Post #566134 by JOHN-O on Mon, Nov 22, 2010 7:47 PM

"Honolulu Confidential" Part 4 of 10

Hotel Street, Chinatown. As Lucas Vigor mentioned, this area of Honolulu has long had a reputation for hard drinking and vice. During World War II, the situation was tolerated as it provided R&R for servicemen fighting in the Pacific. Check out this vintage photograph showing sailors waiting in line for a brothel !!

That history has long associated Hotel St. as an area to go for illicit activity. Maybe not so much the case in recent years, but it still has a somewhat seedy feeling. It also has a vintage frozen-in-time atmosphere ( :) ) which is gradually diminishing in Honolulu. The last time I was in this area was over 10 years ago when I ate at the Wo Fat Chinese restaurant.

Yes, Wo Fat was the business that inspired Steve McGarrett's arch nemesis' name on the original Hawaii 5-0. The 1930's building is still there so I assumed the restaurant was merely closed late at night. According to Phillip Roberts however, it shut down permanently several years ago. :(

I was visiting Hotel St. on this recent trip to check out a recommendation of Phillip's…

Smith's Union Bar

Opened in 1935, it's Honolulu's (Hawaii's?) oldest bar. Yes, this was the historic dive bar experience I was looking for, I could feel 75 years worth of history oozing out of the walls :)

A friend and I savored our drinks with handful of local barflies that weekday night. Actually the drinks weren't as dirt cheap as I had expected, at least not when compared to the Hideaway. They were comparable to a typical Kuhio Ave bar in Waikiki.

As we chatted up the bartender, another divey bar across the street caught my eye, the Gold Gate Lounge. I asked our bartender if non-locals would be welcomed in a place like that. She just shrugged and said it was mainly a Micronesian blue collar joint. Rather than visiting that place (maybe on another trip), we finished our drinks and walked down the street to…

Amy's Place

This was another cool mid-century bar. If anything this place had even more quirky atmosphere as one regular was playing Christmas music over and over on the jukebox, "Don't mind him, he loves Christmas". We sat down next to the requisite guy passed out on the counter and were served by a guy who was a Filipino version of character actor Danny Trejo. When I asked him to call us a cab afterward, he wouldn't do it instead trying to get us to take the bus, "It's only $3.00 !!".

OK, I know a lot of people here have no interest in low-brow adventures such as these and would rather partake in a more upscale experience. Fear not, for Chinatown in recent years has become a hot bed of that improvement (or bane depending on how you look at it) of low rent districts, the "Hipster" bar.

Most of these places are quite discrete, and you wouldn't notice them unless you were looking for them. One popular place is Thirtyninehotel (the address, it's not a hotel) which is almost next door to Smith's.

Actually we had been there earlier in the week when the area was closed off for a Halloween block party. The streets were shoulder to shoulder with people in some of the most inventive Halloween costumes I've ever seen. One voluptuous young women was dressed as the heroine in "Avatar", she was painted completely blue wearing a skimpy loincloth and was topless. I wish I had gotten a picture of her.

Anyway Thirtyninehotel might be of special interest to Tikiphiles as it has a reputation for a mixology boom that's reached Hawaii (more on this in future post).

So where's the best Mai Tai in Oahu? It might be this one based on the classic TV recipe.

The outdoor lounge was packed that night as was the street outside…

Soon after 10pm, HPD started to break up the festivities. I was really impressed on how crowded but well behaved the Hawaii revelers were. In LA, with a crowd that dense I would be afraid an imminent riot could break out at any minute.

Other of these new types of bars are in walking distance. Check out places like Bar 35, Next Door, and Mercury just to name a few.

Me, you'll find me at Smith's. :)