streetlight cadence

for those of you who only show up to first friday late at night, you are missing one of the most precious little gems of the evening.  streetlight cadence is a somewhat allusive ensemble of musicians playing some of the sweetest music on the street.  they aren't rockers, they don't play reggae, they aren't hip hop artists, they don't spin club beats.  in fact i wondered if they were real or just a mirage.  were they a flashback memory of my days wandering around europe soaking in the hipsters busking on the streets of amsterdam?  no!  they were real!  the goosebumps were noticeable, and the excitement in my heart was tangible.  it was classical music on the streets of hawaii!  my old soul was delighted.  the first time i saw them they were playing french love songs from the composer yann tiersen and i melted on the spot.  since then i've seen them a few times, mixing it up with new members, new instruments and trying out vocals, but always an accordion, a stand up bass and a violin.  i wasn't the only one impressed.  nearly everyone who stopped threw a buck or two their way.  they usually play somewhere around the theatre earlier in the evening.  catch them if you can!  ive attached a small clip of them, but it really doesn't do them justice.  to see them in person is like eating a cream puff.  the french equivalent in deliciousness to the local malasada. a treat indeed!
peace, love, and flower power,
the flower girl

riot for $20

apparently twenty bucks can start a riot.  i met the guy who, for a crisp jackson, asked the band at a popular pub to play a rage against the machine tune.  i didn't know that hawaii, with it's peaceful mellow music and island style reggae had any rage fans who would know exactly what to do when they heard zach de la rocha (or the cover band equivalent) thrashing out leftist rants against corporate domination, cultural imperialism and government oppression.  but to my surprise, they did!  they moshed, started punching people, breaking shit, and eventually getting thrown out of the place.   the bouncers stepped in and started tossing people out.  and not in the style where someone is politely asked to leave or told they are no longer going to be served another drink and it was time to call a cab, but in the old school saloon style where the begrudgingly newly uninvited guest was literally thrown out on his ass.  after the chaos was controlled was cleared and the band moved on to a much more somber of a song, the people still danced.  their toes bloodied by broken mugs of guinness and whiskey.  and the flower girl skipped out unscathed. just another day selling flowers at the biker bar.  oh, and the guy who's twenty started it all... three days later he told me his version of the story with mischievous pride.  he showed no signs of battle wounds from the night.  just like zach himself, instigating but safely protected from the crowd.

super freak!

Just in case you weren't downtown last first friday... here's what you missed.  I love this lady.  Let the music (or the booze and whatever else she ingested) take over, kick off your shoes and get funky.  I bet on her days not spent dancing in the street she's wearing a fanny pack and doesn't bother to wash the bird shit off her car.   

6/13 later on in the evening...

Most people see the flower girl walk into an establishment, not sell anything and then leave.  There’s this false idea that we just walk around and never sell anything. So many people ask me “why would anyone buy flowers at a bar?”  While 99.9999% of people say no thanks, (or some sort of drunken sarcastic rude version of no thanks) some people actually do buy flowers.  And the reasons are endless.  One of my favorite comes from a couple who regularly dines at Sarentos.  They always buy one red rose.  For their cat.  To eat.  Their cat eats roses.  And they’ve tested this so many times that they have found he only eats red ones.  Whatever.  I just take the $6 and move on.   Last week I almost got to add facial hair to the list of reasons that people buy flowers.  This little gem of a hippie was so proud of his beard that wanted to decorate it with a flower. 

He wanted to start a new trend kind of like those clip on charms that you add to those hideous clown looking garden shoes that somehow made it into the mainstream of acceptable foot ware.  I wish I had some mini plumerias, we could have stuck them in all over his mug.  Would certainly look better than the usual hippie beard trappings of bulgar wheat and alfalfa sprouts.  But as most broke hippies go, he didn’t have the extra money to blow on a flower.  I can’t blame him.  Shampoo for that beard alone must rack up a hefty bill.  Do guys shampoo their beards?  They should.

Peace. love and flower power,

The Flower Girl

6/13

Aloha Honolulu,

Where was everybody this last friday night?  Holidays will always baffle us flower girls.  I thought for sure that with the extra day off and plenty of beach time ahead, you would all be ready to start the weekend off with a drunken bash downtown.  But quite the opposite.  I guess the sun took it out of you early.  That didn’t stop a few dedicated barhoppers.  Chinatown, while lacking the usual hords of urban hipsters, irish bar enthusiasts, and culture seekers, was still alive and vibrant.  It wouldn’t be Chinatown without someone in costume.  Friday’s winner was a real life ballerina.  

There is something adorable about a girl in a tutu.  Even if she’s 5’9”, she’s forever six years old and innocent.  I wanted to play tea party with her.  Walking the streets in toe shoes, she and her hunky man dancer, with his chiseled abs and his bulging biceps, stopped for a photo shoot at the park behind Indigo’s.  With spotlight on them and a few of us watching in the background, he positioned her in graceful poses.  Tweaking so slightly her wrist, her hand, her elbow.  I don’t really consider myself a girly girl, but I can only wonder if the reaction is the same for all women.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a guy swoon over you with so much detail?   Can you also not help fantasizing that if you too wore a tutu, that the hunky man could be yours?  And you’d ride white horses together.  And he would be good at fencing and concocting magic potions.  All that fades fast when the shrill of the homeless man screaming at his hat interrupts my fantasy and I realize that I’m in the nitty gritty center of Chinatown.  And my knight in shining armor won’t be a guy who can duel in the 16th century fashion.  He’ll be a romantic at heart who’s had way too much to drink.  He’ll be eager to impress someone who barely knows his name and he’ll buy my whole basket of flowers so I can go home early.  For a flower girl, that’s a fantasy that can actually come true.  

peace, love and flower power!

-The Flower Girl