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[{"type":"text","text":"It's worth it to get a cat just to buy these..."}]

Smile 26 7 9

<title>Daily Smile: Thursday, July 9, 2026</title>

It's worth it to get a cat just to buy these...

Daily Smile: Thursday, July 9, 2026

 It&#039;s worth it to get a cat just to buy these...

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

Jared Ursua landed his first FBS coaching job in 2022, joining 

's initial University of Hawai‘i staff as the team's new wide receivers coach. 

Up until that point, the Big Island native's entire collegiate career took place in the state of Utah — Ursua played for Southern Utah from 2008 to 2011 before joining the team's coaching staff from 2014 to 2018. He then coached receivers at Weber State from 2019 to 2021, and was also the recruiting coordinator there.

When he made his way back to Hawai‘i, he was certainly familiar with his surroundings, but he was hungry to learn more. What made the run-and-shoot offense so effective? And what does it look like when it's clicking? For that, he had the ultimate resource in little brother John. 

Following a disappointing 3-9 season in 2017, former Hawai‘i head coach Nick Rolovich decided it was in the best interest of the program to return to its roots in the run-and-shoot, an offensive system where quarterbacks and their four receivers put up large numbers on a variety of option routes.

Despite tearing his ACL in 2017, John Ursua emerged as the star of the team's revamped offense in 2018, hauling in 89 receptions for 1,343 yards and 16 touchdowns. NFL teams were tantalized by his tape, and after declaring early for the 2019 NFL Draft, he was selected in the seventh round by the Seattle Seahawks. 

While Jared Ursua would frequently question 

 about what he saw on a certain play, John was trying to get his playing career back on track. After three seasons with the Seahawks, a repeat ACL injury would go on to derail the rest of his playing career. He went to Canada and latched on with the CFL's 

Saskatchewan Roughriders and BC Lions in 2023, but saw the field for neither. 

John Ursua's post-playing career began in the Islands, first as a trainer for youth athletes who aspired to reach the heights that he did as a player. The training, which focused on speed and agility, ranged from one-on-one to group settings. A close friend of Ursua, who runs Level Up Elites in Orem, Utah, encouraged him to make the move after telling him dozens of clients where eager to learn from him. 

It is also in Utah where Ursua, 32, joined the coaching staff at Orem High School as the school's new receivers coach. It's his first full-time coaching gig on a staff, the start of a journey he hopes to turn into his new career. 

"This is something I'm going to pursue 100%," John Ursua told Aloha State Daily. "This is what I want to do. I want to stick around the game and give back to the kids. This is going to be a long journey for me, but this is just the beginning."

As fate would have it, Ursua's first game on the Orem staff took him to O‘ahu, where the Tigers opened their 2026 campaign at Kamehameha. The Aug. 14 contest was moved up a day due to 

"I couldn't have written it better. I was shocked when they said we were playing Kamehameha first," Ursua said after the game. "It was a treat to be out here. Our boys got to come and hang out for a week, and (Kamehameha) has a great team over there, and we're just glad we got to play them."

Overseeing John Ursua's hire at Orem was head coach Andy Stokes, who back in the day was the final pick of the 2005 NFL Draft but never saw action in a regular season game. 

"We love John," Stokes said. "I know John's older brother really well, Jared. John's played in the league. He's done a lot of the things that we do in our offense. He brings a great perspective to the boys. I know that he wants to grow in the coaching world, I'm grateful for the opportunity to help him out a little bit."

Four years ago, it was Jared Ursua who relied on John Ursua's advice. These days, it's only right big brother returns the favor. 

"I've been calling him, just being like, 'Hey, what do you here, what can I teach these kids on individual (drills), how can I help them grow?' It's been cool to be able to lean on him now," John Ursua said. "At first, he was asking me about the run-and-shoot and UH and all this, but now we get to feed off of each other more, so it's been really fun."

"John and I are always talking about the future, and that kid is so gifted, and I've known it since he was eight or nine years old," Jared Ursua said following a recent Hawai‘i football fall camp practice."

How often does Jared Ursua show his receivers John's UH tape? 

"All the time," Jared Ursua said. "We have a cut up kind of directed toward the '18 and '19 seasons. Those guys were excellent, and then coach (Craig) Stutzmann and (Nick) Rolovich and (Brian Smith) had an offense that we watched and followed. That group was pretty special. That's was a special time in life for him."

