WAIKIKI 1953

When I was 12, we moved to a house on the slopes of Diamond Head. 3040 Hibiscus Drive.
It turned out to be such a fun neighborhood....There were so many kids...we played dodge ball on the street, hung out at night playing ukuleles and eventually spin the bottle.
Sometimes we would hitch a ride in the vegetable truck that went from neighborhood to neighborhood selling fresh farm veggies...the old Japanese man thought we were crazy. We would laugh thinking..what if he crashed and people would wonder what kind of vegetables we were.

Satuday was movie day at Waikiki Theatre...we would take the bus, buy our jujubees, popcorn and coke and see the new movie of the week...That theatre was amazing...it was adorned with fake coconut and banana trees on all sides... STARS & moving clouds on the ceiling, along with the tradtional maroon velvet curtains

Summers and Sundays we fled to the Outrigger Canoe Club, which at the time was between the Moana and Royal Hawaiian Hotels. We sunned, greased doen with baby oil and Iodine, checked out the boys and ate club's special, hamburgers and fries.

Waikiki was full of characters....."Dorkus" on the beach...a really overly tan man who was crippled with Polio, who always sat with his legs apart...in others words, a perve. There was the lady, whom we nicknamed "Bubbles", who walked Kalakaua in her leopard bathing suit with huge boobs and skinny legs. We must have watched her into her 70ies. She seemed pretty happy.

Of course there was Rabbit Kekai, Buffalo and all the beach boys. They would let us hitch rides on the catamarans when we begged long enough. I saw the Shah of Iran, Red Selton, Tony Curtis and other famous celebrities...they were safe in those days.

We wore Linn's 2-pc bathing suits (usually red or white or blue with stripes on the sides)...

Duke Kahanamoku drove a shiney white Jaguar with a gold surfer adorning the hood. He was often in Waikiki...a lot of times I would see him when I was walking my dog there...He was gorgeous.