Ciao meets aloha with Festa Italiana 2025
Festa Italiana, Hawaii's premier Italian festival, is scheduled for March 21 and 22. The festivities will begin with the Passaporto Italiano VIP Experience on Friday, March 21, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at Velocity Honolulu.
Merriman's Hawaii offers luxurious dining and sustainably packaged wines
This exclusive, 21+ event offers attendees the chance to savor curated Italian dishes from Honolulu's top chefs, complemented by a selection of Italian wines, beers and cocktails, all set amidst luxury Italian automobiles.
Hawaiʻi ranks in top 2 for divorce, depression, more: New report
The celebration continues with the Festa Italiana in Strada Street Festival on Saturday, March 22, from 4:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at Mother Waldron Park in the vibrant Kaka'ako District.This free, family-friendly event features over 20 food vendors offering authentic Italian and Italian-inspired dishes, including pasta, pizza, porchetta sandwiches, cannoli, tiramisu and sausage & peppers.
Attendees can also enjoy Italian wines, beers and traditional spirits available for purchase, along with live entertainment and street performers.
Check out more news from around Hawaii
For more details and ticket information, please visit Festa Italiana Hawaii.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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San Francisco Chronicle
a day ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Francis Ford Coppola said George Lucas made him direct ‘The Godfather,' says America may fall like ancient Rome
Before he broke through with 'American Graffiti,' before he became an instant legend with ' Star Wars,' George Lucas became the unsung hero of another American classic that changed cinema history: ' The Godfather.' Or so claims the director of that 1972 masterpiece, Francis Ford Coppola. 'Everyone turned 'The Godfather' down, all the wonderful directors of the time,' the 86-year-old filmmaker told an enthusiastic crowd at the Palace of Fine Arts. 'So they tried to hire me. Here was the logic: 'One, he's Italian-American, so if it gets a lot of flack, they'll blame him. Two, there's a script that wasn't very good, and he's become a successful screenwriter, so he'll rewrite the script. And three, he's young and has two kids and a pregnant wife, so we can just push him around and order him to do everything we want.' 'Well, I turned it down. I had a young apprentice, and we had come together to start a company (San Francisco-based American Zoetrope). His name was George Lucas. He said, 'We can't turn it down, we have no money, the sheriff is going to chain our door because we haven't made the taxes on the thing. You have to do it, we have no other alternatives.' I said, 'You're right George.'' Billed as 'An Evening with Francis Ford Coppola and 'Megalopolis' Screening,' the event in Coppola's adopted hometown on Friday, Aug. 1, finished off a six-city tour designed to create more awareness and discussion of his 2024 $120 million self-financed dream project that tanked at the box office. Coppola was certainly generous with his time. The event lasted nearly four hours, with a screening of the two-hour, 18-minute film followed by a 90-minute discussion with the filmmaker simply sitting in a chair pontificating on a wide range of issues while occasionally taking questions from the audience. Topics included anthropology, history, societal evolution, and the philosophy of human innovation and creativity. ' Megalopolis,' which likens the fall of Rome to the current state of American politics and culture, is informed by the development of human civilization over 300,000 years, noting that patriarchal societies began with the domestication of horses. So, not your typical film discussion. Still, the audience who paid prices ranging from $61-$205 and mostly filled the 1,000-seat venue were enthusiastic and attentive, giving the auteur standing ovations as he took the stage and as he left it. However, there was a small but steady stream of people who began leaving about 45 minutes in. One topic that hits close to home for Coppola is homelessness in San Francisco. The director noted that he founded a nonprofit, North Beach Citizens, in 2001 to help the unhoused find housing, food, and services because he felt the city wasn't doing enough. 'I used to walk to work and see these homeless people sleeping, and people would call them human garbage. What, are we crazy?' said Coppola, who added that the solution to most of society's problems has to be addressed first at the community level, inverting the top-down aspect of federal government. Coppola did, of course, give insights to his films, from the two 'Godfathers' to the San Francisco-shot, Watergate-era thriller ' The Conversation ' (1974); the troubled production of the Vietnam 'Apocalypse Now' (1979); and 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992), his biggest non-'Godfather' box office hit.\ And, of course, 'Megalopolis.' Although he did not address various controversies about its production, including on-set inappropriate behavior (and no one asked about it, either), he believes it serves a warning about America and yet provides hope for the future. America will get out of its mess, Coppola said, as today's generation of children matures. 'Look at the world around us right now, wars all over the place, and the most horrible thing of all children being killed,' Coppola said. 'The kids being killed in Sudan or in the Middle East, someone was gonna find a cure for cancer or write the most gorgeous music ever been written or make a great film. So to me the children are precious. They are our future.' For now, Coppola refuses to release 'Megalopolis' digitally, content to tour with the movie for special one-off screenings. The film only made $14 million globally after its release in September. He did acknowledge there eventually will be a Blu-ray, and the man known for re-editing his past films teased the audience with an alternate cut of the film. 'Right now I'm working on 'Megalopolis Unbound,'' he said to laughter, and ended the night.
