Feel like Chinese tonight?

/in

 

chrysanthemum

So, we were talking about places to eat on Maui, and one among us said, “Do you realize that since Dragon Dragon closed, there are no Chinese restaurants on Maui?”

At least, not outside West Maui and Kihei. China Boat has been around nearly 25 years, serving a fairly limited menu of Chinese Mandarin dishes, like Mongolian Beef and Mu Shu Pork. But it is remarkable that on a tourist island like Maui, one with a long local Chinese tradition to boot, that there are so few Chinese restaurants and such a limited cuisine among the few that remain.

In a similar sized tourist mecca on the Mainland, you’d likely have to choose among Hunan, Sichuan, Canton and maybe Fujian styles. Here, ever since Golden Jade closed, it’s been all downhill.

In Central Maui, there are a couple of “Chinese” restaurants, including a new one, Dragonfly on Lower Main, which has a few dishes, like Mu Shu Pork, and, unusually and from the opposite end of the scale, Egg Fu Young.

So, yes you can sort of get Chinese food on Maui. But what about the rest of the tourism business?

Stella Blues is gone. The Sugar Cane Train is going. Yet tourism headcounts are supposed to be high if not growing. This is not the economic atmosphere in which you expect old-established businesses like Stella’s or the LK&P to be shutting down.

#mauitourism #mauidining

chrysanthemum

Anti-scam for Internet sales

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Another insight from this year’s National Pawnbrokers Association convention. This one came during the roundtable on Police Confiscations, but the speaker did not identify himself, so I don’t know whose good advice this is.

When selling electronics, like a laptop, over the Internet, he said he puts an identifier somewhere hidden on the item. He uses Whiteout or a scratch tool.

He also photographs — not just writes down — the serial number.

That way, if a “buyer” has a broken laptop, then buys a good one from you, then “returns” the broken one for credit, you are in a strong position to defend yourself when Paypal or eBay starts a dispute.

burglar

This won’t protect you from someone sophisticated enough to swap the good memory module in your machine for the bad one in  his, then return a “broken” machine to you, but it will screen out the less akamai scamsters, and that’s most of them.

Good to know.

#mauipawn #mauiretail

 

Anti-scam for Internet sales

/in

Another insight from this year’s National Pawnbrokers Association convention. This one came during the roundtable on Police Confiscations, but the speaker did not identify himself, so I don’t know whose good advice this is.

When selling electronics, like a laptop, over the Internet, he said he puts an identifier somewhere hidden on the item. He uses Whiteout or a scratch tool.

He also photographs — not just writes down — the serial number.

That way, if a “buyer” has a broken laptop, then buys a good one from you, then “returns” the broken one for credit, you are in a strong position to defend yourself when Paypal or eBay starts a dispute.

burglar

This won’t protect you from someone sophisticated enough to swap the good memory module in your machine for the bad one in  his, then return a “broken” machine to you, but it will screen out the less akamai scamsters, and that’s most of them.

Good to know.

#mauipawn #mauiretail

 

 

 

Pawn your sneaks? Sure, why not?

/in

You can do it in Harlem now.

Smell this

Smell this

A 16-year-old kid with 200 pairs of sneakers had the idea. It works about like any other pawn, which is to say, if there is a market for used goods, a pawnbroker somewhere will make a loan on them.

As we say at our Maui pawn shop, we’ll take in anything that doesn’t eat. And no doubt somewhere in the world there’s a pawnbroker who does take livestock, we just haven’t heard from him yet.

At Sneaker Pawn, there is a bit of a different wrinkle. If the shoe owner wants to sell, instead of making a straight purchase, it operates more like a consignment: Sneaker Pawn makes the sale and splits 80/20 with the seller — 80% to the seller.

Biggest drawback from the pawnbroker’s point of view: He has to sniff each shoe.

 

 

Ain’t nothin’ like the real thing

/in ,

As Smokey Robinson so wisely taught us long ago.

It appears that the magic of “Pawn Stars” is limited to the actual Gold & Silver Pawn Shop cast, at least if you value the opinion of critic Steve Bornfeld.

There’s a Vegas show called “Pawn Shop Live!” that’s supposed to be a spoof of the top-rated cable “reality show.” Vegas Steve didn’t like it when it opened early this year, and now that it has been revamped, he likes it even less:

Flashing back to the original Pawn Shop Live! at the Golden Nugget in February, I labeled it “an amateurish misfire of major proportions.” Updating to the rewritten Pawn Shop Live! at the Riviera, I amend that to “an amateurish misfire of TITANIC proportions.”

