Don’t call Las Vegas the “Ninth Island.”
Or do. Whatever. If it makes you happy, then call it what you want.
But the term doesn’t work for several important reasons, which happen to be related to the reasons people from Hawaii love Las Vegas so much.
First, Las Vegas is not Hawaii. Obviously. It’s someplace different. When you live on an island, the longing for “someplace different” can well up like a craving, and Las Vegas offers novelty aplenty that is relatively easy to get to, just one direct flight away.
Part of the lure of Las Vegas, at least for some Hawaii people, is that it has certain familiar comforts of home, like rice at every meal and teriyaki that tastes like teriyaki. Yet the ways Vegas is like Hawaii are superficial and ersatz, like the way a theme park portrays New Orleans or Hogsmeade. There may be some of the signature foods available for purchase and a few recognizable motifs, but on the horizon are the telltale signs that you’re not in Ewa Beach anymore.
The palm trees are different. The birds are big and different. The air smells so different — that mix of cigarette smoke and creosote bushes and dry sand. The sky is bigger overhead and the water has a taste. Even when you’re just brushing your teeth the water tastes different than when you brush your teeth at home.
It’s enough like Hawaii to give the most homesick traveler a measure of comfort, but it’s not at all like Hawaii, which is the whole point of going there.
Well, and the gambling.
Hawaii doesn’t have gambling. Legalized gambling, that is.
The main reason for the Ninth Island moniker is because of the number of Hawaii residents who visit there, many on a regular basis, and the number of Hawaii people who have moved there to seek a more sustainable lifestyle and to buy the kind of house they could never afford in the islands.
Hawaii’s presence in Las Vegas may seem huge to people from Hawaii, but from the Las Vegas point of view, it’s hardly noticeable.
Census Bureau numbers show just 6.7% of the population of Las Vegas is Asian and 0.7% is Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. For the entire state of Nevada, those percentages are similar, though the data may not perfectly describe or include everyone from Hawaii who moved there. All your cousins may be moving to Las Vegas, but together, they’re a drop in the bucket.
Hawaii is unique in the world. Las Vegas is its own thing. Clearly there’s a connection between the two places, and for some, a deep devotion to both.
But Hawaii doesn’t get to 110 degrees. Hawaii doesn’t get so dry that your eyeballs feel like they’re going to crack open in your head. Vegas doesn’t have surf.
Love it all you want but it’s not a part of here. It’s there.
That’s the attraction.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
