Gentle reader,
We keep going back to the Stires Staircase Bungalow Court, the ten rent stabilized units climbing the hillside just west of Downtown that for a century were modest, dignified homes for a small village of Angelenos.
All the tenants have been evicted now, and the great old trees chopped down. Workers came and broke up the roofs, to ensure no person without shelter could find it inside. And the taggers and urban explorers came and made their mark, everywhere.
But still, we keep going back. We couldn’t shake the feeling that something was there that we needed to see.
We found that something. It is a découpaged print of the Mexican baby Jesus known as Santo Niño de Atocha, patron saint of starving prisoners and the wrongly accused, and the figure that our councilmember and nemesis Jose Huizar posted to his official Instagram account shortly before the FBI raided his home and arrested him in June 2020.
It must be nice to have friends in law enforcement to tip you off about big stuff involving you. We always wondered what else he did in that precious window of knowing, before the crew in windbreakers woke up the household and took him away.
In the years since then, we’ve tracked Jose Huizar’s public corruption charges and his eventual confession, attended his co-conspirator Ray Chan’s trial and now are watching the D.A.’s corruption case involving sitting councilman Curren Price.
But despite all the action in the courts, only the names have changed in City Hall, and big real estate still has a stranglehold on the town.
That’s why when we saw the baby Jesus, we leant in and told him the news: attorney Jamie T. Hall is using what he’s learned from the DOJ’s ineffective public corruption prosecutions to take on City Hall’s real dirty machine—not elected and appointed officials who sell their votes, but the anonymous bureaucrats who tee up those votes and who are still helping to grease the wheels rolling over the city’s spirit.
In August, we wrote about Hall’s bombshell petition for writ of mandate, Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition v. City of Los Angeles (Case No. 23STCP02375).
What began with a legal challenge by hillside residents concerned that their narrow, landslide prone streets couldn’t handle the big new projects the city kept rubber stamping has turned into a dogged effort to expose criminal vote trading by elected representatives who don’t actually read citizen appeals or listen to public comment, don’t actually debate the issues, but simply go through the democratic motions before voting according to a prepared script!
If what Hall alleges is true, Los Angeles doesn’t have a democratically elected government, and thousands of official acts over the past 20+ years are illegal under state law and should be reversed.
It’s dizzying to think about, but that’s what this case seeks to prove.
On Monday, July 15 after 9:00am before Judge Maurice A. Leiter in Dept. 54 at Stanley Mosk Courthouse downtown, Hall will argue his case to compel the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office to turn over the evidence needed to prove that Jose Huizar’s PLUM Committee, now run by Marqueece Harris-Dawson, City Council President-Elect, rules on big and small real estate developments by reading from a script prepared by legislative analyst Roberto Mejia.
Here’s a press release about Monday’s hearing, which the public is welcome to attend, and a Dropbox packed with hundreds of pages of depositions and court filings to date. You can sign up for CBSC’s mailing list and drop a few bucks in the kitty if you’d like to support their fight. And please, share this with your friends who love Los Angeles and want to see her clean up her act.
Yes, we keep going back to Stires Staircase Bungalow Court, even though it hurts to look at what the developers have done, empowered by politicians who might have been reading from a script when they sealed its doom. Even wrecked, it’s worth looking at and thinking about.
Tomorrow, we’ll begin our Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue walking tour in Stires’ sad shadow, right next door at Guisados. They’ve got chili relleno tacos on the menu and we’ve got some strange and beautiful tales to tell, so join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles' past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city's soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar and a subscriber edition of this newsletter, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. You can share this post to win subscriber perks. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking and bus tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
• Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 7/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels and Madness (Sun. 7/21) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop (Sat. 7/27 - sorry, sold out) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop (Sun. 7/28) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sun. 8/4) • West Adams Sugar Hill and Angelus Rosedale Cemetery (Sat. 8/10) • Broadway: Downtown Los Angeles’ Beautiful, Magical Mess (Sun. 8/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (Sat. 8/31)• Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (Sat. 9/7) • Highland Park Arroyo (Sat. 9/21) • The Real Black Dahlia (Sat. 9/29) • The Run: Gay Downtown L.A. History (Sun. 10/13) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sun. 10/27) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (Sun. 11/3)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
Empty Los Angeles picked up our June 24 scoop on the Los Angeles City Attorney filing a civil suit against Airbnb "influencer" vladbnb for illegal listings, teaching his tricks to others and scamming Airbnb out of fraudulent damage claims. Two weeks later, local media read the city’s press release and caught up with us.
Just added as a private tour option is the new Film Noir / Real Noir ramble around Bunker Hill and the Civic Center.
There's a new graffiti tower in Los Angeles—but to us it looks more like a tombstone. Sakura Gardens ICF, where Japanese American seniors were displaced after Keiro's new, for profit owner Pacifica ran California's deadliest nursing home in 2020 and beyond, is empty and blighted, a blot on Boyle Avenue. So many ghosts, of donors and nurses and sweet seniors who deserved so much better.
We're so glad we took the time to document the neon and incandescent blink pattern on the Hollywood Downtowner Motel sign after the Vedanta Square ceremony in February. It's now closed and dark, pending conversion to Covenant House youth housing. CH: you gotta keep the sign!
718 W. 30th Street near USC was a pretty Craftsman house, boarded up for years. Like so much useful, historic multifamily housing—4 units, 11 beds—it’s just ash and sludge now. LAFD documented her last moments, glowing red.
James Dastoli has nominated J.M. Close's finest Egyptian Revival apartment house, the Amasis (1926) at 747 Wilcox, to be a landmark. The rare surviving murals and decorative motifs hint at how weird, lurid and thrilling 1920s Los Angeles must have seemed.
As the rumor mill has been buzzin’, Arby’s Hollywood property owner Blake Megdal has inked a deal with Prince Street Pizza to operate a 4pm-4am drive-thru Sicilian slice pop-up from August 8 through Hallowe’en. And while the renderings provided to the press show that Prince Street had hoped to rebrand the iconic Arby’s neon sign using that brand’s trademarked color scheme and Old West typography, that’s no longer the plan. For now, at least, customers will need to make the thoughtful leap from seeing the old school Arby’s hat and knowing it is the temporary home of Prince Street Pizza. We think they can do that, and we’re glad the sign is getting the love it deserves.
Do you know a Los Angeles landmark when you see one? Natch! But it's not official until the Cultural Heritage Commission starts the designation process, and on 7/18 they're considering Arby's, the Gaylord, Astro, Krotona & the Maycrest Bungalow Court.
LA Taco reports that while things look grim for the Silver Platter bar, presently closed by the ABC and facing demolition, there is still a clear path to save this queer landmark, and all it takes is for councilmember Eunisses Hernandez to try. Will she?
Farewell to El Burro and La Carreta. Olvera Street is losing too many familiar faces, and its opaque management leaves Angelenos with a lot of questions and worry about what legacy business is next.
An icon in a ruined bungalow court whispers of real consequences for City Hall's secret racket