We suggest authenticity counts with tongue in cheek. Much as we like “Pawn Stars” and appreciate how much it has done to enhance the reputation of pawn shops everywhere, life with Rick and the family is not really what pawnbroking is like.

Pawnshops, including our Maui pawn shop, do get fascinating, rare and curious items from time to time, but emphasize time to time. Not all the time, like on “Pawn Stars.”

Here’s a secret: TV reality shows are scripted. And not only that, but a show like “Pawn Stars” has agents who comb the country for telegenic items to “pawn.” The owners, who get a chance to explain their treasures on a big stage, cooperate but those are not real transactions.

The valuation offered by Rick may be authentic,  but it’s all for show not dough.

If you think about it for a moment, you can understand. It costs thousands — in the case of “Pawn Stars” tens of thousands — of dollars to create each minute of program. The producers cannot wait around until the next interesting customer walks in.

Even “Antiques Roadshow,” which does draw thousands of hopefuls to each city it visits, sends out advance agents to recruit good antiques and even arranges to transport the big items (like Federal-period highboys) to the auditorium where the show is taped.

If you want to see a real pawn shop in action, come down to 52 North Market Street any day of the week. But you might have to wait several days for any excitement.

Purse matching

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Jordan Tabach-Bank is one of the best pawnbrokers at getting media attention, so we are happy to piggyback on his skill by linking to a piece at Pawn Times about pawning Hermes bags.

Kamaaina Loan also takes high-end  bags for loans, and we are not quite as snooty as Tabach-Bank’s Beverly Pawn, which takes only Hermes, Chanel or Celine, and then only models that retail (new) for $5,000 and up.

Kamaaina Loan will lend money even on down-market stuff like Coach. And even if it retails for only a few hundred.

Here’s a tip that’s good for either pawn shop:

Handbags must be in excellent condition and be accompanied by provenance or proof of purchase, usually in the form of receipt from the original retailer.

Well, we don’t absolutely require an original receipt, but it helps seal the deal. So all you fashionistas out there, save your receipts. Because you never know when (or why) you might need to raise some fast cash.

We generally have a fancy  bag or two or three in our store at 42 N. Market. (Just checked: about a dozen items today.)

Do you know you can rent Hermes bags? Not from us, but it can be done.

 

Fixing the price

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As Kamaaina Loan blog has often said, we (and all other pawnbrokers) are at the mercy of the international gold market. We have no way to influence the price.

If we offer you $500 on Monday because gold is selling at, say, $1300, and it goes down the next day to $1200, that’s our risk. Nothing we can do about it. (And if the price goes up, lucky us.)

It would be nice to think that gold is a true market. We don’t want to play if somebody is scamming the game.

It turns out, somebody is. Or was. In this Bloomberg News report, we learn how a Barclays trader managed to depress the world price by a few cents in order to cheat a client out of $3.9 million.

The manipulation was small and lasted only minutes. Not enough to affect our pawnshop, but worrying nonetheless.

We would like to think that the world market is big enough and free enough to avoid serious manipulation. But we know people will try.

(Barclays was in a position to work this scam because it is one of 4 banks that participate in the daily “London fixing.” The other members are from Canada, Scotland and France, reflecting the international balance of influence in 1919 when this system was set up.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Searching for Mr. Goodpawn

/in

OK, so this is a little bit Inside Baseball, but if you cannot navel-gaze about pawnshops on a pawnshop blog, where can you do it?

chocchocchoc

When searching for news to use on the Kamaaina Loan blog, several times a week, I use Bing and Google to search for “pawn shop news.” Curiously, most of the time the first 2 pages of results on the 2 engines have almost no overlap.

Today, for example, both engines return hits for police stories from North Carolina and Michigan involving pawn shops. (In each case, crooks came to a pawn shop with stolen goods — a theme covered at Kamaaina Loan many times — and got caught.)

But those fresh police blotter stories are the only overlap between Bing and Google for that search string. Although I seldom use Yahoo’s search engine, just for kicks, I tried Yahoo as well. Same outcome: Yahoo knows about the N.C. and Michigan police blotter stories, but after that, not much similarity in the search results.

Since “pawn shops” is not one of the hottest topics, the rest of the results pages are filled out with older stories about “Hard Core Pawn” and whatnot, but not the same whatnot.

As far as pawn news goes, this is not too consequential, but students ought to be aware (as too few are, I think), that there is more than one search engine out there, and more than one query is possible.

