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Kady Pascual

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"EJ is already one hammah!"}]

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JbKillinIt

<title>Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Start um young</title>

Today’s social media find comes from @JbKillenIt, with a stoked little grom.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Start um young

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Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

[{"type":"text","text":"This popular shave ice spot now has dirty sodas."}]

 recently launched its new Ulu’s Hawaiian dirty sodas (starting at $5.75 each). These customizable, non-alcoholic beverages feature a carbonated base — choose from soda or sparkling water ($5.75) or Redbull ($7.50) — and the business’s signature housemade syrups and creams.

We’re told the dirty sodas are available at all Ululani’s Hawaiian Shave Ice stores.

Customers can choose combinations from a pre-set menu or create their own dirty sodas. If you do the build-your-own option, choose from regular or sugar-free soda (Sprite or Coke), or sparkling water or Redbull. Then, choose up to three syrup flavors.

Just like the syrups the business uses for its shave ice, these syrups are made with high-quality ingredients, including ultra-purified water, pure cane sugar and premium fruit purees.

You can enhance your drink with toppings like snow cap ($1.35), Roselani Ice Cream ($2.85), haupia cream ($1.35) or li hing mui drizzle ($1.25). We’re told the snow cap (condensed milk) is currently the most popular option.

Popular combinations from the pre-set menu include Mauna Lona (melona flavor with a recommended Sprite base); No Ka Oi soda (Sprite base with coconut, liliko‘i and mango syrups); and strawberry surf (Coke soda base with strawberry and calamansi syrups). The haupia cream topping is a recommended add-on for No Ka Oi.

Other colorful combos include Holo Holo (mango, strawberry and li hing mui); POG (liliko‘i, orange and guava); and Island wave (liliko‘i and lychee).

Some of the combos — including Baddie Blast (mango and vanilla) and Vanilla Islander (vanilla and Coke) — are available as sugar-free drinks.

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Ululanis Hawaiian Shave Ice dirty sodas 040126

<title>Ululani’s Hawaiian Shave Ice has dirty sodas</title>

These customizable, non-alcoholic beverages feature a carbonated base and the business’s signature housemade syrups and creams.

Ululani’s Hawaiian Shave Ice has dirty sodas

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Columnists

Stand-up comedian Tumua is doing crowd work somewhere on the Mainland, and 

 from the audience. The guy is from Kauaʻi, not born and raised, but “flown there, grown there.” He hasn’t lived there in nine years. While Tumua works the crowd, the guy shouts “chee hoo.” Tumua says, “That’s a solid chee hoo, man.” He does it again. Tumua has to shush him.

It’s a small moment, and Tumua plays it off with dry affection. The guy is playing out what he remembers of a place he left nine years ago. Much of the crowd never lived there at all.

Frank De Lima didn’t have that problem performing locally. Most of his audience hadn’t left. They were in the room — sharing the same plate lunch memories, cringing at the same accents, laughing because every joke was an inside joke. This wasn’t an introduction to local culture. It was a reminder, a celebration, even a reinforcement.

The plantation village was a truly different kind of place — shared land, shared labor, ethnic groups pressed close together with no way out. Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Hawaiians were all crowded into the same neighborhoods and schools. What came out of it — the food, the humor, the pidgin — came from people who couldn’t opt out of each other.

Even as that world was dissolving, people reached back for its symbols. By 1978, a political movement called Palaka Power had taken the plantation worker’s cloth as its name — a clear link to the past. The Palaka Power 

 said so plainly. The writers also noted, in the same breath: the ILWU was declining, sugar and pine would soon be gone, the Democrats of the ‘54 Revolution had mostly left the arena. They chose the symbol precisely because the reality was already receding. The myth was always partly constructed. But it was backed, then, by people who had actually 

The built world that replaced the plantation village included public housing, suburbs, and apartments. The Mainland has all of those. And then came radio, television, the internet, smartphones, and eventually TikTok.

Stand in the Sandy Beach parking lot on a Saturday. A kid near the lifeguard stand is hitting a vape and dancing to a song trending in Atlanta. The shaka sticker on the bumper is working harder than it used to. But social media didn’t cause any of this. It arrived to find the flattening of culture mostly finished and has been tracking it ever since.

The audience for local content skews diaspora: Aunties in Vallejo, Kalihi kids now in Las Vegas, people holding onto something they can’t quite name.

Nostalgia is real. But it runs in one direction. You can package a memory and ship it to Fresno. What you can’t do is put it back. A friend put it plainly: are we our own cover band?

Distinct cultures are not accidents. They grow from particular people living side by side. The plantation village wasn’t a brand. It was a neighborhood. The shaka sticker can travel, but the neighborhood can’t. Something real is lost when a place becomes content.

. He’s reaching for something he actually had, once. What is it, exactly? The memory of a place, a people. The kind of memory that swells within and erupts in shouts — or tears. It’s the memory that many hold of Hawai‘i, even those who visited only for a week.

Nostalgia can become sinful when we deceive ourselves. It’s easy to romanticize farm labor from the comfort of air-conditioned offices, but the plantations were not a paradise. And neither is Hawai‘i. The past is worth a visit, but no place to make a home. 

That’s a solid chee hoo, man — but once is enough. Shush.

Pineapple Plantation housing 16x9 Large

<title>What's in a chee hoo?</title>

Generations removed from the plantation era that forged it, local culture is in danger of becoming a nostalgia-fueled performance of itself, writes ASD columnist Sterling Higa.

What's in a chee hoo?

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Katie Helland

Arts & Entertainment

Actor Chuck Norris, who was martial arts master and starred in the television series "Walker, Texas Ranger," as well as films such as "The Delta Force" and "The Hitman," died Thursday, March 19, according to his IMDb profile. He was 86 years old.

