Solar Eclipse: Moneymaker From Heaven : Event Expected to Brighten Tourism Trade in Hawaii

From telescope shops in Tokyo to barrooms in Baja, the most watched eclipse in recent history is casting its spell over astro-entrepreneurs--including plenty who couldn’t tell a supernova from a Camaro.

Because the eclipse will pass Thursday over heavily touristed spots such as Hawaii and the beaches of Mexico, it’s creating the biggest outer-space marketing bonanza since Halley’s comet.

“This eclipse has just been made to order,” said Debbie Baker, coordinator of the Eclipse Information Center in Kailua Kona. “If a group of marketing experts had sat down, I don’t think they could have planned it better. A total eclipse falling over a resort area, in the middle of summer, just after the Fourth of July.”

It’s particularly a godsend, so to speak, with Hawaii and Mexico tourism hurt by the recession and that other source of darkness, Desert Storm. The eclipse is demonstrating that plenty of people are as eager to spend money to stand in the shadow of the moon as bask in the sun. And if you can do both, so much the better.

As the moon’s shadow pulls a shaft of darkness across the Pacific, it’s creating a human trail of Japanese tourists, American travel agents and the usual flotsam and jetsam of event promotion: eclipse coffee mugs, ballpoint pens and ashtrays, T-shirts decorated with large black spots and $5 cans of “Genuine Hawaiian Dark.”

Japanese aficionados are the Deadheads of amateur astronomy, following eclipses--which happen, somewhere on Earth, a few times a year--wherever they cast their shadow: “Africa, Finland, South America. . . . They recognize each others’ faces and say, ‘Didn’t I see you last year in India?. They’re umbra-addicts,” says Harry Nishiguchi, a businessman who helped bring 450 Japanese through Los Angeles on their way to see the shadow in Baja California.

The chartered flight he helped organize arrived Monday at Los Angeles International Airport and disgorged more than 200 telescope-and-camera-toting professional and amateur Japanese astronomers and their chroniclers from journals like Skai-wa-cha and from the Tokyo Broadcasting Service. They’ll be joining an estimated 4,000 more compatriots in Baja.

Their T-shirts say things like, “ALASKA ECLIPSE 1988.” And their golf hats--hundreds of them, in bright orange--are sporting advertisements for Celestron International, a Torrance manufacturer of telescopes.

“Japanese buy more telescopes per capita than any people in the world,” says Alan Hale, president of the firm, which he says is the world’s biggest manufacturer of quality telescopes.

On Monday he welcomed 240 Japanese astronomy buffs to tour of his football-field-sized factory and handed out hats--which his visitors demanded he autograph. “They were very impressed with the quality,” he says.

Japan--land of Nikon, Minolta and other optical giants--is one of the fastest-growing markets for Celestron’s telescopes, and with television crews broadcasting back to Tokyo scenes of Japanese faces and Celestron hats tilted upward in Cabo San Lucas, it will probably grow even faster.

But the Japanese certainly didn’t invent commercial eclipse-watching. Ed Love, head of Love to Travel in Redford, Mich., canvassed the readers of astronomy monthlies and the USC astronomy department to pack the luxury Viking Serenade cruise ship--newly christened by Whoopi Goldberg-- with a capacity 1,222 eclipsophiles.

They sailed out of Los Angeles Harbor on Monday and are enjoying seminars and lectures on the way to Mexico, swapping stories and viewing techniques (cardboard with pinholes or $1,000 telescopes with aluminum-coated Mylar filters).

In Hawaii, where 50,000 people are expected to descend on the 9,000 hotels rooms of the Big Island, suburban homeowners are selling lodgings to strangers who didn’t think to reserve a year in advance. Reserve squadrons of rental cars--local fleets have been sold out for months--have been arriving by boat from neighboring islands, but there aren’t enough.

“I don’t even have a pair of roller-skates I can give you,” said Margaret Fernandes, station manager for National Car Rental in Hilo.

Japanese are carrying out a mid-Pacific ritual worthy of Stonehenge: 1,300 will assemble on the rolling greens of the Waikoloa Village Golf Course at 2 a.m. for an eclipse viewing party and brunch. The eclipse doesn’t happen until 7:30 a.m., but Japanese are used to staking out spots hours early for their traditional annual cherry-blossom-viewing picnics, too.

It’s hard to imagine anyone without yen being willing to shell out for some of the Hawaiian eclipse paraphernalia available. At the Total Eclipse store in Kona, silver dollar-sized “eclipse earrings” made out of dried banana skin and featuring a painting of the sun are retailing for $75 a pair. Coconuts dressed up in eclipse paint fetch $19 each.

The entrepreneur who may be turning the most heads in Kona is Manny Martinez, owner of Unistyle Hair Salon, designer of five different eclipse hairstyles. His Total Eclipse features a close-cropped black circle on the top of a blond corona of hair. He says he has had eight paying customers for his out-of-this-world designs.

In Honolulu, the center for eclipse activity is Bishop Museum, where lines snake out of the gift shop and through the lobby. The museum has sold nearly 300,000 “sun peeps” to protect people’s eyes and estimates that another 200,000 were sold elsewhere in this state of 1 million people. A 32-page informational booklet by Bishop Museum astronomer Ken Miller, called “Eclipse Hawaii,” had to be reprinted twice to keep up with demand since it was first published in March.

Closer to home, New Age travel agents in the Southland are offering tours for those who could never remember the difference between astronomy and astrology. Power Places Tours in Laguna Beach has scheduled a day cruise from Puerto Vallarta that offers not only nearly six minutes of total eclipse viewing, but a special chart for each person, drawn up by an astrologer, showing how the event will affect his or her astrological sign.

Marketers know they have to take advantage of a narrow--about six minutes--window of opportunity. The attention span of many eclipse watchers isn’t much longer than the celestial event itself.

Bill McCabe of Orion Telescopes in Santa Cruz, one of California’s biggest telescope retailers, said sales have been “wild,” with many customers who don’t hesitate to drop $600 on a telescope and filters for what he says is, in essence, a one-time use in Hawaii or Mexico.

“Some people look at the eclipse, put the telescope in the closet and they’ve done their astronomy for the next five years. They’ve expressed their interest in the world.”

Also contributing to this story were Times correspondents Susan Essoyan in Honolulu and Anne Michaud in Orange County and Times staff writer Chris Kraul in San Diego.

On Thursday, a total eclipse of the sun will pass over the tip of Baja California and several major cities in Central and South America. the ecilpse, which is expected to be seen by more people than any in history, will also pass directly over the world’s leading astronomical observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. The Big Island is the only Hawaiian island in the track of the total eclipse.