Remember when women wore hats and gloves to shop at Union Square? It was that long ago that a little plaque was placed on a grimy stretch of sidewalk on Geary Street just east of Powell. The plaque in question lies in front of a jewelry store, between a cement trash can and a mailbox. Its brass lettering reads: "This sidewalk is made from black sand from the fabled beach at Kalapana, Hawaii."
What plaque, you say? What sidewalk?
...
Then a few weeks ago, while in Honolulu, I called the Hawaii Visitors Bureau for the heck of it. The bureau's Ross Wilson Jr. sent queries out to the Big Island and, lo and behold, broke the mystery. It was Matson Navigation Co. that put in the sidewalk to commemorate its ties to the islands. ...
Jeff Hull, Matson's public relations manager, said the sidewalk went in around 1958, the year Matson dedicated a sales office at Geary and Powell. Dorothy Lamour christened the opening with champagne. Bolivian artist Antonio Sotomayor unveiled a 50-foot mural illustrating Matson's transpacific routes. And atop the building, a 24-foot Plexiglas model of the bow of a Matson liner lit up at night. ...
The sidewalk's still there, though -- a funny little bit of Hawaii and city lore.
What a nice piece of investigative journalism, adding more character to a city already brimming with it.
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