Hot Markets: Love for sale
- Leilani
- Oct 2, 2023
- 4 min read
The Covid pandemic brought restaurants and markets to their knees with businesses shuttering from consumer withdrawal and fear. Some food-based businesses managed to work through it, setting up take-out and delivery services, or setting up outdoor services. And now with AI in our midst, and our future workplace and workforce more uncertain than ever, it’s a good idea to take a pause and re-evaluate existing markets – what works, what doesn’t, and what they might look like in the future. There are so many different iterations and scales of markets, the discussion of this could probably fill a book. But rather than write a treatise, I’ll write a brief article featuring a type of market that I find successful or unique in its approach. It may not address potential calamities, and let’s hope it doesn’t have to, but it may be inspirational fodder for burgeoning market makers.
In the small sugar cane town of Honokaa along the Hamakua coast, there is a mom shop (I don’t ever see a pop, so I’m not going to credit one) that seems to have been around for decades. Unassuming in its display and offering, Rebecca’s Farm Fresh sells an array of veggies that caters to an Asian and local clientele. There is a large table loaded with fresh vegetables, like bunches of ong choy, mounds of bitter melon, and boxes filled with an assortment of tropical fruit. On the far end is a wall of sundries, showcasing soy sauce, coconut milk, and toilet paper.
At the counter, some nice homemade offerings of suman malagkit, or Filipino steamed coconut rice cakes, and banana bread. And then on the left-hand side, behind a low row of sweet onions and purple potatoes, she sells something else. Something extraordinary.
On a tall shelf, above the bunches of apple bananas, there’s a collection of objects that I think are some of the coolest folk art produced on the Big Island. It could also be some of the coolest folk art produced anywhere in the world. Stacked in a haphazard array are a cluster of paper model school buses, enough to fill up three rows of shelving, intricately hand-drawn in pen and colored in crayon. These buses are each individually measured, cut, inked and colored, and assembled with plan masking tape. As a graduate student making architectural models out of balsa wood, I know the effort and time these models required; the artist made great efforts to articulate not only the graphic components, but also the 3d quality of an actual bus. The dashboard, for example, is not flat, but has protrusions; the driver’s mirrors and the steel angles jut out just like on a real bus.
In awe, I took this 2-foot-long bus and brought it to the register to learn more about it and the artist. The older Filipino woman working the counter, who was also the owner of the shop, told me it was made by “her special boy.” She explained he was in his 30’s and that he is often at the library working on his models and that his name is Gilbert.
A week later, I had my first celebrity sighting of Gilbert, diligently cutting and taping a bus together. My friend and I sat in the same vicinity, while I rubber necked, peering in his direction whenever I thought he wasn’t looking. But he noticed, and he’s not shy to introduce himself. My friend and I told him how much we admired his models, he thanked us, and shortly went on his way. It was a brief encounter but had the same effect as the time I ran into Muhammed Ali outside a restaurant, I was a little gob smacked to say the least. I didn’t get the chance to ask him why he made buses, and maybe of course there is no clear answer except that he wants to and it’s his art. But I did get to see him in action, a pleasure and an honor to see beauty being born.
Which brings me back to what makes Rebecca’s Farm Fresh market so unique. The juxtaposition of art and produce is unexpected, the quality of the work, impressive. But it’s the narrative created between the mother and the son that is so refreshing, sincere, and touching. We all know what it’s like to love family, and here, a mother’s love for her son is on display. It makes one want to stay a little longer, to look around a little closer. A market selling the love of family, inadvertently.
Gilbert's Art Models:
Rebecca's Farm Fresh
45-3454 Mamane St, Honokaa, HI 96727
Buy a model bus and help make Gilbert a folk art star! All proceeds will go to help with Gilbert's care and the Hawaii Autism Foundation (minus shipping & handling)
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