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1 San Jose, CA 1 Detroit, MI
2 El Paso, TX 2 Washington, DC
3 Honolulu, HI 3 Baltimore, MD
4 Austin, TX 4 Memphis, TN
5 New York, NY 5 Dallas, TX
6 Louisville, KY 6 Philadelphia, PA
7 San Diego, CA 7 Columbus, OH
8 San Antonio, TX 8 Nashville, TN
9 San Francisco, CA 9 Houston, TX
10 Fort Worth, TX 10 Phoenix, AZ
NOTE: Portland must be somewhere below the top ten, either of the safest or the most dangerous. (that information is available only if one pays) City Crime Rankings by Population Group
Latest 2006 Crimes per 100,000 People:
Portland, OR Honolulu, HI National
Murder: 3.7 1.9 7
Forcible Rape: 54.04 25.09 32.2
Robbery: 239.2 104.7 205.8
Aggravated Assault: 417.2 169.1 336.5
Burglary: 1011.7 600.6 813.2
Larceny Theft: 4063.8 2907.9 2601.7
Vehicle Theft: 825.9 689 501.5
Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitors sites is not allowed
FYI
Eddie
ps, I was a cop in Honolulu and now live in San Jose. Lucky to have lived and now living in two safe cities. I shudder to think what a cop must have to go through daily in Detroit or Wash. DC. Yikes!
Maybe we could start by stopping the labeling and name calling of Haole...
Haole is not name calling, it is describing. Haole is a description of how someone looks, not how they act. When there is a whole group of folks it is just as polite to say "take this to the haole one over there" as it is "take this to the fellow with the red shirt". Discussing one's ethnic group is a valid and very allowable thing in Hawaii, it is generally not derogatory or mean. When it gets derogatory, it has cuss words with it, although as far as I can tell folks only know one cuss word in Hawaii.
Discussing one's ethnic group is about the same as discussing the make and model of your car. It's something to talk about, not something to demean anyone. If your car is a pickup truck, most likely it will have certain characteristics. If your ethnicity is Hawaiian, most likely you will have certain characteristics, prefer certain foods, etc. Give some poi to a Hawaiian and he will probably be able to tell you the variety of taro it was made from and possibly where it was grown. Give the same poi to a tourist and they will make lame jokes about library paste. Is that not ethnicity?
Haole is not name calling, it is describing. Haole is a description of how someone looks, not how they act. When there is a whole group of folks it is just as polite to say "take this to the haole one over there" as it is "take this to the fellow with the red shirt". Discussing one's ethnic group is a valid and very allowable thing in Hawaii, it is generally not derogatory or mean. When it gets derogatory, it has cuss words with it, although as far as I can tell folks only know one cuss word in Hawaii.
Discussing one's ethnic group is about the same as discussing the make and model of your car. It's something to talk about, not something to demean anyone. If your car is a pickup truck, most likely it will have certain characteristics. If your ethnicity is Hawaiian, most likely you will have certain characteristics, prefer certain foods, etc. Give some poi to a Hawaiian and he will probably be able to tell you the variety of taro it was made from and possibly where it was grown. Give the same poi to a tourist and they will make lame jokes about library paste. Is that not ethnicity?
hotcatz has is right 100%, for instance I am hapa haole. ie half white and half Japanese. I'm proud of my heritage and many hapa here if they happen to also be haole describe themselves in this manner. it's just like saying oh hey you blonde, red head, or brunette etc. the term haole has been around awhile and has been used as more of a description just like the word hapa has. if anyone used it in a derogatory sentence you'd know and they would only use the word haole because they were describing someone who was white. they could say the same thing if talking about someone else. I don't like how many who are either not familiar, educated etc. with various words, phrases and culture in general here assume that haole is a bad word. heck i know people who are white/haole who don't mind being described as a haole because they understand that it is a descriptive word rather than anything negative
Your friend stayed all of 2 days, then decided to leave after only seeing what was in walking distance of her hotel? I have to say her bad experience was her own fault, not Hawaii's.
I TOTALLY Agree..... Making a LIFE changing decision to move from Rainy Oregon to Beautiful Hawaii without even visiting? And then saying that she went EVERYWHERE? Non-sense. I totally agree it is her fault and NOT Hawaii's.
I have been visiting Oahu/Maui for 6 years (Once a year and each time 2-3 weeks) and still have not visited everypart of the Islands. I have been wanting to move over to Oahu for 3 yrs, and NOW within 3 months am going too. This type of move cannot be spare of the moment. I have done tons of research on Housing/Apartments, jobs (Transferring over), neighborhoods and everything. My friends from Hawaii are amazed that I know the exact location of someplace they are talking about. When I arrive off the plane, I don't need a map or anything to get me around... I Know the place.... AND Love the place.
I was born and raised in Portland, OR and this place does have some very nice features. I lived in Downtown Portland and have experienced the same gunshots and not so great nighttime walking situations.... these are in every major city. BUT if you travel onto the outside of city limits, these are far less common. Honolulu/Waikiki is the same. Pearl City, Ewa Beach, Kailu, etc are not like Waikiki/Honolulu.
