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Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Little bird has his own condo....."}]

Smile 26 8 3

<title>Daily Smile: Monday, Aug. 3, 2026</title>

Little bird has his own condo.....

Daily Smile: Monday, Aug. 3, 2026

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

[{"type":"text","text":"Kam Bowl is now open in Pearl City."}]

The restaurant opened in Times Square Shopping Center, in the former space of IHOP. The eatery 

 and re-opened in July under new ownership and under a new name, Aliʻi Diner.

At the new Pearl City restaurant, customers can expect the same signature dishes Kam Bowl was known for according to co-owner Ryder Yoshida, who says the menu is currently limited to the most popular dishes.

“It’s smaller and more simple,” Yoshida says. “We’re concentrating on getting the stuff people like before adding more things.”

Kam Bowl Pearl City did some renovations to the restaurant’s interior, such as adding new booths for seating.

“The kitchen was pretty much empty; we had to re-do the whole kitchen,” he says. “The hard part about it is the restaurant is big and the kitchen area to prepare food is small, compared to the Kalihi location.”

The menu features dishes like the eatery’s famous oxtail soup ($24.95), hamburger steak ($18.95), loco moco ($18.95) and Japanese breakfast ($18.95). The latter includes miso soup, toss salad, two eggs and a choice of mahi or salmon.

The restaurant now uses wagyu beef to make its hamburger patties, according to Yoshida.

“This is the first time we’re using wagyu beef,” he says. “We’re trying to keep prices reasonable.”

Dishes like hotcakes and sweet bread French toast are available from 7 to 11 a.m. Many plate lunch-style entrees come with white rice and a choice of toss or mac salad.

On the eatery’s opening day — Aug. 1 — regular customers from Kam Bowl’s Kalihi location were eagerly eating breakfast. Yoshida encourages diners to check out the new space.

“I was sitting in here before we opened, and people would ask, ‘Are you guys open yet?’” he says. “I kept on saying, ‘Pretty soon, pretty soon.’ Just come and try our food.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Kam Bowl Pearl City is open daily from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m."}]

98-1264 Kaahumanu St. Ste. B03, Pearl City

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Kam Bowl Pearl City owner 080126

<title>Kam Bowl is open in Pearl City</title>

The eatery is now open in Times Square Shopping Center, in the former space of IHOP. Customers can look forward to signature dishes like oxtail soup, loco moco, hamburger steak and more.

Kam Bowl is open in Pearl City

 just launched its new happy hour, which is available daily from 4 to 6 p.m. in the eatery’s bar and lounge area.

Start with discounted beverages like liliko

i spritz ($10), a variety of martinis ($10) — choose from matcha, tropical, mango, and lychee and peach — sake specials ($12) and featured wines by the glass ($10 each).

While not part of the happy hour drink menu, the eatery also just revamped its signature cocktail line-up with new additions ($18), including Olena mamaki tea, Rabbit Island, cucumber margarita and an espresso martini.

The happy hour dishes feature half-portions of popular items from the a la carte menu. The poke nachos ($12) are a customer favorite. They feature four different chips — won ton, sweet potato, taro and shrimp chips — topped with shoyu ‘ahi, spicy mayo, yuzu crema, green onions, pickled red onions, pea tendrils, kizami nori and edamame. The dish is full of contrasting textures, which makes it especially fun to eat.

The brisket sliders ($17) are a happy hour exclusive. These housemade rolls are stuffed with barbecue brisket, pickled onions and guava barbecue sauce.

’s new Paniolo burger from the a la carte menu — which also includes brisket — these sliders are sure to please.

The coffee rib-eye steak ($20) is another popular choice and is probably one of the best deals on the menu. It’s coated with a coffee demi glace and served with an arugula salad with tarragon dressing.

If you’re looking for comforting flavors, opt for the barbecue chicken pinsa flatbread, which is topped with kiawe barbecue chicken, mozzarella cheese, parmesan, peppers, red onions and barbecue sauce.

Other happy hour dishes include a lobster roll ($17), margherita pinsa flatbread ($10), seared ‘ahi ($12), kiawe smoked pork ribs ($17), chicken wings ($12) and garlic fries.

Insider tip: Ask about the restaurant’s new secret menu, which also should be accessible via a QR code on the menu. The secret menu currently features a burrata salad ($18), burnt brisket tips ($17), cheesy bread ($12) and a bone-in beef rib platter ($85).

