For anyone who’s ever fallen deeply for the pursuit of riding waves, Oahu is a revered place. There are famous waves everywhere, for every season, and every type of surfer. The water temps are ideal for staying out all day in just boardshorts and the weather is generally conducive to chasing surf year around.
But for those of us who’ve spent any extended period of time on the island, there’s a dark underbelly that’s hard to ignore. From the south shores of Waikiki, to the fabled North Shore or the West Side, homelessness is the pandemic. Camps can be found in just about every town of any size. And COVID only exacerbated the problem.
YouTuber Tyler Oliveira highlighted that homeless problem like few have in recent years. He went in-depth with people living on different parts of the island, many of which you’ll recognize if you know the place.
“While this may look like paradise,” he says in the opening, “reality is, it’s far from it. As homeless people from the mainland take one-way flights to Hawaii they arrive here to find violence, drug addiction, an overwhelming lack of resources, and an unexpected hatred for white people.”
Oliveira dives into this phenomena of “one-way” tickets, interviews addicts, and visits a homeless camp that has rarely been documented. It’s an in-your-face reminder that there’s a lot more going on in Hawaii than surfing. An addiction epidemic combined with a brutal housing crisis that has caused a travesty of humanity in a place once thought of as heaven on Earth.
The YouTuber is part of an interesting movement that looks at the darkest corners of the human experience in America. A mirror of sorts set to social media. Oliveira has visited Kensington Street in Philadelphia where fentanyl addiction has hit a terrifying apex. He also investigated the gun violence on the streets of Chicago and has looked at many other crime-ridden locales.
He joins vloggers like The Soft White Underbelly that interviews and profiles addicts to understand their stories, and Tales From the Streets, a raw look at addicts and homeless people mostly set in Phoenix. If you’re looking for a pretty picture of the American dream, look elsewhere. If you want reality, these channels make for a captivating (and tragic) watch.
