McCully–Mōʻiliʻili: The South King Street Block

McCully and Mōʻiliʻili are the neighborhoods immediately inland of Waikīkī, on the far side of the Ala Wai Canal. Most visitors pass through them on the way to somewhere else, or never register them at all. They are not scenic. They are where a large number of people in Honolulu actually live, eat, get their hair cut, and buy things — a dense, unglamorous, mostly low-rise grid of walk-ups, churches, temples, noodle shops and small storefronts.

The reason to make the trip is a single stretch of South King Street in the low 2000s. Within four addresses you get a barbershop that has been cutting since 2011, a sneaker consignment shop, a design-goods store built out of a honeymoon in Japan, and a record shop that doubles as the headquarters of a label reissuing Hawaiʻi's own music. None of these are tourist businesses. They exist because the neighborhood supports them, which is exactly why they are worth an hour of a visitor's time — you are walking into a working street, not a curated one.

Go on foot, and go with the hours in mind, because this is where visitors get burned. These are small independent shops with short, genuinely idiosyncratic hours — several close at four or six in the afternoon, some are shut on Sundays, and the record shop keeps a schedule that is closed in the middle of the week. Check before you walk over. It is roughly a twelve to twenty minute walk from most of Waikīkī, or a short ride; the bus down Kalākaua and up King runs constantly.

Eat while you are here, because Mōʻiliʻili's food is the other half of the argument and it is largely Japanese and Korean, largely family-run, and priced for people who live here rather than people on vacation. This is a neighborhood of izakaya counters, yakiniku, soup, and conveyor sushi. If your plan is a haircut, a record, and a bowl of something at nine at night, this is the part of Honolulu that has been quietly set up for exactly that the whole time.