‘I learn something new every day’

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I bought a fountain pen, so I went to Office Max to get a bottle of ink. The very young clerk was eager to help, but she didn’t know what a fountain pen was.

“I never heard of that,” said she.

A slightly okler clerk came to our rescue, but it turned out the store had only ink cartridges, not bottled ink. The clerk advised me to try Ben Franklin.

Ben Franklin had bottled India ink, but in a locked cabinet. “You need to lock up the ink?” I asked,

“The kids steal it,” the very helpful clerk said. “They use it for tattoos with a pin.”

I learn something new every day.

(Our Maui Gold Buyers store at 98 North Market sells new, professional tattoo gun outfits for a reasonable price. Don’t steal ink. If you are going to tattoo, do it right.)

Learning to go slow

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Now that the Final Environmental Impact Statement has been approved, the Wailea 670 project will most likely happen. I had my doubts over the past two decades since it was proposed. There are a lot of lessons to reflect upon in this development. Some are good reflections, some not.
In no particular order of significance:
1. Honua`ula, as it is now called, will have one golf course. Wailea 670 was to have had 2. Golf courses have managed to lose a lot of money for their owners over the past 20 years here. Several have gone bankrupt. Others have sold at distress prices. There’s no doubt golf sells, but there are many courses, relatively few golfers. We will keep seeing golf courses in big developments, because they are an attractive way of decorating the main drainageway. For each developer, it looks like a way to monetize a piece of infrastructure. Over time, it probably results in more courses than the traffic will bear.
2. A cap on annual deliveries of 100 houses a year is novel. In the past, developers wanted to sell as many as quickly as they could, particularly in a big project in an area devoid of infrastructure. The upfront infrastructure costs incurring a heavy burden of debt service. Today, and for as long as the Federal Reserve decrees, the burden of debt service will be small. Over the past 20 years, few developers could sell as fast as they hoped, so the cap of 100/year probably won’t have much practical effect.
3. But requiring the 250 (off-site) affordable houses to be built first will add heavily to the builder’s upfront costs, especially if they end of costing him beaucoup bucks. The history of affordable in South Maui has not been inspiring. When the Grand Hyatt (as it then was) built its off-site employee housing, the employees didn’t want it. The project found a hard time filling up in competition with other, standalone projects, too. In West Maui, the story has been different, because there, instead of too much (by some people’s standards) housing, there has been too little (by anybody’s standards). But that should be the topic of a future post.
4. Off-site environmental mitigation has had a mixed record. Lee Altenberg, a population biologist, fought for years to preserve a patch of native wiliwili forest in the lower corner of Wailea 670/Honua`ula. Lower corners, though, are where developers want to put their sewage treatment plants (to avoid pumping costs; sewage runs downhill), and so here. So far, Altenberg has not succeeded in making his point with the Maui Planning Commission. It’s hard for people who do not care for native plants to get it, though. 95% of the native wiliwili forests have been wiped out by farming and building and roads. By definition, the remnants are in “waste lands” that nobody (until now) cared about. It is hard to get people to understand the concept of “scarcity value” when it comes to land use. From the developer’s point of view, putting his sewage treatment plant anywhere else raises costs and makes his houses harder to sell.
5. Already, according to Nanea Kalani’s news report in The Maui,News, there is nervousness about the cost of water in the private water system. The infrastructure expense is eyepopping — $22 million for a 1,150-unit project, or about as much as the county water department spends on its physical plant for the entire island in a year. That’s expensive water. The report does not mention, and perhaps nobody remembers, that there was a question way back when about that water. Wailea 670 drilled 2 wells, for irrigation. They were expected to come up brackish. They flowed sweet and clean. David Craddick, then the water director, said if they were fresh, the water was the county’s. Charlie Jencks said, just wait till we’ve pumped for a while; the water will turn brackish. This is an experiment worth watching. There are rumors of more fresh water in the South Maui aquifers than the older studies (and current legal parameters) admit. Wailea 670 did not choose a promising site for its wells. It drilled where it owned. If it’s true that you can hit fresh water more or less at random on the south slope of Haleakala, that changes the development game in a huge way. Low-growthers should be praying nightly that those wells turn brackish and soon.
6. Bike and hiking trails. These have to be in developer plans in order to get approving nods from trendy people, but it’s doubtful they will ever be used enough to justify their cost. There’s a reason nobody hikes that hillside now: it’s steep, hot and dusty. Following development, it will still be steep and hot.
7. Jencks said the project needs to move within 3 years, but he is counting, in part, on either joint venture partners or buyers of pieces with their own development money. Presumably, he has somebody in mind, but Kaanapali 2020 has been looking for JV partners for a long time and apparently they are hard to find.

