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Early Trader Vic Oakland CA. menu

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In the middle of a long dry spell on the collecting end of things but found this today. An early menu mailer. Measures a bit larger than 5" x 7". Great colors and graphics on six pages. The renderings along the top of each page are very detailed drawings of the interior of the restaurant. No date on the menu so I'm guessing it dates from the late 40's. I have never seen this menu before so it may be a rare one. Either way I was happy to have found something today.

front.

Interior pages.

Back and close up of the rendering.

Here are a couple of closeups of two of the drawings.

Oh how cool, I used to have that one, but lent it out and never got it back. It's noteworthy for several reasons:

The rendering of the original building is my favorite of them all, you can even make out the proto-Tikis!
They used to have the original drawing hanging at the Emeryville location.

You can see a cannibal carving in the rendering of the store

The Dr Funk illustration and story

The map, to my knowledge the only time the Trader used a map

Trav,

Nice score on the menu, I have tried for that one a few times. Great graphics. Did not follow Bigbro's reference to the Dr. Funk story, is that in the mailer?

DC

Vic's version of the Dr. Funk is the Bora Bora cooler, and it's not so much a story, but the fact that Vic seems to have known SOME of the drink's original history, with the Absinth recipe, and, judging by the illustration, the fact that Funk was a white doctor in the South Seas, something I was not aware of until I found the book excerpt below:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=29020&forum=10

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2010-05-24 09:10 ]

1

Xlnt menu find Trav ....very cool drawing renderings as well.

Thanks guys. Not a bad find in a little town in MI. Sven, I thought of your Dr. Funk post when I first browsed through the menu. Here is a better look at the Dr. Funk artwork and another closeup of one of the drawings.

Pages: 1 6 replies