The Keauhou Store has added a new art and music room to its museum-like main floor staples of fresh baked cookies, lunches and convenience food and drink items.
The Keauhou Store has added a new art and music room to its museum-like main floor staples of fresh baked cookies, lunches and convenience food and drink items.
The former fabrics and sewing room for the popular Mamalahoa Highway general store is now home to original art and photos by local artists such as photographer Alvis Upitis’s unique dyed metal process prints, and watercolor, acrylic and oil paintings by Kailua-Kona’s Lisa Bunge.
Also featured are original 1930s, 40s and 50s menus commissioned by Matson Navagation and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, sheet music and album covers from the 1930s to the 1950s, and nostalgic advertising prints.
Highlighting the music collection are guitars made by co-owner Kurt Brown. His latest creation uses curly koa found beneath the 4,000-square-foot store during its restoration. Also discovered during the renovation were hundreds of 1950s-era 45 rpm Japanese records, most of which were still in their original paper sleeve.
Joining the Japanese records are classic American 45 and 33 rpm vinyls from the 1960s with titles from Neil Diamond, Bee Gees, Carpenters, The Rolling Stones, Connie Stevens and Johnny Mathis. Old wooden crates and drawers of cabinets built by Yoshisuke Sasaki nearly 100 years ago are filled with surprises and treasures for vintage record collectors.
Built in 1919 in upcountry Kona by Sasaki, a Japanese immigrant, the Keauhou Store was refurbished and reopened in 2011 by Holualoa’s Kurt and Thea Brown.
The Keauhou Store, located about a mile north of the Honalo junction on the old Mamalahoa Highway, is open from 10 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. For more information, visit www.keauhoustore.com.