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Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Now let's all enjoy a puppy fighting some cauliflower..."}]

Smile 26 4 28

<title>Daily Smile: Tuesday, April 28, 2026</title>

Now let's all enjoy a puppy fighting some cauliflower...

Daily Smile: Tuesday, April 28, 2026

 Now let&#039;s all enjoy a puppy fighting some cauliflower...

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

S’mores latte. Haupia pie matcha. Love is love latte. These are just a few of the specials you can find this month at 

, which usually pops up at Laulani Community Park in ‘Ewa Beach.

Coffee Cruiser opened in August 2024, according to business owner Brittney Haitsuka.

“I have always loved coffee and VW buses,” says Haitsuka, who says she was a barista during college. “At that time, I was working part-time as a gymnastics instructor, and I just felt like I needed more of a purpose in life. A mobile coffee shop felt just right, and it was the best decision I ever made.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Coffee Cruiser has popped up at Laulani Community Park since its opening."}]

“This park doesn’t normally have food trucks, but I did see a shave ice truck one time,” Haitsuka says. “There is a lot of parking (here); that’s one of the main things (I was looking for).”

When it came to choosing a name for her business, Haitsuka says she wanted something short and to the point. She uses beans from Big Island Coffee Roasters for her coffees.

“I’m from the Big Island, so I wanted to use a Big Island brand,” she says.

Coffee Cruiser’s menu features coffees, iced teas, specialty lattes and matchas. Only in-person orders are accepted.

“I wanted to give a variety (on my menu), so there’s something for everyone,” Haitsuka says. “The most popular matcha is the jungle fever ($8). It has 3 grams of matcha, macnut syrup, white chocolate and your choice of milk.”

The business’s bestselling drink is its banana bread latte ($8), according to Haitsuka. It features two shots of espresso, banana syrup, white chocolate, cinnamon and the customer’s choice of milk (whole, oat or almond).

She notes that the groovy latte ($8) — two shots of espresso, hazelnut syrup, white chocolate and your choice of milk — is another customer favorite.

“My personal favorite is a seasonal special called the Sunday Stack latte,” she adds. “It has two shots of espresso, maple syrup, white chocolate and I usually get oat milk. I also love this one as a matcha.”

June specials include the s’mores latte ($8) — complete with marshmallow fluff, chocolate and marshmallow syrup — haupia pie latte or matcha ($8), and love is love latte or matcha ($8). The latter is inspired by Pride Month, according to Haitsuka.

“At the end of the month, 50% of the proceeds from the ‘love is love’ drink will be donated to Hawaii LGBT Legacy Foundation,” she says.

Customers can add toppings to the s’mores latte, which is returning drink from last year. Additional toppings include whipped cream, Golden Graham bits and chocolate (50 cents each).

Additional toppings like whipped cream and Fruity Pebbles (50 cents each) are also available for the love is love latte.

Coffee Cruiser also partners with other small businesses to sell their baked goods for customers to enjoy with their coffees or matchas. She currently partners with Chat’s Sweets by Charity — for its banana bread and brownaners, or pastries featuring a banana bread top and brownie base — and Lyman Lattes for its mini stuffed croissants.

“I’ve partnered with her (Chelsey Lyman of Lyman Lattes) pretty much since the beginning,” Haitsuka says. “Around two months after I opened, she reached out to me. She normally drops off baked goods every morning and we sell them here.”

Every croissant is twice baked and baked fresh to order, according to owner/baker Chelsey Lyman.

“In 2022, my husband and I were selling bottled coffees, but we needed a pastry to accompany them,” she says. “I decided to make my favorite almond croissants. Then, from there, our croissants ended up taking off and becoming more popular than our coffees.

“I wanted to sell something unique that you don’t see many people selling,” she adds. “While everyone was making sourdough during the Covid-19 pandemic, I was learning to make croissants.”

Customers can find a variety of the mini filled croissants ($3.50 each) at Coffee Cruiser. Popular flavors include strawberry guava, ube haupia and brown butter chocolate chip.

“Seasonal flavors for the summer will be s’mores — which is my most popular seasonal items — and Fruity Pebbles,” Lyman confirms.

Due to the age of the VW bus — 1973, according to Haitsuka — the business does not participate in events across O

ahu. However, customers can order bottled drinks to-go.

“We are not able to travel further than the ‘Ewa Beach or Kapolei area,” she confirms. “However, we do offer our drink to-go bottles in bulk since we are not able to be on location (at events). If you bring the bottle back (on your next visit), you get 10% off. Customers like to stock up for their work week.” 

[{"type":"text","text":"She adds that the business is big on prioritizing community."}]

“We love our regular (customers), which is why we have stamp cards,” Haitsuka says. “We also like to collaborate with a lot of other businesses often. Supporting small, locally owned businesses is super important to us. Aside from that, we just want to ensure that we are always serving good coffee and good vibes.”

