I found that when in Hawaii, you often feel the urge to go to ABC Stores - The Stores With Aloha. The urge is best fought off
by examining your spending thus far on your trip, and thinking about the fact that you owe no one anything, and that this gift-giving that goes on in your circle of friends is really a bit much. But then you see darling little bags of macadamia nuts or some decently priced and kind of cute t-shirts, and in you go.

My daughter and son only liked the ABC stores because of their ubiquity. They chose to shop elsewhere. Like at Billabong. (Please note: they prefer the one on Kalakaua.) They are really little fashion hounds, and in my son's case he feels the need to try everything on, compare products, and talk with the salespeople.

We tried to buy him a t-shirt at the actual Monster Pipeline competition site, but he got in trouble with a vendor for putting his gnarly, sandy, dirty hands all over the merch, so we had to leave quickly. These are the retail life lessons everyone must learn, I suppose.

A week from today we were at the North Shore looking at monster mess and baking in the sun. Trying to decide whether or not to eat at Cholo's again. Heavy, heavy sigh.