John Ursua 082126

<title>Former Hawai‘i star receiver John Ursua dives into coaching career</title>

Following the end of his illustrious playing career, Ursua is now the receivers coach at Orem High School in Utah.

Former Hawai‘i star receiver John Ursua dives into coaching career

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

Located between “Pauoa Valley, Papakōlea and Punchbowl” — according to its 

 — Hopohni opened a few weeks ago. The biz, designed to be a casual, neighborhood spot, offers whole pizzas, along with grab-and-go slices.

We stopped by when the business had only been open for two weeks. It’s in the former space of a bakery on Lusitana Street, and is located by a laundromat.

The shop offers slices and whole pizza pies, which are 18 inches. A variety of slices are in the pizza warmer, but if you want a specific flavor, ask about it.

So far, the mushroom pizza ($5.50 slice, $27 whole pie) has been a customer favorite. It features tomato, mozzarella, Parmesan, chopped cremini mushrooms, garlic, Italian parsley, white onions, lemon zest and chives.

The pig pizza ($6 slice, $29 whole pie) has been another popular choice. It features a crème fraiche base, and is topped with mozzarella, Pecorino Romano, kalua pig, lomi medley and chives.

Other unique flavors include chimichurri ($5.50 slice, $27 whole pizza) — a crème fraiche base with mozzarella, chimichurri and extra-virgin olive oil — and pina ($6 slice, $29 whole pie). The latter is tomato-based with mozzarella, chopped pineapple, pickled red onions, jalapeno, chorizo and cilantro.

The biz also offers staples like tomato, cheese and pepperoni. Some flavors, like pepperoni, can be ordered with optional toppings like sweet peppers and date syrup, and hot peppers with Hawaiian chili-infused extra-virgin olive oil.

Hopohni’s cheese pizza — which comprises mozzarella, fontina, Pecorino Romano and Parmesan — can also be ordered with ricotta.

Customers can look forward to rotating weekly specials; for updates, follow the biz on Instagram. 

Street parking is available. So far, Hopohni has been open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays to Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sundays, but hours are subject to change. 

Hopohni kalua pork pizza 081226

<title>Hopohni is a new neighborhood pizza spot in Honolulu</title>

The pizza biz opened a few weeks ago in the former space of a gluten-free bakery. Customers can find thin-crust pizzas with unique toppings, including chimichurri, kalua pig, and chopped pickled red onions.

Hopohni is a new neighborhood pizza spot in Honolulu

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Government & Politics

Columnists

Rick Hamada wrote this week about our long failure to invest in 

. The wreckage left by the hurricane proves his point.

Storm drains backed up into the streets. Sewage went where sewage should never go. In some neighborhoods the taps ran dry. And power failed all over.

Infrastructure is the kind of thing you notice only when it breaks. This week, a great deal of it broke at once. But none of it should have surprised us.

Seven years ago I co-authored a report called 

. It went to the Hawai‘i Executive Conference, an annual gathering of the state’s chief executives and decision-makers. We tried to put a number on what Hawaiʻi owes its future: retiree healthcare and pensions, infrastructure repair and replacement, and the cost of preparing for storms and a rising sea.

The counting was hard, because few agencies publish what their systems will cost to maintain or replace. Still, the number we reached was $88 billion, and the room agreed with it.

Agreement, more or less, is where the story ends. Infrastructure has not moved up the priority list since. The Islands’ two signature projects — rail and the stadium — are new construction, the shiny kind.

Ask why and you will hear that maintenance is not glamorous. A ribbon-cutting makes for a better photo than a repair schedule. Both answers are true.

But there is another reason, less flattering and more important. Infrastructure belongs to the world of atoms, and atoms are indifferent to rhetoric.

A pipe holds or it leaks. A grid carries the load or it fails in the dark. Taking a project from concept to completion in that world takes real executive skill. Our politics neither selects for it nor rewards it.

Consider a career we have seen more than once. A young man serves in student government, rises to president of the student body at UH Mānoa, interns at the legislature, manages a legislative office, and then wins an open seat. Or he is appointed, skipping the campaign.

He was chosen at every step for ambition and persistence, which are real virtues, but never once for having built or repaired anything. When his car dies on a Tuesday he stands over the engine as helpless as a child. By Thursday he has recovered his confidence to reform the economy. He has simply never worked anywhere his words could be tested against material, and no one has loved him enough to tell him so.

