California cooler is a way of using one of your kitchen cabinets to expose air to the outside. In this example, a california cooler is “re-made” by adding insulation to the cabinet doors and allowing air to flow straight in from the outside.
I live in California and most of the year (except summer), I can say the temperatures never reach higher than 70 degrees fahrenheit. Of course if you live inland California, this isn’t going to happen but for most of you ocean-breezers out there (San Francisco, Santa Monica, Monterey), you can make your food last longer and make use of natural cooling such as this.
When the refrigerator came along, it seems that, over time, the vents were boarded up and the California Cooler was all but forgotten. Today, if you walk the streets of my hometown, Berkeley, where most of the houses were built in the 1920’s, you will see many homes, and even apartment buildings, with the exterior vestiges of these vents.
