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Cheers, To My Raise
Extra, extra, read all about it: Study shows drinking pays. That’s the story—run in newspapers across the globe—from two American economists who studied the wages of drinkers and nondrinkers. According to economists Bethany Peters and Edward Stringham, drinkers earn 10 percent to 14 percent more than nondrinkers.
“Social drinking builds social capital,” Stringham, an economics professor at San Jose State University, said in a press release. “Social drinkers are out networking, building relationships and adding contacts to their Black-Berries that result in bigger paychecks.”
The study was published by the libertarian group Reason Foundation and in the Journal of Labor Research. The authors say their research came in response to a nationwide wave of anti-alcohol legislation. We don’t, however, suggest handing this study to your significant other next time you come home late from the company pau hana.
-Scott Radway
Crash and Burn
This election season we saw a few audacious campaign advertisements. But perhaps none were as inappropriate, distasteful and downright offensive as the television ad aired by the community group Ohana Kauai. The commercial, which began airing on Kauai just days before the five-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, featured a plane carrying crash-test dummies, bursting into flames and crashing. Over the gruesome image, a narrator warns Kauai’s votes have been “hijacked,” referring to a move by the county government to nullify a charter amendment that Ohana Kauai petitioned for and voters passed in 2004.
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illustration: Mike Austin
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Understandably, the commercial offended many Island residents—including two of the four City Council candidates endorsed in the ad. But Ohana Kauai chairman Walter Lewis unapologetically defends the commercial, stating, “I can understand why people, in the context of 9/11, would consider it troublesome, but we see pictures of hijackings every day. That’s not unusual. And, we commissioned it back in August, at a point in time when the focus wasn’t on 9/11. We felt we had a message to convey and the ad conveys that message.”
Then-candidate Ron Kouchi, who won his September primary, doesn’t agree. “I told Walter I was very upset and I thought the ad was highly offensive and totally inappropriate, and I wanted nothing to do with it,” says Kouchi, who immediately asked the group to pull the ad from the air. Several weeks after his request, the group discontinued the ad. It did not, however, discontinue its support for Kouchi and the other three candidates. “We’ve been friends for a long time, so they still endorsed me,” says Kouchi, adding, “If that’s what you want to call it.”
The other three candidates endorsed by Ohana Kauai also won in the primary.
-Jacy L. Youn
Ticket of the Future
The age-old ritual of going to a baseball game and holding on to the ticket stub as a souvenir may soon become obsolete.
With the Oct. 1 return of Hawaii Winter Baseball (HWB), a four-team league composed of minor league prospects, season ticket holders were introduced to a cutting-edge means of entrance to the stadium.
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| photo courtesy of Sony Hawaii |
SKIDATA and Sony Hawaii have provided turnstiles at the two HWB venues—Les Murakami Stadium and Hans L’Orange Park in Waipahu—that read a FeliCa (derived from the word felicity, or happiness) enabled key chain given to season ticket holders. The “smart” key chains, engineered by Sony, will provide pertinent information to the site managers, such as how many seats are being filled, and will allow customers to enter the stadiums quickly and easily when the device is swiped over the turnstile.
“It makes season ticket holders very special,” says HWB director of communications Dave Rolf. “They are pioneering what we are going to see in the future. There’s never been a way to get into a stadium by waving a key chain [until now].”
According to Tom Rollo, senior executive vice president of SKIDATA Inc., Hawaii Winter Baseball is the first vendor in Hawaii to install and use the technology.
SKIDATA is responsible for nearly 4,500 similar applications in more than 30 countries. The company has installed products in multiple arenas, from soccer stadiums in Europe with 60,000-plus seating capacities to fairs, exhibitions, amusement parks and other tourist attractions around the world.
-Kyle Galdeira
Disclosure: Hawaii Winter Baseball chairman and CEO Duane Kurisu is also the chairman and CEO of the aio group, which owns Hawaii Business.
da kine Tunes
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| illustration courtesy of Oceanic Time Warner Cable |
Whether you love it or hate it, Apple’s iTunes is the source for legal downloads of music. But if you’ve ever tried to use the service to purchase Hawaiian music, you know that iTunes leaves a lot to be desired. A recent search for songs in the Hawaiian genre resulted in a measly 150 items, at least a dozen of which were Elvis Presley’s “Hawaiian Wedding Song.”
Well, fret no more, local music lovers. Oceanic Time Warner Cable has come to the rescue, with its version of the online digital music store, OCTunes. The site, www.octunes.com, features more than 3,000 songs by local artists. And a 99¢ per song, it’s not hard to get a decent collection going.
The only downside is OCTunes sells WMA files, which—you guessed it—won’t play on your iPod.
-Jacy L. Youn
 Hawaii Business defines often-spoken words, new and old, to help you make sense of what’s being said. |
Salmon Day: The experience of spending an entire day working on a project only to see it amount to nothing at the close of business, says OfficeSlang.com. Or, in salmon terms, swimming all the way upstream just to be eaten by a gluttonous bear. Co-worker: “I spent all day on that proposal and the client just backed out before even hearing the pitch. What a salmon day!” -Scott Radway |
Neighborhood Watch: Salt Lake
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Country Club Village 5
3075 Ala Poha Place 2BR, 2B 2 parking stalls Monthly maintenance fee: $285 Living area: 884 square feet List price: $409,000 |
Country Club Plaza
5070 Likini St. 2BR, 2B 1 parking stall Monthly maintenance fee: $292 Living area: 1,039 square feet List price: $445,000 |
It’s easy to overlook Salt Lake. Located in an ancient volcanic crater just outside industrial Honolulu, the area was originally developed in the ’60s and was intended to be one of the showcase communities of a thoroughly modern Honolulu. Over the years, other Oahu districts have garnered fancier reputations, but, in actuality, Salt Lake, which is in close proximity to downtown Honolulu, the airport and most of the island’s military bases and installations, has the numbers: According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Salt Lake ranked eighth of all the neighborhood communities in Hawaii in terms of median annual household income. It also ranked second in median home values, then $875,000, second only to Waikiki.
As the city’s population and economic activity shifts slightly westward, more Oahuans are rediscovering the centrally located Salt Lake, which has become the “new Makiki.”
-David K. Choo
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