets that had been built to handle casualties from the Spanish-American War in the Philippines.
In 1920, Fort Shafter Hospital was renamed in honor of Brig. Gen. Charles Stuart Tripler, who had been medical director of the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War.
Wailana Coffee House
Do you remember when the Wailana Coffee House was the Kapiolani Drive Inn? That would take you back before 1969, when founder Francis Tom tore down his drive-in and built a 24-story condominium in its place.
Tom started the Kapiolani Drive Inn as the food concessionaire at the zoo in Kapiolani Park in the mid-1940s. In 1948 a fence was put up that effectively cut off the drive-in from its customers. Tom bought an acre of land along the dirt road that was then Ala Moana Boulevard. Before the Hilton Hawaiian Village and the Ilikai, this was considered by many to be “out in the country.”
The Kapiolani Drive Inn soon opened there, but Tom’s wife, Mary, had her doubts. “I counted cars one evening, and only a few went by! We were scared. But eventually word got around and people found us.”
“Drive-ins declined somewhat in the 1960s,” son Kenton Tom recalled. “Dad decided a classier place might be better. He hooked up with Bruce Stark, and they developed the property with the new restaurant beneath the condominiums. The Wailana name was Stark’s idea.” “Wailana” means “floating on water.” Their logo is a lily, which floats peacefully on water.
Bob Sigall’s latest book“The Companies We Keep 5,” has arrived, with stories from the last three years of Rearview Mirror. “The Companies We Keep 1 and 2” are also back in print. Email Sigall at Sigall@yahoo.com.