Some years ago, my brother told me this sad story:

He was filling in for another teacher who had fallen ill, in a college course about technology & culture. He assigned a paper on “the technology of chocolate.m,” thinking that might capture the interest of the students.

The first paper was fairly interesting, as was the second, but as he read the submissions, it became apparent that “research” for these students amounted to typing “technology chocolate” into a search engine and using to top 3 hits.

In my brother’s research courses, when he assigned a topic, he expected his students to make an exhaustive study of what was available. As it happens, chocolate, like most things, involves more than Google’s first 3 hits.

 

Why they pawn — playing the long iron game

/in

As we often say here at Kamaaina Loan blog, unlike at the bank, you don’t have to tell us why you want to borrow money. It’s don’t ask, don’t tell at the pawnbroker.

You could call it a sad iron

You could call it a sad iron

But sometimes we wonder, all the same.

From Bangkok, an unusual example of how a customer uses a pawnshop:

It seems he pawned an iron — Lovestar brand — 15 years ago and has been paying interest on it regularly ever since. Since he’s not rolling over the interest, it isn’t a case of owing much more than the iron is worth.

According to the Bangkok Post, pawn shop employee Nattarak Peekklang thinks, “The customer may think that his iron is better kept inside the shop’s safe than at his home.”

Maybe. But he isn’t taking the iron out to use it from time to time then returning it to “storage.” He isn’t even using his iron the way David Copperfield’s old nurse, Peggotty, did in Dickens’ novel, pawning hers for sixpence each Friday and redeeming it each Monday because she never can keep to a budget.

But Mr. Nattrarak follows the international Code of the Pawnbroker:

 

I never ask him why he doesn’t pay it all off at once

 


#maui #mauipawn #mauiloan

Boulevard of Broken Promises

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Among the smaller items in the Maui County budget — which will far exceed half a BILLION dollars, we are not a small, rural place any more — but one close to Kamaaina Loan’s interests is the Iao Minipark (or whatever its final name turns out to be).

The historic Wailuku business district, which we are proud to be one of the oldest existing veterans of, was designed for horse-drawn buggies and walkers. North Market Street was not paved for many years. Then after World War II, everybody got wheels.

Congestion.

The county took a bold step, buying up several blocks and closing a couple of streets (alleys, really) to create the large Wailuku municipal parking lot. Since then, it’s been all downhill as far as parking has been concerned.

In other older places struggling to adapt to modern  habits, the county has added significant public parking: a million-dollar lot in Makawao and a similar one in Paia. Presumably these are partially responsible for the full storefronts and higher commercial rents in those towns. (Having top drawer tourist draws helped, too, of course.)

Wailuku languishes. Commercial rents in Paia are about four times higher than in the North Market Street area.

Much follows from low rents. Non-profits, which are attracted by low rents, swarm in Wailuku but are absent from Paia and Makawao. In those “country towns,” merchants compete vigorously for shop space and there are few vacant buildings. There has been new construction in Paia and lots of investment in keeping up the old buildings in Makawao.

Not in Wailuku. Space goes begging and comparatively less sprucing up occurs. Green Lotus has recently upgraded and reopened a vacant gas station on Main Street that had been vacant for over a decade (despite having its own parking). Only one new-from-the-foundations building has gone up in our district in the past decade.

What construction has occurred has chipped away at our parking.

Now the county proposes to chip some more.

No question the vacant, unpaved lot between the Iao Theatre and our building (in which Maui Sporting Goods is a tenant) needs to be addressed. Right now, it provides  nearly two dozen precious, in-the-middle-of-things parking spaces.

When rebuilt, paved and made to conform to 21st century codes, at least 10 stalls will disappear, maybe more.

The area lost at least 23 when North Market was gentrified. In our view, we have gotten down to a point where 10 or 12 fewer spaces is a really big deal.

Don’t get us wrong. We support the minipark, for safety reasons. People we know have stumbled and fallen and been injured there.

But the history of the county’s work in the historic business district has been to promise more parking and then not deliver. Before the devastating rebuilding of North Market, the business owners and managers were promised that before North Market was to be taken in hand, something would be done.

That something was prominently to be a parking garage on the municipal lot. Never happened. Nor did anything else.

People really do need parking. A big fraction of the activity in the area is governmental. The county’s own staff grows year by year, till it has overflowed the nine-story county building into the One Main Plaza building.

Those people don’t (for the most part) walk or bicycle to work. They drive. Then they park.

The Chinese used to practice a form of slow execution called the “death of a thousand cuts.” That’s what’s happening to business in Wailuku.

#mauitraffic #mauibudget #mauibusiness