Antique stores tend to be places people either love or hate. As the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Well, I am an unabashed treasure seeker, and one of the best shops in Hawaiʻi is most certainly Antique Alley (1030 Queen Street, Honolulu). Run by Paké Zane and his partner in business and life, Julie, the store is (almost literally) floor-to-ceiling antique & vintage finds.
In other words, it was a perfect place to begin my research of the original Hawaiian RH Shirt from the 1930s/40s. It was here that I bought my first coat of arms patches as well as a several UH Mānoa yearbooks from that period.
On a recent trip to his shop, I caught up with Paké to talk story...
Q1. You've called yourself and Julie, "cultural recyclers," which makes Antique Alley the definitive "on-island processing center" to channel these recycling streams back into the consumer system. Having recycled for decades, have you seen any big changes over the years?
We try and recycle what we see as cultural artifacts. These are any man created items ranging from a tooth pick holder to a poi pounder, from a vintage soda bottle to a television set. Cultural recycling is an effort to transpose things from one generation and find a place for it in a future generation. Unfortunately, some of the biggest changes in the past 45 years have been the shrinking of the collector base, the increasing cost of doing our kind of business, and the evolving distinction between the analog and digital worlds. Also, living spaces have shrunk from single family homes to apartments and condominiums, so people have less space for possessions. Shows like Antiques Roadshow and American Pickers have brought some attention to the "hunt," but not so much collecting as a hobby, avocation or lifestyle.
Q2. Are there any ways in which those changes give you a sense for how Hawaiʻi, itself, has changed?
We are, in layman's terms, screwed. Hawaiʻi's economy used to be driven by the sugar cane, pineapple, and tourism industries. Decades ago, the plantation moguls ruled the day, but as time marched on we lost sugar and then pineapple, leaving us with only tourism. I'm not bemoaning the demise of the plantations, but we are now almost totally dependent on this one source of sustainability - tourism. The change we need is a movement towards "self sustainability." However, instead of farms, we build more living spaces and have less good spaces to produce foods. Granted, Antique Alley has benefited from the tourist market - typically, over 50% of our sales are to "out-of-towners" - so we might not have existed this long without tourists. Or perhaps we would have made adjustments to fit the times. Who knows? What I do know is that we cannot please 10 million plus tourists, staying in thousands and thousands of living spaces, driving tens of thousands of rental cars without slowly committing social and cultural suicide.
Q3. Yeah, I hear you. It can be hard to be hopeful about the future sometimes. That's one of the reasons I started United Islands actually - to try to be even a small part of a solution rather than idly sitting by as these things unfold. Any thoughts on how we make change in Hawaiʻi?
Q4. Antique Alley has played a big role in my research of the shirt's origins. The vintage patches & yearbooks I bought here were invaluable primary source materials. I'm curious: did any of the original "RH Shirts" ever end up getting recycled here?
I grew up on Maui and do remember in the 1940s men wearing shirts with the patches on their shirt pockets. I don't think any of the original RH Shirts ever came into the shop, although I do recall one vintage safari shirt done in that style by Duke Kahanamoku's label being sold here at one time. I think the patches were out of style and use by the latter part of the 1950s. Over the years, we've found some loose pocket patches, but no original RH Shirts.
Q5. Speaking of rare and precious things, I was curious if there ever was an item that you sold that you had secretly wanted to hold on to?
At one time we sold the black and white porcelain street signs from the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco, which was the undisputed epicenter of the early 1960s "Hippie World." The person who I sold it to promised to sell it back to me when he was ready to give it up. Sadly he died in the past year and I don't think I will ever see the signs in person again. Such is life and death.
Q6. Historically, being a link between the East and West, Hawaiʻi has been called the "Crossroads of the Pacific." Is that perhaps something that makes selling vintage & antiques in Hawaiʻi different than in other places?
Hawaiʻi's unique physical position on this earth is what has made it so intriguing to the big business people (missionaries included) as well as for the tourists, each with their own motivations and agenda. So the name "Antique Alley" is a catch-all name used by hundreds of shops across the nation. What makes us unique is having much more Asian and Pacific Island items than most Continental American shops. However, we have "stuff" to recycle from Kalamazoo to Kabul! [laughs] Lots of stuff stops in Hawaiʻi and never leaves, like a lot of people.
Q7. Talking about vintage & antique stores in other areas, are there ones you visit on the mainland or overseas?
We haven't traveled off island for many years but did so in the past. When Julie and I lived in Amsterdam our houseboat sat on a canal 3 blocks from the one of the best flea markets in Europe called Waterlooplein. Second among our past favorite flea markets is the one that used to be between Mill Valley and Sausalito called the Marin City Flea Market. Another great recycling center lost to developers never to be experienced again.
Q8. Someone told me you're such a Hawaiʻi legend that Billabong put your face on their hangtag, is this true?
[Laughs] It is. Years ago, a representative for Primo Beer Company visited me and asked if his photographers could take candid photos of me for a promotion. He said the idea was to put the photos on beer coasters with some text promoting us in some way. Conjuring images of beer glasses sweating in the heat, I imagined a very wet and sloppy image. "Yuck," I thought, but free publicity is free publicity, so I let them take my photo. After they left, however, I never heard back from them, nor received any samples for approval or distribution, so I forgot about the whole episode. Fast forward a year or so, a longtime Japanese customer came into the store and asked, "Paké-san, do you have any "Primo surf shorts?" I had none, so I advised him to check the nearby Billabong store since I had heard that they had partnered with Primo to make shorts and shirts out of Primo promotional fabric. Hours later he returned and asked me if I was trying to play a trick on him. "Of course not, why?" I asked. Evidently, he had found the Primo shorts he'd been searching for...but with a hang tag with my picture attached to it! He handed me the hang tag and I was as astonished as he was! I had no idea my photo was being used to sell surf shorts, but at least there was no beer dripping down on my face!!