Ukulele Festival 2008 ( acabo'oe view )

Well, it's over and done with, and what a day.

Today my wife and son and I went down to the 38th annual Ukulele Festival at Kapiolani Park in Waikiki.
It was a really great show, with manny wonderful performers including, but not limmitted to

James Hill
Otah San
Brian Tolentino
Del Beazly
Kelly Boi DeLima ( and his daughters )
Roy Sakuma ( of coarse )
and over 800 of the Sakuma studio's students.

What a wonderful day.
The mos interesting performance was when James Hill sat down on a stool, layed his Ukulele on his lap, and began playing a song by tapping chopsticks on the strings. It was kinnda like he was playing a lap steele guitar, but different. Very interesting.

I got more signatures on my Ukulele too.
I got James Hill
Kelly Boi DeLima
and a very talented lady named Paula ( whoes last name I didn't hear. if any one knows it, please tell me. )

I was wearing my G String Ukulele Co. shirt, and I met up with Fred, Aaron, and Dino, all from Ukulele Underground. Each of them got a G String Sticker.
Sorry to those of you that were there that I didn't come across, maybe next time.

Below are some pics. Hope you like them.

Can't wait for next year.
Aloha
Bob

Fellow UU members Bob, Fred, and Aaron


Fellow UU members Dino, and Bob


G String Ukulele Co. employees
Bob, Josh, Stephen, and Gavin ( my co workers )


This is when I got my pic taken with James Hill.

Awesome pics! Wish I could have been there!

So you pass out alot of G-String stickahs o'wot?

Cool photos, thanks for letting those in far away countries taste a bit of that miniguitar-spirit. Ukuleles are so much more fun if you can enjoy them with other people outside, instead of sitting alone under the airco... oops.
Can you tell a little bit more anecdotes about what happened, did you exchange T-shirts with James Hill, find out any trade secrets from rival companies, did the infamous performer known as the "Ukulele swallower" show up, what was the best food, tell us tell us!

Well, first of all, it was HOT. Sweat like a pig HOT.

Anyway, the atmosphere was ukulele. Everything ukulele. Families with tents, ukulele cases everywhere, bar-b-que grills blazing, picnicing, partying and ukulele sounds everywhere. When I first got there, we just took a seat off to the side and I immediately went to look for the ukulele giveawya sign ups. Me and my family arrived around 10:00...unlike a friend I ran into who got there at 5:00 am. OMG. Well, I have to say they gave away a lot of ukes away. I mean A LOT of ukes. Ukes to the kids who were playing in the festival as well as the audience. I signed up for drawings at 2 booths....the Puapua ukulele shop booth (located in Waikiki) and the Kanilea booth. Other booths there were the G-string booth that had a large plastic bin with 3 decks of cards scattered inside. if you pulled the Ace of Spades, you won the uke. Other cards gave consolation prizes. The Koaloha booth had a slot machine thing....if you hit the jackpot, you won a uke. other combinations gave consolation prizes. Kala had a booth there too with tons of uke on display and that's all there was...displays. I had found out later in the day that the booths were not selling any ukulele. It supposedly had something to do with the businessess not being able to profit at a non-profiit function. I don't know if they were taking any orders, but I would think they would. On the other hand.....when an 8-string G-string Koa uke is priced at $1040.00....ouch.....who carries that much money! I took a G-string catalog cause that is probably the closest I will get to one!

One of the best consumables there was the shave ice! I had Aaron and Fred stand in the long line for the G-string ukulele giveaway while I picked up some shave ice. That was awesome. My wife had a Caramel Frappucino from Starbucks for $2.00 or $3.00...i forget. My kids all wanted shave-ice, hot dog, nachos.....man what an eating fest. I'm broke now! hahaha. I ended up have a beef stew plate. pretty good for $5.50. Probably could of saved money going to BK, but eh, I think part of the proceeds went to the festival. There was also booths selling the Festival T-shirts and cd's of the artists peforming at the festival. I picked up a Manoa DNA cd and a Holunape cd. $15.00 each.......not bad. The main reason me and my family were there cause my 11yo son was part of the festival. They were the youngest kids playing.....i think my son took maybe 8-10 classes and ended up performing. They were pretty good. Hopefully he dont get too good and be better than me! hahahahaha.

Me and my family stayed all the way till the end in hopes one of us would win a uke, but no dice. It was a very nice day. It was the first one that I have ever been too. I have some video of the performers but I have to go burn them on disc and I'm going to let Aaron edit them. I hope this gives everyone a little feel of what went on at the festival.

Are those G-String tee shirts for sale? I'd want one or two.

Thanks for sharing those great pix! We definitely have to start planning a pilgramage to Hawaii!!!

Dino pretty much covered it.
I remember lots of great performances. We were always having to compete with the sun being sooooo bright though. We would have to move often to get back in the shade of the trees overhead.

As far as funny anecdotes....
O I got one.
When I first saw fred at the place, I went over to say hello. I then noticed the guy with the cam next to fred was aaron. He was filming the performances, and when he saw me, he just turned the cam on to me. I was totally unprepared. i think I said " Uhh...aloha Ukulele Underground, I'm Bob....uhhh acabo'oe on the forums, and uhhh yeah."
I felt really dumb, but o well.

If aaron puts that in, u guys will c.

As far as if the G String shirts are for sale, I don't know.
I think that those were just a few that were extra from the ones we wear. My boss orders them a few at a time.
Best way to find out would be to go to the web site and e mail Derek Shimizu ( my boss )

Aloha Bob

acabooe said:

As far as funny anecdotes...When...then...he just...I felt really dumb

Click to expand...

I love it!

But why isn't MGM anywhere in the pics? Rivalling companies, come near my booth and I slit your strings? :music:
Or was that a whole different festival? I can't keep track anymore Great pics though, I wonder if the vids by Aaron will be made viewable for us.

wow, great photos! thanks for sharing. that looks like it was a lot of fun.

UkeNinja said:

I love it!

But why isn't MGM anywhere in the pics? Rivalling companies, come near my booth and I slit your strings? :music:
Or was that a whole different festival? I can't keep track anymore Great pics though, I wonder if the vids by Aaron will be made viewable for us.

Click to expand...

MGM was there, but was just sitting in the KoAloha booth (right next to the GString booth.)

And I know that Kanilea was selling their ukes. They had 14 custom Ukulele Festival 08 commemorative edition ukes. If they offered 20% off retail on the tenor sound monster, with a free case and tshirt we really would have purchased it right there...unfortunately it was only 15% off...thinking back on it, maybe we should have tried negotiating for the $45 difference.