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Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

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<title>Hawaiʻi Scene on Social: Making up all any kine</title>

In today's social media find, @islandmagicmike riffs on Hulu, Disney and more.

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social: Making up all any kine

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

MĀNOA — As the University of Hawai‘i's offensive line left Micah Alejado scrambling one last time, the left-handed quarterback eluded San Jose State's defense for a final heave from near midfield. 

Alejado's desperation throw floated in the Mānoa air for approximately four seconds. If one of four Rainbow Warriors positioned in the end zone were to catch it, all the ugliness of the team's lack of offensive execution would have been temporarily erased. 

It was not to be. The throw caromed off Kejuan Bullard Jr.'s hands, the final play of a 20-16 loss for the Rainbow Warriors. Hawai‘i fell to 1-4 in the 2026 season, its Mountain West championship hopes taking an early fatal blow at 0-3 in conference play. 

Despite 12 penalties for 85 yards, most of which were committed by its offensive line, UH held on to a slim chance for victory until the very end. As San Jose State's team stormed the field to collect the Dick Tomey Legacy Trophy for the sixth consecutive matchup, many of Hawai‘i's players stood still on the field dejected and in disbelief. 

"Obviously, we're not in the best place right now as a team," Alejado said after the game. His return after a 9-4 season in 2025 was the basis of a 

 for the Rainbow Warriors heading into 2026. "You look at our schedule and don't expect to come out 1-4, whatever it is. For the team, it's obviously tough, but I guess it's football."

Hawai‘i had a chance to take an early lead in the first quarter, but a Cam Barfield handoff on fourth and inches was ruled short at the San Jose State 4 with 1:52 left in the first quarter. An Alejado interception set up San Jose State's first touchdown of the day, a 10-yard pass from former UH backup quarterback Luke Weaver to 

Campbell alum Kamaehu Kopa-Kaawalauole with 12:01 left in the second quarter. Weaver's throw was nearly intercepted by Matagi Thompson; instead, 

Kopa-Kaawalauole had a clear path to the end zone after securing the catch. 

San Jose State doubled its lead after Weaver found a wide open Carson Clark for 12 yards with 6:08 left in the second quarter. After seeing his team execute the play, SJSU offensive coordinator and former UH player and coach 

 was animated in his celebration. The 14-0 lead was an advantage the Spartans carried into the half. 

Hawai‘i showed signs of life in the second half, producing three straight scores and two stops. Yet the 'Bows still trailed 14-13 after that sequence, as two of those point-producing plays were 

 field goals, the other a 58-yard touchdown pass from Alejado to Devin Alves. 

Alves' score was the final touchdown of the game, as San Jose State's Trajan Sinatra hit two field goals to pad its lead, including a 30-yarder with 1:15 left. 

Following a 27-yard return by Blaze Kamoku, Hawai‘i had one minute and eight seconds with no timeouts to score, starting from its own 29. Two short passes to Barfield, as well as a Alejado rush up the middle, caused the 'Bows to spike the ball three times in their final possession. The 'Bows did not attempt a deep pass on their final possession until the failed Hail Mary. The Rainbow Warriors emulate the two-minute drill often during practices but ultimately weren't able to get the score they needed on Saturday. 

"It'll be difficult if you don't get the ball out of bounds. You got to stop the clock somewhere, somehow," Hawai‘i head coach Timmy Chang said. "There's kill situations. There's things that we do during practice that get you ready for it. But it's a difficult situation, definitely on our side. But I thought they executed as well as they could."

In the victory over his former team, Weaver completed 19 of his 28 passes for 246 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. Meanwhile, Alejado was 23-for-35 with 341 yards, one touchdown and a pair of picks. 

Weaver, who showed no ill will towards the Rainbow Warriors in the wake of his departure, was seen hugging many of his former Hawai‘i teammates following the game. 

Next up for the Rainbow Warriors is a road contest at Arizona State on Saturday, Oct. 10. Kickoff is set for 4:30 p.m. HST, and the game will be televised nationally on FS1. 

"It is really just one day at a time," Chang said of his team's outlook. "You clean up these little things, regardless of who's in there, who's playing, it comes down to to execution, discipline, all the things that we build our program off of. These are the things that we just got to truly understand. There's beating them up, but you know, they feel down already. So the message is how do we get better? How do we stop the things that hurt us?"

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<title>Hawai‘i football's Mountain West hopes dealt fatal blow with frustrating loss to San Jose…</title>

Led by those with close ties to the Islands, San Jose State earned its sixth consecutive victory over the Rainbow Warriors on Saturday night.

Hawai‘i football's Mountain West hopes dealt fatal blow with frustrating loss to San Jose State

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

 in late December that its Kakaʻako store on Cooke Street was closed and the business was moving.

