Festival brings Pacific Islands flavor to Henderson

Mona Shield Payne / Special to the Sun

Jonathan Hoomanawanui, center, sings and plays the ukulele while performing with the Hula Halau O Kaumualii group Saturday at the Pacific Islands Festival at the Henderson Events Plaza.

By Kyle B. Hansen (contact)

Sunday, Sept. 13, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.

Pacific Islands Festival

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For George Kanno, moving to the Las Vegas Valley from Hawaii was a culture shock.

People are not as friendly here, he said.

“Here, you meet someone with a handshake,” he said. “In Hawaii, you meet them with a hug.”

Kanno got to feel like he was back in Hawaii on Saturday as the Prince Kuhio Ho’olaule’a Pacific Islands Festival turned the Henderson Events Plaza into an island of Hawaiian culture in the midst of the desert.

“It kind of feels like going home with all the Hawaiian music,” he said of the 19th annual festival. “It’s a different atmosphere here. It’s the aloha spirit.”

Kanno, who attended the festival for the first time with his Mexican wife, Balbina, moved to North Las Vegas eight years ago and is stationed at Nellis Air Force Base.

He was excited to run into some friends at the festival and was pleased with the number of vendors at the event.

“I thought it was going to be like 10 vendors, but it’s like a mini flea market,” he said reminiscing of the Aloha Market in Hawaii.

The festival, sponsored by the city of Henderson and the Las Vegas Hawaiian Civic Club, included vendors in tents that filled the plaza and spilled onto the closed Water Street.

Bands from the amphitheater and a temporary stage set up outside the Justice Center.

Tamara Nelson brought her family from the southwest valley for the festival. “We were curious and wanted to get out of the house,” she said.

Her husband, Chris, said he enjoyed the music the most, as he sat firmly parked on a bench near the Justice Center stage.

But daughter Willow Leuty, 12, and her friend Tiffney Stone, 10, were itching to explore more of the vendor tents.

“So far it’s been fun,” Leuty said. “I like the shops; they have smoothies and I like to look at all the cool stuff.”

Krystal Bautista, who is Filipino but was right at home with her Hawaiian friend Josh Gawiran-Rasquero, said the food was the best part.

“You don’t get the real Hawaiian food all the time,” Bautista, 17, said. “Here, the real Hawaiian people make the food.”

The festival continues Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.