The local male’s casual style of dress is so well known and easily described that it has almost become cliche:

Aloha shirt, untucked. Feet in slippers. Nice slippers if it’s a dress-up event. Buss-up slippers if it’s for a football-watching party at a friend’s house or just a regular Sunday doing errands and washing the car.

But in between the shirt and the slippers is another measure of authenticity and the clue to the psyche and survival instinct of island men:

Double shorts.

That is, shorts worn underneath shorts.

They’re not just for keiki taking swim class anymore. Or college boys who don’t do laundry.

You see grown men walking through the grocery store with surf trunks showing below their gray Quicksilver dressy shorts. In parking lots, they confidently dress and undress next to the open door of their car. When they lean over to lift a cooler into their truck or to get a little closer to the screen to see the slow-motion review of a play, they are secure knowing that the only thing showing above their waistband is another waistband and not the label with the fruits.

Double shorts make a man ready for anything. Spur-of-the-moment surf session? Ready! Split the seam after a big lunch? No worry. Spilled coffee on your lap? Not a problem.

Some brands of athletic wear actually sell double shorts as double shorts, with a clingy yoga-type support short underneath and a looser track-style over-short sewn together.

But the local-style double shorts is a little different, something born of a beach culture and the desire to be ready whatever wave might be coming. It is about making sure your butt is covered no matter what.

(Hang on. Here comes a big jump.)

The Honolulu Police Department wasn’t wearing double shorts.

Not literally, as in what individual officers wear. No, those itchy-looking dark blues are fine (though if police officers wanted to wear surf trunks underneath, perhaps that could be useful depending on the assignment). But figuratively, the commission that oversees the department didn’t have anything underneath the pair it was wearing when the former chief was swept out to retirement by a big wave of controversy, and now everybody can see the exposure and awkward fumbling, and it’s kind of shame.

HPD has been without a chief for going on five months now. Almost half a year. Certainly the acting chief is holding down the day-to-day, but doesn’t somebody need to be making strategic plans for the future? Doesn’t somebody need to go to meetings, set up meetings, talk to the feds and the prosecutors and community leaders and be able to say, “We see this trend happening and we plan to put these measures in place” and all the things executives say in meetings?

There was ample time to figure out how to find a new chief before it needed a new chief. Large organizations have succession plans. As it is, the department is hanging out there in the breeze.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.