Please do research and know the sitiuation that you are getting yourself into before making that big decision. I have people daily saying I will not like it there.... I spent enough time there over the past years that I know I will LOVE it there!
hotcatz has is right 100%, for instance I am hapa haole. ie half white and half Japanese. I'm proud of my heritage and many hapa here if they happen to also be haole describe themselves in this manner. it's just like saying oh hey you blonde, red head, or brunette etc. the term haole has been around awhile and has been used as more of a description just like the word hapa has. if anyone used it in a derogatory sentence you'd know and they would only use the word haole because they were describing someone who was white. they could say the same thing if talking about someone else. I don't like how many who are either not familiar, educated etc. with various words, phrases and culture in general here assume that haole is a bad word. heck i know people who are white/haole who don't mind being described as a haole because they understand that it is a descriptive word rather than anything negative
I am 100% White (Haole) and do not take it offensive while I am in Hawaii at all. I have Tons of Samoan, Filipino and Hawaiian friends both in Portland and in Oahu. I actually had a sticker on my car that says "Haole Built". If you take it as a bad word, then that is when you are expecting trouble and don't "fit in". I am prowd to be called Haole and respect that.
My aunt and two cousins have lived in Hawaii most of their lives and I have spent every summer there since I was 10. They call me Haole and I have never taken it offensively. Its not a derogatory term, it is a Hawaiian term that they have used for foreigners (white people) for hundreds of years. Trust me for the most part they dont mean it to be cruel. They call me Haole but the children also call me auntie, even the children that I am not related too. I find this amazing.. everyone there is family and if you respect the people and the island they will invite you to join their family.
Honolulu was really strange to me when I first came there too. I had been to islands and experienced "island life" in other parts of the world, had traveled extensively, and lived in a foreign country as a teenager, and I never had as much culture shock as when I moved to Hawaii.
Racism is a prevalent and accepted part of Hawaiian culture. It has nothing to do with getting to know the islands and giving them a chance. Haole is used as a derrogotory word just like ni*g*r, the problem is locals justify the use. They say things like "you just can't adapt to island life" to justify being racist. And it's accepted by brown and white locals as just a fact of life. It's honestly one of the most despicable things about Hawaii. I have brown and white friends, local and non-local, and I've spent a lot of my life in very diverse environments. There is nothing okay about being racist and Hawaiian residents should be able to recognize that. If the racism were in the reverse, no one would even dare to justify it without fearing serious backlash.
There is also nothing of ALOHA in racism.
The best was when one of the state senators (from Oahu) used the term wet**ba*ck* to describe someone who was hispanic in a public speech he made. He's a man of asian decent and he called a hispanic person a wet**ba*ck*. He had to apologize pubicly and his response was that he didn't know it was a racist term.
Ignorance or racism either way it's despicable.
As for nightlife, your friend was pretty accurate. There are not a lot of places that are low key where a 30-something female can go and hang out. When you come from established cities on the mainland, you're used to bar environments that have a little class, yet can be aid back too. Waikiki is the largest nightlife area and it is very cheesy/touristy/military (think men who have been out on ships or stuck in a pretty awful place fighting for their country-without women around- and well they are gonna blow off some steam and look to hook up. Add to that tourist women on the prowl for a hot romance in hawaii and you get the idea. Young locals like waikiki too, the options are limited and you have to make the most of what you have, and when your 25 you might be interested more in finding a guy to hook up with with than just hanging out with your friends and having good conversation).
The other main area for hanging out is chinatown and frankly unless you go on a first friday of the month, it definitely doesn't feel like a safe place to be by yourself. There are homeless drug addicts everywhere, on sidewalks and store stoops. It is not a place I would feel comfortable exploring if I were a single 30-something new to the area.
As for trash, that's pretty accurate. I always find it ironic when some people talk about how the haoles are ruining their islands and then you see locals with brown skin throwing trash out of their car and into the ocean quite frequently. And there is a love of styrofoam like none ive ever seen, whether it's the daily plate lunch and or the backyard paina (bbq) If anything a lot of the haoles that come to hawaii are much more environmentally conscious.
Hawaii is definitely a place that takes some time to grow on you. And even once you get used to it, it's sometimes frustrating place to live. And it did make me appreciate the place I moved from a lot more. The one thing that is nice is that there isn't as much random violent crime. There is definitely spousal/child abuse and some of it is drug related, but there is also a very strong patriarchal culture in Hawaii that stems from the influence of the plantation immigrant cultures that are now embedded in the islands. And there is a lot of cultural emphasis on saving face. Which sometimes lead to important things not being said or brought out into the open.
Homelessness is also a huge problem, the cost of living is very high and the wages on the islands don't compensate for that like in other places. A lot of land owners bank on the tourists or people from california that are used to a high cost of housing and charge really high rents, which leaves housing for locals in very short supply and makes it very expensive. It is a huge problem for everyone that lives and rents in Hawaii and the poeple that suffer the most are the locals that are working 2-3 jobs at minimum wage and still cant afford a place to live. And it makes poeple resentful, especially of Haoles, even though nowadays a lot of the land ownership rests with multinational companies, "local japanese" (the ones that came to hawaii to work on the plantations and have been in hawaii for several generation) and Japanese (from Japan).
