Why subscribe?
Nobody knows Los Angeles history, true crime and historic preservation like Kim Cooper and Richard Schave, proprietors of acclaimed tour company Esotouric and authors of the Raymond Chandler Map and How To Find Old Los Angeles. From The Real Black Dahlia to Charles Bukowski’s L.A., Pasadena Confidential to The Birth of Noir, their deeply researched bus tours (currently on hiatus, but featured in the short documentary below), walking tours, blog posts, webinars (available here on Substack as a streaming channel) and 3-D virtual tours reveal the secrets of the city they love.
Subscribe to become one of Esotouric’s preservation pals and you’ll be kept well informed about Los Angeles cultural history news, threatened landmarks that need your help, newly discovered photo archives, vintage streetlights lost and found, “corruption corner” updates on L.A. City Hall, and offbeat local lore you won’t find anywhere else. Let Esotouric be your personal librarians collecting everything worth knowing about the most fascinating city in the world.
It’s free to be a “gentle reader”
Just click the “Subscribe now” button and add your email to stay informed about how our shared history is still leaving its mark, and join the community of people who share your passion for looking deeper into Los Angeles. Every new edition of the newsletter will go directly to your inbox. For more frequent updates, you can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. And there’s a short documentary explaining how true crime tours turned into a real life noir battle for the soul of Los Angeles.
To get a taste of the free newsletter, see these popular posts:
• The Hotel Cecil is a crime scene, but not the way you think it is. (About our appearance as Skid Row historians on the Netflix show Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.)
• For Marty & Elayne, with love and rage
• Let's Talk Taix: The Most Interesting Historic Preservation Battle in a Generation.
• In memory of William J. Kirkpatrick, who came to see the 1932 Olympics, and died in a doorway on Vermont Avenue. (The untold story of a widely circulated vintage crime scene photograph.)
• Noir Los Angeles is thrilling... but not if you have to live in it!
Paid subscribers get:
Our sincere appreciation for supporting our historic preservation advocacy and research—we couldn’t save so much without you. Subscribers also receive occasional special posts sharing stories and images you won’t find anywhere else on the internet, drawn from our visits to special collections archives, offbeat road trips and mysteries we sleuth out from vintage newspaper rabbit holes just for you. When you subscribe you’ll immediately get access to all the subscriber-only posts.
These special posts have featured an esoteric temple tour where we got goosed by a ghost, a visit to the seldom seen basement of the Bradbury Building, UCLA’s undigitized vintage menu collection, Pat Adler’s 1960s research photos of L.A. landmarks, backstage treasures of the Mayan Theatre, a 1930s movie theater promo scrapbook, a secret spring in a subway tunnel, skulls and brains.
We appreciate your support, especially since we paused bus tour operations in March 2020 due to the coronavirus. After a pandemic series of immersive L.A. history webinars, we returned in June 2022 with all new walking tours. We’re always working hard to tell the stories of threatened Los Angeles landmarks, and find public policy solutions to keep them from being demolished or displaced.
Sign up for the free or paid editions and we promise you’ll be the best informed Angeleno or fan of the city you can be—and you’ll be the first to know when we announce new events, which often sell out.
yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
