Post #300550 by Cammo on Thu, Apr 19, 2007 10:17 PM

Every summer it was our ritual to go see the Laguna Sawdust Festival, the Koi Pond store (a really cool place) and end up at the beach right below the Royal Hawaiian. We'd go snorkling at the cove, shell hunting, make a sand castle, and get generally famished by sunset.

Then we'd just go up to the RH in our bathing suits and sometimes change in the bathrooms upstairs, sometimes just sit there drying off at the tables. And we'd pig out at unbelievably cheap prices. We've taken friends from Canada there, sat swilling blue drinks in soaking wet clothes and waiting for the shrimp and ribs to arrive.

Every single person around us was a return customer, the older ones had been coming since the '60s. Elizabeth Taylor's parents ran an art gallery a block away. Wyland got started a half block from that. Some of the really old customers remembered their parents (!) going surfing there in the 1920's. We honeymooned at the Eiler Inn, 5 minutes away.

So I'm really really sad, but we knew that special places are here for a very short time. The Royal Hawaiian lasted longer than any, but better that it's really screwed up than just watered down. Better dead than wheezing.

So bid goodbye, or rather Aloha, to our friends and golden memories at the Royal. That island has sunk slowly to the horizon, the oceans of change have finally washed it away.

I'm gonna have a drink. Hey, why doesn't somebody invent a new drink called the ROYAL HAWAIIAN????