WAIKIKI MEMORIES; RECAPTURING THE ESSENCE OF EARLY DAYS OF HAWAIIAN TOURISM.

Byline: Eric Noland Travel Editor

Waikiki. For many repeat visitors to Hawaii, the name alone is enough to send them scurrying to the comparative tranquillity of the outer islands.

To them, Waikiki is a loose confederation of ABC stores selling touristy junk, bordered by an oppressively crowded beach, clogged with skyscraper hotels that blot out the sun and obliterate the breezes out of the Manoa Valley. It is noise and hubbub. Las Vegas by the sea.

Waikiki wasn't always this way, though. In the infancy of tourism in these islands, it was synonymous with a much gentler pace. It's not difficult to see why. The setting is ideal: a sun-washed scallop of beach on Oahu's southern shore, aimed slightly west to capture sunsets, with the extinct volcanic cone of Diamond Head creating one of the most picturesque - and photographed - backdrops in the islands.

Incredibly, as a millennium winds to a close, vestiges of this Hawaii of old endure to this day. You have to search for them a little bit, and be persistent, but this cradle of enchantment will allow you to turn back the clock. Turn it back as far as you wish - to the surfer era of the 1950s and '60s; to the '20s and '30s, when it was the domain of film stars and barons of industry who could afford the expense (and time) of the boat passage; even to the turn of the century itself, when it was favored by such literary giants as Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London.

You'll find old Hawaii at such venerable hotels as the Royal Hawaiian and the Moana Surfrider, or listening to '30s-era slack-key music under a 115-year-old kiawe tree on the grounds of the Halekulani, or strolling past a 19th-century missionary house - built in boxy, New England architecture, with winter storm shutters! - in downtown Honolulu.

If your plans take you to Waikiki, even if just for a night or two, use your imagination. Step back in time. Feel some of the suffocating constraints of life in the 1990s magically melt away.

An excellent place to start is the Royal Hawaiian, easily the most recognizable landmark at Waikiki. To make it distinctive, the California-mission structure was painted pink before its opening in 1927. The color wouldn't clear any planning board in the country today, but in this setting, it is endearing.

The Royal, as it has come to be known, is usually viewed from the beach. Try something different. The hotel is mercifully set back off Waikiki's frenetic main drag, Kalakaua Avenue, tucked behind the brown-concrete drabness of the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center. Approach it from this direction. You'll walk past trendy shops and skirt a fast-food stand at which ``Danish-style hot dogs'' are sold by an Asian woman (now that's modern-day Waikiki).

Then, the reward: A small, lattice archway, covered with vines, leads the way to the seldom-used front door of the Royal (arriving guests are dropped off at a courtyard entrance in the center of the hotel). A walkway to the front door winds around an enormous banyan tree, which is alive with twittering birds just after dawn, and past towering coconut palms that are descendants of the forest of palms that covered this area when Waikiki was a beach retreat of Hawaiian royalty in the 1700s.

The rising sun has to fight its way through inland canyons of steel to reach the Royal, but when it does, the banyan tree and the coconut palms create a delightful mosaic of shadow on the hotel's pink face.

Hotel officials say many guests actually request rooms on this side of the building - forsaking even such high-demand views as the ocean and Diamond Head - to savor this garden setting in what feels like a wild-bird sanctuary.

While walking the halls of this hotel, or having breakfast in its open-air, beachside Surf Room, you half expect to bump into Carole Lombard or Douglas Fairbanks or one of the du Ponts - among the frequent guests during the Royal's glory era.

This was Hollywood's playground in the 1930s - even serving as a film location for ``Waikiki Wedding,'' with Bing Crosby, in 1935.

Two doors down, at the Moana, the time warp is even more pronounced. In another two years, this hotel will celebrate its centennial - it became Waikiki's first major hotel when it opened in 1901, and its ambience has changed very little since.

Breaking sharply from an architectural trend of its day - most outsiders ignored native design and built as if they were in Philadelphia in winter - the Moana, though of a Victorian theme, was constructed to capture breezes from both ocean and mountain. Today, its lobby remains blissfully open-air, and it features an enormous, sweeping veranda that opens onto a beachside courtyard, all of this beneath a banyan tree that has flourished since it was planted in 1885.