Open 8 a.m. to noon Fridays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Coffee Cruiser business owner 060926

<title>Coffee Cruiser offers lattes and stuffed croissants in West Oʻahu</title>

The business sells coffees and matchas out of its 1973 VW bus. The business usually pops up at Laulani Community Park in ‘Ewa Beach, and partners with other local businesses, like Lyman Lattes, to offer baked goods with its beverages.

Coffee Cruiser offers lattes and stuffed croissants in West Oʻahu

De Soto 2025

DeSoto Brown

Hawai‘i History

Columnists

We are all familiar with parking meters. Why do you think they exist? Probably everyone who’s asked this question would immediately say these devices are only meant to earn money for local governments.

But everyone who says this would be wrong. 

In fact, parking meters were invented for a different reason, which was simply to make people move their cars.

Before the 1930s, in crowded urban areas, it was common for workers to find convenient places to park close to where they worked, and then to not move their cars for their entire work day. If regulations imposed time limits, policemen would usually mark a tire of a parked vehicle with chalk to check if it stayed in the same place. All the owner had to do was to move the car slightly within the required hour or two, and then the law was not being broken. The result was that other people driving downtown to shop or for appointments couldn’t find parking, and businesses would suffer. 

Forcing people to put coins into meters changed this habit. When the time ran out, you could get a parking ticket, and that has always been enough of a threat that most motorists won’t risk it. If necessary, they’ll park elsewhere, or they’ll move their cars. The result is turnover of parked vehicles, freeing spaces for others. Success!

This realization was the work of a man named Carl Magee. He invented the parking meter, and the first examples of his invention went into use in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935. They worked, and other cities pretty quickly began to install them too.

Remarkably, some forward-thinkers in Honolulu began advocating for parking meters very early. In fact, this began in May 1936, less than a year after the first ones appeared on streets in Oklahoma. Meters came very close to being placed in downtown Honolulu for a trial period in 1937, but this effort failed.

In January 1938, a local newspaper survey of O‘ahu residents showed an intriguing breakdown: 9% were in favor of parking meters, 23% opposed them, and 68% didn’t yet know what they were. 

Regardless of citizen ignorance, this debate was pretty much constant for years, through 1941 … but the arrival of World War II and the necessity of manufacturing huge amounts of material for military use (which excluded parking meters) shut down the discussion till late 1945, after the war had ended. And then the arguments went right back to where they’d already been.

In September 1947 the City & County of Honolulu passed Ordinance #1085 which laid out the entire process of how parking meters were to be chosen and where they were to be placed. In spite of this legal order, again, nothing happened.

Finally, in the summer of 1950, the Hawai‘i Aeronautical Commission, which oversaw Honolulu International Airport, took charge. The most convenient parking spaces at this facility were, not surprisingly, filled with employee vehicles every day. New rules were created to prohibit this and to create zones for workers’ cars, and parking meters were mandated to be installed. This didn’t happen till August 14, 1951, when 101 of them were placed closest to the air terminal. Once this barrier was broken, the resistance to meters in Hawai‘i was overcome at last. 

Downtown Honolulu’s new parking meters had to be fed for the first time on February 1,  1952. And, just as predicted, they worked - motorists were able to find more empty spaces, which quickly made the majority of drivers into parking meter supporters. Of course the meters provided the City & County of Honolulu a new source of revenue as well. The charges were simple: 1c provided 12 minutes, and 5c bought an entire hour, with a maximum of two hours in total. Only two kinds of coins were accepted by the machines: pennies and nickels. Dimes, if inserted, provided nothing and were a total loss for anyone who used one. People soon learned that they were going to need to carry change to be able to park in the busier parts of downtown Honolulu, since an expired meter would bring a ticket that cost $1 (that's $12.45 in today's dollars).

The following year, meters came to streets in Waikīkī and Kaimukī. Business owners in the former location actively denounced the devices, claiming that they would be unsightly and not in keeping with their desire to make the tourist district less urban in appearance, and presumably more like a tourist’s fantasy ideal. Regardless, on July 13, 1953, the 377 meters along Kalākaua Avenue and some of its intersecting side streets were open for business. The next day, 123 meters mostly on Wai‘alae Avenue in Kaimukī were required to be fed. 

Inspired by Honolulu, Hilo too was soon equipped with parking meters which went into operation on September 15, 1952. And just as in Honolulu, discussions soon began to plan where more were to be placed.

