November 23, 2003

Checked out Whalers last night, a bar in Lihue that does its best to become a techno dance club on Saturday nights. Evidently, we missed the memo that everyone was going to be at some event on the North Shore and that the club population would never top 20. I can forgive quite a bit when it comes to dance music played incredibly loudly, but the forgiveness requires lots of happy people melding with the rhythm. And that just wasn't happening last night. There were, however, strings of Christmas lights everywhere attracting some of the tiniest moths I've ever seen. In the space of 10 little light bulbs there were more moths than people in the entire club, jockeying for prime positions. What purpose does the attraction to light serve for moths? Is it warmth? Finding the best possible lighting to show off wing markings? Are those pools of light refuges or diners?

Whalers is at the end of the road that winds through the Marriott resort, next door to an abandoned shopping mall. To get there, you drive down a tree-lined avenue and cross two arched bridges, both marked with rearing horse statues. The whole setting screams elegance and disposable cash and insulated adventuring. It's the last outpost of the colonialists, wealth and refinement surrounded by jungle, now abandoned by choice or by disaster.

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