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Los Angeles Times
‘Everyone is feeling it': This book nails millennial alienation
Emily Hunt Kivel's book is unlike any novel you will read this year, a story about millennial angst that is also a bewitching fable. Evie Cavallo, Kivel's protagonist, is a 20-something mid-level graphic designer at a New York ad agency who loses her rented apartment and finds herself cast adrift. Landing in a fictional backwater town in rural Texas called Gulluck, Evie discovers a hidden gift for shoemaking and finds herself welcomed into an eccentric community of fellow cobblers. 'Dwelling' is social commentary wrapped into a delightful allegory about identity, work, ritual and tradecraft. I chatted with Kivel about her debut novel, and how, despite its fantastical elements, 'Dwelling' nails our present cultural moment. (Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to whose fees support independent bookstores.) I started reading your book thinking, 'Ugh, a polemic about the housing crisis,' and by the end of the book I was deeply moved by Evie's journey. That's what I wanted. I wanted readers to think they were reading one thing and to end up at the end thinking, 'Where the f— was I?' I wanted to write a book that changed shape and form while in the reader's hands. Was that the original intention going in? I don't know if I started out with the intention of writing the book I did, but I certainly didn't want to write a maudlin dystopian commentary on the housing crisis. I did want to touch on this feeling of complete instability that millennials in particular are feeling, but also I think everyone is feeling it to some extent — this incredible lack of stability, and alienation. Evie, maybe, kind of wants to be a creative, but instead she blossoms by learning a craft that involves using her hands and her head, not a computer. I think there's a parallel between finding a craft and coming into your own, and in that way, I think it's a fairly earnest description of what it feels like to discover yourself through something that you're passionate about. Evie goes from being an insular character who's living a self-absorbed life, because that's what society wants us to do, to living a life that's actually very generous. The book takes on the contours of a fable. Did you read fables in preparation? I read a lot of fables just to keep myself motivated and interested during the writing process. One of the primary texts that I found very helpful was Italo Calvino's translation of Italian folk tales. It brought me back to this kind of irreverent but weirdly earnest and enchanted quality that I wanted to create in the book. Unmoored from her prior life, Evie finds her identity in Texas. I think this is something a lot of people are struggling with, not just Millennials. We are asking: Who are we? What is our purpose in life? I think we're meant to feel relatively valueless in our society right now. The economy wants us to feel that way, and so I think what Evie is doing is finding value in herself and giving the middle finger to the version of society that she was living in. The key element of Evie's new life is this robust community that welcomes her. I wanted another world to open up to Evie, a world that's oriented towards life rather than the self. The book is really the story of how to find a home, and what makes a home. Community is the only actual way to resist the forces that we have in our society that are alienating us from our work, friends and family. In the acknowledgments, you thank the UCLA Writing Extension program. What was that experience like for you? One of the most formative experiences of my life was the UCLA Extension. I went to UC Santa Barbara and was absolutely miserable. and so I graduated early and moved to L.A. I was finding community and portals into another world at the Extension, which is available to everyone. I was writing alongside such a diverse array of people. I finally started to feel like a writer there. I took classes with Lou Matthews, who I think is the heart of the program in many ways. Nathan Smith thinks 'There's No Going Back: The Life and Work of Jonathan Demme,' Davd M. Stewart's biography of the late film director Jonathan Demme, contains 'inconsistent, often abridged, treatments of Demme's films and what messages to glean from a long view of the director.' Hamilton Cain weighs in on Ed Park's new collection of stories 'An Oral History of Atlantis,' submitting that 'We're complicit in his fiction … the act of reading a jumble of synapses in our brains, spinning in all directions like a spray of bullets.' Chuck Hogan's 'The Carpool Detectives,' about four moms who solved a murder, is a 'true crime mystery that reads like a novel,' according to Diane Garrett. And finally, Stuart Miller has a chat with 'Jeopardy' host Ken Jennings about his new book, 'The Complete Kennections.' Located just steps away from the ocean, Manhattan Beach literary mainstay Pages, A Bookstore is one of L.A.'s best indie shops. We chatted with general manager Jeff Resnik about what his customers are buying right now. What's flying off the shelves at the moment? Some of our recent top sellers include 'The Ghostwriter' by Julie Clark, 'Run for the Hills' by Kevin Wilson, 'The Names' by Florence Knapp, 'It's Only Drowning' by David Litt and 'Tilt' by Emma Pattee. Do you find that, because you are near the ocean, people tend to look for beach reads during this time of year? Definitely. Being so close to the ocean, we get a steady stream of readers looking for something light and enjoyable to bring to the beach. 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USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Trump White House ballroom: A look back at Grand Ballroom Trump built at Mar-a-Lago
