Hawaii 1/2: The city Honolulu - Page 2

Ex-Ithacan · #21 Posted **May 29, 2013, 1:25 PM**

Very impressive set Dan. Beautiful sunsets, great skyline shots, and love the wide angles. I have a feeling I'll never make it there, so this thread gives me mixed emotions. Thanks for the tour.

BTW, that final pic is a doozy.

brickell · #22 Posted **May 29, 2013, 2:40 PM**

I enjoyed the pics but Honolulu looks more dainty than I was expecting.

Not sure why I expected more.

The Common Mynas are actually an Indian species. We got them crazy down here too. From what I've read they're considered pests in Hawaii (like the European Starlings in the US). The Hill Myna has an amazing voice though. It looks like your bulbul is an invasive too. Anyway, the more you know...

I'm also making it my mission to find some chrysanthemum tea.

bobdreamz · #23 Posted **May 30, 2013, 7:15 PM**

Very beautiful city! Fantastic pics!

Guiltyspark · #24 Posted **May 30, 2013, 8:23 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by brickell

I enjoyed the pics but Honolulu looks more dainty than I was expecting.

Not sure why I expected more.

The Common Mynas are actually an Indian species. We got them crazy down here too. From what I've read they're considered pests in Hawaii (like the European Starlings in the US). The Hill Myna has an amazing voice though. It looks like your bulbul is an invasive too. Anyway, the more you know...

I'm also making it my mission to find some chrysanthemum tea.

It is a huge and very dense city. That does not really come off in his picture though.

Thundertubs · #25 Posted **Jun 1, 2013, 5:15 PM**

Having for whatever reason always been rather incurious about Hawaii, I had no clue that Honolulu had any sort of historic, urban downtown. Looks pretty cool.

volguus zildrohar · #26 Posted **Jun 1, 2013, 10:30 PM**

Well now...

xzmattzx · #27 Posted **Jun 2, 2013, 7:53 PM**

Great pictures!

Cirrus · #28 Posted **Jun 3, 2013, 3:31 AM**

Yes! Found in a Korean grocery in Northern Virginia.

Chef · #29 Posted **Jun 3, 2013, 5:31 AM**

Honolulu is a city I always forget about. It looks like an interesting place even without the whole tropical paradise thing.

george · #30 Posted **Jun 10, 2013, 11:07 PM**

Great tour, thanks.

Orlando · #31 Posted **Jun 11, 2013, 3:42 AM**

Is the mystery city #1 Cincinnatti, Ohio? Memphis, Tennessee or Louisville, Kentucky?

KevinFromTexas · #32 Posted **Jun 11, 2013, 5:14 AM**

Great pics, as a fellow semi-birder, I really enjoyed the bird photos.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cirrus

I did not know pineapple plants look like this.

Pineapple plants are actually a variety of bromeliads. My dad had several varieties and hundreds of these in our yard.

Check out the movie "Medicine Man" with Sean Connery. In the movie Sean Connery plays a scientist in the South American jungle searching for cures to diseases. One of the plants he uses is a Bromeliad that grows on trees way up the canopy. They also used a lot of Bromeliads in most of the Star Trek movies and on the Next Generation tv show. In the scene at the end of the Wrath of Kahn when they pan over Spock's torpedo casket, there are Bromeliads covering the forest floor. They shot that scene at the botanical gardens in San Francisco.

The flower in the 2nd photo is a hibiscus. It's the state flower of Hawaii. The flower in the 3rd one is that of a ginger plant. We have a ginger in our front yard right by my bedroom window, and it's blooming now with about 3 or 4 pods like that one.

atlantaguy · #33 Posted **Jun 11, 2013, 6:04 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orlando

Is the mystery city #1 Cincinnatti, Ohio? Memphis, Tennessee or Louisville, Kentucky?

It is definitely Cincy.

Great thread, Cirrus. Looks like you guys had a fantastic trip, and HNL is more scenic and lush in the City than I expected. The parks and gardens are beautiful.

Thanks!

detroitmetro101 · #34 Posted **Jun 11, 2013, 7:05 AM**

natural and urban paradise

AviationGuy · #35 Posted **Jun 12, 2013, 1:42 AM**

Great tour of a wonderful city and island. I really liked your bird photos, too, especially that cardinal.

Mr Nilsson · #36 Posted **Jun 15, 2013, 11:23 AM**

Honolulu must be one of the healthiest looking, cleanest and most underrated cities in the country. Its architecture in particular doesn't get ther respect it deserves.

Mainlanders tend to think about it as a Pacific version of South Padre Island -that is if they think about it at all, and granola Haoles hate it for having the temerity of being a Hawai'ian city. How dare those Hawai'ians have a city at all? Don't they know I came here escaping the city?

Mr Nilsson · #37 Posted **Jun 15, 2013, 11:31 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cirrus

There's a weird little pedestrian mall. The stuff along it wasn't very interesting, but there was a steady stream of locals all along the street.

What' so weird about it? Actually I think pedestrian streets are one of the best things about Honolulu. And that's what a pedestrian street should be like. Not a tourist trap - just people going about their business. None of that tokenistic let's-close-a-street-to-traffic-for-a-day-so-we-can-all-walk-about-looking-disoriented-and-trying-to-be-urban crap.

Cirrus · #38 Posted **Jun 15, 2013, 2:34 PM**

One might argue that pedestrian malls are better suited to non-tourist streets, but that's very unusual. Unusual means weird.

A lot of the streets in downtown Honolulu seem to planned either for pedestrians or cars, with little in between. It's almost like a shopping mall, where you drive all around the exterior and walk through the middle, and nary the two shall meet. That sort of planning was all the rage in the 1970s, and for the most part it didn't work out, because the pedestrian areas just emptied out. It seems to work well enough in Honolulu, but after so many failures elsewhere, other cities should be very careful before emulating.

bunt_q · #39 Posted **Jun 15, 2013, 3:46 PM**

Is there research comparing the viability of pedestrian streets (and the general model you describe Cirrus) in cold weather cities versus warm weather? I can think of quite a few examples of ped streets working in tropical cities (in the U.S. and elsewhere) that one might reasonably expect to fail elsewhere. I wonder if moderate ped traffic 12 months a year somehow makes up for what you'd see in, say, Chicago, where you'd have a very busy summer and a lot of slow months...? Just thinking out loud.

Reminds me of the "common knowledge" in skywalks. They're bad news nearly everywhere, but then there's Minneapolis, where downtown retail remains in surprisingly good shape. It works for them.

dc_denizen · #40 Posted **Jun 15, 2013, 4:05 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Nilsson

Honolulu must be one of the healthiest looking, cleanest and most underrated cities in the country. Its architecture in particular doesn't get ther respect it deserves.

Mainlanders tend to think about it as a Pacific version of South Padre Island -that is if they think about it at all, and granola Haoles hate it for having the temerity of being a Hawai'ian city. How dare those Hawai'ians have a city at all? Don't they know I came here escaping the city?

'granola haoles'?