The Best American Sports Writing 2013 - Plot & Excerpts
Occupy Frommer’s THE HAWAIIAN HISTORY that plays through headsets on the buses that shuttle tourists between the shops, hotels, restaurants, and beaches on Oahu is predictably bland, defanged, and heavy with half-truths. During the winter of 2011, I wrote such toothless audio tours for a popular tourism company. A typical paragraph might begin: Even hula has its heroes. Early missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands discouraged the dance for being too sexy, but, lucky for us, the fun-loving last king of Hawaii, King David Kalâkaua, kept the hula alive in secret. In addition to preserving the hula, King Kalâkaua took a trip around the world, and wrote “Hawai‘i Pono‘ī” (“Hawaii’s Own”), which later became the state song. But Kalâkaua’s most visible achievement was the construction of the stunning ‘Iolani Palace on our left—the only royal palace built on U.S. soil. Flanked by palm trees, this shining example of Hawaiian renaissance architecture was built at the astronomical (for 1882) cost of $300,000.
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