Rainy summer weekends in Seattle are unfair. Literally unFair.

Our annual city-wide summer shindig known as SeaFair lasts for a month with many of the major activities happening on, of course, the weekends.

For instance, today was a sponsored event at a Buddhist temple down in the International District. It's an annual traditional Japanese/Buddhist dance for the dead known as Bon Odori. It's food and fun and beautiful women and girls in gorgeous kimonos and regular folks in regular clothing (and the SeaFair Pirates) all dancing in a huge oval in the middle of the street. Miss SO and me rarely miss it. Today was one of those rare occasions, because of the rain.

Luckily, the day wasn't lost as Miss Significantly Other and me traveled down the turnpike to Burien in order to take in the 19th Hawaiian Summer Festival presented by the Waikinikona Hawaiian Club (Waikinikona is Hawaiian for Washington).

It was rather smaller this year than I remember it but then again, I could be mis-remembering it because these hula/food/vendor things tend to run together in my head.

The food was traditional hula show fare if it was non-traditionally pre-portioned in individual containers. We had (click on picture) 1. Macaroni salad. 2. Kalua pork (smoke seasoned pulled pork - the real stuff is cooked right on the piggy in a pit known as an imu). 3. Poke (pokee, going against the Hawaiian language norm of "e" sounding like "eh"). Poke is usually raw seafood, ahi tuna (big-eye or yellow fin tuna) being very popular. I'm not sure what kind of poke this was. Brown is not a good color for raw seafood. 4. Lomi salmon (also known as lomi-lomi salmon). Lomilomi is a Hawaiian massage technique but is also descriptive of the technique itself and meaning, roughly, "squished with the hands". Lomi salmon is salmon (tradition calls for canned salmon as that's what was available when the dish was born), onions, green onions, tomatoes and hot chilies tossed into a bowl and squished with the hands. It's ono (good-tasting)! 5. Rice. 6. Cake with coconut icing.

This was very non-traditional hula consisting mostly of auana (sort of "ow-onna") which is modern music and dress. The girls wore actual plastic grass and metalized grass skirts in a couple of their numbers. There was also some non-traditional Tahitian dancing.

The girls were very pretty, especially the momona (uh... healthy) one on the right in the photo. Her face was very expressive as were her fantastic eyebrows. Being less angular than the other two girls, her movements appeared more fluid. And, yeah, she was cute as hell.

There were the obligatory keiki (kay-key, children) dancers as well as others in the halau, including the kumu, who danced, but these three girls were the focus.

I gotta say, though, that this isn't my cup of awa. I like the traditional kahiko (ancient) chant/dance accompanied by traditional instruments. I'm a pain that way.

The dancing started out on a very high note from my point of view with a group of keikis backing up Hoku and all of them wearing maile (my-leh) leis and Hoku in a real grass skirt. I could smell the "green" of the things. It was great! The keikis had their own kahiko-style dance after Hoku's ended.

She came out with the whole group at the end for two full auana hulas.

I didn't mention the vendors but that's because they were pretty uninteresting. If you've been to more than two of these hula shows, you've seen everything once already.

I'm sure the entertainment got better as the day wore on but we left right after O'Lono. I found the volume of the music to be unbearable and the lack of quiet for the dancers was pretty disrespectful.

All in all, though, these shows are just that: shows. The halaus are there to recruit dancers, sell Hawaiiana and what-all. I find that very little hula is about actual cultural preservation and more about selling plastic plumeria hair clips.