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Hope
some one puts in a picture of Joe's at Waikiki. It was a bar/restaurant
on Kalakaua Avenue, on the Mauka side in the jungle area, across from
Kuhio Beach. Joe’s was famous to us haole surfers for being off-limits
to haoles. Heard about some spectacular fights there in early 1960's.
Seems as soon as a west coast surfer, newly arrived, would hear it was
locals only there, they would immediately go there and usually precipitate
a fight. (Interestingly enough haole women could go there, as long as
they looked good). Sort of sounds like George Bush today - that there's
just no place on earth that a haole shouldn't be allowed to go to. I don't think I ever went in there but knew several California surfer
types that did as well as a couple of female California women who were
more adventurers than surfers. Not too many haole women adventured to
Hawai’i then compared to the number of haole surfers. |
One of the haole surfer/fighter types was named Larry and he was distinguished
from other California surfers by a very realistic tattoo of bright red
lips smack in the middle on the right side of his okole. How do I know
of this? There was a lot of "browning out" going on in Waikiki
by California surfers at that time. "Browning out" was the
term later changed to "mooning". I recall sitting in the line
up at Queen's waiting for waves and observing several haole surfers
sitting on their boards with their trunks around their necks. I wondered
if I this was some sort of surfer's ritual, local or otherwise, that
I should be doing. Then a wave would come and one of those guys would
catch it and "moon" whoever may have been watching from the
Kuhio Beach area. Larry was one of those guys. The "moonings" also punctuated surfer parties at night in the
"Jungle" at the Diamond Head end of Waikiki. Waikiki pretty
much closed at 10:30 every night then. Don't recall much crime and there
were still affordable apartments. I shared various "Jungle"
apartments with other California surfers then. The "moonings"
often resulted in visits by the HPD in their really cool 50's muscle
cars with the police lights on top. The police were usually called by
local families who thought the whole "mooning" thing was barbaric.
They also opined that California surfers were "trash" and
would often shout such things while the police chased the pantsless
surfers around to arrest them. There was also one California surfer
from Downey who developed such a reputation for frequently "mooning"
at parties that he became known as "Rank Frank". I did get
to know him both here and later when we both returned to Long Beach
State to finish college.
Ed Greevy 2003
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