So yesterday afternoon I decided to drive all the way over to West Maui and visit Kaanapali. I parked my truck at Canoe Beach and headed north, along the beach walk, to Whaler’s Village to get some lunch. It was a typical day, sunny and warm and gorgeous. About halfway there I ran into my friend George, sitting at a timeshare kiosk in front of one of the resorts. We chatted a bit about my book and his family, and then I walked off to lunch. When I was done I walked back the same way and saw him, still sitting at the kiosk exactly where I’d left him.
“So was there any action while I was gone?” I asked him.
“Yeah, there was,” he said. Maybe 10 minutes earlier, a kid in dreadlocks wearing jeans and tribal bands of some sort (“he clearly wasn’t from around here,” George said) was just sauntering down the path, handing people $100 bills. George said he was busy and didn’t get one, but his buddy at a nearby kiosk did, and after carefully checking the bill to see that it wasn’t some kind of funny money, had ran after the guy to thank him profusely. Apparently the guy just smiled and walked off, saying nothing but still tossing wadded-up bills to the tourists along the walk.
“Why was he doing that here, of all places?” George asked me, referring to the fact that the people getting the free bills were already paying around $500 a night to stay in Kaanapali in the first place. “Why not go to Paia and do that, where the people could really use the money?”
Guess that’s just Maui for you.
Anthony Pignataro 