The CoolTown movie test

A few days ago I was listening to a traveling sports announcer exclaim that San Francisco and Seattle were two of the country’s greatest cities (New York goes without saying).  Sure, I agree.  Then today I saw some evidence of that.

I came across three movies during the day on my travel day from Hawaii to Washington DC:  Life or Something Like That, A Guy Thing and The Rock.  They were set in Seattle, Seattle and San Francisco, respectively.

Watch a lot of movies if you want to know where the cool cities are.  You can’t have romance and intrigue without them.

Distance learning will help the small to trump the big

Small businesses can’t compete financially with larger corporations, but the can move quicker and smarter.  So can smaller city governments and universities.  Distance learning can help.

In my last full day in Hawaii (stopping over in Honolulu), I visited the largest university in Hawaii, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, to learn more about their distance learning program as a means of exporting their local cultural assets.  One parking ticket and several referrals later, I was able to ask the right person, “Do you have a distance learning program?“ “Not yet” was the reply.  When I asked if they were working on it, the reply was, “I said, not yet, OK?“

Meanwhile, I had completed a distance learning class (Hawaiian language) from the diminuitive University of Hawaii at Hilo (in my hometown) the year before.  Little Hilo got my $520, and all I got from the university giant UH Manoa was some respect issues.  Guess who’s going to be richer sooner?

Make your own rules

When you have an abundance of local culture, you start breaking mass-traditions in favor of something more meaningful.

Hawaii is well known locally as almost being another country since its diversity of food, customs and even conversation language is so unique compared to the mainland United States.  This pervasive diversity breeds an openness to new ideas, where it’s not so much that one of the signs pictured here reflects the local cowboy community in this central Hawaii town, but the fact that the powers that be allowed them to replace the traditional stop signs in the first place.

It’s all in fun, and CoolTowns are known for it.

Aloha Tower is Hawaii’s CoolTown spot

I remember visiting Honolulu (a few islands over from Hilo) years ago and meeting up with friends at the nightlife hot spots - The Point After and Masquerades.  For a city of a million people, that was it, and we had to drive between them.

Honolulu now has a CoolTown spot (elements of a CoolTown) at Aloha Tower and there’s no question where I’d have gone every night back then: dozens of places to drink, eat, dance, listen to music, shop, or just walk around and “sightsee”.  Plus, there’s the backdrop of the Honolulu skyline, the island’s mountains, the ocean and night sky.

Unfortunately, it’s so popular that it’s getting expensive - time to build another one.  What would make it a true CoolTown is if it were affordable to entrepreneurs and artists, and that they could actually live on-site.

At a restaurant in Washington DC, an associate from Alabama told me about this amazing store in the small town of Hilo, Hawaii (my hometown).  I never heard of it at the time, but now I know where the buzz is coming from.

Sig Zane is a local fisherman, surfer, dancer, artist and cultural practitioner (his bio is a must-read) who translated his deep understanding and practice of local culture into art that can be experienced by everyone, especially clothes.  It is this strong relationship to his local roots and commitment to being a student of his own Hawaiian culture that makes Sig a worldwide success in such a remote, rainy town… and he’s also a really nice guy.

ps Yes, he designs umbrellas too.
pps It’s raining right now.

How to overcome the Walmart dilemma

In the small town of Hilo, Hawaii, the nightly hot spot (by far) is… Walmart.  While most everything is closed by 11 pm on a week night, the parking lot is full at the “Fortune 1” big box.  Walmart is the town’s effective community center.  Is this how it has to be?

As they say, if you can’t beat ‘em (and that’s tough with the largest company in the world), join ‘em.  The idea is that if Walmart is inevitable, then make it inevitable in the downtown.  A plan shown here from one of the top retail town planners in the country shows how:  Have one side of the building oriented towards a large parking lot as usual, and have the other side fronting a walking main street.  This is actually done in major cities and other countries all the time.  You can even incorporate a shopping mall this way.

An even more progressive trend is to have “liner stores”, which are smaller stores that front the big box to make its pedestrian-oriented side seem less overwhelming.

*ps Make sure the code says that the doors on the pedestrian side must be open, as one rather shady big box kept them locked.

A 56K modem just doesn’t cut it anymore

While writing this column from my home town in Hilo, Hawaii is refreshing, the lack of broadband isn’t - it sometimes takes a few minutes just to download a single web page.  DSL isn’t even available.  Which leads me to fiber optics…

If being stuck with a 56K modem has already made me miss publishing a daily story, how many opportunities is a small town with a struggling economy missing each day?  Then again, how much is a big city missing by not having fiber optics?  That’s why we’re working with companies like Corning to make sure everyone can compete on a common playing field, or at least give the most innovative, community-minded ones the early advantage!

For municipalities who believe the tortoise wins the race, that’s a fairy tale.

Now this is how to rock like the big cities.  It doesn’t get much better when you the area’s best bands take the stage in front of what seems like half the population of the entire town cheering them on, with the backdrop of the downtown main street on one end and the ocean on the other.

Even in a quiet, economically-challenged small town that’s the subject of a local comedian’s sarcastic song, “Hilo, the most exciting place on earth”, a creative team of the area’s most creative artists, entrepreneurs and entertainers can start to turn things around - creativity equals economic growth.

You know it’s a small town (47,000 people) when the event’s sound system was set up by my cousins who happen to live next door.

Live from Hawaii… the farmer’s market

I’m on vacation for the next few days in Hilo, Hawaii, my hometown, but I’ll still report on what I find here.

While Hilo may not be a CoolTown per se, like any town it has its qualities.  For instance, you really can’t have a CoolTown without a farmer’s market, and the Hilo Farmers Market is one of the best.  Offering a variety of items from exotic produce to seafood and flowers to bongo drums, it’s a must for locals and tourists alike.

What makes farmers markets so cool?  The items are fresh, unique and less expensive, and it’s not only directly representative of the local culture, but you get to meet the local representatives directly as well!  I’m lucky to have two within walking distance of my Adams Morgan, Washington DC pad as well.

What’s your community’s manifesto? Memphis knows. The Memphis Manifesto summit took place in May 2003, a great first step in establishing a beta community.

Hosted by Creative Class author Richard Florida, Smart City Radio’s Carol Coletta selected 100 creatives in politics, arts, design, media, technology and academia, business, economic development and nonprofits, from Austin to Toronto, Portland to Providence, to meet in Memphis on the first of May to draft a manifesto for creativity in cities.  Why should cities care?  Because creativity creates economic growth.

What did the Creative 100 come up with?  You can read the Memphis Manifesto to find out, and the ten summary principles sound very familiar, which include: Invest in the ‘ecosystem’ (ie cooltowns), embrace diversity, value risk-taking, be authentic, invest in quality of place, and support continuing education in creativity.

What happens when a local Creative 100 becomes a real working guild, then a founding population for a revitalized neighborhood? That’s what this website is all about.