The latter is impressive and designed to share. The platter includes six slider buns, pickled vegetables and barbecue sauce. The bone-in beef rib is available in limited quantities; the meats are smoked in-house. The fork-tender beef is flavorful in and of itself; the sweet and tangy barbecue sauce just takes it to the next level. 

Meanwhile, the cheesy bread features a garlic sourdough bread with mozzarella and cheddar cheeses in the middle.

Guests can enjoy complimentary self-parking for 2.5 hours with restaurant validation.

Complimentary 2.5-hour self parking with restaurant validation

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100 Sails happy hour 030226

100 Sails Restaurant & Bar just launched a new chef selection dinner buffet, available from 5 to 9 p.m. Mondays to Wednesdays. This buffet costs $62 per adult; instead of action stations like prime rib or sushi handrolls, it features specialty items like roasted beef tri tip, guava barbecue pork ribs, mushroom risotto and more.

100 Sails buffet cheese 021026

New weekday dinner buffet at Prince Waikīkī

The sizzling omurice — fried rice topped with an omelet and demi-glaze sauce, served on a hot skillet — is one of the most popular dishes. Happy hour runs daily from 5 to 7 p.m.

Chez Kenzo happy hour spread 011426

Budget Bites: Chez Kenzo Bar & Grill’s $9 happy hour

<title>New happy hour at Prince Waikīkī</title>

100 Sails Restaurant & Bar’s new happy hour menu is available daily from 4 to 6 p.m. in the restaurant’s bar and lounge area. Dishes include poke nachos, brisket sliders — a happy hour exclusive — coffee rib-eye steak and barbecue chicken pinsa flatbread. Also new: The eatery’s secret menu, which includes a mouthwatering bone-in beef rib platter.

New happy hour at Prince Waikīkī

Lopaka and Tanya Kapanui

Lopaka Kapanui and Tanya Kapanui

Hawai‘i History

Columnists

For many of us, recollections of Paradise Park in Mānoa evoke memories of school field trips and weekend adventures with the family. Walking down the spiral entrance and finding your way through the maze, you might have seen a couple getting married in the gardens. Large bird cages held all sorts of tropical birds that chirped and squawked as you passed. Quite often, a gentle rain cooled you off as you followed the pathways, and then the mist gave way to sunshine once more.

Although the park closed in 1994, the property hasn’t been completely abandoned. The main building holds offices and a visitor’s center with a snack shop, restrooms, and activity rooms. The Halau features a gallery with numerous works by local artists and is available for meetings and events, such as instructional classes or storytelling events. Next to the Halau, the Classroom with its mirror-lined walls, is a hub for diverse dance classes, featuring weekly, in-person sessions that include Scottish Country Dancing, international folk dance, ‘Ori Tahiti (Tahitian dance), and more.

Visitors who hike the Mānoa Falls Trail will find a place to use the restroom, grab a snack, and relax a bit in the visitor’s center. And if you’re lucky enough to run into Aunty Pua, she might have time to tell you about the hauntings in the area.

Down in the park below the main building, nature has moved in, covering nearly everything with vines, mold, and moss. The gardens have all grown over the asphalt paths, leaving narrow, vague remnants of walkways. The remaining buildings in the park are now unstable, often damaged by fallen branches, and their walls are rotted by the continuous moisture of the valley. Fallen trees are left where they fell, no one remaining to clean them up.

Yet the quiet that settled over the grounds was never complete. Long after the birds were gone and the gates closed, caretakers began to speak of strange happenings. In a valley already steeped in legend, it wasn’t long before Paradise Park earned a reputation not just as a place of fond remembrance, but as a place where something still walks after dark.

According to Aunty Pua, a maintenance manager used to see a column of smoke in the mornings, moving down the pathway. He swears it wasn’t mist that often settles in the valley. This smoke seemed to move with a purpose. In another instance, a groundskeeper was catching chickens by the amphitheater one day when something grabbed him from behind and slammed him to the ground, holding him there. When he was finally able to get up, no one was around him. Night marchers are often said to appear as moving columns of smoke or mist, and one is advised to lie face down while in their presence.

Film crews working on productions such as Lost

and Hawaiʻi Five-0 also reported unsettling poltergeist activity around their food service areas. One incident, centered on a catering truck parked near the park’s amphitheater, so frightened the crew that they refused to return to that location. 

