See you on 4th of July

808 ID will have a booth at the 4th of July craft fair in Volcano (Cooper Center), so if you’re headed up mauka, please stop by and say hello. I’ll include some teasers here.

Merchandise site is up

Etsy store front

The merchandise site is finally up. You can visit him at http://808id.etsy.com

All merchandise is customizable, so weʻre figuring it out. Still learning.

Mo’o Boy

Some shots from Keahi’s hoike performance. He’s doing the dance about the mo’o in Panaewa? Not sure.

808 iD blog site now open

808id.wordpress.com

With the sales during Merrie Monarch, Ahi’s finally on a roll, so he set up his new blog site, 808iD, and the merchandise site will be set up soon. Exciting times. Now if only he could concentrate on his trig and English. It’s still under construction, so don’t expect much, but it’s up.

Ahi’s bad day turned upside down

Ahi had a no good, very bad, horrible, devastating day, and all before 8:30 a.m.

Bzzzz – my iPhone starts vibrating in first period. I have an email. I quickly check – KS Connect – Isaiah Ikeda has a progress report from E. Truesdale (English). I quickly text Ahi – F in English. Missing historical fiction essay = F. His reply, “oh snap, I forgot to turn it in.”

BZZZZ – another email on my iphone. KS Connect. Isaiah Ikeda has received a progress report from trigonometry. WHATTT?  Nothing about missing work, just that he needs to prepare better. Text again. “Trig too?” No response.

Meanwhile, Ken is at the Butler Building setting up Ahi’s display of shoes and hats in Grandma Hughes’ Merrie Monarch crafts booth. He sends me the picture above at 9. Ken’s message: “cool huh?” Response, yeah, cool. 2 progress reports already this morning, NOT COOL.

Ahi, meanwhile, is not in texting range anymore. He’s leaving school to play baseball in Kona, so maybe he went to one class today.

Did I mention that Ahi has dog shit luck? That when I was pregnant with him, we won these outrageously fabulous prizes from random contests on the radio? It’s uncanny how his bad days can change to good days just by the random act of his moving forward. So on to the rest of the day.

While Ken was watching Ahi in Kona, I was visiting mom at the craft fair after work. I told Ken he really shouldn’t waste all that gas to go to Kona because Ahi’s not going to play. They played a hack team on Monday and he saw ZERO playing time. The game before that, about the same. So why should Ken go 200 miles out of his way to watch Ahi sit on the bench? Remember dog shit? Ahi got put back in the rotation as DH again. Not only that, he went 3 for 3 with one triple and two RBIs. He even stole a base again (his speed is the reason he was on the varsity team from freshman year, but he hasn’t really had opportunities to steal). Of course once he stole the base they put a pinch runner in for him.

Meanwhile, when I get to the craft fair, Isaac is talking to a girl and her mom and he hands them over to me. They are buying Ahi’s hat. Cool. They give me $25 in cash, I give it to mom, and she gives it back to me with another wad of cash. “Here’s Ahi’s money from sales today.” WHAT? I look at the rack (see photo above). No hats. Isaac sold the last hat. I look again. One pair of shoes is sold too. Whoa. If he didn’t just start making hats, sell one early and keep one for himself, he probably would have earned more than $125 today. Now that’s dog shit turned into fertilizer.

New merchandise

Getting ready for Merrie Monarch so we went to Walmart for shoes and there were no shoes! Zero. Freaking out. So we went to the mall to look for alternatives. Found some blank hats at Lids, so experimenting with the two surfaces. Going with the canvas one with the 808id logo because the surface holds the color better than the puffy one.

Prom prep

We finally got a weekend free, just before Ahi headed off for Maui to do a presentation at the Native Hawaiian Educational Conference, so we quickly made our way to Love & Lace to rent a suit for prom. Here I thought it was the end of April, but it’s more like 3 weeks away, so I’m glad we decided to go.

Ahi wanted a pinstripe jacket, so this is the one. The funny part is after the lady did the measurements, Ahi’s claim to fame is that he is the size of the manequins (just a little shorter). He also learned from her that he must wear his pants above and NOT below his hips. That makes him a solid 32, and not a 34 which is the size he insists on buying for his surf shorts.

