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Kady Pascual

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

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Living.wit.sammy

<title>Hawai‘i Scene on Social: When there’s a will, there’s a way</title>

Today’s social media find comes from @Living.Wit.Sammy, who really wants to catch fish.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: When there’s a will, there’s a way

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Sterling Higa

Columnists

Somewhere on Nehoa Street, outside Roosevelt High School, there was a fight. A gang from another school had shown up after the bell. What followed was the kind of chaos that burns into memory. Boys spilling into the road, thudding sounds, the feeling of not knowing whether to stay and watch or walk away. I couldn’t tell you how it started. I couldn’t tell you how it ended. The details have faded the way details do when nobody was recording them.

That’s the thing about human memory. It compresses, softens, and eventually lets go. A fight that felt huge at the time becomes, 20 years later, a blur of raised voices and adrenaline.

Hawai‘i has always had a fighting culture. Anyone who grew up here knows this. The scraps behind the gym, the girls smacking each other and pulling hair in the cafeteria, the boys heading to a nearby park to settle something. None of that is new. Schools have never been the sanctuaries we pretend they are. Something in the tenor of what happens in them now feels different.

What is new — truly new — is that the fight never has to end.

There are Instagram accounts built around filming street fights in Hawaiʻi. They get shared in group chats and stitched into highlight reels. The culture that produced Worldstar HipHop — filming strangers on their worst day — has been handed down to teenagers. They have taken to it eagerly.

The camera doesn’t just record a fight. It changes the fight. It adds an audience that’s hungry, and a hungry audience changes the performer. The boy who might have walked away now has a reason not to. The girl who threw the first slap throws three more because someone is watching. The recording doesn’t capture the event. It becomes the event.

Consider Carly Ng — a woman with special needs, beaten by a group of teenagers more than once, the attacks 

. The response was swift, and it too went live. Neighbors hunted down the alleged attackers in crowdsourced justice, 

Shakespeare set the same sequence in Verona. A wrong done, then avenged, then avenged again. The tragedy doesn’t belong to any single act but to the momentum the original act creates. Someday soon, someone in these videos is going to die. It might be a victim who hits the pavement wrong. It might be someone who stepped into the final act of a very old play.

The spectacle is the problem. The performer needs an audience, and we’ve been a willing one. What does it mean to scroll past a video of a teenager getting knocked out and feel nothing — or worse, feel something like satisfaction?

Paul’s instruction in Philippians is not a polite suggestion to think nice thoughts. “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Our appetite is not neutral. What we feed it trains us in what to want. A generation raised on this content is being trained toward something. It is not honorable or lovely.

Put the phone down. Don’t record fights; don’t watch them. None of this requires a new law or a task force. It requires the older, harder thing: deciding that the appetite for spectacle is worth resisting.

The worry is that we have already gone further than we realize. In fight videos, you can sometimes see the fencing response — the reflexive arm stiffening that signals serious brain trauma. It’s the same thing that ended Tua Tagovailoa’s career in Miami. It is a body responding to a life in crisis. The crowd, meanwhile, holds up its phones, eager for more.

Pray we don’t record what comes next. By then, we won’t know we should have looked away.

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<title>The fight never has to end</title>

There have always been beefs and scraps in Hawai‘i's schools. Now fights are social media events, incentivizing kids to put on bigger and more violent shows for the audience, writes ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa. This is going to get someone killed.

The fight never has to end

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

 just launched a new elevated dining concept called Girl Dinner.

This meal ($40) is served daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. It includes chicken nuggets with crème fraiche, salmon roe and chives; Caesar salad; truffle fries; a filthy martini (vodka or gin); a collagen marshmallow and Hello Kitty ring pop.

The meal was inspired by the viral “girl dinner” trend but with an elevated twist. This version features a little bit of everything, but with a little indulgence, according to chef Chris Murakami.

“Just like the Adult Happy Meal, it’s supposed to be fun and exciting,” he says.

The chicken nuggets are exclusive to the Girl Dinner meal; it’s not part of the eatery’s regular menu. The soft collagen marshmallow is also made in house.

“I want to start putting different sauces for the chicken nuggets, like honey mustard,” Murakami says.

If you’re feeling extra, you can enhance your meal with 1 ($60) or 2 ($100) ounces of caviar.

While the meal includes a filthy martini — made with vodka or gin — that’s the eatery’s recommended pairing to maintain the “girl dinner” vibe. However, customers can substitute this with any other classic cocktail, glass of wine or zero-proof drink.

The Girl Dinner is available for a limited time, but no end date has been set yet. 

Girl Dinner served daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

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<title>New Girl Dinner in downtown Honolulu</title>

The Dotted Line just launched an elevated meal called Girl Dinner, which includes chicken nuggets with crème fraiche, salmon roe and chives; Caesar salad; truffle fries and a filthy martini.

New Girl Dinner in downtown Honolulu

Government & Politics

On a Monday morning earlier this month, Mayor Rick Blangiardi sent his proposed budget for the coming fiscal year to the Honolulu City Council. The total came in $133 million less than the year before. The operating side grew by less than one percent. There were no ribbon cuttings. The 

 lasted about 40 minutes and drew a few paragraphs in the morning papers.

Had the number gone up — a record spend on city services, a bold new chapter — there would have been more headlines. The budget that doesn’t grow is not a story.

What matters is whether government grows faster or slower than the income of the people paying for it. The University of Hawaiʻi’s economic research arm, UHERO, 

 personal income in Honolulu will grow about 3.7% this year. That 3.7% is the speed limit. A government budgeting above it is spending money its people haven’t earned yet.

