This is an excerpt from the radio show Our Metropolis, a half-hour issues and affairs program that airs Tuesdays at 6 p.m. on KUNV 91.5-FM and is hosted by the Greenspun Media Group’s John Katsilometes. Tune in next week to hear the rest of this interview with UNLV Department of Hotel Management professor Katherine “K.P.” Pohndorf, co-founder of the Lei Day Festival, a celebration of Hawaiian and Polynesian culture, crafts and entertainment scheduled for May 3-4:
What is going to happen at this event?
It’s our 11th annual, and it’ll be in the California Hotel and Casino parking lot. It’s a big block party. We have nonstop entertainment onstage both days. It’s all free, open to the public, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. My first hula troupe will be onstage at 9 a.m. both days. … As a headliner, we have Tony Conjugacion, who is noteworthy as a hula instructor from Hawaii, and is also a fabulous recording artist and has been an entertainer for many years. We have wonderful Hawaiian food, like Portuguese hot malasadas, the very famous doughnut; then you can move over to the poi mochi, a fabulous treat from Hawaii; we’ll have Kahlua pig; lomi lomi salmon; garlic chicken; chicken on the spit; garlic chicken; barbecue ribs. We’re very multicultural. We’ll have Chinese food, we’ll have a Samoan group out there, cooking.
A lotta Spam, too?
Oh yes [laughs]. They have the Spam slot machines at the California, yes. I’d never seen that before. If you talk to Hormel, they’ll tell you that 50 percent of their Spam sales worldwide are to the state of Hawaii, which is unbelievable. In fact, if you come to Lei Day, the University of Hawaii Alumni Association—my alumni association—will be selling Spam mousibi, which is Spam on rice with a little seaweed wrapped around it. It is a delicacy for us. We love our Spam. It came from the war days, and you can do a lot with it. Fry it up with eggs, serve it for breakfast.
There are several thousand Hawaiians who have relocated to Las Vegas; probably at least 40,000 have moved here. What is the draw for that particular culture?
Something happened when the Mirage opened up in 1989, and people from Hawaii started coming here. The economy [in Hawaii] was suffering a little bit, the housing prices were so high. The first generations started moving here, then the next, then whole family groups. We just found the jobs we liked; it was easy to transition into hospitality jobs, to hotel jobs, here in Las Vegas. Those are absolutely the careers we seek. We probably have more Hawaiians [at UNLV] than they do at the University of Hawaii. … Word of mouth caused all of this, one generation leading to another generation leading to another generation. Our students are very successful, and they go back home and spread the word.