As Halloween approaches next week, it’s a reminder that some businesses consider that date a seasonal highlight. That’s certainly true for a pair of entrepreneurs who are juggling several scary ventures on Oahu.
Noa Laporga and Angelina Khan have their hands full — with chainsaw-wielding clowns, ghostly cocktails, tiki paraphernalia and more. Together, they are 17A Productions, in which they put their love of horror and make-up special effects to work providing entertaining scares in a wide range of ventures.
Halloween, naturally, is their own special madhouse. Right now, the pair is executing the Haunted Plantation, a local twist on haunted houses that they’ve held at Hawaii’s Plantation Village in Waipahu since 2006. That annual attraction has drawn national attention and hundreds of attendees each night, becoming the major annual fundraiser for this museum devoted to Plantation-era history.
In partnership with Ichiriki Restaurant Group, the pair is also currently running the pop-up Ghost Bar in Ala Moana Center. It’s their second year doing Ghost Bar, this time in the 4,000-square-foot space that was formerly Café Lani.
Earlier this year, 17A Productions opened its first permanent operation, the Chinatown tiki bar called Skull & Crown Trading Co. And their reach extends to Los Angeles, they own Black Box FX, a studio that specializes in scary masks and effects for their own ventures and for others, as there is now a nationwide industry of some 4,000 haunted house-style attractions
Laporga and Khan tell PBN that their next business step is likely to be Mainland extension of their pop-up Ghost Bar and Skull & Crown concepts.
