Drank Sunday away

 Up at 3. I apparently drank Sunday away. I remember waking up around noon and thinking of all the things I had to do and deciding to drink some more so I could sleep a few more hours, and just kind of ... well here I am and it's Monday. And I've got a sore knee and one side of my ass from apparently getting up in a drunken stupor to use the bathroom and fell down. Well, at least I didn't take it on the chin or miss the toilet or something. 

Here's a listing of the ways I utterly failed when I tried moving back to Hawaii in '03. 

(1) I decided to move back based on reading the book "The Happy Isles Of Oceania" by 2nd-rate author Paul Theroux. It should take more thinking than that. 

(2) I was going to "do jewelry" like my older sister, because everyone wears jewelry, right? 

(3) Of jewelry, I was going to do scrimshaw, which I can do, certainly, but that ship sailed a long time before, the scrimshaw fad passing by the 80s. 

(4) Because I was going to "do jewelry", my older sister very helpfully took me around and got me equipped with one of those Foredom tools and a bunch of other stuff. None of which I turned out to need. Scrimshaw, or any other jewelry, can be done out of a kit no bigger than a grocery bag, sitting under a tree in the park. 

(5) Because "doing jewelry" demands such things as Foredom tools and such, I rented an apartment instead of just renting a room. The place I got was a deal, $600 for a large studio 1/2 block off "the strip" in Waikiki, but that $600 is still a large "nut" to come up with each month. A room for $300 or less would have been much more sustainable. 

(6) Then of course for some reason I "needed" to buy a car. I hate cars, but I just had to dump a few thousand into a big blue Volvo wagon, which I also had to pay for a parking space for. Yes, in Hawaii, cars even cost you when they're standing still. A smart move would have been to buy a motor scooter, which I simply could have given to my older sister when I left. After teaching her how to properly ride it of course. She bought herself one before and thought she could teach herself how to ride it. It hadn't gone well.

(7) Not being willing to just find a job to work at. Maybe I could have gotten to work for Foodland (local supermarket chain) again. 

(8) I didn't have the panhandling/hustling skills I have now. I now know how to make many different kinds of handicrafts and hustle them, plus as an ultimate back-up,, the "crack spanging" or what I call "walking panhandling" technique I actually learned from seeing a guy do it in Waikiki. Any of my techniques or just plain "panning" are good for a solid $20/hour. 

(9) I also was "up" for busking, but again, being successful at that takes years of a sort of apprenticeship. I didn't have those years under my belt at the time, and for some reason was terribly afraid of what my older sister would think of me. Looking back, that seems silly. If I did well of course she'd think well of it. It's been a couple of economic crashes since then and if something works, it works. 

(10) Another thing I thought I'd do is caricature drawing. From no experience, naturally. But again, it takes years of drawing the bad ones before the good ones start to come out. And, in Waikiki, it's often "draw a face and go to jail". The cops there don't like seeing anything physical being exchanged for money. Especially if it's by a white person. A guy who had parrots and would get tips for people having their pictures taken with them, was in and out of jail like it had a revolving door. Same went for a Korean portraitist who was quite good but ... Korean. The ruling group being Japanese, being Korean is about on a par with being white there.

So I was looking at busking, jewelry-making, scrimshaw, caricature-drawing, and keeping going with Ebay. I probably could have done OK sticking by my guns on Ebay because I had my debt worked down to about 5 grand. But I'd gone there with the idea of getting away from Ebay. I hate Ebay. And yet, if I go back Ebay may be a life line. 

The problem was that I had an idea I was going to do all these things, with no real experience to speak of in doing the things. I had some experience in scrimshaw, having done it for fun as a kid, but no real experience in hustling the stuff. Learning an instrument as I go in busking is a real recipe for a hard time. 

Just busking itself has been a long, hard apprenticeship. From sounding awful and not really being worth the $4 or $5 an hour I was making, to finally sounding kind of good and making $10 or maybe $20 an hour on a good night, to finally figuring out that the most obvious placed to play are not always the best. Our "Trumpetman" who's famous for playing at San Jose Sharks hockey games, thinks playing under the bridge is excellent and when not there, playing at The Old Spaghetti Factory. It turns out that playing under the bridge is awful and The Old Spag isn't very good either. If he played at Whole Foods (he's have to take a bath and get a haircut) he could bring in $100 a session but at his age I doubt he's going to change his ways. 

But learning that little "paddling pool" at Whole Foods was revelatory. Hell, it was Veterans' Day and there was no action at the Old Spag. I moved down to the gate by this bar called the Wagon Wheel or something, and got a few tips, but the crowd was dying out for the night. I'd figured I might as well get banned from playing at Whole Foods this night as any other, so I went over there. And I made $132 in an hour, the $100 in the form of a single bill from a guy who was Air Force and got out of me that I was Army. Making $32 in an hour was impressive enough, and that spot, playing in the last hour or two before they close, turned out to be good for $30 - $50 an hour. 

Then it was Christmas season and the spot blocked with trees, then I got sick, then the virus came ... 

The point is, though, I felt like I'd arrived. While Trumpetman was under his bridge, trying to out-loud the cars with that riff they play at horse races, I was playing neat stuff and getting compliments along with my tips. I'd pack up a few minutes before Whole Foods closed and go in and do some shopping so they knew where my money was going, too. 

So while I can do a variety of small handicrafts and am glad to have developed those skills, anything where goods and money are exchanged will be problematical in Hawaii. There's an understanding on the strip that the Pacific Island gals can peddle their little coconut-leaf fish and such things, because they're Pacific Islanders and need the money. It's Local Culture(tm). 

If you're white things get trickier. But who can say anything about playing a ukulele in freakin' Waikiki? With one sister married to one of the island's top lawyers and another one married to a Hawaiian police chief? 

I'd say the main difference between the version of me that existed in 2003 and the version of me that exists now is, I'm more used to roughing it. In 2003 I was essentially trying to go from a lifestyle that involved having a car and a large-ish apartment and needed to adapt in a hurry to a lifestyle that involved living in a room or even a garage, no car, being able to get by on the local min. wage. And I was assuming I could "wing it" with any of a number of things, none of which I had any real experience in.