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Daily Smile

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Smile 26 5 25

<title>Daily Smile: Monday, May 25, 2026</title>

There are two types of people in the morning...

Daily Smile: Monday, May 25, 2026

 There are two types of people in the morning...

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

Government & Politics

As the state picks up the pieces after Hurricane Lala, residents are once again advised to prepare for another storm this weekend.

Tropical Depression Two-C — which is expected to evolve into Tropical Storm Moke by the end of the week — is approaching the state, and is forecasted to dump several more inches of rain onto places already waterlogged after Lala.

National Weather Service meteorologist John Bravender said the storm will pass south of the Islands, and shouldn’t have as large of a wind field as Lala, so the storm shouldn’t be as damaging as Lala was. Nonetheless, it is expected to bring 10-15 inches of rain to the windward and southeast portions of Hawai‘i Island, the place hardest hit by Lala.

Elsewhere in the state, the NWS is forecasting that windward Maui will receive six to 10 inches of rain, and two to four inches will fall on the rest of the islands. The first rains are anticipated to reach the Big Island late Saturday night, and spread to the rest of the state through Sunday into Monday.

Bravender said that, with the ground already saturated following Lala, floods will come on much faster. Furthermore, land has been destabilized already — some houses in Na‘alehu on the Big Island were buried in feet of mud, Green said — which elevates the risk for more landslides.

“Take this storm very seriously,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Logan, Adjutant General of the State of Hawai‘i Department of Defense. “If you used up some of the supplies that you already had for Hurricane Lala, go back to the store and get everything together, about 14 days of medicine, food, pet food.”

Residents should consider their potential evacuation routes, particularly now that some roads may be blocked or closed following Lala, Green said.

Logan said about 136 National Guard personnel are deploying throughout the state, primarily working on clearing debris from roads. However, he added that some teams and high water vehicles will be stationed near the Wahiawā Reservoir, which came close to overflowing during the Kona Low storms in March.

As of Thursday, Green said, the water level at the Wahiawā Reservoir was at 78 feet; it overflows at 90 feet. Green said the reservoir widens as it gets higher, so each successive foot takes substantially more water.

Green said the state will issue warnings if the reservoir reaches dangerous levels, but added that “we’re not in that circumstance right now.”

Once again, residents are urged to sign up for alerts for updates about the storm as it progresses.

In the meantime, recovery work for Lala continues. Hawaiian Electric announced that “essentially all” customers on Maui and O‘ahu have had power restored, leaving about 13,380 still without power on the Big Island.

Green said HECO is bringing extra personnel and equipment from the Mainland to assist in restoring power.

However, Green added that the state’s power grids are in serious need for upgrades. He said some rural areas will probably need “microgrids” — a small localized power grid that can operate independently of the greater grid — to improve their power resilience, and said he expects “a lot of energy overhaul” in the next decade.

Green said he hopes the Federal Emergency Management Agency will issue a formal disaster declaration by next week, which will allow the state to procure additional federal funds for the recovery effort. He added that, in conversation with FEMA representatives, the scope of Hurricane Lala is generally expected to meet federal thresholds for federal assistance.

In addition, the state Legislature made about $100 million available this year for storm responses, in anticipation of a strong hurricane season this year.

Green also highlighted recovery efforts by the Hawai‘i Foodservice Alliance — which donated thousands of units of water, milk, eggs, diapers, rice and other supplies to Hawai‘i Island — as well as philanthropic donations. Tadashi Yanai, founder of UNIQLO, will donate $3 million, while UNIQLO itself will donate 50,000 items of clothing.

Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell and Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff will both donate $1 million each, as well, Green said.

, using its Stronger Hawai‘i fund, has issued more than $700,000 in grants to various organizations providing recovery support, including to Hilo-based nonprofit Vibrant Hawai‘i, which helps to directly connect supplies to people impacted by the storm.

Green said he believes the state is better prepared for this year’s storm season than it might have been five years ago. Nonetheless, he added, Lala’s rainfall was at the high end of what was predicted, and if more storms like it come — the NWS predicted between five and 13 storms in the Eastern and Central Pacific this year — then additional assistance might be necessary.

The next of those storms might already be in sight. Green warned of another tropical depression forming in the Pacific, which he said could approach the state by the beginning of September, although he added that there is currently no way to predict its course or strength.

Currently, the National Hurricane Center reports a depression forming several hundred miles south of the Baja Peninsula, with a 60% chance of developing into a storm within the next week.

PXL 20260821 001633089 TS 000 16x9

<title>State warns: take new storm seriously</title>

Another storm approaches, even as Lala recovery continues.

State warns: take new storm seriously

De Soto 2025

DeSoto Brown

Hawai‘i History

Columnists

There was a time when neon signs were all over the place in Honolulu, and indeed pretty much all over the world. Today they are rare to nearly nonexistent, and they mostly evoke memories of the middle decades of the 20th century. What is neon? What made it popular, and why did it go away?

