Hawai'i Skies

Daily Smile

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

Adopt a Pet

Daily Features

ASD icon blue inverse lighter

ASD Staff

Smile 26 8 20

Daily Smile: Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026

Smile 26 8 19

Daily Smile: Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2026

Oh look, it's the dreaded anti-cat table...

Smile 26 8 18

Daily Smile: Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026

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

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

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

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.

Neon, its birth and death in Hawai‘i

Arrasmith Portrait

Perry Arrasmith

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Why does Hawai‘i have a GET?"}]

It’s because of the Great Depression. That’s really it. 

In September, Rick Hamada tried to figure out why the State of Hawai‘i had a GET instead of a conventional sales tax. The GET, he succinctly 

, is much more convoluted than a simple statewide sales tax.

To Hawai‘i’s residents, the tax is ubiquitous. You pay the GET when you grab coffee in the morning, groceries in the afternoon, or dinner in the evening. While picking-up anything with a vehicle, you pay for it with the gasoline burned to keep your engine running.

Today, the GET is the most important source of revenue in the State of Hawai‘i. “The largest tax type by revenue is the general excise tax,” the State Department of Taxation (DoTAX) 

 in 2024. “In FY 2024, the State collected $4.5 billion from this tax, a 0.9% increase from the previous year.” 

The State of Hawai‘i’s total tax revenues in that same period totalled $11.08 billion, meaning that more than forty-percent (40.61%) of all revenues are drawn from just the GET.

The GET’s ascension to the centerfold of state tax policy is the accidental product of a crisis that was resolved before Pearl Harbor. In fact, it is the result of over three years of bi-partisan debate by territorial legislators, territorial governors appointed by Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a coterie of small business leaders. 

However, most folks do not know the true story of the GET, or how Hawai‘i even ended up with it in the first place. 

Across the United States, sales taxes emerged as “

” for cash-strapped state governments during the Great Depression. Hawai‘i, then only a territory of the United States, was not an exception, except where it opted for the GET in lieu of a straightforward sales tax.

Before the GET was established in 1935, financial pressures in 1932 had already pre-empted a reckoning with the territory’s reliance on property taxes for revenue. 

The anxieties bubbled to the surface in early 1932, when the Territorial Legislature was convened by Republican-appointed Governor Lawrence F. Judd to consider several changes to the state’s tax structure. On May 11, 1932, Judd passed Act 42, which provided for the establishment of an excise tax targeting businesses across the islands.

The establishment of the Business Excise Tax (BET) was accompanied by cuts to the Territory’s property tax system, resulting in a temporary halt to the Territory’s taxation of personal property. 

“Falling values stimulated a demand for a major reduction in the real and personal property taxes, then the mainstays of the Hawai‘i tax structure,” one exhaustive 1963 

 from the Legislative Reference Bureau explained. 

By November 1932, John Snell of the Honolulu Advertiser was 

 to understand why the Territory proceeded to adopt a BET instead of a general sales tax. 

Tax Commissioner Albert Waterhouse, one of the major architects of the BET, pinpointed the territorial economy’s reliance on the exportation of plantation goods (remember, it is 1932) as an important consideration. As Snell understood it, “the Territory would lose most of the revenue it is gaining this year from exports of sugar and pineapple under the business excise tax, as very little of the Islands’ production of these commodities is sold at retail in the Territory.”

The BET was subject to a trial run. In May 1934, Judd’s Democratic successor Joseph Poindexter convened an 

 on taxation to consider prospective amendments to the Territory’s tax structure. While Judd’s introduction of the BET might have been regarded as temporary, Republican legislators and the Democratic Governor Poindexter proceeded to make it a permanent revenue source for the Territory. 

The BET, as the predecessor to the GET, was still subject to editorial criticism, in part because it was regarded as a tax which shifted pressure from property values to commerce. “Conceived in confusion, born in haste, and put into operation in a sort of desperate flurry of effort to raise needed revenues,” the Star-Bulletin declared in May, “the excise tax has been and is a failure.”

Reforming the BET was the partial conclusion of Governor Poindexter’s advisory committee, which as a result arguably became one of the most consequential tax study groups in Hawai‘i’s history. 

The BET was subsequently repealed on May 9, 1935, with the signing of Act 119 into law. Meanwhile, as a means to still capture revenues from businesses, Act 141 of the 1935 Session of the Territory of Hawai‘i permanently established the GET two days later, on May 11, 1935. 

The LRB’s 1963 comparison of the BET and the GET found that the new tax policy was far more expansive for local businesses. “Consequently,” their analysis found, “the [GET] became a cumulative one, not merely applied to the value added at each stage of production and distribution as under the business excise, but at each stage taxing again the values added at all earlier stages.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Our Evolving Tax Policy"}]

While it carries all the appearances of a conventional sales tax, the GET is not a sales tax. This matters in the context of its stated purpose. As the law’s title suggested from the beginning in 1935, it was a levy “on the privilege of engaging in certain occupations.” 