The people who do have that skill get bid away. Honolulu’s managing director, Mike Formby, left city government to run a maritime company whose businesses include ship repair. Few politicians or civil servants could follow him. You can’t fake it until you make it on the open seas.

The room that received Troubled Waters was full of executives, though, and executives have bad habits of their own. The people who complain loudest about government waste have sometimes bankrolled stadium campaigns and rail coalitions. New construction generates business.

Meanwhile, the convention center roof leaks, and highways are sinking into the sea.

A government that attempted less could maintain more. 

Every agency should publish, every budget cycle, what its systems will cost to maintain and to replace. Then the bill stops hiding. No new vanity project should clear the budget until maintenance of the old ones is accounted for. Fix-it-first is not austerity. It’s just honest accounting.

And voters might begin to ask of a candidate the question we ask of a contractor: What have you built? The plumber who has sweated a joint knows something about the world that a law seminar cannot teach. We should stop pretending otherwise.

Another storm will come. Before it does, we need more than pretty speech from our political leaders. They should spend some time in the world of atoms.

Touching grass turns out to be good advice, even when the grass is wet.

Pothole i Stock 174662203 16x9

<title>The $88 billion bill we agreed to ignore</title>

Seven years ago, a room full of Hawaiʻi’s most powerful executives agreed the state faced an $88 billion problem in investing for the future. Then everyone went back to work. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on why the maintenance never comes.

The $88 billion bill we agreed to ignore

Business & Tourism

, according to business owner Talia Bongolan-Schwartz. While the business's Kailua store has remained open, the bagel biz is soft opening another Honolulu location in a spot that's close to Ward Village.

Tali’s Bagels & Schmear is opening on Friday, Aug. 21, on Waimanu Street, at the new artist co-working/gallery venue called OurSpace. While the new space is conducive to takeout, customer seating is also available. 

“A bunch of the folks who started OurSpace came from BoxJelly,” Bongolan-Schwartz explains. “They asked us if we would be interested (in coming here) when we were still open at Ward.

“OurSpace is quite new; they’ve got an artist co-working space and they do a bunch of events, too,” Bongolan-Schwartz adds.

During the business’s soft opening, only in-person ordering will be available. The biz still features its most popular menu items, including the b.e.c. ($13.99) — crispy bacon, scrambled eggs, cheddar and muenster — and the OG NYC ($17.99), which features premium lox, classic schmear, local dill, capers, tomato and red onion.

Newer menu items feature turkey, ham and pastrami bagel sandwiches, according to Bongolan-Schwartz.

“We decided to step up the lunch game,” she says. “The biggest difference you’re going to see on the menu is a whole line of Boar’s Head meats and a bunch of homemade sauces — we’re making a horseradish Russian dressing, lemon caper remoulade and spicy brown mustard. We’re slicing the meat fresh, too; none of it’s pre-sliced.”

New options include the deli ($15.99) — Mesquite-smoked turkey, black forest ham, housemade lemon-caper remoulade, cheddar, Swiss, local lettuce, tomato and sprouts — and the Jewish deli ($16.99), which comprises fresh-sliced pastrami, Swiss, housemade spicy brown mustard and house pickles.

Bongolan-Schwartz expects the business’s hot pastrami ($18.99) — fresh-sliced pastrami, housemade Russian dressing, Swiss, sauerkraut and a side of house pickles — to become a customer favorite.

“That is a New York classic, kind of going for the Katz’s Deli (vibe),” she says. “We’re basically going from a bagel shop to slowly expanding into a delicatessen.”

All sandwiches are served on the customers’ bagel of choice; the Everything bagel is the most popular flavor, according to Bongolan-Schwartz.

“We’ll normally have our full assortment of bagels,” she says. “I really like the onion (bagel); it’s a good complementary flavor. I would add onion onto any sandwich anyway, so it kind of cuts out the need for that.”

The biz also features an expanded drink selection at this location. Besides sparkling water and soft drinks, customers can opt for Israeli iced coffee ($7.99) — a cold brew slushie with oat milk, local mac nut syrup and a honey-tahini drizzle — and Shaloha slush ($6.50), which is made with local liliko

Tali’s Bagels & Schmear will be open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays to Mondays (closed Tuesdays). The biz has extended its hours compared to its previous location, which was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

“We’re definitely excited to see our old customers,” Bongolan-Schwartz says. “That was important to us — to stay close enough by that people who have been loyal to us for three years at Ward Centre would be able to hopefully just walk over here. We’re excited to see how the new menu does.

