First Fridays! In Honolulu

First time at first friday and lovin’ it. May day lei for sale, vendors and great food!

I just didn’t get it. I expected so much more, especially after seeing wonderful downtown events like the Night Markets and Eat The Street, but after three hours here I was still wondering when all the individual ‘parties’ at various bars, restaurants, and art venues would coalesce into one giant, lively event. Part of the problem I had was that there was so much dead space between the venues that the lively spirit in one area faded before reaching another. Based on what others said, maybe if I’d waited another hour or two then things would’ve finally reached critical mass? For a party, there seemed to be too few people, too few bands (especially outdoors, where there was only one), and as I mentioned, too much dead space. (The few bands I did see and hear played a variety of music, depending on the venue, which was nice. A band called Streetlight Cadence — four guys singing, playing a jury-​rigged «standup cello,» a violin, a guitar, an accordion, and a jury-​rigged drum and tambourine [which the accordion played with his feet while keeping up with his primary instrument also] — was particularly good and drew a huge crowd to the street corner where they played for a long while.) For an arts festival, there also seemed to be far too little art; what was there was interesting and covered a variety of mediums and styles, but there just wasn’t all that much. I know most of Chinatown closes down by 4:00/5:00, but I guess I thought more places would be open for this event, lending light and sound, as well as art and culture, to the proceedings.

Wake up, wake up, get up! it’s the first Friday of the month…
When people ask me what is First Fridays. I tell them it’s just like a big block party that happens every first Friday of each month in the downtown/​chinatown area.
At this event, you will find that majority of the shops in the area anything from the bars, pubs, clubs, art galleries, etc. opens up in a big social gathering for everyone.
There’s a lot of space to walk around and discover the downtown side of Honolulu if you’re not familiar with area.
There’s a bunch of parking structures that you can park in too. Majority of them has flat rate pricing but it can get filled up real quick so you have to be on top of it. If it does fill up by the time you get here then there’s always street parking outside of the party zones.
It can get crazy here later in the evening. Majority of the crowd doesnt show up until 10:30-ish. So people… get here before the rest of the herd does. Fair warning!
Enjoy!