The Cockeyed Mayor* (and Supporting Cast)

Waikiki is full of characters.

• Tragically hip Japanese kids in t-shirts that have English text that makes no sense.
• Surfer dudes with mahogany tans who, upon closer inspection, are a lot older than you’d guessed at first glace.
• Pushy time share salesmen who pretend they want to give you sightseeing advice.
• Bossy yet weirdly helpful food court employees.
• Haoles  who should have worn a lot more sunscreen.
• Hot girls in tiny bikinis with tinier dogs. Really, who needs three miniature pincers?
• Street artists who are either absolutely still until you drop a buck into the tip jar or who are sketching fair to middling likenesses of tourists.
• Older ladies of mixed ethnic backgrounds who wave around fliers for shooting ranges. Mostly in Japanese.
• Hot guys with tattoos and board shorts that are hanging precariously low on their narrow hips.
• Old guys in polo shorts, loafers, dark socks, and shorts that are hitched up precariously high.
• Honeymooners, hand in hand, windowshopping if they’re not roped in by the timeshare guys.
• Homeless people in a stunning array of demographics — all ages, shapes, colors, sizes.
• Suspected drug dealers on cell phones.
• Great clouds of retirees, usually in plumeria leis and lumpy white shoes.
• Shiftless, pasty teenagers keeping a safe distance from their canvas hat wearing parents.
• Shutterbuggy documentarians and their smarty pants pals, none of whom currently have real jobs, who sit around scheming ways to bug out and move to the islands full time but who will more likely end up right back where they were before they headed to Hawaii, only with a greater sense of pining and possibly one more ukulele.

*The Cockeyed Mayor of Kaunakakai is an old hapa haole song written about a local character — a foreign white guy — who wanders the tiny central town on the island of Moloka’i.