“We were nervous about the new menu because we made a lot of cuts,” she adds. “We cut a lot of things off the old menu that are pretty traditional, like our white fish salad, which is a New York deli staple. But I think this menu is going to suit the needs and desires of the people here.”

The biz will eventually do a grand opening. For updates, follow Tali’s Bagels & Schmear on 

Open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays to Mondays (closed Tuesdays)

Talis Bagels owner 081926

<title>Tali’s Bagels & Schmear is reopening in Honolulu</title>

The bagel shop, which used to be located in Ward Centre, is soft opening in its new location on Waimanu Street on Friday, Aug. 21. The business features bestselling dishes like the OG NYC bagel, along with new deli-style creations like the hot pastrami.

Tali’s Bagels & Schmear is reopening in Honolulu

Lala showed us our vulnerability. Hundreds of thousands lost power. No firm damage numbers are in yet, but they will be large. No total can capture what this storm means for a family that has lost their home or a loved one. Though not deadly on the scale of the Lahaina wildfires, this disaster is no small thing.

Traffic signals went out across the islands. Honolulu’s Board of Water Supply reported loss of pressure in the mountain ridges of metro Honolulu. And two sewage spills resulted from a backup power failure at Ala Moana Wastewater Pump Station.

And yet Lala was not a direct hit. Its worst devastation fell on the rural southern tip of the Big Island, which is sparsely populated. Even there it broke rainfall records, unleashing dangerous floodwaters, with wind and rain combining to cause tremendous damage.

Hurricanes are a fact of life in these Islands, and more will come. Lala was barely a Category 1, and its worst impacts landed where few people live.

What happens when a stronger storm hits urban Honolulu? What happens if it cripples the airport and the port? The tourism plant that pays so many of our bills would go dark along with everything else, and the military and construction sectors would not be far behind.

Lahaina gives us a preview. Three years after the fires, tourism there has yet to recover, and the commercial core has not been rebuilt to any significant degree.

Some of this delay is due to community resistance, nurtured by a cadre of professional activists who would like to tear down capitalism writ large. Some stems from government inefficiency and corruption. But some of it is a plain economic judgment. Why invest in commercial property in an area prone to wildfire?

Widen the lens and the question gets uncomfortable: Why invest in Hawaiʻi at all, exposed as we are?

Japan faces the same exposure. It is battered by earthquakes and typhoons, and like us it is aging fast, which has slowed its growth. But Japan is a technology and manufacturing power with some of the best disaster response in the world. And it remains a high-trust society, one that bands together in crisis rather than dividing.

Recoveries from such disasters run K-shaped. The affluent, those with somewhere else to live, those whose work survives a blackout — they do fine. The super wealthy don’t weather storms; they flee them, decamping by private jet to their other villas. Meanwhile those whose homes were destroyed, whose wages stop when the power does, suffer.

The GoFundMes and nonprofit funds and federal assistance will launch, as they always do, and they will go only so far. In Lahaina the assistance programs are already winding down, and the disaster is already being forgotten.

“The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it” (Proverbs 27:12). Households will take stock now: keep more food and water in reserve, perhaps add solar panels or battery backup to keep a refrigerator running. But those adaptations are not available to all families. The divide begins before the storm comes.

There are broader economic arrangements to be made. The state must wrestle with how to reduce the impact of natural disasters on its key industries: tourism, the military, and construction. Meanwhile, businesses and investors will evaluate risk, and insurers will adjust their models and pricing. All this is done quietly, with the effects hard to measure. Where on the ledger does a canceled investment show up?

And there are deep political questions. Since the Lahaina wildfires, Hawaiian Electric has appeared flat-footed. It is paying for decades of deferred investment in the grid. Major transmission lines cross mountainous terrain, and they failed again in this storm. These lines are hard to fix on a good day, near impossible mid-storm. Even neighborhood distribution has failed. For decades, 

 were laid in the ground without any protective layer. These lines drown whenever flooding is severe.

