Cafe Attitude

Hana’s pretty much broken into a few distinct groups of people. You have the Hawaiians of course, born and raised in Hana and very much proud of that fact. They wear shirts with the town’s zip code sported on the back, they smoke pigs underground in their front yard, and flash the hang ten sign to their fellow Hawaiians as they drive by in their pickups. And then you have the Haoles (what they call non natives, the majority who are white.) Haoles can be further broken into their own groups. You’ve got the tourists, mostly couples in their 50’s or 60’s driving the infamous “Road to Hana,” taking their pictures on the beach, and moving on to their next Maui destination. You’ve got the people, like Krista and Ian, who have moved their life to this remote Hawaiian town, and you have the Wooffers like myself, testing the waters for a bit (although many never leave..) And then you have, dare I say it, the hippies.

Now just for the record, I’m not one too judge, and after attending an environmental school for the past four years, I’ve seen my far share of the modern day counter culture…. But after spending an evening at Café Attitude, I had to share….

Café Attitude is a lovely outdoor “café” in an even smaller town than Hana, about 10 miles further east. Every Sunday night, they share the bountiful harvests of their gardens in a community style dinner, and have an open mic session for the remainder of the night. Since our friend, Ashely had rented a car for the week, we loaded up one too many in the back, and headed down to experience this place, and what an experience we had.

Little white lights lined the beautiful wooden framed structure that lit our wonderful organic meal as the night grew darker. After finishing my salad and baked pumpkin and drank the last of my water from the same vintage Mc Donald’s Flinstone’s  glass that my family still uses at home; the night truly began. The owner, a woman in her late 50’s I’d guess, started the show by taking the stage with her Ukalele and sang for 11 minutes (she warned us before she began) about her strong body and the air she breathes, or something to that theme. A younger lad came on next with his guitar, and played a song of simple chords and lyrics about loving the earth and the trees. I don’t mean to make fun of him in anyway, he sang his heart out, and I love trees just as much as the next person, but just the way it was performed, seriously could have been straight out of an SNL skit….

The night continued with a variety of acts that mostly included some form of singing or poetry reading, and during every act, a woman by me kept passionately shouting out things like “You’re a child of the Earth!” and “Oh yes!  Love is the Answer!”….you get the picture, another SNL moment. While all the skits played out, I people watched at the crowd, and unfortunately smelled some of them…. One person ( I honestly couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman) stole my attention as he? just floated around with a bizarre hazy smile on his face, tooting along on his little flute, adding a faint sound to whatever music currently played.

To give some credit to the talent here, there were incredible fire dancers shakin’ their stuff to some “tight” drummers around the fire. Three girls took stage at different times, one using a lit hula hoop. Her extremely impressive hula hooping was mesmerizing enough, and to add the fire; entertainment indeed, man.

The icing on the Café Attitude cake came at the end however, as one heavily bearded man on stage reminded us all to cleanse our bodies with, “The Tea.” Also for the record, I’m very much into eating healthy and organic food, and love tea, but something about people canting on about “The Tea” reminded me a little too much of drinking the Kool-aid, so I had to pass on that and once again just observe. 

As you can probably imagine, no Hawaiians attended the show at Café Attitude…

Aloha!