On any afternoon or evening here, you're likely to find guests - many of them elderly - basking in a bygone time. They read newspapers and books, play cards, smoke cigars and engage in a dying art: simple conversation. Although the nearby bar bustles with activity, there is no need to worry about the intrusion of blaring sports highlights on ESPN. In fact, there isn't a TV in sight.

The Moana and the Royal, both operated by the Sheraton chain, are the rare Waikiki hotels that didn't raze their original buildings when an extreme demand for hotel rooms developed in the 1960s and '70s. The two hotels stuck with their original structures - six stories each - and instead added modern tower wings to accommodate the burgeoning demand.

Stepping back in time

If they're so inclined, nostalgia buffs who visit Hawaii can really turn their imagination loose. A number of books chronicle the impressions of visitors from various eras. And the Bishop Museum, which lies on the northwestern outskirts of Honolulu, maintains a rich display of treasures from history both distant and recent.

Most of the visitors who arrived here from America and Europe more than a century ago simply didn't get it. They surveyed island life that blended perfectly with the climate and gentle pace of the islands and for some reason set about trying to create a world that felt like home.

This applied to attire, diet, architecture and entertainment.

Lucy G. Thurston, a missionary wife who arrived from Boston by ship in 1820, wrote in her diary, ``The men wore girdles, and the women a slight piece of cloth wrapped round them, from the hips downward. To a civilized eye, their covering seemed to be revoltingly scanty.''

In light of current fashion trends in Hawaii, it is almost painful to view photographs from 19th-century life in the islands. Men of Hawaiian high society are in suits, even on the beach. Local women are attired in the clothing that, for the sake of modesty, newcomers urged them to wear: long-sleeved, high-collared, calf-length gowns. No wonder no one is smiling into the camera.

At the Bishop Museum, you'll also learn that the Congregational missionaries from New England were mortified by the hula, a storytelling native dance in which the hands tell a tale while the hips maintain the rhythm of the song.

Hawaii's newcomers, while instituting their fashion standards and building their tiny-windowed homes and churches out of blocks of lava rock, sought to eradicate the dance from Hawaiian culture.

Even 100 years later, assimilation by Hawaii's visitors remained minimal. The March 12, 1901, edition of Honolulu's Pacific Commercial Advertiser heralded the opening of the Moana on Waikiki. It included the dinner menu for the event: olives, salted almonds, English sole, mallard duck, beef a la Portuguese, Roquefort cheese. Not a scrap of guava, mango, ono or mahi mahi to be found, much less any kind of drink with coconut in it.

As for attire, little had changed in 100 years. Author W. Somerset Maugham visited Hawaii in 1916 and wrote, ``The Americans, ignoring the climate, wear black coats and high, starched collars ... The Kanakas (native men), pale brown, with crisp hair, have nothing on but a shirt and a pair of trousers.''

One of the Moana's lobby walls today includes a photograph of two women decked out in acceptable swimming attire of the time: a long-sleeved, knee-length wool dress, gathered at the waist, and heavy stockings to hide their legs.

By contrast, today's visitors dress in the least-constrictive clothing and footwear they can find, sleep in open-window comfort and eat from the bounty of the sea and the inland valleys.

The Moana's restaurant has long since ditched the English sole that was served at its opening, offering instead island chicken, local prawns, plus Hawaiian snapper, mahi mahi, opah, ahi, moi and Pacific salmon. Some dishes are accented with Maui onions.

And guests seem content to while away hours in the wicker chairs on the veranda, the white rocking chairs on the front porch or the iron patio furniture under the banyan tree - which was planted for beach shade in the age before sunscreen lotion.

The tourist boom

Several factors led to the assault on Waikiki's onetime serenity.

In the 1940s, barbed wire was strung along the beach in anticipation of a Japanese land invasion, and tourism understandably bottomed out. The Royal and Moana were pressed into service to house Navy personnel.

After the war, the growth of America's middle class and an increase in leisure time made Hawaii accessible to a wider variety of traveler, not just the wealthy. The islands were the center of U.S. military operations in the Pacific, and many servicemen longed to return with their families for a more pleasurable visit.

Then came a series of fortuitous events. Two occurred in 1959: Jet service to the islands was instituted, cutting the one-way trip from 12 hours to under five, and Hawaii gained statehood. A few years later, during the Vietnam War, the islands were the primary r&r site for military personnel and their families, and Hawaii's popularity grew ever more.