Upstairs in the restaurant, personnel would make a point of leaving by 10 p.m. If they dared to stay any later, they would experience the stoves and lights turning on and off by themselves. Some say it was almost like a “last call” or a “hurry up and leave” signal. Film productions that used the restaurant reported hearing giggling from a girl, and numerous workers saw a woman with wild hair and crazy eyes.

Even the parking lot is not without its own share of hauntings. As the site of several deaths due to accidents and suicides, people have claimed to see dark figures moving in the shadows.

In that dark parking lot, I had a brief conversation with a friend of mine by the name of Dexter Lum. He was the man whom I referred to as my “Sifu” in the craft of Freemasonry. Dexter had reached the height of all levels that a practitioner could reach in our fraternity, except that of the Grandmaster of all masons in the state. But even without the title of a Grandmaster, Dexter still held a measure of influence within the craft. However, when Dexter was in Blue Lodge, he was simply my Sifu, and he helped me understand the particulars of what is required to become proficient in my degree work as a Freemason.

Several years ago, Dexter Lum was killed in a tragic car accident in that same parking lot. I can’t say for sure that Dexter is stuck in that location due to the trauma of his death, but the fact that I had a conversation with his consciousness, his soul, his entity, whatever you want to call it, means that his ghost or spirit is cognizant to a degree. However, he may not be fully aware that he has passed. 

More than a few people have felt an unnerving presence in the lot at night. One of the former restaurant managers used to leave flowers as offerings in the parking lot to appease the spirits, hoping they would leave the restaurant alone.

Today, Paradise Park stands suspended between memory and mystery. What was once a place of celebration and song now rests quietly beneath a canopy of trees, overtaken by the forest. Whether the strange occurrences are echoes of the past or simply imagination, the valley has always carried a spiritual weight that demands respect.

But keep in mind that the park below the main building is closed to the public. There is no circumstance under which anyone is permitted to enter the abandoned grounds without the express permission of the property owners. While the stories may be intriguing and the atmosphere undeniably eerie, the structures are unstable, the terrain hazardous, and the risks very real. Paradise Park may be haunted, but it’s also very dangerous.

We invite you to visit Paradise Park, have a snack, explore the art gallery, and talk story with Aunty Pua, if you can catch her. She’ll almost always have a ghost story for you.

As she mentioned before, “I’d better be careful what I say.  Activity has been quietly increasing lately.”

Footbridge at Paradise Park Large

<title>More paranormal activity at Paradise Park</title>

Paradise Park stands suspended between memory and mystery. On one hand, the visitor center reasons open and lively, even if the majority of the park closed  years ago. As for the rest of the property, what was once a place of celebration and song now rests quietly beneath a canopy of trees, overtaken by the forest. Whether the strange occurrences are echoes of the past or simply imagination, the valley has always carried a spiritual weight that demands respect.

More paranormal activity at Paradise Park

Katie Helland Headshot

Katie Helland

Arts & Entertainment

The Hui Mo‘olelo: Lahaina Film Festival

 will hold a screening of five animated short films on Oʻahu, following one on Maui last month. The free event starts at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 27, at 

 of New York, as well as students from the 

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Cinematic Arts

The festival is presented by the Maui Public Art Corps in collaboration with the

County of Maui, Maui Historical Society, Lahaina Restoration Foundation, and the

University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Outreach College.

The free event will also include a question and answer session with several of the artists and storytellers. 

O’Connor spoke with Aloha State Daily about his creative process, as well as themes in one of the featured films, which is entitled “Ola n

“We visualize this sort of like a sketchbook as if you were walking through the town doing quick little watercolor studies,” he said. “The Pioneer Hotel plays a central role. The school. And, also just the daily life of people. In our story, a number of artists gravitated towards the story of the temple, so there will be different interpretations of the Jodo [Mission] temple.”

That temple had burned down previously, he said. 

“The community around this temple has literally been through this before, and they're still trying to rebuild from two years ago, but it's something that the temple community had been through it previously,” he said. “And they realized, ‘This is the cycle of life here. This is what we need to continue to do again.’ ”

A 15-minute piece, like this, typically takes at least six months to a year to create, O’Connor added. In this case, the piece was pulled together in a much shorter time frame, he said. This particular film pulls together six recordings, which feature generational wisdom and talk about common places from different perspectives.

“There are a lot of generational stories,” O’Connor said. “There are people who are talking about growing up in the 1950s or even earlier and the way that they remember the town, and they're in conversation with people who are younger — in their 30s or 40s — and they're talking about how they remember the town.”

