(Born in Honolulu before “Pearl Harbor,” broadcaster and author Ron Jacobs began his sportscasting career as the backup trackside announcer when Roller Derby came to Honolulu in the 1950s. While in Hollywood he co-created American Top 40 in 1970. He has written extensively about traditional and popular contemporary Hawaiian culture. Jacobs' OBAMALAND: Who Is Barack Obama? is the #1 best-selling nonfiction book in Hawaii since its publication in 2009.)
Please pass this on to anyone you know at ESPN or the sports people at the other networks: It’s HO-no-lulu … got it?
Let’s begin with the most onerous transgression committed by the off-Islander TV and radio announcers: They often blunder into the mispronunciation of the name of the Aloha’s State’s capital city: Honolulu. Al Michaels gets it right since he kicked off his broadcast career right here in Hawaii. Boomer Berman gets it right because he always does with most things besides having frequently flown to and from Hawaii to qualify as an Honorary Kama’aina (old timer.)
It is not pronounced: HUH-nah-lula. To anyone who knows the Hawaiian language or merely just how to pronounce the name of my hometown saying it that way aloud is excruciating to the “local” ear or anyone who knows the correct way to say this word, which literally means “protected bay.” Anyone who let’s loose with “Huhnahlula” is thereafter known as not akamai (hip) to the place and everything about it. There even might be a spillover of doubt as to the mispronouncer’s credibility when it comes to other “details.”
It would be easy here to cite examples of how the names of pro and college athletes from Hawaii and the rest of the South Pacific have their names butchered up by some sportscasters who have never been west of LA. Worse even is when they just quit trying and “cleverly” assign a Polynesian player a convenient nickname. At this they are not particularly creative. When the NFL’s St. Louis Rams drafted tight end Michael Patrick Hoomanawanui of Illinois in the fifth round announcers threw in the towel during the preseason games that revealed that Hoomanawanui was a keeper. He was re-labeled: “Illinois Mike.” And thus was he known by the play-by-play callers unable to tackle “hoh’-oh-ma-NAH-wah-noo-ee” for fear of what we say in Hawaii street Pidgin English: “Make ass.”
There is one sure fire way to remember how to pronounce the name of this town: Think of its most famous son (other than the current President of the United States.) Who else but: DON HO.
Can you say “Don Ho”? Great! You are on your way to nailing it like a native. Take my dear friend’s first name—I knew and interviewed Don Ho over a period of forty years—and add: “No” and “Lulu.” HO-no-lulu.
A small thing you might think. Until you think about the last time someone blew the pronunciation of your hometown or whatever. But unless you’re from a major city the chances of the town’s name popping up in the news are slim. But hey, this is Honolulu, baby. You know, the place where the crew from HAWAII 5-0 patrols the scene, keeping it safe for all who arrive here, whether or not they can pronounce correctly the HNL designation on their baggage tags.
The Pro Bowl is played in Aloha Stadium. The word “aloha” indeed can mean both hello and goodbye but in connection with this venue it may as well translate into: White Elephant Rusting By The Sea. Actually to say that in Hawaiian you must pronounce it: He 'elepani ke'oke'o e ki'o kukaehao ana ma ka pili kai.
Aloha Stadium was conceived to be one of the first multi-sport venues, the kind where grandstands could be moved about to fit either a football or baseball configuration within its oval structure. Someone sold the reigning bureaucrats on the idea of, like, “floating sections” of seats that could be moved about from season to season.
To the best of my knowledge they never moved all that much after the Hawaii Islander baseball team left town. The all-metal structure opened in 1975, replacing venerable Honolulu Stadium, the old “Termite Palace” in Moilili in town, which had been the major outdoor arena since the Territorial Twenties. The old wooden structure wore down over half a century but it did not suffer from what has afflicted Aloha Stadium since day one: Rust. Park a car next to the Pacific Ocean for thirty-five years then have a look at what remains.
Of course Aloha Stadium is not a ’75 Chevy parked at Sandy Beach. So over the decades it has been as massive metallic political football, so to speak. But it all boils down to the place is still there and perpetually under repair with no viable alternative in sight. There have been studies, proposals, legislative boogies and all manner of suggestions but the place remains the only big game place in town.
Compared to the worst NFL stadium, whichever that may be, Aloha Stadium is bush-league and downright shoddy in just about every category except for Beautiful Weather in January. (The same can be said of Miami, but when the NFL shifted the Pro Bowl there last year it lacked the aloha and allure of the Fiftieth State so The Great Meaningless Filler Game is once again being played out in Halawa, within a few hundred yards of Pearl Harbor itself, with its metal-munching ocean saltwater. However the United States Navy keeps things shipshape unlike the rusting stadium that looks out at the USS Arizona Memorial next to the docked USS Missouri. Fortunately these historic landmarks have been preserved. As well they should be. They are not only perpetual reminders of the infamous December 7, 1941, sneak attack on the naval base but they are also the state’s number one tourist attraction. Officially the 2011 Pro Bowl generated $28 million in visitor spending and $3 million in state tax revenue.
These days the game is staged during the interregnum week between the conference championship playoff games and Super Bowl. This manufactured “all star” game, which originated in 1938 way before the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 but bounced around the country in eleven different stadia in search of fans who would fill the seats for this most exhibition of all NFL games. By 1979 someone figured out that high-paid pro football stars would compete in a meaningless game if it could be played in “paradise” and they could bring along their families and/or entourages while paying for the spree with their game check. Players on the winning squad take home nearly as much as Mitt Romney makes in a day: $45,000 per player to the victors and $22,500 each for the losers.
The rap has always been, “The teams mess around for three quarters and then play to win at the end so they can earn the victor’s share to help pay their wives and girlfriend’s shopping sprees.” A winner’s game check can evaporate at Waikiki’s “Luxury Row” on Kalakaua Avenue, a Rodeo Drive West, featuring stores like Tiffany & Co., Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and so on.
Meanwhile the game itself is always video-garnished with the same mai tai, waterfalls and hula girl images of Hawaii that are great for those who serve the “visitor industry” but bear less resemblance to reality than the polyglamorous picture postcards peddled at souvenir counters and tourist traps.
The stadium in which the Pro Bowl is played is located “about twenty minutes from Waikiki,” but that really applies only to emergency vehicles with flashing lights and screaming sirens. In that days when UH football was hot and all 50,000 seats were sold a game could cause traffic jams for miles in all directions, all aiming for parking lots too small to hold maximum crowds.
Nonetheless, islanders who have never seen an NFL game in person regularly show up for this faux battle, which is usually a high-scoring, no defensive game just a few notches above flag football. And for those who do go and have a ball—good for them.
In a display of how meaningless this game is NFL players will be allowed to tweet during the Pro Bowl. Sort of. Before you get too excited, realize players will not be using their own personal devices. Rather, they will be using designated kiosks on the sidelines. If people do indeed “roll over in their graves” Vince Lombardi must be spinning faster than a Ferrari engine at maximum r.p.m.
Most of us football fans who live here in Hawaii watch the Pro Bowl game on TV, if at all. And we understand that nothing much is at stake but that’s cool; good for the guys whose plays merited their selection to these elite squads. I just hope that those in the broadcast media, the same people who have mastered the pronunciation of such Super Bowl players’ names as the New York Giants stars Amukamara, Kiwanuka and Umenyiora learn how to say “Honolulu” correctly. Before they focus the following week on Super Bowl XLVI played at that stadium in Indian Apple Us.
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