So, not surprisingly, this website, called Hawaiian Culture in Southern California, highlights a few activities and groups in the greater Southern California area, but is fairly sparse. The site is a page on a larger site which is dedicated to “Hawaii for Visitors” and hopes to help the Hawaiians at Heart once they get back to the mainland perpetuate the things they saw in Hawai’i. They have a free e-mail newsletter, highlighting different events that may be of interest in the islands. There is also a separate section for Northern California Hawaiian Culture.
I say that the information provided is somewhat sparse, since, for example, there are only two halau and E Hula Mau listed under the heading “Hula in Southern California”, when, in fact, there are over ten times that amount of hula halau in So. Cal, as evidenced by the listing on Hawaiian Music Island.
The site is also not restricted to Hawaiian Culture, but spans more of a Pacific Island spectrum, as it includes “Pacific Islander Organizations” such as Fire Knife of Samoa, Friends of Tahiti and the PICC.
One cool feature of the site is that it lists the closest gourd farms (Welbourne Gourd Farm in Fallbrook and the Gourd Connection in San Diego) so that you can make your own ipu and what not, which may be hard for some people to locate.
With a little more information and resources, this could be a very useful website for mainland Hawaiians.
The website’s editor and moderator, Kathie Fry, describes herself as “a frequent Hawaii visitor who flies from Los Angeles to Hawaii about 8 to 10 times a year”, making the website an exogenous contribution to Hawaiian culture on the mainland. The website is, however, open to contributions from anyone.