Its new location isn’t far — the business is reopening tomorrow, Jan. 8, on Ala Moana Boulevard in the former space of Valyou Hawaiʻi.

Starting tomorrow, the store will be open daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. This is the business’s largest location, according to manager Cecilia Yang. Its other stores are located in Pearl Kai Shopping Center and in Waipahu.

You can find all your favorite snacks, ranging from Kit-Kats to chips and drinks. Newer snacks can be found near the store entrance.

Since the shelves are organized by category — chips, candies, noodles and more — it’s easier to shop. The business recently brought in more drinks, especially teas, according to Yang.

Like its other locations, the store isn’t limited to snacks. Customers can find sauces and a variety of cooking products, as well as home goods.

Customer parking is currently available on the side of the store, and additional parking will eventually be available in the lot behind the store.

Stay tuned for the store’s grand opening celebration. 1-2 Buy Hawaiʻi will also be doing special promotions for the upcoming Lunar New Year.

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<title>Asian snack shop 1-2 Buy Hawaiʻi finds new spot in Honolulu</title>

The business’s Cooke Street store has relocated to Ala Moana Boulevard, in the former space of Valyou Hawaiʻi. It opens to the public on Jan. 8.

Asian snack shop 1-2 Buy Hawaiʻi finds new spot in Honolulu

Arrasmith Portrait

Perry Arrasmith

Government & Politics

Columnists

The most bizarre section in Hawai‘i’s 

 is the one that relates to the state’s regulation of population growth. It is a testament to a bygone era informed by misguided local anxieties. 

Runaway population growth across the Hawaiian Islands once occupied the Hawai'i zeitgeist. While much of this mindset persists in the halls of society, it contrasts with Hawai‘i’s contemporary demographic woes. 

Between April 1960 and April 1970, Hawai‘i added 115,510 residents to its population, totalling 748,182 residents across the islands. It was a meteoric rise that stressed the Hawai‘i’s poor infrastructure, corrupt land management practices, and limited housing across the islands. 

Hawai‘i was a young, growing society. The median age of a resident was 25. Much of the State’s dynamism and vigour, in turn, were informed by a mix of talent both local and non-local.

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During this time, national commentators were fretting about the global population’s growth. Paul and Anne Ehrlich had co-authored 

in 1968. Internationally, the Club of Rome furnished the

report, which only further argued against overconsumption. Political views wrapped in scientific dogma started-off a new movement whose cultural salience was confirmed by the 1973 film 

While societies were wasteful and inefficient, these reports didn’t necessarily call for more efficiency. Instead, they called for fewer people. 

While the times have changed, our Constitution’s outdated language shows how we are still stuck in the ’70s. Through national debates over population control, Hawai‘i became a tragic guinea pig that used environmentalism to justify population control, opening the floodgates for arguments against urban development, immigration, and economic growth. 

These conversations continue to plague Hawai‘i’s zeitgeist, most notably when it comes to unnecessary conflict between economic growth and environmental stewardship.

In 1970, the Hawai‘i State Legislature passed Senate Resolution 305, establishing the State’s Temporary Commission on Population Stabilization. A 1972 report issued by the Commission suggested an inverse relationship between environmental stewardship and population growth. 

“It remains to be seen whether or not we will achieve a balance with the limits of the Hawaiian environment in this present period of growth in Hawaiian history,” the 

 warned, “but it should be recognized that with respect to maintaining the quality of the environment, population and prosperity are ‘trade-offs.’ If we expect to maintain a fixed level of pollution and impact on the environment by people in Hawaii, then any increase in one will require a corresponding decrease in the other.”

In the following year, the State Senate once again adopted a resolution calling for the establishment of an optimum state population. “The question of population equilibria among the Islands is a difficult one to answer quantitatively,” a 

 from the Department of Planning and Economic Development warned.

“One must consider the impact on the environment, what ‘quality of life’ should be used as a measure, means of developing a viable economy within a stable population, and the size of population on each Island which will bring about a desirable balance with the social and natural environment of Hawai‘i.”

Nationally, the Commission on Population and the American Future had been established by federal law in March 1970. A final 

 issued by the Commission was submitted to the U.S. Congress in March 1972, with proposals ranging from increased abortion access to voluntary sterilization to stricter immigration controls. Out of political embarrassment for its recommendations, the Nixon Administration largely distanced itself from the Commission.

However, the rhetoric which argued for limits on immigration had devastating consequences. In the present-day, arguments blaming immigrants for environmental degradation have had devastating 

Back in Hawai‘i, the reports stacked on one another. In 1972, Earl R. Babbie of the civic organization 

, a major argument for a cap on Hawai‘i’s population at one million (Hawai‘i’s population reached this threshold in the mid-’80s). 

