ALOHA

I am sorry to inform you that ALOHA has closed it's doors as a direct result of BlueCity's decision to end the lease with us. Without a long term lease, I cannot invest, operate as I want to and overtime ALOHA as a whole becomes unsaleable. Over years, there always has been a challenging relationship with the building and some of the people involved in the decision making process. However, i have no desires spending my life fighting for my legal rights. Instead, I decide to follow where life wants me and continue from the principle of "working with what is". To live a life of truth is dare to trust, dare to die and dare to fully surrender to all that is happening in the present. ALOHA was like my vision of life itself. Everything begins and ends with 'working-with-what-is, trying to squeeze the maximum out of the minimum and full acceptance of everything that comes to the surface in that process. I could not have given myself a better personal and professional education. What looks like a restaurant, to me is also a laboratory, a testing ground in which I explored possibilities for healthy, unruly and future proof hospitality and restaurant culture. Working according to the principles of nature / your own nature is not easy. It takes curiosity, dedication, patience, radical honesty, self confrontation, discomfort, breaking down of ego and a lot of resilience. Since the start of ALOHA in 2013 many have helped to build, breakdown, sharpen and given substance to me and to ALOHA for which I am more than grateful. My entrepreneurship is about establishing a reconnection between ourselves and our true nature. Rooting down by de-constructing and developing skills to understand and learn to work with, and from, nature. Eating locally does not cover it all. Reducing food waste does not cover it. It is untying, thread by thread, from a shirt of entitlements in which a person sees themselves as a separate from the bigger picture and can begin to rediscover and reinvent themselves. I will be reflecting on project in which I can elaborate on this holistic vision. For me, a sustainable restaurant hardly exists because truly making impact would be shutting yourself down. However, in this sector there are many things that can and should be done more sustainable, even though the current state of the industry is extremely challenging. ALOHA has developed a blueprint where through a (radical) low waste working method, the farmer, the team, the entrepreneur and ultimately the industry, I believe, could all win. If life is an art, to me that art consists not only in doing what we can to become good, but also in developing the ability to receive what is given to us and bear what is withheld from us. I am open to work with smart entrepreneurs, creators, cross thinkers and courageous policy makers who can change systems from the root and are not afraid of the resistance that this process undeniably brings. You can write me on femma@duck.com with ideas and comments. Amor Fati ya'll Femke