But frankly, looking around the beer scene in Oahu, it doesn't seem like I'm the only one going through a fallow period. Two of the big beer-related things we've been looking forward to around here--the opening of the Honolulu Beerworks, and the opening of a Kaimuki-located craft beer bar by the people behind the incredible REAL: A Gastropub--are still not open. And there's no telling when they might come to fruition.
The last I heard about The Honolulu Beerworks was the post Tim Golden put up on Beer In Hawaii on January 17th. The title of that of post--"Honolulu Beerworks is Brewing!"--got a lot of people all excited. Finally, more than 6 months after the closing of Aloha Beer, we'd have a chance to drink ales and lagers brewed on Oahu without having to go to Gordon Biersch! (No offense to Gordon Biersch, their beer's are good, but it's not easy for me to get excited about a chain.) But... a month and a half later, and there's still no sign of when Honolulu Beerworks will be opening their doors. And then I went back and looked at the first in-depth piece Tim Golden wrote on the brewery, which was published in Honolulu Magazine last September, and saw that the estimated opening date at that time was November. Which means we're currently at least three months behind schedule.
November, it so happens, was also the planned opening month I'd heard about for REAL's new location in Kaimuki (which is gonna be called BREW'd). I heard that date back in August, when I'd decided to try to trick REAL owner Troy Terorotua into giving me a job. "Yeah, try contacting me again when the new location opens up. Oughta be in October or November," he told me. Well, yesterday I ate breakfast across the street from the storefront that BREW'd will hopefully be occupying sometime soon. They had the signs up, but as you'll see from the picture I snapped (which follows below), they've still got a long ways to go.
So, the two new beer places we've been eagerly anticipating here in Honolulu are both at least three months behind schedule, and there's no telling when they'll be opening up. Considering the astronomical cost of rent for business spaces here, delays of that sort seem like a potential threat to the viability of the businesses themselves. I mean, if you're paying tens of thousands of dollars in rent every month, then every month you aren't earning is a month you're building serious debt. And that sort of debt seems like it might be hard to deal with and still survive. (All of this is of course supposition on my part, and I'm an ignorant schmoe who's never owned a business of any sort, so take it all with a grain of salt.)
At first I was wondering if the delays were just examples of "Hawaii Time," in which nobody's in a hurry and everything takes ages longer than it's expected to. But a recent conversation with Bill Comerford, the owner of four of the Irish bars in Honolulu, clued me in that other factors might be involved. In our conversation, which turned into an anti-government rant by Bill (which is exactly what's happened to every conversation I've had with him), he told me that he'd been trying to get approval to open up the upstairs section of Anna O'Brien's pub for a year and a half, and that the city still hasn't granted it to him. So maybe the delay's for Honolulu Beerworks and BREW'd are city-related.
In any case, Honolulu still doesn't have locally-brewed beer, and Kaimuki still doesn't have it's new craft pub. People are getting thirsty--me especially.
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