HECO’s finances leave little room to harden the grid before the next storm. It sought legislation capping its wildfire liability and 

 against ratepayers — what critics call a bailout. And HECO’s holding company sold most of its stake in American Savings Bank to help pay its share of the $4 billion wildfire settlement. If a major hurricane struck urban Honolulu and destroyed critical infrastructure, could HECO rebuild at all?

Lala spared Honolulu. Policymakers should take the reprieve for what it is and prepare for the day that the big one comes.

Lala Sunday afternoon

<title>Hurricane Lala was a warning: Is Hawaiʻi ready for a direct hit on Honolulu?</title>

In Nāʻālehu, floodwaters swept homes off their foundations; in Kaʻū, bridges were destroyed. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on why a storm that spared Honolulu should serve as a warning.

Hurricane Lala was a warning: Is Hawaiʻi ready for a direct hit on Honolulu?

Crime & Courts

The flashing blue light caught my eye from across the Longs parking lot, and for half a second I looked for a squad car. There wasn’t one.

The light sat up on a pole, bright and tireless, flanked by two cameras and a speaker. Every so often the speaker cleared its throat to remind me, and the myna birds, that these premises were under surveillance.

Without leaving the lot I had wandered into Oceania. This is Hawaiʻi now.

We are used to it, which is the strange part. The locked cases came first, only for the obvious things — cold medicine, cans of Spam. Then they spread. Now you summon a clerk with a key to buy honey, or laundry detergent. The plastic barrier that did not exist a few years ago is now as common as the shopping cart. The pole in the lot is the next turn of the same screw.

We have quietly traded places. The man who steals walks out with his arms full and his pulse even, having learned that little will happen to him. The man who obeys the law frets over a lapsed car registration or the fender he tapped. The thief is hard to find. But the taxpayer is right there, with an address.

Some of this we chose. In 2016 the Legislature raised the felony-theft line from $300 to $750, the first such change since 1986. Some argued that the increase was necessary to keep up with inflation, though 1986's $300 was worth $657 in 2016 — lawmakers essentially excused an extra nearly $100 worth of theft as non-felonious. But others sold it as mercy, and as thrift besides: fewer felonies, which means fewer prisoners and a smaller bill. When the tenderhearted and the tightfisted want the same thing, what they usually want is to stop paying for something. What we stopped paying for was justice, and the camera arrives when the state steps away.

The thief is not beyond love. The addict on the sidewalk is a man God made and Christ died for, and a city that forgets it turns cruel in a hurry. But there is a mercy that is only cowardice in better clothes.

To watch a man sink into what is destroying him and call your inaction compassion is to flatter yourself at his expense. Real mercy wants his good, and his good includes consequences. The civil ruler, Paul writes, “beareth not the sword in vain.” The sword is part of the office.

There is a bill for all this. Stores call their losses shrink, and shrink is folded into the price of everything you carry to the register. The guard, the wired cases, the minutes spent waiting for someone to unlock the condiments — everyone pays to cover the lawlessness of a few.

The state has one job it cannot hand to anyone else. It must protect the people who keep the law and discipline the people who break it. Order is not a luxury bought only when the budget allows. It is the first thing government is for. When the state does this work, the honey can sit on an open shelf. When it quits, a private company bolts the honey down and hoists cameras up on poles.

Justice is not mysterious. We could enforce the repeat-offender laws already on the books, and set a theft threshold a thief has some reason to fear. We could fund the courts and police well enough that a stolen cart leads to more than a shrug. We could also watch the law-abiding a good deal less than we do.

There is an old story about a pole like the one in the lot. When the Israelites in the desert were dying of snakebite, God had Moses raise a bronze serpent. Whoever looked at it lived. It was a strange mercy, and it worked. The trouble came later. Generations on, they were still burning incense to the bronze snake as though the metal had saved them. A king named Hezekiah finally broke it apart and named it Nehushtan — a thing of bronze.

We have hoisted another Nehushtan. The pole can record a theft, but it cannot reform the man committing it.

History runs in seasons, and a law that sleeps can wake again. Meanwhile, we pray for the only lifting-up that ever healed anyone. Not bronze on a pole, but the Son of Man raised on a cross, who reaches the man standing under the cameras. The blue lights will keep flashing over him. They were never going to save him.

Daily Smile: Thursday, July 9, 2026

ASD Staff

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Daily Smile: Thursday, July 9, 2026

Authors

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