Tucked on Merchant Street in Downtown Honolulu is a treasure chest filled with decades-old relics and tokens from Hawaiʻi’s sports scene. At first glance the spot might look like the coolest vintage shop you’ll ever set foot in, but it’s a museum first.
Here, history is on display, including jerseys from various University of Hawaiʻi sports teams, as well as memorabilia from the Hawaiʻi Islanders—the baseball team that played in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League from 1961-1987. The collection even includes a ball from the last game the Islanders played in 1987.
The founders of Old Queen Street Stadium, Kevin Faller and brothers Chester and Kevin Sebastian, are guardians of a unique slice of Island history. Here, they share stories with different generations of people—for some, it’s like reliving the past; for others it’s a revelation. “Good stories become medicine,” Faller says. “We like to share stories and heal.”
Whether it’s older folks reminiscing about chapters from their own lives, or younger ones peering into a past they’ve never experienced, Old Queen Street Stadium welcomes everyone to not just view history, but to touch it as well. Unlike other museums that keep their artifacts under glass or section them off from viewers with ropes and stanchions, visitors here can quite literally feel the fabric of old jerseys—the same kinds that they, their siblings and maybe even their parents and grandparents once wore. “It’s a beautiful phenomenon when brothers and sisters see what their childhood was like,” Faller says.
Collectors Faller and Chester Sebastian first connected back in 2020 over a 1990s Les Murakami baseball jersey that Sebastian had posted on Instagram. Murakami is a celebrated UH baseball coach who ran the program from 1971-2000; the baseball stadium at UH Mānoa is named in his honor. Sebastian says Faller wanted to buy the Murakami jersey from him—but despite Faller’s persistence, it was a piece that he wasn’t about to part with. But with that connection came a realization: There are people out there who are interested in collecting Hawaiʻi sports memorabilia and swapping stories of the past…