2301 - About The 23rd Floor

SPACER

The 23rd Floor is in an aging condominium just off Kapiolani Boulevard, near Ala Wai Community Park, in Honolulu. It’s where I do my writing and cultivate a practice of aggressive solitude.

SPACER

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SPACER

I call it “aging” because it was built when condos were modeled after correctional facilities and didn’t look at all like the current infestation of alabaster and crystal honeycombs cropping up on every other block.

I have the entire 23rd Floor because of a quirk. The 23rd is the topmost floor, and it’s really only a unit, not a floor. The haole contractor (Chicago) who built the condos had this idea to give himself a little crow’s nest of an office, on top of the building. Before he could finish the project, he went Chapter 11 and the Honolulu developer who bought the unfinished business at the Trustee’s sale decided to make the office a little penthouse hideout and inflate the normal “per-square-foot” asking price by a factor of three.

The first owner of that over-priced unit was my uncle, fulfilling a youthful dream to retire in the Islands. Too bad his retirement was only into the third month when a lifetime of alcohol poisoning suckerpunched his lights out.

But, good for his favorite nephew who is fulfilling an aging dream to create dubious monographs and endless drafts of seriocomic novels on a laptop, while sitting on a lanai overlooking Waikiki.
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SPACER

If any of the above existed anywhere but in my pineapple inflamed imagination, that’s exactly how it would be.

As it is, it’s still true enough for the modest purpose of inventing a backstory for this little web log.

Cheers,
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Steve Gillard