First, scientifically, neon is a rare gas which is naturally present in a small amount in earth’s atmosphere; it was first identified as an element in 1898. A French inventor, Georges Claude, discovered that if pure neon gas enclosed in an airtight glass enclosure was electrified, it would give off a bright orange-red glow. In 1912 Claude’s company, using this technology, began manufacturing the first neon advertising signs. (Although known just as “neon signs” they did, in fact, use other gases as well to produce different colors.) After coming into use in France, the first such electric signs were displayed in the USA in the early 1920s (said to specifically have been by a Los Angeles car dealership in 1923), and Americans immediately took to these amazing and striking new lights that soon would dramatically alter downtown streets by night.

Initially, the Claude Neon company registered patents in the United States for specific processes that they used in their manufacturing process. From this fact they implied that they alone were the only authorized makers of neon signs and that all competitors were potentially in legal violation of their patents. In Honolulu, as neon was first promoted to customers in 1928-1929, two competing sign companies (with confusingly similar names) that represented two manufacturers mildly battled about this in their ads. The Electric Shop, licensed by Claude Neon through a California company, stated the former “controls the neon sign patents in America” and that customers must “Beware of Imitations.” Meanwhile the Electric Supply Company, agent for QRS Neon, said it would protect customers from claims of patent infringement if any such arose.

The Electric Shop was the first to offer neon signs in Hawaii, but under cumbersome restrictions. Such signs were not sold to customers but only could be leased for three years, requiring monthly payments, with the option to extend the lease at half price after that. Meanwhile the Electric Supply Co. boasted that it sold signs outright, which probably was more attractive to buyers. The Electric Shop started things off in a big way in February 1928 by installing 33 neon signs on both Standard Oil gas stations (13 of them) and Shell stations (20 out of the 88 then on O‘ahu). The latter were said to “sparkle with beautiful Neon signs by night” in a newspaper ad on May 1, 1928. By July of the following year, some of the Honolulu businesses with neon included the Benson Smith Drug Store, Manufacturer’s Shoes, Hub Clothing, Henry May & Co. groceries, and two of the Consolidated Amusements movie theaters. By the 1930s, the latter would be adding significant amounts of neon to their theaters’ marquees and facades.

Into the 1960s, neon would be a growth industry locally. For sign companies, neon could be financially lucrative since the fragile glass tubes that created the colorful glows required constant care and maintenance. Not only could these be broken, either by mistake or intentionally by vandals, they also tended to gradually flicker or go out completely through damaged electrical connections. Signs that blinked in successive patterns would eventually go out of whack as well. And since neon was almost always mounted high up on poles or the fronts of buildings, intentionally out of reach of the public, servicing it required climbing ladders or using other mechanical means of getting to it.

All this trouble meant that customers increasingly began to choose cheaper and less problematic signs made from plastic panels illuminated from behind by fluorescent light bulbs. And as these replaced neon, the exacting technique of bending the thin glass tubes into the required shapes of letters or other designs by holding them over a very hot flame like a bunsen burner was gradually lost by the experts who once had done this work.

During the 1930s neon was mostly perceived as being a colorful and lively part of urban areas, but by the late 1940s its reputation began to slip. In detective novels and Hollywood’s famous “film noir” crime dramas, neon instead began to symbolize the sleazy parts of cities where dangerous things happened and bad guys ran wild. In Hawaii specifically, neon began to be criticized in the 1950s. Don Beachcomber, restauranteur and eventual developer of the International Market Place, advocated that all neon be banished from Waikīkī since Kalākaua Avenue was “already taking on the aspects of any mainland street at night.” A visiting ad agency executive from Minnesota warned “... for heaven’s sake, don’t make [Hawai‘i] a neon paradise and over-commercialize it." A visitor from Connecticut wrote in a newspaper letter in 1956: “Everywhere neon signs! What has happened to the people of Hawai‘i that such desecration is permitted?” But at the same time a spokesman for a group of neon dealers countered that such signs “tend to aid crime prevention” (??) and that “many tourists have inquired why Honolulu doesn’t have huge sign displays like New York’s Times Square or Florida’s Miami Beach.” (Dubious).

In the end, it wasn’t a bad reputation that brought neon’s reign to an end; it was just cost, fragility and changing technology. A revival of interest and appreciation for neon began in the 1970s but this of itself was not enough to keep its use at the level of decades past. The incredibly specialized training necessary to bend the glass tubing into complex shapes stopped and those capable of doing it died off, and eventually LEDs replaced it with equally bright colors and even more changing patterns. While neon will, it’s hoped, always survive in some fashion, never again will Hawaiian skies be as widely lit by its glow as in the 20th century.

1 Neon montage ca 55 16x9

<title>Neon, its birth and death in Hawai‘i</title>

Bright, colorful neon signs debuted in the Islands nearly a century ago, with literal Hollywood glamor — the Waikīkī, Kūhiō and other movie palaces used them. Restaurants and small businesses of all kinds went for neon, too. Over time, they became associated with dive bars and the bad side of town. ASD history writer DeSoto Brown revisits and the highs and lows of this distinctly 20th-century form of advertising.

Daily Smile: Monday, May 25, 2026

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