Laughing waters

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Even if you’ve never been to Las Vegas, you probably know about the fountains at the Bellagio, which are as much a symbol of the city as the Gateway Arch is of St. Louis or the statue of Kamehameha I is of Honolulu.

What you don’t get from the pictures, though, is that the leaping jets of water are choreographed to music blasted out over the lake. These comes in sets of 3 (every 30 minutes during the day, every 15 minutes during the evening, when the sidewalk around the lake is crowded and various street hucksters set up).

I had never expected Vegas to be ironical, still less self-deprecatory, but I was wrong.

The first song in the set I watched was “Hey Big Spender,” catchy, brassy and apparently written for the occasion (“Hey, big spender, spend a little time with me”). The next was equally appropriate, “Viva Las Vegas.”

The third tune was unexpected: “Simple Gifts.”

This one, however, was instruments only, no vocal. Still, I know the words, and “It’s a gift to be simple” was decidedly odd coming under the sponsorship of the Bellagio.

Thank you for making us Number One

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Thank you readers of Maui Time Weekly for voting Kamaaina Loan Cash for Gold the best “Green Business” on Maui. Not only do we deal in “green” providing affordable loans to the people of Maui, all of our merchandise is recycled.

From Maui Time: “My first encounter with Kamaaina Loans and Cash for Gold was something out of a bad sitcom. I was shocked, how could there be a tie for best ‘green’ business? And both of them are pawnshops? Imagine my embarrassment learned the truth. It was like thinking I was dating twins, only to find out they were the same person. Kamaaina Loan/Cash For Gold provides a professional alternative to banks. Get it? They deal in ‘green’ every day. They offer accountable services, at competitive rates and have been in business for over 35 years.”

The editor is right. Pawnshops are the original green businesses, in the sense that everything is recycled. (Well, almost everything. Our shops do stock a few new items.)

And it appears that some people filled out their forms using one name — Kamaaina Loan — and some another — Cash for Gold. But both are the same business, and when the winners were announced, the owner, Big Rich, was at the National Pawnbrokers Association trade show in Las Vegas, scoping out new services and systems to serve you even better in the future.

Because while our merchandise is recycled, the systems in the back office that support the operation have to be up-to-date.

Welcome, hurricanes!

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Well, Daniel is now reduced to a tropical storm, but he and Hurricane Emilia are predicted to bring us some rain. Right in the middle of the dry season.

That saying about clouds with silver linings? It fits hurricanes perfectly.

Most people do not realize that in Hawaii we get most of our rain on just a few days a year — usually in winter kona storms, but occasionally, like later this week, when a tropical storm/hurricane brushes past.

Florida depends on hurricanes or tropical storms hitting the Mainland for virtually all of its freshwater. Lucky we live Hawaii, we can get the water without the wind — most of the time.

Bruce Guerin memorial

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Friends of Bruce Guerin gathered Sunday at Cary & Eddie’s Hideaway for a memorial to the pianist, who was an advertisement for being cheerful and staying active.

Nobody who knew Bruce ever remembered him being anything but upbeat. A few weeks ago, he was hauling concrete blocks to build a patio. Not bad for a man of 93, said his son Mark.

Bruce played piano professionally for more than 70 years.

His folks were in the movie business in Hollywood, which got Bruce roles in silent movies as a tot. He enlisted in the Army before Pearl Harbor and played in Hawaii for the USO Orchestra.

After the war, he played for top acts on the Mainland before moving to Hawaii in 1969. He played at the Hyatt for 12 years and at many other venues. Until a year ago, he was entertaining moviegoers before the Wednesday showings at the MACC.

Gold in the ocean

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After World War I, Germany owed a lot of money in war reparations, and also needed a lot of money to import food. Its economy was shaky, so scientists got the idea of extracting gold from seawater to pay the country’s bills.

