Hawaii invites visitors to experience Obama's Oahu

HONOLULU -- Three miles and a world away from the bikinis and high-rises of Waikiki, Mitch Berger slows his minibus to a crawl in the residential neighborhood of Kaimuki, a onetime ostrich farm for Hawaiian royalty. Pointing toward a nondescript blue duplex, he announces that President Obama's Kenyan father had lived in a house at the same location while attending the nearby University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1960.

"He was 25, and (Obama's mother, fellow student Stanley Ann Dunham) had just turned 18," says Berger, a Honolulu guide who includes the neighborhood on his new Obama-themed tours. "It wouldn't be too far off to think that the 44th president was conceived right here."

Customer Ben Nworie, a Nigeria-born college professor and pastor living in Los Angeles, stops taking notes for his congregation back home and delivers a one-word reaction: "Wow."

Kaimuki may not carry the cachet of Diamond Head or the North Shore, home to surfing's Banzai Pipeline and locations for the TV series Lost. But thanks to the Honolulu-born chief executive, it's one of many Oahu locations getting a higher profile this winter.

From the $8 million retreat he rented on Kailua Beach over the Christmas holidays to the bone-crunching shore break where he perfected his body-surfing techniques as a teenager, Obama's current and former island haunts are part of a presidential sightseeing trail that stretches from Indonesia to Africa. And though most Hawaii residents are taking a laid-back approach to their native son's growing fame, the state's struggling visitor industry hopes the Tourist in Chief's obvious affection for slippas and shakas (Hawaiian slang for flip-flop sandals and a thumb-and-pinky salute) inspires more vacationers to follow his lead.

"Being a 'local boy,' he knows the island well," says John Monahan of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, which highlights Obama-related Oahu locations on its website (gohawaii.com/obama). "Everyone needs to rest and relax, and luckily for him, his home is one of the greatest places in the world to rejuvenate."

Yes, you can buy a laminated "Obama's Oahu" driving map and plot a walking tour of Makiki, the president's middle-class, unassuming boyhood neighborhood, on the local website Obamasneighborhood.com. Honolulu's Aqua Hotels & Resorts offer a new "Obama-rama" package that includes discounted rates, rental car and a copy of the book The Dream Begins — How Hawaii Shaped Barack Obama. An "Obama Surfs" T-shirt is a top seller at Oahu-based Crazy Shirts outlets, and owners of Kona Joe Coffee on the Big Island of Hawaii have created a blend of Hawaiian, Indonesian and Kenyan coffees called "Barack O Blend."

If Berger's fledgling tour operation is any indication, however, Obama-mania is more muted in the Aloha State than in other destinations trying to capitalize on their connections to the new president. He still sells a $40, Obama-themed trip that includes a drive past Hanauma Bay, a marine preserve where Obama took his daughters snorkeling last summer, and Sandy Beach, Obama's old surfing hangout. But soft bookings prompted Berger to offer a shorter, $5 "highlights" version that's limited to central Honolulu.

Two miles northwest of Waikiki, tourists have started venturing into Obama's former stomping grounds of Makiki, which ObamasNeighborhood.com's Rob Kay describes as an "urban mixed bag of modest bungalows, 1960s cinderblock walk-up apartments and churches of every stripe." But the area's notoriety hasn't translated to a bonanza of business at the Baskin-Robbins outlet where a teenage "Barry" scooped ice cream, and manager Sherill Fernandez says a "Whirl of Change" flavor — discontinued after the election — wasn't a big seller.

A half hour's drive from Waikiki on the windward side of Oahu, the Ololama Golf Links in Waimanalo is a low-key public course where the clientele is 90% local and club coordinator Leo Ho says "everybody is treated like ohana (family)" — including longtime customer Obama.

A smattering of vacationers have dropped by since the presidential duffer played there last summer and over the Christmas holidays, but they weren't greeted by any signed photos or Obama-themed tees.

"We didn't fawn over him," Ho says, "and we never even thought about trying to make money off of him."

Adds Jason Sivill, band leader at the president's Honolulu alma mater, the elite Punahou School: "You don't see people on the corner selling Obama dolls, because the culture here is much less obsessive about celebrities. I think that's one of the reasons he likes to come back."

But if Hawaii becomes the next Crawford, locals' nonchalance and sense of ohana won't be the only presidential lures. Notes blogger Alex Salkever of Hawaiirama.com, Obama's old neighborhood "is not what most visitors would fly 3,000 miles across the Pacific to see."

"Even now," Obama writes in his 1995 memoir Dreams From My Father, "I can retrace the first steps I took as a child and be stunned by the beauty of the islands. The trembling blue plane of the Pacific. The moss-covered cliffs and the cool rush of Manoa Falls. The North Shore's thunderous waves, crumbling as if in a slow-motion reel. The shadows off Pali's peaks; the sultry, scented air."