Twenty years after the opening of the Grand Ballroom at President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Trump announced another new ballroom on a grand scale — this time at the White House. The Trump Administration on July 31 said construction on a $200 million, roughly 90,000-square-foot White House State Ballroom will begin in September. The project will be paid for by donors including Trump and have a seating capacity of 650 people, the White House said. The U.S. Secret Service will oversee security features of the new structure, officials said. "President Trump is a builder at heart and has an extraordinary eye for detail," Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said in a White House news release. "The President and the Trump White House are fully committed to working with the appropriate organizations to preserving the special history of the White House while building a beautiful ballroom that can be enjoyed by future Administrations and generations of Americans to come." The style and architecture of the exterior of the new ballroom will be "almost identical" to the rest of the White House, Trump officials said. The work will include major renovations to the White House's East Wing, where presidents have historically held large receptions. Trump has frequently complained the White House lacks a proper large-scale ballroom for entertaining. While the outside of the new ballroom at what is known as the people's house will feature the same iconic styling as the rest of the property, renderings released by the White House show that the interior style is undoubtedly reminiscent of the Versailles-inspired Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom that was completed at Mar-a-Lago in late 2004 and had its grand opening in 2005. Here's what to know about Mar-a-Lago's large ballroom and its history. When was Mar-a-Lago completed, and what are some of its features? Construction on Mar-a-Lago began in 1922. The house was designed for cereal heiress Marjorie Meriweather Post in the Spanish-Moorish style by architect Joseph Urban, who also designed the nearby Bath & Tennis Club and the Paramount Theatre farther north in Palm Beach. When completed in 1927 on its 17-acres, the crescent-shaped main house had 115 rooms, with 58 bedrooms and 25 bathrooms. Urban drew on classical designs, looking to the Thousand Winged Ceiling at the Accademia in Venice as inspiration for the 34-foot ceiling in Mar-a-Lago's living room, and the Palazzo Chigi in Rome as inspiration for the hand-painted ceiling in the dining room, according to a 2002 Daily News report about Mar-a-Lago's history. After a major redecoration in 1956, Post added Mar-a-Lago's White and Gold Ballroom as a venue to host to her popular charity events and the square dances for which she was so well-known, according to the 2002 profile. She also added three bomb shelters during the Korean War. What has Trump added to Mar-a-Lago? Trump paid a reported $10 million for Mar-a-Lago in 1985: $5 million for the property itself, an additional $3 million for the furnishings, plus $2 million for the beachfront stretch that years prior was sold to a neighbor. When Mar-a-Lago's club opened in 1995, it had amenities such as a spa, tennis courts and nine-hole golf course. In 2000, construction began on the $3 million beachfront project at Mar-a-Lago that added a new swimming pool, a pair of two-story buildings with cabanas and a snack bar, a spa, fountains, and ramps and stairs down to the beach, the Daily News reported in 2002. In 2004, Trump received approval from Palm Beach to tear down an aging slat house on Mar-a-Lago's property to build a kitchen to help serve the estate's new ballroom, which opened in 2005. Over the years, some of Trump's plans for Mar-a-Lago have been shot down by state and town officials, including a proposal for a 120-slip marina and, before opening the club, a concept that would have subdivided Mar-a-Lago's acreage to build estate homes. What about Mar-a-Lago's Grand Ballroom? The Daily News first reported in 1996 that the National Trust for Historic Preservation was reviewing plans for a new ballroom or expansion of the dance pavilion at Mar-a-Lago. Because Mar-a-Lago is a national landmark, all major changes must be reviewed and approved by the trust. "We're just looking art different concepts, different ideas. It's very preliminary," Trump told the Daily News in 1996. "We need a ballroom because of the success of Mar-a-Lago. It has been so successful that the crowds are potentially hazardous to the facility, and the ballroom could remedy this problem." Mar-a-Lago's team "did a lot of shuttle diplomacy with the National Trust for Historic Preservation," said Wes Blackman, who was Mar-a-Lago's project manager for the ballroom. The trust has easements at Mar-a-Lago, including two to protect the views to the east and west, and one to protect the tree line along the south property line, he said. After Mar-a-Lago opened as a club in 1995, the events coordinator at the time brought Blackman and Trump to the ballroom built by Post and said it would not be able to meet the demand for large events . "There isn't room to put them that is weatherproof," Blackman recalled the coordinator saying. When the