Haines Burt Freeland; Louis Garcia III and Kaliko Storer;

One of stories was recorded in Japanese. O’Connor reached out to a colleague to help with editing that clip since he does not speak Japanese, he added. 

Loss, trauma — and the corresponding rebuild of community — are themes he has seen first-hand. O’Connor has lived in New York City for more than 30 years, he added. 

“I've lived here through various periods of destruction,” O’Connor said. “I was here for 9/11. Here for the floods. Here for all these other things. And what makes the city resilient is the people of the city. We have blackouts, and neighbors are feeding each other. We have pandemics, and people are taking their elderly neighbors to the doctor. It’s the community which makes the place.” 

For O’Connor, the project brings up certain themes of humanity. 

“The idea that we can all rebuild this community and preserve this community through our connection to one another and our sharing of these stories and our sharing of these experiences — to me, it's specific to Lahaina in so many ways, but it's also specific to every person on earth who has been through tragedy, been through devastation, and seen redemption and restoration with their neighbors, with the larger world. To me, that is something which we need to do and celebrate and promote, however we can.”

O’Connor traveled to Maui for the first screening of the short film in February. He told some of the students who attended the event as their first public film screening, that they will “never have another experience like that screening,” he said.

“This feeling in the room is so — indescribable,” he said. “The different levels of emotion. People start giving testimony of their own life experiences. I don't know if that will be replicated outside of Maui. Hopefully it will be, because it's really an unbelievable screening experience. I've been in 100 film festivals, and I've only once experienced anything which is remotely close to this and even that was still a little bit far away.”

Ola nā iwi

<title>Five films about Lahaina featured in this festival</title>

Richard O’Connor is a New York City animator working with students to tell multigenerational stories about Lahaina. The short film he animated explores the devastating impact of the wildfires of August 2023. Watch a screening of this and other short films on Thursday, March 27.

Five films about Lahaina featured in this festival

Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros Headshot

Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros

Aloha Spirit

A simple definition for a megachurch is a Protestant church with attendance measured in the thousands. 

Megachurches of various denominations across the country have “regular attendances pre-pandemic of 2,000 or more adults and children,” according to the Connecticut-based 

. Today, the average megachurch has a weekly attendance of more than 4,000 people. There are about 1,800 megachurches nationwide, with at least eight operating in Hawaii, according to the most recent data.

[{"text":"Six megachurches can be found on Oahu:","type":"text"}]

[{"text":"And two megachurches are on Maui: ","type":"text"}]

the religious makeup of Hawaii residents is primarily Christian, 25% of whom are Evangelical Protestant; 20% are Catholic; and 3% are Mormon. Most Hawaii adults profess a belief in God, though churchgoers reported attending a religious service once or twice a month, a few times a year, to seldom/never.

In research conducted in the early 2000s by Hartford Institute for Religion Research, there are several other characteristics of a megachurch besides just size: 

The institute acknowledged that though “there are many very large Catholic churches, we have chosen not to include Catholic churches in our discussion of megachurches in the U.S.”

In a 2015 study, the institute also found “that worshippers are not attending [church] as frequently,” reporting a 20-year decline in megachurches since their study in 2000. While the survey did not explore the reasons for this trend, one observation noted was the use of online church as an alternative to in-person attendance.

Hartford Institute for Religion Research’s most recent data also noted, the median budget for megachurches nationwide in 2019 was $5.3 million. Expenses typically include staff and facility costs, programs and outreach. This breakdown is similar to churches of other sizes, the institute reported, adding that “an average of 96% of a megachurch’s total budget comes from participant contributions.”

In Hawaii, budgets for megachurches range in the low millions. For example, Kihei-based Hope Chapel received $3.8 million in support, $2.7 million of which came from its general offering, according to a 2019-2020 audit. Contributions were earmarked for the church’s building fund and World Missions, with a large portion going toward staff salaries and general operations. 

Financial data for the other churches listed could not be obtained prior to the publication.

Worship service (Atlanta, GA) 010925

The Giving Circle Church aims to "do good to the community" by awarding microgrants to local nonprofits, while introducing a series of community-focused events in the new year.

Gingerbread Communion at The Giving Circle Church

Makiki church to host community events

Music volunteer Manny Dayao helped put a jazz band together more than 10 years ago that performs at 6 p.m. on Thursdays at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.

Daily Smile: Monday, Aug. 3, 2026

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Daily Smile: Monday, Aug. 3, 2026

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