Walk up to the porch at Laurel Canyon Boulevard near Lookout Mountain on a Saturday morning and you will find the same scene that has played out for decades: a line for coffee, someone splitting a turkey sandwich on the bench by the firewood bin, a couple trading canyon gossip before the climb back up toward Mulholland. The hours posted on the door still read 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. most days, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday, the same schedule the store's own listing shows as of this August. If you only judged the Canyon Country Store by what happens at the counter, you would never guess that its ownership has been fought over in public twice in the last twelve months.
The paper trail tells a messier story. It involves two separate corporate entities filing for the same liquor license within four months of each other, a 44-year owner who says he found out about his own store's sale from a notice taped to the wall, and a public dispute that moved from an Instagram video to a Facebook post before most regulars on the ridge above ever heard about it. For anyone who treats this store as the last stop before the climb up Lookout Mountain or the long way home to Woodrow Wilson Drive, the actual sequence of events is worth laying out plainly, because the version that made it into the trades and the version sitting in county license records do not quite match.
The Paper Trail, In Order
Here is what the public record and local reporting actually show, set against each other:
- September 5, 2025 — The store's liquor license transferred to a new entity, Canyon Country Corporation. The filing kept the original 1982 licensees, Manoutcher Shamsa and Kamran Nejatbina, and added two new stockholders, Eli Bina and Shirley Bina, with David Manoutcher Shamsa listed as the corporation's president, according to a review of Alcoholic Beverage Control license records published by the San Fernando Valley News Portal.
- January 21, 2026 — A second, unrelated license application appeared, this one under a different company entirely: Canyon Country Cousins Liquor Inc, with Donald Hannoun as CEO, Brandon Hannoun as CFO, and Ryan Rommy Askar as secretary. That license was still listed as pending rather than active, per the same records review.
- February 6, 2026 — A posted notice about the alcohol license transfer surfaced inside the store, and word spread through the canyon before either ownership group made a public statement. Co-owner Tommy Bina reacted on camera to the notice, and Hoodline reported that reporters could not reach co-owner David Shamsa for comment.
- March 11, 2026 — The Hollywood Reporter's Rambling Reporter column confirmed the sale and noted rumors that the new owners might convert the space into a liquor store, reporting that Bina had posted a video in February saying his partners sold the store without his knowledge.
- April 22, 2026 — Bina posted directly to Facebook, stating that new owners had told him he was no longer welcome at the property he helped run since 1982 and that longtime employees had lost their jobs, a statement reported in full by WEHOonline.
What stands out reading these five dates side by side is that Tommy Bina's name does not appear anywhere in the September 2025 license transfer, the one that predates his public complaint by five months. Whatever happened between the original 1982 licensees and the new corporation, it happened before the dispute became visible to the neighborhood, and the January 2026 filing under a third, entirely separate company only adds another layer that neither party has publicly reconciled. That September 2025 license, the one currently active for the store's alcohol sales, is set to expire August 31, 2026, according to the same records review, so anyone following this story closely should expect another filing before Labor Day.
Bina's own account of the moment is short and direct. In his April post he wrote: "I am fighting for the Canyon Store."
What Hasn't Moved
None of that corporate back-and-forth has interrupted a single business day. The store's live listing this August still shows a full weekly schedule and a note about a refreshed menu, not a closure notice. The British candy section Bina started stocking decades ago, the story goes, after realizing a regular customer in loud suits was David Bowie, is still part of the shop's identity according to the same WEHOonline account of the store's history. Pace, the Italian restaurant that now occupies the basement space where Cass Elliot once lived, remains next door and unaffected by any of the license changes above it, a detail confirmed on the store's own site.
The physical facts that make this corner what it is have not changed either. It still sits at Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain, on the site of a 1919 hunting lodge rebuilt in 1930 from stone and brick pulled out of the old riverbed. Jim Morrison still lived on Rothdell Trail directly behind it, close enough that the store's own version of events describes his belongings being thrown from a window during a fight residents could see from the porch.
A Parking Note Worth Knowing Before You Go
One practical wrinkle that trips up newer residents and visiting family alike: the store shares its small lot with the restaurant next door, and during dinner hours that lot runs on valet, which can make a quick stop for firewood or a Gatorade feel more complicated than it should, a pattern noted by multiple visitors on Tripadvisor. If you are running up before dinner service starts, the errand stays simple. After that, plan on circling the block once.
Why This Is the Story, Not the Sale
The instinct with a story like this is to write about the sale itself, who bought what and from whom. That misses what actually matters if you live on Wonderland, Kirkwood, or anywhere along the climb toward Mulholland and Woodrow Wilson. Two ownership entities have now filed paperwork for the same license inside of five months. A man who ran the place for 44 years says he was removed from a corporation he didn't know existed. And through all of it, the porch has not gone dark for a single evening.
That gap between the ownership drama and the daily experience is the actual local knowledge worth having. The businesses that hold a canyon together are rarely the ones with the cleanest paperwork upstream. They are the ones that keep opening at 7 a.m. regardless of what's happening in a filing cabinet at the Alcoholic Beverage Control office downtown. For now, the Canyon Country Store is doing exactly that, and the coffee line on the porch is the only ledger that matters to the people who live above it.
If you're already living the daily rhythm this store anchors, that same close attention to what's actually happening on the ground, not just what's on paper, is the standard Neal Baddin brings to representing homes along the Mulholland and Woodrow Wilson corridor. When the conversation eventually turns to what your own place on the ridge is worth, that's a call worth making to someone who already knows which stories on this hill are real.