In September 2023, the State Department of Taxation released a 

 on the exact purpose of the GET, noting that there are two key differences between the GET and a conventional sales tax. Their explanation, nearly 90 years after the fact, is relevant to the 1935 law.

"First," DOTAX explains, "the GET is a tax on the business for the privilege of doing business in Hawaii, whereas a sales tax is a tax on the customer that is collected by the business.”

Secondly, DOTAX further explains, the GET is a “tax on income from almost all business activities,” while a sales tax is only a tax on ‘tangible goods.’ Such goods, DOTAX explains, can only include physical objects “that you can touch such as furniture, books, clothing, or toys.”

Certain taxes in Hawai‘i’s history have been reformed, replaced, or repealed. The most onerous example is the poll tax, which was once regarded as a mechanism to prevent poor residents from voting in elections. Per one 1957 report in the Honolulu Record, this particular tax was 

According to Jonathan Helton at the Grassroot Institute of Hawai‘i, the GET is not actually a sales tax, even though it looks like one. “In reality,” Helton 

 in 2023, “the excise tax is a tax on the total revenues of the businesses, at every transaction level, from manufacturing to wholesale to retail.” (Helton’s overview is one of the most accessible overviews of the GET, if you want to learn more). 

Meanwhile, Devin Thomas and Daniela Spoto of the Hawai‘i Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice regard the GET as 

 tax on Hawai‘i’s residents, meaning residents with lower incomes will often pay a higher proportion of their income through the GET on such necessities as groceries. Their findings mirror those of the Legislative Reference Bureau’s 1963, which similarly concluded that the GET would be a far less regressive tax if it exempted food.

Running a business is not an innate ‘privilege’ in Hawai‘i, nor is the ability to buy groceries. Reckoning with the ghosts of the Great Depression are necessary for any future in Hawai‘i. 

The state government in Hawai‘i is incredibly reliant on the GET, meaning it is not likely to disappear anytime soon.

In the meantime, Hawai‘i should work to correct instances where our GET inadvertently engages in ‘tax pyramiding.’ Compared to any other state in the Union, Hawai‘i is among the worst with this practice. 

The GET’s base, or the scope of the items that it taxes, is far too large by national standards. According to the 

, “the ideal sales tax base consists of all final consumption, both goods and services, while exempting intermediate goods to avoid tax pyramiding, where the tax is imposed multiple times on the same final product.”

While the Territory of Hawai‘i wanted to capture as much exported revenue as possible from major plantations without levying property taxes, we live in a very different economy. Proponents of the GET based in 1935 like the Territory’s Tax Commissioner would find Hawai‘i an economically foreign place. Tax systems must evolve with the times.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Times change. So too should our GET. "}]

1935 Territorial representatives

<title>Why does Hawai‘i have a GET?</title>

The General Excise Tax. We all know it, we all complain about it, especially the way it stacks up in transaction after transaction, raising prices. But there was a time when it didn't exist at all. Here's a look at who created it, when, and, most importantly, why.

Why does Hawai‘i have a GET?

Square Kady Pascual Headshot RGZ5762

Kady Pascual

Arts & Entertainment

Aloha State Daily has partnered with Pacific Media Group to send several of you to a special screening of Disney’s live action adaptation of the animated film, “Moana,” at 4 p.m. on Saturday, July 18 at Consolidated Ward Theaters.

MNA TP3 00086594 Sml

Enter for a chance to win tickets to see Disney’s live action adaptation of the animated film ‘Moana’

Did you know that rainbows are circular? A rare sighting of a full circular rainbow was spotted in Hawaiʻi — the rainbow state. #ThrowbackThursday

Circular rainbow

Hawai‘i Scene on Social meets Hawai‘i Skies

The community's point of view of the second Kona Low storm.

Kona Low pt 2

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Neighborhood weather updates

Annual holiday photo event with pets supports The Hawaiian Humane Society.

IMG 4125 Santa Paws 2022 PC Hawaiian Humane Society

Adopt-a-Pet Oʻahu: Santa Paws event returns

"I’m a special girl who’s hoping to find a special home to call my own."

Sunshine

Adopt-a-Pet: Let Sunshine light up your life

If you’re searching for a sweet, loyal companion who just needs a second chance, come meet Aspen in person at Maui Humane Society or inquire about how you can adopt her from just about anywhere.

Daily Features - Sunday, 23 August

Hawaiʻi Skies: So many kinds of clouds