Spotlight on Beretania
The Beretania Block Instagram account zooms in on one of the city’s unique streets.
Dreamy cityscapes, videos of neighborhood eateries and interviews with local business owners all populate Beretania Block, an Instagram account that started last fall about life on and around South Beretania Street.
While one post delved into the history of 8 Fat Fat 8 Bar & Grille with its current owner, whose father opened the restaurant 40 years ago, another previewed the latest Honolulu Museum of Art exhibition. “Beretania is a one-way commuter street where you stop by and keep going, but our motivation is to attract more people to Beretania businesses and make it more of a communal area,” says Sammie Yee, the content creator behind the account.
Yee works at Harbors Vintage, a store on South Beretania Street that specializes in vintage clothing; she partnered with the store’s owner, Arik Ma, to launch the account. Ma’s vision was to create something similar to Keep It Kaimukī, promoting the area’s restaurants, boutiques, landmarks and the people behind them.
“It’s so hard to keep a business going while also staying true to yourself and your history and prioritizing customers and community,” Yee says. “Doing this, I have gained so much respect for local business owners for just powering through. They will all say what keeps them going is their customers, the people who frequent their businesses.”
Plans for Beretania Block include uniting neighborhood businesses into a collective and organizing community projects.
@beretaniablock on Instagram, Threads and TikTok
Andrea Lee is the digital editor of HONOLULU Magazine.
