The Machinery of Night

Foto Friday: Think Pink

Well, this isn't the greatest photo for the last FF of the year, but tough.

Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Honolulu, Jan. 2002

This is the famous, romantic Royal Hawaiian hotel on Waikiki Beach. Specifically, it's the back of it. You can see the hotel in the distance in this picture.

As I said at the beginning of the year, this is a posh joint. The other day I saw an episode of Hawaii Five-O in which Slim Pickens and his hick family turn up at the desk of the Royal Hawaiian demanding the room they'd reserved. The clerk hems and haws and tries to make them understand that they are low-life scum who are not fit to tread the sacred ground by saying, "B-b-but" and "Please!", but it's no good. Unable to ban people on the basis of thick southern accents, he must give them their room.

I believe that this is also the episode where they're eating at an outdoor restaurant, and Slim's wife expresses outrage that there's a white woman eating with an Oriental. Slim promises to find them an all-white restaurant next time. Even when that episode was minty fresh that made me go, "Huh??"

Anyhow they turn out to be cold-blooded killers who are very sloppy about leaving clues, and that low cunning baffles McGarrett for an entire hour. (Sadly, I missed the rest of the ep.) (According to IMDB, it was called "One Big Happy Family" and was based on a true story.)

If I ran the Royal Hawaiian, I would've sued.

The big cream-colored building on the right is the RH annex, which probably contains the better rooms. But what would be the point of going if you didn't get to stay in the breathtakingly-expensive pink palace?