ballroom was officially pitched to the town in 1999, it was set to replace a large white tent that Mar-a-Lago had temporarily erected to host large events on the property, Blackman said. Because the structures could not be permanent, air conditioner compressors for events in the tent were placed on trailers, and temporary bathrooms were brought in, he said. The ballroom was "a very large building," he said, with records showing that it was 17,000 square feet, larger than the 11,000-square-foot ballroom built by Post. West Palm Beach-based architect Rick Gonzalez of REG Architects was the lead designer on the project. Blackman said he and Gonzalez took a lot of trips to Washington, D.C., and the trust visited the property as well, as they worked to finalize a design the trust would approve. Together with Gonzalez, Blackman said Mar-a-Lago's team "chased that building all over the property" with the trust until the location was settled. "It's in a hollow, a low spot, and it's behind the wall, and you really have a hard time even knowing the building is there when you pass the property," Blackman said. Before finalizing the architectural plans, Trump sent Gonzalez and Blackman to New York to meet with famed architect Philip Johnson, whose Glass House in Connecticut remains an iconic example of the International Style of design. Johnson, who died in January of 2005, declined to take on the task of designing the new ballroom, which was essentially "locked into the Mediterranean revival framework" because of the rest of the property, Blackman said. "He wasn't into that," Blackman said. "He was in his 'monster phase,' which were a lot of oblique angles, and he wasn't into having to fit into a mold like that." Trump also asked Blackman to consult with another friend: crooner Paul Anka, whom Trump hoped would weigh in on the new ballroom's acoustics. "I did call him," Blackman said. "It was a unique experience." He added that because Trump had already made the decision to have marble floors in the ballroom: "There's nothing you can do with that. It's gonna be a reflective surface," Blackman said of Anka's advice. Trump was adamant that the new ballroom needed to be larger than the 15,000-square-foot Ponce de Leon Ballroom at The Breakers Palm Beach resort, Blackman said. While that was part of the inspiration, he said that Trump also wanted to bring the annual International Red Cross Ball to Mar-a-Lago. Trump was successful, and one of the highlights of Palm Beach's social season soon moved to Mar-a-Lago's Grand Ballroom. "We always thought that it helped getting the National Trust to approve something first, and then that kind of gave us the 'Good Housekeeping' certificate that we could cash in with the Landmarks Commission," Blackman said of the town's approval process. While the project to build the new ballroom received approval from Palm Beach's council in October of 1999, the timeline was pushed back several times because of construction of a new Royal Park Bridge, the Daily News reported in September 2002. The project received final approval from Palm Beach's landmarks board in April of 2002, and construction began the next year, with the building permit issued in August of 2003, Blackman said. While his 10-year tenure with Mar-a-Lago ended soon after receiving the permit, Blackman returned to work on other projects at Mar-a-Lago, including the ballroom's kitchen and the massive flag pole that led to a legal battle between Trump and Palm Beach. What does the Grand Ballroom look like? The exterior of the ballroom building, which is on the property's south side between the main house and Southern Boulevard, was designed by Gonzalez to mimic the Spanish-Moorish style of the rest of the estate, the Daily News reported at the time. But the ballroom's interior was designed with France in mind. The decor drew on Versailles, with shining marble floors, intricate gold leaf designs, crystal chandeliers and soaring 40-foot coffered ceilings. The Daily News reported at the time that the gold leaf alone carried a $7 million price tag, and the overall project cost stood at $35 million. "I modeled the interior after Versailles, and there is nothing like it in the United States," Trump said of the ballroom in a 2005 interview with Florida Design magazine. When it opened, guests were reportedly awestruck by the 17 Stras chandeliers, each with a cost of $250,000 and imported from Czechoslovakia. The first major event in the new ballroom was Mar-a-Lago's annual New Year's Eve Gala to ring in 2005, according to news reports. From a Dec. 31, 2004, Daily News report: "A 1,200-square-foot loggia leads into the two-story foyer through a series of Palladian-style mahogany doors with wrought-iron borders. A staircase leads to a 45-foot observation tower. For New Year's Eve, there will be stages at opposite ends of the ballroom, one for the dance orchestra and one for headliner Vanessa Williams." The next event: a grand party to mark the marriage of Trump to his then-fiancée, Melania Knauss. Their marriage ceremony was Jan. 22, 2005, at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea, and celebrants then made the short drive to Mar-a-Lago for the reception. Anka, a guest at the wedding, treated guests to two songs at the reception: "Diana," and a version of the song "Lady Is a Tramp" that Anka dubbed "Donald is a Trump." USA Today contributed to this report. Kristina Webb is a reporter for Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at kwebb@ Subscribe today to support our journalism.
