I’m saddened to share with you photos of a place that isn’t anymore. The International Market Place in Honolulu has been torn down to make way for an upscale mega-mall.
Oahu is not my favorite Hawaiian island mostly because it’s dominated by Honolulu, a large busy tropical city similar to many others around the world. But within this city there was a nice place, a island of shady banyan trees. Here you could talk to pleasant people running small cart-shops, you could buy inexpensive gifts, or patronize hole-in-the-wall restaurants where you could have a nice meal, or a place to sit, rest, and cool down.
When we visited Honolulu last fall we found the site of the International Market Place boarded up, and when peeping through a crack in this tall wall of plywood saw a massive hole-in-the-ground dozens of feet deep. What will take its place? A large shopping complex with the kind of shops you’d find on Rodeo drive in Los Angeles or Caesar’s Forums in Las Vegas. Boring and uninteresting places to me.