These reports built a case for a more permanent state agency tasked with controlling the state’s population growth. As a result, the Commission on Population Stabilization and the Hawaiian Future was 

A primary architect of the measure, Nadao Yoshinga, was not solely worried about the influx of outsiders. Natural population growth among existing residents was another worry. Yoshinaga, an influential member of the State Senate, would 

 in the name of limited Hawai‘i’s population growth over the coming years. Limiting population by whatever means necessary (in the confines of the law) was the objective.

At around this time, Robert C. Schmitt, the State Statistician of Hawai‘i, 

 of the emerging field of population policy. Proponents of population control, at least in the early Statehood era, had started to organize in the late ’60s through such organizations as the University of Hawai‘i-sponsored Zero Population Growth-Honoulu, Citizens for Hawai‘i, Life of the Land, the Sierra Club, and Save our Surf. 

These groups advocated for policies to halt population migration, economic development, and other factors like densified communities in the name of environmentalism. Perhaps tragically, this misguided approach to Hawai‘i’s prevailing problems created a manichean world of values in conflict with one another.

Arguments for population control in the name of environmental stewardship had a real impact on policy in the late ’70s. Most notably, this came to a head in 1977.

During his annual State of the State address, Governor George Ariyoshi directly addressed population control, arguing for immigration controls and density regulation in the name of the ‘aloha spirit.’

“The problem of excessive population seems to be central to nearly every problem in the State.” he started. “Too many people means too few jobs and too much competition for them. Too many people means too little land for agriculture, parks, and scenic vistas. Too many people means too much crime and too much erosion of possibly our single most important commodity: the Aloha Spirit. Too many people means too much pressure on all our governmental and private institutions.” 

Ariyoshi wanted fewer people in Hawai‘i, plain and simple. To reinforce his views, the State Legislature even sponsored a 

 on population and the Hawaiian future in March 1977. 

One piece of legislation would have discriminated against recent arrivals to Hawai‘i through residency requirements for state jobs. A Federal Judge based in Honolulu, the part-Hawaiian Sam P. King, condemned the State of Hawai‘i’s flirtation with a flagrantly “anti-migratory” statute.

These attempts provide a marked contrast with the present day. In January 2025, the Department of Human Services 

 that the State suffers from a vacancy rate of 24% of all civil services positions (equivalent to more than 4,000 jobs). 

Nevertheless, Hawai‘i still inserted a section into its Constitution at the 1978 Constitutional Convention that called for population planning. To date, it is the only Constitution in the United States with such explicit language.

Instead of promoting smarter urban planning methods that conserved space while reducing sprawl or incentivizing farmers to bring more fallow agricultural land into cultivation, it was more convenient to blame the outside migrants for Hawai‘i’s development problems.

Instead of fostering solutions which invite greater societal innovation, it is more convenient to fall for an ideology wrapped in the veneer of science. 

Since 1970, Hawai‘i’s population fortunes have reversed.

Global population growth is not exponential, nor could it sustain the growth rates witnessed after the Second World War. In fact, our planet’s 

 will likely begin declining before 2100. 

The paranoia of the ’70s became irrelevant over the following decade. By 1983, the Commission on Population and the Hawaiian Future had been abolished.

For a majority of Hawai‘i’s residents in 2025, the ’70s are a foreign, unknown domain. Since Hawai‘i’s 

 was 41 as of 2024, it’s safe to conclude more than half of Hawai‘i’s population was born after 1980.

Today, Hawai‘i is missing people. It is one of the fastest aging states in the United States. The population is contracting, with more than half of all Native Hawaiians on the planet living outside of the archipelago.

Culturally, it is still easy to blame the outsider for our own problems. Instead of acknowledging our own complicitly in failing to plan for the future, it is far easier to find that the outsider is only exacerbating the problems we are not addressing. Policies which now arrest growth not only injure potential migrants. They also hurt residents.

The debates over population control in the ’70s were about a fear of change and a society’s failure to properly navigate the pressures wrought by new forces.

Contemporary conflicts over growth still magnify this attitude. Not unironically, stewarding Hawai‘i’s environment means Hawai‘i’s environment needs to also steward Hawai‘i’s people.

“It should be remembered,” Governor John Burns said in 

, “that the key ingredient in any environment is man himself: he is part and parcel of and the key to the value of our total system of symbiotic relationships on this earth. Being a part of the environment demands that we consider human economics together with biological ecology.” 

“If man is hungry, ill-housed, undereducated or poorly treated in his society,” he wondered, “what service is it to him that his environment remains in its pristine, natural state?”

A society without one cannot have the other. We need to think about growth, not stabilization. We need to think about people.

