“For political correctness, I’m the gatekeeper,” David said. David, 56, an attorney, agrees that Scott can be funny but reserves the right to shoot down his little brother’s ideas if he thinks they are running astray. Scott, 54, says he is the funnier of the two and usually “gets the ball rolling” in coming up with new wording. “If you read it over and over, you lose the essence,” Scott said.Ĭrafting the messages is a thrill but also carries responsibility, the Jung brothers say. Getting the nuance wrong means getting on people’s nerves or worse, but overthinking it, over-massaging it, can drive the humor into the dust.
There’s a fine art to comedy writing, they have learned.
David owns EcoCab, a Hawaii-based company that fields eco-friendly taxicabs but has been hit hard by the advent of Uber and Lyft Scott wanted to change course from an earlier life as a stock trader in Asia Nathan Oh is an entrepreneur who has investments in the neighbor islands. The Jung brothers have always liked joking around, but they never imagined that maintaining a successful comedy schtick would be instrumental to career success. “We inherited it, so we have big shoes to fill,” Scott Jung said. The Jung brothers reached the same conclusion. Gibfried quickly realized that the company’s reader board was a form of branding that kept customers returning. When the Loui brothers retired, Paul Gibfried, the owner of a factory in Missouri who relocated to Hawaii, bought them out. Nathan Oh, left, and Scott Jung with their mascot, Rentie, in front of the reader board on one of the rare occasions when it displayed a serious message honoring the late President George H. Roberts tour bus drivers have been known to point out Hawaiian Rent-All to gawking tourists as a local landmark.
But cultural homogenization, corporate consolidation and zoning regulations that disdain idiosyncratic advertising displays have meant that fewer businesses are able to use their storefronts as fonts for self-expression.īut people in Hawaii really love to laugh, and the Hawaiian Rent-All sign has hung on through the years, becoming practically an institution on Oahu. The reader board went up in 1968.īack in the 1960s, such signs were a common way for independent entrepreneurs to draw attention to their businesses. The original owners of Hawaiian Rent-All were also two brothers, Gordon and Norman Loui, who started the company in 1964. “The big corporates can afford to be cookie-cutter, process-oriented our advantage is we are more nimble, more responsive,” said David Jung. The reader board is a unique advertising tool that allows the small store to compete against giant rental firms funded by mainland corporations. The core business is renting equipment such as jackhammers, forklifts, party supplies and power tools. The Jung brothers and Oh took over the long-time company in the past year, buying control from the previous owners. When Hawaii residents were still shaking off the fear instilled by the mistaken announcement in January that a nuclear attack was heading this way, they had this to say:Īnd when the threat by Hurricane Lane fizzled but a bunch of local boys from Honolulu won the Little League World Series, they said this: Mazie Hirono told American men to “shut up and step up” in the wake of the sexual abuse allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, they riposted with this embellishment: You have likely seen some of the team’s recent puns and zingers. “They’re like the talk of the town for residents and people passing through. “I go by their business every day and I get a little chuckle with their clever wordplay,” said urban planner Tim Streitz, who chairs the McCully/Moiliili Neighborhood Board. The sign is a throwback to old-school technology of a theater marquee with changeable letters. Tens of thousands of cars a month stream past Hawaiian Rent-All at the intersection of McCully and South Beretania, and for the past five decades, motorists have craned their necks to catch the latest play on words or double entendre above the front door. With longtime friend, Nathan Oh, the two brothers took over ownership of a McCully/Moiliili equipment rental company well known for its decades of bawdy, funny and irreverent signs, often tied to hot topics in the news, on a reader board above the front door.
When they bought a long-established business at one of the busiest corners of Honolulu this year, aspiring funnymen Scott and David Jung found themselves manning the highest-visibility comedy platform in the islands. Editor’s Note: “Coconut Wireless” is a new occasional series aimed at bridging gaps in what can sometimes feel like disparate and scattered neighborhoods across Oahu.
0 kommentar(er)
