Post #441101 by Mai Tai on Thu, Mar 19, 2009 4:12 AM

Here's my find for the day/week/month/century - the carved doors to the original Trader Vic's building on 6500 San Pablo Avenue in Oakland.

The person on the left in the picture above is Kier Fullmer, manager of the Trader Vic's warehouse (although a lot of you already know that), and we're standing with the narrower of the two doors. Upon hearing that I picked up these doors off of Craigslist, she was dubious at best that they were the real doors (as were Midnite, Notch, and most others that I relayed the story to). To be quite honest, I was dubious as well. The doors had been listed at least twice on Craigslist last year, once right after the Trader Vic's warehouse sale, and again last fall. The listing seemed a little odd, as they were described as being from the Emeryville location:
Pair of hand carved tiki doors - (oakland hills / mills)
Pair of hand carved tiki doors. These doors came from the original Trader Vic's in Emeryville. The larger door measures 36 inches by 80 inches. The smaller door, 26 inches by 80 inches. Both are very heavy.

So I decided to check it out. I figured that at best I might be checking out some doors that came from somewhere in the interior of the current Trader Vic's on 9 Anchor Drive in Emeryville, and at worst they would make a nice entry for my home bar.

When I contacted the seller, I asked her if she had a back story for the doors, and indeed she did. To her knowledge, the original Trader Vic's location at 6500 San Pablo Avenue was closed and relocated to it's current location at 9 Anchor Drive around 1970 or 1971 (sounds about right). The owner of a bar over on Telegraph Avenue and 23rd knew Vic Bergeron, and bought the doors off of him, and then hung them on his bar, Cabel's Reef. (I have no idea if Cabel's Reef was a tiki bar or not at the time, but my nephew lived in an apartment above Cabel's Reef around 8 years ago, and at that time it catered to the LGBT community). The doors remained on the building until late 2007, when Cabel's Reef was sold to it's current owner. She changed the name to The Vibe lounge, and did some heavy remodeling and redecorating. She removed the doors, and they've been in her garage ever since. She was wondering what to do with them. and had been thinking about cutting them up, and turning them into table tops!

Upon seeing the doors, I was both excited and disappointed. Excited, because after seeing a bunch of the more vintage carvings at the Trader Vic's warehouse sale last year, these doors immediately jumped out as being authentic carvings that fit right in with all of the other decor that the company would have been using at the time. I had a really good feeling at first glance. But I was disappointed too, because the doors were tagged up fairly heavily with graffiti, which was not prevalent at all on the photos on Craigslist, as seen below:

When I asked the seller why the photos in the ad didn't show any graffiti, she said that the pictures were taken the day she bought the bar, and when she went back the next day to remove the doors, they had already been tagged. (Since the graffiti is black and pink in color, I wonder if it was done by a customer and/or employee that was disgruntled that Cabel's Reef closed, and marked it just like the ol' Lincoln's Address folks changed the name on Forbidden Island's license application notice to "Brokeback Island"?)

Anyways, I decided to buy the doors, graffiti or no graffiti. I was able to fit the smaller of the two doors in the trunk of my car, when the rear seat was folded down, and Midnite journeyed over to the East Bay the next day to help me pick up the larger heavier one. Then we celebrated with Val's Burgers.

Midnite and I brought the smaller of the two doors over to the Trader Vic's warehouse a few days later, and met Notch there. When Kier examined it, she immediately could tell that the door was very very old. She had speculated over the phone that they could be carved teak, but when she saw it she ruled out teak right away. She thought that they might be carved out of ironwood, and brought over one of her woodworking specialists, Javier, who confirmed that they were indeed ironwood, and indeed very old. All of the original hand carved tooling marks are still extremely visible. The original finish is still on the top 5 inches or so of the top of the doors, where they were most sheltered from the elements, and the finish gradually fades away until it is completely worn off two thirds of the way down.

In Kier's opinion, due to the age, materials, carving pattern, tooling marks, and the fact that one door is wider than the other, that these are indeed the original doors to the original Trader Vic's location at 6500 San Pablo Avenue. We haven't figured out exactly how far back they date, but it definitely would have been post Hinky Dinks, perhaps in the early 1950's. I'm waiting for the corporate office to try to find some type of photo to 100% validate this claim, but so far all of the photos show the building with the doors open.

And for you urban archaeologists, here is where the doors were hung at Cabel's Reef/The Vibe Lounge:

The original Trader Vic's location at 6500 San Pablo Avenue:

A Hinky Dink's photo for comparison:

Artist rendering of the original Trader Vic's:

9 Ancor Drive, where the doors definitely were NOT mounted. Neither here:

Nor here:

So as I await some kind of photo from the good folks at Trader Vic's, I need to figure out how to remove the grafitti without harming what's left of the original finish or the wood. Any and all suggestions would be appreciated. Maybe I should start a thread for those recommendations in "Creating Tiki". I'll post more close up photos later - these doors are really heavy, and not easy to move around. Until then, let the spirited debate ensue! :)