Blangiardi’s operating increase of less than 1% means city government is shrinking against the economy. That’s harder than it sounds. Union contracts alone required wage raises above 1%. He covered that and still cut the total.

The pattern elsewhere is mixed — and mostly worse. On Kaua‘i, Mayor Derek Kawakami’s current budget 

, more than twice the county’s projected income growth.

Maui’s Richard Bissen is a different story. UHERO projects Maui’s income to grow about 4% this year. Bissen’s proposed budget for next fiscal year 

. That’s nearly flat in real terms — a return to earth after the fire-driven spending surge.

The outlier nobody talks about is Hawai‘i County Mayor Kimo Alameda. His proposed operating budget 

 against projected income growth of 3.4%. Nearly as disciplined as Honolulu, with almost no press. Alameda governs quietly, and Hawai‘i County draws less notice than Maui or Honolulu.

Blangiardi didn’t cut services. He cut the budget lines for vacant jobs. With roughly one in five city jobs vacant, that pay was already sitting idle. The mayor pulled about $50 million in vacancy funding back across departments. The police chief called it tight but workable. AI tools are rolling out across city offices — not to cut jobs, but to get more done.

Blangiardi is not always easy. Councilmembers, reporters, and slow-moving department heads have all felt the friction. But for five years, he’s been the strongest check on government growth in Hawai‘i. And in his 2026 State of the City address, he 

 not to raise property taxes while in office.

Government that lives within its means doesn’t produce ribbon cuttings. It fills the potholes, keeps the lights on. In the oldest sense, it’s a good neighbor. It doesn’t always make the news.

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<title>The budget that doesn't grow</title>

Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi did something remarkable early this month in releasing a city budget that came in $133 million under the previous year's budget. ASD columnist Sterling Higa looks at all four county budgets to see which counties are living within the means of their citizens.

The budget that doesn't grow

Lopaka and Tanya Kapanui

Lopaka Kapanui and Tanya Kapanui

Hawai‘i History

Kamapuaʻa, the wild and rebellious demigod, is usually found in Hawai‘i’s lush, rain-drenched forests and valleys. Part man and part pig, Kamapua‘a is a shape-shifter whose most common form is that of a large wild hog. His restless spirit drew the fury and disdain of Pele, the fiery goddess of the volcano, but he pursued her relentlessly.

With his boundless passion, the nature of the pig god’s affinity for cooling rains and verdant lands countered Pele’s tempestuous fire and her lava’s destructive creation. The relationship between the two was filled first with anger and violence and then with wild desire. Eventually, Kamapua‘a could never tame the goddess’ flames, and Pele could not cage the demigod.

In their final epic battle, the pair realized it was impossible to destroy one another. Kamapua‘a proposed a truce, and the pair agreed that Pele would remain on her side of the island where it is hot and arid, and Kamapua‘a would remain on his side, where it is cool and lush, and none shall trespass into the other’s domain. From this ancient feud comes the superstition of carrying pork from one side of the island to the other.

Locals on O‘ahu will be quick to tell you, “Don’t bring pork over the Pali!”

This is a warning that if you should bring pork from Kailua over the Nu‘uanu Pali, you are carrying the kinolau (the embodiment) of Kamapua‘a into Pele’s territory, angering her. Personal stories of car trouble, strange occurrences, and even ghostly encounters from people who had pork in their cars reinforced this belief, with the scary events only ceasing once the pork was removed.

The story of bringing pork over the Pali is just one layer of the complex and spiritual history surrounding this place. If you ask different people why the Pali is haunted, you’ll likely get several vastly different answers, and most of those answers might be true. This haunting, spiritually powerful place has a long and violent history. It’s not just one thing that haunts the Pali; it’s many. 

In 1947, ten years before the first Pali tunnel was completed, a group of young men and women had been discussing the supernatural and learned that, under certain conditions, “spooks” could be seen at the Nu‘uanu Pali. They initially took this information as a joke and decided to test the theory just after midnight. Upon the advice of their Hawaiian friends, they brought with them some raw pork and fish. The night was very dark, and there was no moon.

Just around midnight, they drove up to the lookout, parked their car facing the plaque dedicated to King Kamehameha I, and sat there in the dark, waiting for something to happen. After a short while, one woman alerted the group to a large figure that looked like a man sitting on the side of the hill with his arms locked over his knees.

The driver turned on the car’s headlights, and the figure moved. When the lights were turned off, it suddenly reappeared in a different place. Although the night was dark, the figure was clearly visible, and the group watched in horror as the ghostly man changed his shape to that of an animal. The group tossed the pork out of the car, and in that instant, the awful odor of death and decomposition enveloped them. 

Around 12:45 am, this group of young men and women entered the police station and excitedly shared their terrifying experience with the police lieutenant on the midnight watch. Although the story may have impressed the Lieutenant, his only comment to the newspaper was, “They threw away pork at $1 a pound!”

What or who did these five young adults encounter? Could the strange figure have been the demigod, Kamapua‘a? What is your experience in bringing pork over the Pali?

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: When there’s a will, there’s a way

Kady Pascual

Social Media Editor

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Hawai‘i Scene on Social: When there’s a will, there’s a way

Authors

Kady Pascual

Social Media Editor

More in Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Neighborhood weather updates

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Island vibes

Gotta catch ‘em all — at Ala Moana Center: voices from Pokémon GO’s “Wild Area: Global” event

Starbucks holiday launch draws crowds for limited-edition cups

Most read