In our own time, we need a Constitution whose thinking is not tethered to the past. While the language in outdated documents like our Constitution locks our zeitgeist in another time, we need to get over our history. We need a better zeitgeist.

Crowd i Stock 1357524756

<title>Hawai‘i's bizarre legacy of population control (and why it's still here)</title>

In the 1970s, Hawai‘i gave in to fears of overpopulation, so much so that population control was put into the State Constitution.

Hawai‘i's bizarre legacy of population control (and why it's still here)

 is known for its iconic views of Diamond Head and the Pacific Ocean, live Hawaiian music and hula, and hand-crafted cocktails with stunning sunset views.

The eatery recently added new dishes to its menu. House Without A Key’s new dishes are inspired by Hawaiʻi’s diverse culture, and its menu is updated seasonally, according to chef de cuisine Jarrin Otake.

Choose with seafood-centric starters like the Lawaiʻa roll ($29) and Hamachi crudo ($32). The roll is a seafood lover’s dream, as it comprises ‘ahi, salmon and red king crab salad. It features a tempura-fried exterior and is drizzled with sweet unagi sauce, garlic aioli and spicy aioli, and is finished with tobiko, ikura and scallions. Each bite boasts lots of seafood; this dish is easily one of my new favorites on the menu.  

“Lawaiʻa means ‘fisherman’ in Hawaiian,” explains Otake. “It seemed fit to name a roll that; it offers different seafood from around the world — crab from the East Coast, crab from the North, and ‘ahi from Pacific waters.”

Meanwhile, the Hamachi crudo is a good option if you want a refreshing, sashimi-like appetizer. The pieces come swimming in ponzu sauce and garnished with daikon, shiso, garlic aioli, tobiko and pickled chili for a slight spice.

“This is a different variation of the classic hamachi sashimi and Spanish technique or style of crudo,” Otake says. “We’re placing a local island touch with Japanese izakaya style to this dish. Lots of different flavors and textures that are key to this dish all come together in one bite.”

Since I love truffles, I gravitate with any dish with truffles in its name. House Without A Key’s new truffle pizza is unique because of its dough, according to Otake.

“Our dough is made in house with a 24-hour holding process, giving the dough time to relax and strengthen,” he explains. “We top off this crispy — yet soft and fluffy —  crust with rich, savory flavors of parmesan cheese sauce, assorted mushrooms (Aliʻi, cremini, button and Hon shimeiji), black truffle shavings, arugula and more truffle oil. I would say this pizza is quite ‘prodigious’ — remarkable and impressive by all levels of quality.”

I appreciated the pizza’s lighter crust, which still boasted a nice crunch. Its cheesiness will satisfy cheese lovers, and the truffle flavor is subtle — enough that you’ll know it’s there, but not overpowering. 

While this new pizza doesn’t disappoint, the “Melted Memories” four cheese pizza ($28) — complete with blue, Parmesan, mozzarella and ricotta cheeses — is still my absolute favorite.

The hearty dish is simple but appealing to both guests and locals, according to Otake.

“This is my rendition of my late grandmother’s braised boneless short ribs,” he says. “It’s comforting; everything brings you back to my grandmother’s house in Waialua. This is why I called it ‘Tūtū Mā.’ It’s a reference to old Hawaiʻi, growing up with Hawaiian-Pigeon English slang spoke throughout the household, referring to your grandmother or great aunt as ‘tūtū mā.’ Usually, you can find them cooking something in the kitchen any time of the day.”

The braised short ribs are ultra tender and flavorful — and impossible to stop eating.

If you’re craving something light, fruity and slightly tart, this tropical treat is ideal. The tropical fruit mousse tart ($16) reflects everything Hawaiʻi has to offer in one bite, according to Otake.

“The clean, crisp, tart flavors of the tropical fruit, the rich mousse in the middle and a crispy crust hold all of these inviting flavors together,” he says. “It’s one of my favorite desserts on the menu.”

Since I love chocolate, the chocolate verrine ($16) — which is the restaurant’s take on a French chocolate mousse — is right up my alley. The velvety milk-dark chocolate pot de crème is finished with a dark chocolate glaze and chocolate shavings.

“Verrine means a ‘small glass,’” Otake says. “It’s a glass filled with different styles of chocolate mousse and has chocolate shavings on top. It’s full of delicate, sweet flavors that hit all your senses. It’s a great way to end a perfect meal at House Without a Key.”

Of course, Halekūlani’s signature coconut cake ($16) is still part of the dessert menu, but these two new treats are worth trying.

halekulani.com/dining/house-without-a-key

Open nightly for dinner and sunset cocktails, 5-9 p.m.; entertainment is from 5-8 p.m.

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Hawaiʻi Scene on Social: Making up all any kine

Authors

ASD Staff

Reporter

More in Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

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