“It is with heavy hearts that our family shares the sudden passing of our beloved Chuck Norris yesterday morning,” shared his Instagram account on Friday, March 20. “While we would like to keep the circumstances private, please know that he was surrounded by his family and was at peace.”

Norris’ account has about 3 million followers. He was best known for his roles in action movies and television shows. 

six-time undefeated World Professional Middleweight Karate champion

 and founded the Chuck Norris System, a Korean-based style of karate.

 after graduating high school and served in Korea where he began to study the martial art Tang Soo Do. After returning home, he worked for Northrop Aviation and 

Norris was one of a handful of Americans to achieve 

eighth-degree black belt status in Tae-Kwon-Do

“To the world, he was a martial artist, actor, and a symbol of strength,” shared the statement from his Instagram account. “To us, he was a devoted husband, a loving father and grandfather, an incredible brother, and the heart of our family.

The family statement also noted reports of a recent hospitalization. 

“We know many of you had heard about his recent hospitalization, and we are truly grateful for the prayers and support you sent his way,” shared the family. “As we grieve this loss, we kindly ask for privacy for our family during this time. Thank you for loving him with us.”

A little over a week earlier, on Tuesday, March 10, Norris shared a statement on Instagram announcing he was 86 years old.

“I don’t age,” wrote the matial artist, as he demonstrated some of his moves in a backyard with palm trees. “I level up.”

. Lone Wolf Ranch, a dog food company founded by Chuck Norris, took to Instagram to share about its founder.

“Today we thank Chuck for everything he did for this country,” shared the post. “He was a true patriot, and a champion for dogs and the people who love them.

Norris also posted on social media about being in Kauaʻi in July of 2025.

Chuck Norris

<title>Chuck Norris dies</title>

Actor Chuck Norris, the renowned martial artist known for his roles in action films and the long-running television series "Walker, Texas Ranger," has died. He was reportedly hospitalized on Kauaʻi. Previously, he was also a guest star on an episode of "Hawaiʻi Five-0."

Chuck Norris dies

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Michael Brestovansky

Government & Politics

Crime & Courts

The state could shed light on “one of the darkest corners of Hawai‘i's public policies” thanks to a prison reform proposal.

 would restrict the state’s use of solitary confinement within Hawai‘i prisons and require greater review and reporting of how the practice is implemented. 

Prison reform advocate Kat Brady is the bill’s primary architect, and told Aloha State Daily that she has been working on some version of solitary confinement reform for over a decade, despite pushback and stonewalling from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“There’s so much stuff that goes unreported on it,” Brady said. “Basically, I’ve learned that the state Legislature is afraid to deal with it. The assume everyone dealing with solitary is Charles Manson.”

Brady said the lack of transparency about solitary confinement — defined in the bill as when an inmate is confined in a cell for 20 hours or more per day, with their activities, movements and social interactions severely restricted — has real impacts on human lives: she said she has spoken with several prisoners who have been placed into solitary confinement without any explanation why, or any explanation of how to be released back into general population.

“I know people who have come out of solitary … damaged,” Brady said. “I’ve known people before they went in and they came out different.”

Under SB104, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation would be required to restrict the use of solitary confinement beginning July 2026. Solitary would only be permissible if there is a reasonable reason to believe the prisoner poses a risk of immediate harm to themselves or another, and that prisoner would have a right to a hearing within 24 hours of being committed, and to be represented at that hearing.

Prisoners in solitary would not be denied access to food, water, medical care or legal counsel, they would be provided a document explaining “the criteria for a pathway back into the general population,” and more, the measure reads.

Prisoners 21 years old or younger, pregnant or recently pregnant would also not be subject to solitary confinement.

The measure would also form various working groups to consider further policies regarding the use of solitary confinement on vulnerable populations — such as the elderly, disabled or those with serious medical conditions — which would report to the state Legislature in 2027.

Brady said SB104 has been overwhelmingly popular throughout the legislative session — except with the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which provided the only negative testimony against the bill across six committee hearings. 

DCR has submitted written testimony saying that the bill “attempts to resolve a problem that does not exist” and that separating a prisoner who is exhibiting inappropriate behaviors “is necessary for the greater good.”

But Brady said the state’s use of solitary confinement has been heavy-handed. She said she has worked with one inmate who was placed in solitary when prison staff “shook down” his cell to look for illicit drugs.

“They shook down the wrong cell, they knew they did, but he went into solitary anyway,” Brady said. “[The state] has been kowtowing to DCR at risk of people’s lives.”

The bill states that solitary confinement has a long-documented history of causing significant — and often permanent — psychological and physical damage. 24 states have enacted laws to limit or prohibit the use of solitary confinement.

At the same time, Hawai‘i's prison system faces an ongoing mental health crisis. Four inmate deaths in Hawai‘i prisons were suspected or confirmed suicides in 2024, the most since 2020.

“It may not seem like high numbers compared to, say, Illinois, where there’s more than 50,000 people in prison,” Brady said. “We’ve got about 3,800 in prison [statewide], so if that many people die, that’s way wrong.”

The bill now sits on Gov. Josh Green’s desk, awaiting his signature. Green’s office has not signaled his stance on the issue, but Brady said she has worked with Michael Champion, Green’s senior advisor for mental health and the justice system, on the bill, and hoped that Champion — who has himself advocated for ending solitary confinement in Hawai‘i — will put a good word in the governor’s ear.

“We’re creating a really robust criminal class,” Brady said. “It’s so obvious that people are getting incarcerated because they can’t get necessary services, they can’t get housing or mental health services.” 

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Start um young

Kady Pascual

Social Media Editor

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Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Start um young

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Kady Pascual

Social Media Editor

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