Chase needed a good backdrop for photographing his cocktails, so he put up some bamboo in the back room to his rented house. That wasn’t enough, so he built a full-fledged tropical bar and called it Trader Sampson’s Cocoanut Canteen.
Trader Sampson – aka Chase – named his home bar as an homage to two famous World War II era establishments in old Los Angeles, the Cocoanut Grove and the Hollywood Canteen. The Cocoanut Grove was a renowned supper club for film stars, and the Hollywood Canteen was a place where those stars served soldiers who were on their way to the Pacific front. Chase keeps his home bar accurate to that period by using a pre-Tiki, Don the Beachcomber look with vintage photographs and lots of collectible memorabilia, including menus, napkins, and postcards dating from the 1920s through the 1940s.
Read the rest of the story in Polynesiacs: Tiki at Home, page 371.
Trader Sampson’s Cocoanut Canteen, Eagle Rock, California