Of course kua’aina buggah that he is, he wears shoes, but no socks. Hard to try on shiny shoes without socks. He also learned that he pulls the pake side of our family – no wide shoes for him.

New Name and a General Excise License

Two things happened to complicate the “art.” First, dad found a MySpace website of a NY tattoo store named 808Ink. No connection to Hawaii and ugly tattoos, so changing name. The new name is 808iD. It has to do with knowing who you are, your kupuna, your ohana. It also stands for Isaiah’s designs, and indigenous designs.

The second thing was my friend found a local website with shoes for sale, and one of the shoes looked like something I made. So, time to get serious and get my general excise license, so I did. Mom and I are now owners of 808iD.

Dad’s doing some research and maybe this summer we’ll have an official website up and running, but first I have to make it through hoike, baseball season, track and the end of school.

These are my first shoes I tried with colors. I’m practicing my Japanese side. I also made some wedges for mom’s red hat luncheon. Mom found some cork wedges at Ross. She wanted pink sakura, so I used black sharpies and permanent color pens. Mom did the coloring.

Ahi adds another pin to his varsity letter

A not so brief history of the strangeness that is Ahi fish’s sports life:

Soccer – played since he was 4 1/2 (not an all-star player, but continued to play – freshman year – jv starting goalie, varsity backup goalie; sophomore year – varsity left fullback; junior year – refused to play soccer)

Baseball - played since he was 5 (not an all-star player, cried all the way until majors, begging me to let him quit) Freshman year – athletic director released him from the varsity soccer team w/o the soccer coach’s ok so that Ahi would have time to play JV baseball (he was released right before the soccer team left for states), was one of 2 freshmen picked up to play varsity baseball that year; sophomore year – JV benchwarmer, varsity courtesy runner, 2nd year at states, all star team for RBI – played in Houston this summer.

Basketball = played until he was 10, when mom said, “you know what, you’re not progressing, let’s quit” – and he did.

Volleyball – started playing in 8th grade, freshman year JV volleyball middle blocker and hitter (short as he is he can jump – inherited from mom); sophomore year – volleyball moves to spring and butts up against baseball. He continues to play in the community and sometimes when he can fit it in, plays Haili tournament.

Cross Country – started sophomore year when fall season no longer was volleyball. He’s a middle of the pack runner – when he’s not hurt he can easily go under 19 minutes for 3 miles, but has to push to get close to 17 minutes. He is plagued by lower back, knee and ankle injuries (also inherited from mom).

Track – started in his sophomore year as a way to do 4 sports in one year (butts up against baseball, but track offers 6 am practices so he goes to school early). Middle distance runner – he hasn’t hit his potential yet, but likes the 800 and 400 but 400 is a full on sprint for him and he’s not a sprinter. Would love to be a jumper, but can’t fit in enough practice time to get the technique. He should probably go longer than 800, but LOVES the 4 x 400.

Cheerleading – started in his junior year while he was waiting for baseball to start. He loves to do stunts and likes working out at the gym where he can work on his tucks and flips. The gals quickly took him in, invited him to their Christmas party and last night, he did his first official JV and varsity basketball game. He got his own megaphone and he got to do stunts and one-ups. (He lifts one girl solo – he should have tried to bulk up more – the dead lift from the shoulders up is brutal).

Next year? He doesn’t want to paddle or bowl or golf or do air riflery. He would never do judo (his girlfriend is nationally ranked), and he looks scrawny but he’s got a heavy frame so he would get killed in wrestling.

Tennis? Nope. During baseball season. I think there’s nothing else he can do. Maybe he’ll go back to soccer, or maybe he’ll go back to hula. There’s always excitement at our house.

Wait until Ponolani moves to middle school next year – I think he’s going to create a whole different path.

16 Bars

This is a repost now that we moved blog sites. Ahi was doing a slam poetry competition at one of the local stores in November. He always made it through to the next round, but at the semi finals, he had to go to Honolulu for a leadership workshop, so he couldn’t continue.

This first video is an original poem on any topic Ahi slam video

He wrote on the spoken word.

The next round was a topic chosen by the promoter of the contest. Each contestant got the topic on Monday and they had to write their piece, memorize and deliver it on Saturday.

He had to write about the store, Wiwo’ole, but wiwo’ole in Hawaiian also means fearless. Slam 2