Moving to the present — contrary to what might be assumed, parking meters have not simply continued to increase everywhere over time. As shopping areas in particular have evolved in different Hawai‘i locations, meters have sometimes been deactivated or removed in hopes of luring people back. But don’t get your hopes up! They are definitely here to stay, today being primarily activated by credit cards instead of quarters. However it’s done, you will continue to part with money to be able to leave your car someplace.

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

2 Parking meter Airport 51 crop 16x9

<title>Hawai‘i's parking meters – when, where, and why?</title>

Before parking meters came along, street parking in Hawai‘i was free — and a total free-for-all. ASD history columnist DeSoto Brown dives into how the parking meter got to the Islands.

Hawai‘i's parking meters – when, where, and why?

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Government & Politics

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Ben Sasse is bleeding from the face."}]

He’s seated across from New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, 

, and he pauses to note it. He’s dying of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. One side effect of the treatment is that his body can’t grow skin.

“Yeah, you look terrible,” says Douthat.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“Thank you,” says Sasse with a smile."}]

Since his diagnosis, Sasse has appeared on 

 stage, and a parade of podcasts. He uses the time to say what most politicians never dare to.

He talks about faith. He quotes R.C. Sproul. He discusses Tocqueville with the ease of someone who has actually read him.

Sasse is a two-term Republican Senator from Nebraska, a Harvard graduate, a Yale PhD in History. He voted to impeach Donald Trump and took the consequences. Though popular with voters in his home state, he left the Senate to serve as President of the University of Florida.

Now he spends his last days making one argument: American political life has gone badly wrong. Not because the wrong party is winning. Because the whole enterprise has lost its bearings.

Sasse starts with something most politicians would rather ignore: the pace of technological change. Previous economic transformations — industrialization, electrification — unfolded across generations. This one won’t. Robotics and automation will wipe out whole careers within a single working life.

Sasse sees a second shift: disembodied consciousness, the way screens let people leave their world. Families are breaking apart. Communities are dissolving. The local ties — churches, civic groups, the small-scale institutions Edmund Burke called “little platoons” — that help people absorb hard times are being stripped away. The formation of souls and citizens is at risk, and government is mostly ignoring it in favor of clickbait and rage.

He thinks our loves should be ordered, first to God, then to those nearest us, rippling outward from family to neighborhood to state to nation. Caring about a national political party more than your own community isn’t just confused. It’s a disorder of affection.

What’s true of the nation is true in Hawai'i. The legislature introduces three thousand bills a year. How many of those take the large challenges seriously? The demographic shifts, the cost pressures squeezing local families, the slow hemorrhage of young people off the Islands? The floor speeches and press releases gesture toward these problems, but the lawmaking doesn’t match the problem.

Sasse’s example suggests why. He can sit for an hour-long interview on dense political and theological matters because he has a clear philosophy — a disciplined way of working through problems. It also gives him the power to persuade, which is the precondition for coordinated action.

The founders studied rhetoric and philosophy with the same care they gave the law, because republican government runs on argument and clear speech. Most of Hawai‘i’s lawmakers couldn’t sustain an interview like Sasse’s, and the laws show it. There’s no clear direction. No will to rally the public. Few signs that anyone has thought hard about what government is for. What fills the vacuum is performance: press releases, floor speeches written for social media, outrage timed to the news cycle.

Sasse has a simple framework for what a coherent politics looks like. He describes four ways of valuing government, measured in cheers. No-cheer people — hardcore libertarians — don’t understand that government exists to secure liberty. Three-cheer people believe in a state that controls everything. Republicans, he says, are the one-cheer party. Democrats are the two-cheer party. Each has an extreme wing. Hawai‘i’s loudest voices are at the extremes.

What we lack are the one-cheer leaders: those who see government as necessary but flawed, able to secure order but not to deliver salvation.

Government should do a small number of important things well. It should get out of the way of the little platoons. It should never present itself as the path to utopia. Hawai‘i’s government casting itself as humanity’s last best hope has always been faintly comic.

Sasse’s sharpest line comes when he describes what voters already sense about the way their leaders talk.

They know it’s bullshit, he says — and they don’t want to be lied to. Why can’t politics do a small number of important, long-term things?

There is something clarifying about a man making that argument while bleeding from the face. He has no election to win, no caucus to protect, and by his own reckoning, weeks or months to live. What he’s chosen to do with his time is sit down and think hard about what government is and isn’t for, and what we’ve lost by confusing the two.

In watching Ben Sasse die, Hawai‘i might learn something about how to live.

Ben Sasse Getty Images 1231346544

<title>Ben Sasse is dying in public</title>

The former U.S. senator from Nebraska is talking about big ideas everywhere he can as pancreatic cancer takes his life. Hawai‘i's politicians could learn from what he has to say about government doing fewer things well, says ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa.

Daily Smile: Tuesday, April 28, 2026

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Daily Smile: Tuesday, April 28, 2026

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