Tourists began to stream onto the islands, from 45,000 in 1950 to 2 million in 1970 to 6.7 million last year. Hotel construction exploded in the '60s and '70s, as high-rises went up with little apparent regard for aesthetics.

During this era, many of the established hotels leveled their buildings to meet the demand for towering stacks of nondescript rooms, but not the Moana and the Royal. They still stand ready to accommodate anyone seeking nostalgic charm.

B.J. Whitman, a spokeswoman for the Royal, said the hotel's tower - which affords the requisite views of the ocean and Diamond Head - is most popular with the hotel's Japanese guests, whereas visitors from Europe overwhelmingly prefer the historic building. American guests are split about 50-50 on preference, she said.

Erica MacGuyer of the Moana said the majority of its guests prefer the newer banyan tower for the classic views, but many still seek out rooms in the old building, which underwent a $50 million restoration in the late 1980s and is on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's registry of historic American hotels.

Much like other buildings of its era, it has its quirks. Just as the El Tovar doesn't face the Grand Canyon and the Hotel del Coronado doesn't face the ocean, some of the Moana's finest ocean views are lost to fire stairwells in each of its 1918 wings.

But the rooms, though small, are quiet and have no shortage of modern amenities. When the hotel opened at the turn of the century, its unheard-of in-room conveniences included telephones and private baths. Today, maintaining that trend, the rooms have 10-foot ceilings, 8-foot-high windows, digital thermostats and automatic lights that sense when a person enters the room. Other stylish touches include mirrors with beveled edges, frosted-glass bathroom fixtures, hardwood accents and heavy wooden shutters on the windows.

For a building pushing 100, it is in remarkably good shape. One islander encountered on the impressive staircase said he books a room there every year. He said that his son's 80-year-old home on Kauai, by contrast, has all but succumbed to Hawaii's unofficial state critter, the termite.

Comforting settings

To appreciate bygone Waikiki, however, you don't have to wander all the way back to the turn of the century.

A taste of the surf culture of the '50s and '60s can still be had at Duke's Canoe Club, the beach bar of the Waikiki Outrigger Hotel. It is named in honor of Duke Kahanamoku, an Olympic swimming champion in 1912 and 1920 and one of the pioneers of modern surfing. (His 150-pound koa-wood surfboard, which he used in the '20s, is on display at the Bishop Museum.)

The terrace at Duke's presides over a patch of beach between the Moana and the Royal, and on any afternoon it swarms with beach boys past and present.

No shirt, no shoes, no service? That may be a common edict along California's beaches, but it would be no dice here. On a recent visit, beach bums up into their 50s wandered in barechested, barefooted and their suits dripping wet. Two young women dragging inflated air mattresses sat down to order drinks and appetizers.

This is an unpretentious place that captures the atmosphere of unbridled frolic that came to define Waikiki in the post-World War II years. Hotel management kind of gets out of the way and gives the surf crowd full rein. ``It's very casual and very welcoming,'' the Outrigger's Nancy Daniels said of the bar. ``I think that's why a lot of people like to congregate there.''

On a recent Sunday afternoon, so many people were crammed into the joint that bouncers were required to regulate the flow. Below the terrace, a band was playing contemporary Hawaiian rock, and a patio area had been pressed into service as a dance floor.

Flanking the scene, in odd juxtaposition, the Hawaiian-music combos at the Moana, the Royal and the nearby Halekulani doggedly held forth with their ukeleles, acoustic guitars and lilting vocal technique. Against the Fender bass and miked drums at Duke's, the old music had no prayer.

But the throwback bands played on, and by the next night they had the relative quiet of the beach to themselves again.

The Halekulani's patio dining and bar area, called the House Without a Key (the name derives from a 1925 murder mystery written by guest Earl Derr Biggers), maintains a longstanding tradition of offering Hawaiian music each afternoon and evening. It's all set under that 115-year-old kiawe tree.

``It's not the whole razzle-dazzle Polynesian entertainment,'' said hotel spokeswoman Joyce Matsumoto. ``You won't see a knife dance. I think people like sitting there and like enjoying how gracious and gentle Hawaii is. You're seeing the sun set, listening to the surf coming in.

``I think people love coming there because they can imagine their parents sitting out there.''

The Moana, meanwhile, was the location of the ``Hawaii Calls'' radio program from 1935 until it fizzled out 40 years later. (A TV version of the show aired in Los Angeles in the '60s, and it served as kind of a video postcard to lure island visitors.)

