What's Actually Happening in Paia This August

The visitors thin out a little in August. The Road to Hana traffic still stacks up on Hana Highway around 10 a.m., but by early evening the town belongs to the people who live here. If you have been in Paia long enough to know which parking lot to duck into behind Baldwin Avenue, this month has a rhythm worth paying attention to. A few of the anchors are new. A few have been here longer than most of us.

Here is what is on the calendar, where the tables are worth grabbing, and one Saturday you probably want to keep clear.

Keep August 22 Clear

The Paia Rinzai Zen Mission holds its Bon Dance on Saturday, August 22, at 120 Alawai Road, just off the main drag. Service starts at 6 p.m. and the dance begins at 7. It is one of the later stops in a season that opened way back in early June at Puʻunēnē Nichiren and closes on September 12 at the Hana Buddhist Temple.

If you already went to Mantokuji's dance on July 11 across the highway, Rinzai is a smaller, quieter counterpart with its own feel. Reverend Kodai Haga, the resident minister at Rinzai, described Obon this year as an occasion to notice the "many visible and invisible causes and conditions that support our lives today." That is the frame worth carrying into the yard. You do not need to be Buddhist, or Japanese, or know the steps. Slip into the circle behind someone who looks like they know what they are doing, eat something from the food line, and stay for the taiko.

A practical note for parking: the mission is directly across from the Paia Community Center, and the lots fill up by 6:30. Walking over from town is faster than most people expect.

A Week at Paia Bay Coffee

If you have not been paying attention, the weekday programming at Paia Bay Coffee & Bar at 120 Hana Highway has quietly become the most consistent slate of local nights in town. It is worth knowing which night is which, because most of it repeats.

Chino also stars in the local sitcom Moku Moku, which is worth knowing before you show up to heckle him. The Thursday first-of-the-month slot rotates in live band karaoke with Jeremy Savo and Friends, which is a different animal from regular karaoke and worth catching once even if you never sing.

Trivia has become the sleeper hit. Wednesdays in Paia used to be dead. They are not anymore.

Where the Newer Tables Are Worth Booking

Paia's dining lineup has shuffled meaningfully in the last two years, and if your default is still Paia Fish Market or Flatbread, you are missing where the town has moved.

Cafe Mambo took over the historic old Paia train station and reopened as a brighter, breakfast-and-lunch spot with a full menu that runs from Loco Moco and banana bread French toast in the morning through Hawaiian plate lunches, fish sandwiches, and seafood tacos at midday. Indoor and outdoor seating, and it fills up around 9 a.m. on weekends. If you have out-of-town family coming in September, this is the pre-Hookipa breakfast.

Vana Paia is open Tuesday through Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. and has become the reservation to plan around when you want a real dinner out. Four dining areas including a private Vana Room that seats up to sixteen, sushi bar, cocktail program, and the string-light-under-the-trees patio that photographs better than it needs to. Not a walk-in on a Friday.

Wabisabi Soba & Sushi is the sleeper. 100% buckwheat gluten-free noodles, a small menu, and BYOB, which changes the math on a weeknight dinner considerably. The garden seating feels like a small Kyoto side street dropped between Baldwin Avenue and the highway.

If you are chasing something more ambitious, the intimate Chef's Table dining room on the edge of town runs a prix-fixe market menu between $200 and $300 per person, six to nine courses, with a glass of sparkling wine included. Not an every-week outing. A birthday one.

Ho'okipa Without the Tourists

August is still trade wind season, which means Ho'okipa Beach Park is doing what Ho'okipa does. The turtles are hauling out in the late afternoon, and the windsurfers get going once the wind fills in around 11. The overlook lot on the east end of the park is the one to use if you are just stopping to watch. The west lot is for surfers.

If you have kids, the Menehune Mayhem surf contest for ages 15 and under happened back in May, but the same crew tends to be out at Ho'okipa in the evenings running informal sessions through the summer. Worth pulling over for.

For a longer walk, the paved path from Paia Bay east toward Mantokuji is best in the last hour before sunset. You will pass the Zen mission's cemetery, which sits right on the coast. It is one of the more striking views in this part of the island and one that most people driving past on the Hana Highway never see from the ground.

What Comes Next on the Calendar

The Rinzai dance on August 22 essentially closes out Paia's summer programming. After that, the town shifts. The mornings get a touch cooler, the swell direction starts thinking about winter, and Ho'okipa starts to change character by late September. Reservations at Vana and Cafe Mambo loosen up for a few weeks between the summer visitors leaving and the fall crowd arriving.

If you are planning ahead, the Hana Buddhist Temple's September 12 Obon is the real season closer for the whole island. It is a full Road to Hana day if you want to make it one. Leave Paia before 8 a.m., stop at Twin Falls for the first Saturday farmers market if it falls right, and roll into Hana with time to eat before the service.

Closer to home, the weekly Paia Bay Coffee slate keeps running through the fall, and the Sunday live brunch with Mark Johnstone is the one to have on the mental default list. It survives every schedule change.

One More Thing

The reason August in Paia is worth writing about is that the summer events calendar mostly hides what the town actually is the other eleven months. When the Bon Dance crowds clear out and the Wednesday trivia regulars come back, you get a clearer look at the businesses that will still be here in five years and the ones that will not. That is useful information whether you are thinking about the house next door going up for sale or just deciding where to eat next Tuesday.

If you own a home in Paia or on the Hana Highway side of Haiku and want a candid read on what your street has been doing lately, or you are thinking about what a move within the North Shore looks like, reach out any time. I have been working this part of Maui full time since 2003 and I would rather have a real conversation than send you a canned market report.

Let's connect through Harry Devery whenever the timing feels right. Talk soon.