Add to that, Honolulu doesn't not feel like a paradise, there is a lot of concrete and traffic and run down 60's and 70's style architecture, the kind that looks really outdated and ghetto. The north shore and east oahu are very pretty tho, not as many highrises and no elevated H-1. Kailua is really nice, but you do have to contend with the sewage overflows into the water from heavy rains.
There was a comment above that you have to have lived in Hawaii long enough to understand, but basically there was a really huge sewage overflow into waikiki a couple years back when the island was experiencing severe flooding. It was done more or less intentionally to prevent individual pipes from overflowing all across the city. However it is an infrastructure problem that has been ongoing for 10 or 15 years and the EPA has fined the city of Honolulu for that long because of it's outdated sewage infrastructure. It was awful that it happened, but what was even more awful was that no one was warned. There were no signs put out on the beach to warn people (about 60 percent of hawaii's economy is based on tourism so a sewage spill is bad for business). Several people died from bacterial infections before they decided to put out warning signs. It was certainly not a crowning moment for Hawaii politicians, but after the hype blew over everyone pretty much forgot about it. And the city dedided that it could either improve the sewage infrastructure or improve the wastewater treatment plant but not do both. When you live somewhere that is so isolated there is very little oversight.
Another thing to realize about Honolulu is that in many ways it is a working city, with a large military industrial complex and a large influx of tourists. It is not the prettiest city and about a million people live on the small island of Oahu, add to the population all the tourists that visit everyday (in busy times they almost double the islands population) and you have a congested and dirty city with all the ills that come with big cities that happens to be on a tropical island and has a political environment that still thinks Honolulu is a small town.
It's a place that exists in two realms: the tourist Hawaii and the real Hawaii - they are two different places at times. But I will say, the strangeness of it all and the uniqueness of the traditional Hawaiian culture does at some point get under your skin and tie you to the place in ways you never though it would. It's a contentious relationship for some of us Haoles, it's a place you feel attached to, but at the same time alienated from. It's a place of extreme beauty and extreme ugliness, and somehow they coexist, defying your expecations of what a tropical island should be like. It is a place that definitely takes time to know and like and at some point you might dislike it and then turn around and like it again and go back and forth. That has certainly been my experience.
Last edited by mainlandhonu; 05-25-2009 at 12:15 PM..
She said she looked at 6 different apartments (I believe one was 2800 per month) and they were all in bad areas. She said the two nights she stayed in her hotel, she heard gunshots and there were always cop cars and sirens. She said she was the only (sigh) how do I say this without getting slammed ....white person in most of the areas. She said there were no trendy, downtown, single type areas and that some of the places she was walking were just downright scary during the day and she wouldn't walk there at night. She said it was filthy, trashy and people just threw their trash on the street, in other words, no sense of pride whatsoever.
Yes, some apartments can cost upwards of $2000, but that isn't island wide. Your friend obviously didn't do her research, and missed out on a beautiful place to live. Too bad she feels so negative about the islands, but maybe if she had taken the time to appreciate the beauty or respect the land -- it could have been different.
In regards to her being the only "white" person--LIES
Hawaii is a melting pot of nationalities, according to the city data website:
[LEFT]Races in Honolulu:[/LEFT]
[LEFT]
Japanese (23.3%)
White Non-Hispanic (18.7%)
Two or more races (14.9%)
Filipino (11.6%)
Chinese (10.7%)
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (6.8%)
Hispanic (4.4%)
Other Asian (4.3%)
Korean (4.2%)
Black (1.6%)
Vietnamese (1.6%)
American Indian (1.4%)
Other race (0.9%)
[/LEFT]
[LEFT]
Read more: http://www.city-data.com/city/Honolulu-Hawaii.html#ixzz0j2vqWN6N
[/LEFT]
And as far as trash on the ground---where the heck was she? Chinatown? That is the only place that I know of where trash is stacked in the streets at the end of the day for the Opala trucks. If you litter here in Hawaii you face a $500 fine, or jail time--we take pride in our 'Aina.
Your rebuttal is a little late as the French Maid last visited the site over 1-1/2 years ago. Nice revival!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Made_In_Anahola
Yes, some apartments can cost upwards of $2000, but that isn't island wide. Your friend obviously didn't do her research, and missed out on a beautiful place to live. Too bad she feels so negative about the islands, but maybe if she had taken the time to appreciate the beauty or respect the land -- it could have been different.
In regards to her being the only "white" person--LIES
Hawaii is a melting pot of nationalities, according to the city data website:
And as far as trash on the ground---where the heck was she? Chinatown? That is the only place that I know of where trash is stacked in the streets at the end of the day for the Opala trucks. If you litter here in Hawaii you face a $500 fine, or jail time--we take pride in our 'Aina.
Last edited by 7th generation; 03-24-2010 at 03:10 PM..
Reason: name calling is inappropriate here
I just read the whole necro'd thread! It was very interesting.
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Rebuttal to The French Maid