Today at the Moana, Herb Lee Jr. strums a ukelele in a band that brings smiles to the faces of older guests when it plays hapahaole music - English-language Hawaiian standards that date to the '30s.

``We do our best to try to serve that up,'' he said. ``But this also gives us an opportunity to introduce them to new music written in that style, or in the Hawaiian style, Hawaiian-language music.''

The newer music grew out of the Hawaiian renaissance of the '70s, led by slack-key wizard Gabby Pahinui. And it blends seamlessly with the mainland-influenced music of a half-century ago.

``The beauty of it, it is all uniquely Hawaiian. It has the same aloha,'' Lee said.

As the band took a break, he looked out on the contented hotel guests gathered on the veranda and the banyan court. Lee spoke of his music, but his words could just as easily have encompassed the entire ambience of the setting: ``It's what they're looking for when they come here - that romantic feeling. We're romantics, too. It's like rediscovering that (bygone) age.''

IF YOU GO

Tourists who have the nostalgia bug will find ample opportunities to indulge it in Waikiki and Honolulu.

WHERE TO STAY: For more than half a century, the Royal Hawaiian and Moana Surfrider hotels dominated the Waikiki landscape. Each ancient structure stands just six stories, although both hotels, which are operated by the Sheraton chain, have newer towers attached. At the Royal, rack rates for the historic structure range from $305 to $535 nightly (the latter for an ocean view). A historic ocean suite goes for $1,500. Information and reservations: [phone] or [phone]. Web: www.Royal-Hawaiian.com. At the Moana Surfrider, nightly rates range from $265 to $405 (ocean view) for the old building. The hotel also offers a Moana Memories package, which includes breakfast and afternoon tea, among other things. Information and reservations: [phone] or [phone]. Web: www.moana-surfrider.com.

IN TUNE: Hawaiian music dating to the early 20th century and to Hawaiian royalty in the 19th can be heard at several locales, often augmented with hula dancing. Daily sunset performances are held outdoors at the Halekulani, Royal Hawaiian and Moana Surfrider hotels on Waikiki. The Kodak Hula show, which dates to 1937, is still held Tuesday through Thursday at 10 a.m. at the Waikiki Shell Auditorium in Kapiolani Park. Admission: $2.50. Information: [phone]. The Royal Hawaiian Band, established in 1836, performs regularly at various locations in Honolulu. Information from the Hawaii Visistors Bureau: [phone]. Boat Days, celebrations for incoming ships, have been revived at Aloha Tower by City Councilwoman Rene Mansho. Information: [phone].

MUSEUM CRAWL: The Bishop Museum (1525 Bernice St., Honolulu) maintains an outstanding collection of items of Hawaiian history. It is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $14.95 for adults, $11.95 for seniors (over 65) and youths (ages 4 to 12; children under 4 are free). Information: [phone]. Web: www.bishop.hawaii.org. In downtown Honolulu, a short stroll on South King Street will take in the Iolani Palace, the Kawaiahao Church, the Mission Houses Museum and the famous statue of Kamehameha the Great.

OFF THE SHELF: Recommended reading for a taste of bygone Hawaii: ``Mark Twain's Letters From Hawaii'' (Appleton); ``A Hawaiian Reader'' (Mutual Publishing); ``A Hawaiian Reader, Vol. II'' (Mutual Publishing). The Twain book is difficult to find, even in Hawaii bookstores. Most L.A. County libraries can special order it. The latter two books are compilations of writings about the islands by famous writers.

- Eric Noland

CAPTION(S):

9 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--3--Color) Along Waikiki Beach, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, left, maintains its 1920s elegance even as the Sheraton Waikiki towers over it. Meanwhile, the Moana Surfrider, above, has changed very little in appearance from the time it was featured on a 1918 postcard.

(4--6--Color) Today, the front porch of the Moana, right, maintains its turn-of-the-century charm. Hawaii tourism boomed after servicemen were introduced to the islands during World War II (map, above center is from 1946). Music from the ``Hawaii Calls'' radio program, which originated at the Moana in 1935, also lured visitors.

(7--Color) no caption (Guitar)

(8) The Bishop Museum, on the northwestern outskirts of Honolulu, houses a rich collection of Hawaiian historical items.

(9) A statue of King Kamehameha stands in downtown Honolulu.

Box: IF YOU GO (See text)