Although gold is heavy, a small fraction of the gold that rivers wash into the sea remains in suspension.

Germany outfitted a ship with laboratories and extraction equipment and sent it on a long voyage to mine gold from water.

The scheme failed. There really was gold in the water, but about a thousand times less than the original promoters had thought.

Fritz Haber, a Nobel Prize chemist and one of the strangest scientists of his time, eventually concluded that gold from the wedding bands of the researchers had contaminated their samples and given the false readings.

So the gold is still in the ocean, and because the oceans are so big, there’s a lot of it. But it was and remains uneconomic to extract it.

MORAL OF THIS STORY: When it comes to gold, you can never be too careful.

Canoes off and running

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Last week was the start of the canoe racing season, which coincided with the end (at last!) of the professional basketball season. Basketball used to be a winter sport.

Kahului Harbor was choke people as the paddlers got it on.

Did you know that Kamaaina Loan makes loans on canoe paddles? They are not a big water item compared to surfboards or fishing poles and reels, but paddles are valuable and, therefore, loanable.

Canoes would be loanable, too, but they are kind of hard to get up on the counter.

Pawn 101: “Old pawn”

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Kamaaina Loan Cash for Gold is Maui’s oldest pawn shop, but it is not an “old pawn” shop. “Old pawn” is a special term in the business, used by pawnbrokers and dealers in the Four Corners area of the Southwest.
“Old pawn” may or may not have anything to do with what is usually called “pawning.” As used in the Southwest, it means older Indian-made items, usually jewelry but also any of the other things that the Navajo, Zuni, Hopi and other tribes made on their reservations and sold or swapped at trading posts.

After the Zuni learned silversmithing in the late 19th century, the skill quickly spread to the other tribes, but each group developed a distinctive method and style. In the early 20th century, there were few roads and no banks on the reservations. Indian families saved their wealth in the form of silver jewelry, often decorated with turquoise, coral and occasionally other stones or enamel.
The bracelets, concho belts, rings and necklaces were like a savings account. The families would sell their wool, hand-woven rugs or other produce to the traders, who would open a “charge book” where the value of the trade goods was set off against purchases of flour, cooking oil, cloth, tools, kerosene, canned goods and other necessities for life on a remote ranch. If the produce wasn’t enough to cover the bills, a family would deposit jewelry with the trader.
This was called “pawn,” although at least at some of the trading posts, like Wide Ruins, the traders did not charge interest. Pawning usually involves interest payments. Some items were left in pawn for years. Eventually, if the owner did not cover his account, the “pawned” item would be forfeited to the trader.
Today, “old pawn” means an Indian item (most often jewelry) that was either left as security for charge accounts or sold outright. Often, it is taken to mean jewelry made before the ‘60s, although it can apply to jewelry made anytime in the 20th century.
A related term, “dead pawn,” refers to items that really were pawned and not redeemed.
Dealers who are not pawnbrokers use the term “old pawn” to refer to older jewelry they obtained from traders or pawnbrokers, whether the item was ever actually used to secure a pawn transaction or not.
“Old pawn” is a regional term. It is not used by pawnbrokers elsewhere in the country, even though all pawnbrokers deal in old jewelry.

Why do we say ‘gold sucks’?

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You may have seen our ads that say “Gold sucks.” Why would we say that? Aren’t we “cash for gold”? We are. And when we say “gold sucks,” that doesn’t mean we don’t like gold.

We love gold. We buy it. We sell it. We will lend you cash on the value of your gold.

What we don’t do is predict where the price will go next. If you bought gold a year ago, you should be feeling pretty good. The price is way up.

But if you bought a couple of months ago, maybe you feel like you made a mistake. The price is down a couple hundred dollars an ounce.

Gold sells at a world price. We use the New York spot price, which is set by factors far beyond Maui.

Let’s say you are one of those people who bought gold when the price was close to $1,800 an ounce. And you need some cash today. You wouldn’t want to sell and lose $200 an ounce (based on the NY price as this is typed).

But you can bring your gold in and get a loan. We will give you the most we can based on today’s price.

Pay us back in 30 or 60 days and keep your gold. In case it goes back up past $1,800 or whatever price you paid.

So, in our view, gold only sucks if you are forced to sell. And at Kamaaina Loan Cash for Gold, we offer you another choice.