Ever since we started looking out for Los Angeles, nearly twenty years ago, people have come to us seeking help with troubled landmarks, blighted buildings, demolition by neglect, unhinged landlords and vanishing heritage.

Through trial and error, obsession with the process, and the belief that charting a path to help people save special places is a kind of magic spell that heals the world, we've celebrated some terrific wins—and learned from fascinating losses.

You can read about our varied preservation advocacy efforts here.

Along the way, we've learned how to navigate Los Angeles' profoundly opaque reporting and compliance systems, developed strategies for getting checked-out council staff to respond, honed public records research into a fine art, encouraged Angelenos to get involved, and watched a community of preservation pals grow into a powerhouse of eyes-on-the-street advocates, civic stewards and community educators.

But many times, when somebody reaches out, we end up giving them general advice before we ever get to the unique problem where we can actually help.

As our reach has grown, so has the volume of requests arriving through email and our various social media channels. At the same time, Los Angeles has become harder to monitor. More places are at risk, public agencies are increasingly unresponsive, and the losses can feel overwhelming.

We worry constantly that something wonderful will fall through the cracks. And recently it did. Even with several community tips, we got to the Schultheis Bungalow Court only after the public hearing that likely sealed its fate.

So we built a form—a single place where anyone concerned about a building, landmark, tree or piece of public art can reach out and share what they've found.

As someone fills out a Looking Out for Los Angeles field report, each section includes links and guidance explaining how to search public records, report problems and understand what comes next. It may look simple, but this little tool represents nearly twenty years of work in the civic trenches.

To quote William Mulholland: “There it is, take it!”

Our aim with this tool is to make it easier for Angelenos to scratch that infernal itch that comes with caring about a place, but not knowing what to do for it. Knowledge is power, and Los Angeles is worth looking out for.

Please use it whenever you need it, and pass the link along to others who care. Let us know if there's information we should add. We're excited to use this tool to empower community members and amplify their efforts to stabilize, preserve and reactivate the places they love, while we can be more organized and hopefully not miss another Schultheis Bungalow Court!.

Building tools like this—and doing the reporting that accompanies them—takes time. If you find them useful, and if you appreciate our posts on the Los Angeles heritage, architecture, landscape and policy stories the mainstream media overlooks, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Our preservation, vacant historic housing and public corruption reporting is about to kick into high gear, and we need your support now more than ever.

This newsletter will always be free because we believe every Angeleno deserves access to this reporting. But we couldn't do this work without our paid subscribers and walking tour guests.

Through Friday, August 7, annual newsletter subscriptions are 50% off. You'll get full access to our pandemic-era paywalled posts while directly supporting the work ahead.

On Friday morning we'll be back in the high-security Department 106 of the Foltz Courthouse as Judge Larry Paul Fidler hears Councilman Curren Price's motion asking the court to dismiss the criminal case with no trial. If the Judge grants the motion, the prosecution ends.

Meanwhile, in civil court, Price's former senior deputy Angie Reyes-English is pressing her wrongful termination and whistleblower lawsuit, and finally got her former boss to sit for a deposition on July 23 after months of legal wrangling.

As his next court date approaches, we're putting the finishing touches on our reporting from Price's week-long preliminary hearing, which featured high drama from both the bench and the gallery, along with remarkable insights into the profound dysfunction and backstabbing inside the CD9 office.

If you’re a CD9 constituent frustrated with council staff: it’s not you, it’s them!

Outside the courthouse, we're working on stories about empty Victorian neighborhoods, endangered mid-century apartment buildings, FBI surveillance of a great Los Angeles writer and fresh evidence that the knives are out for brave civil servants inside City Hall. Stay tuned!

If you're already a paid subscriber, we have a special offer for you, too. Just send us an email before midnight Friday with the date of an upcoming Esotouric walking tour you'd like to attend, and let us know whether you'd like to bring a friend. Your ticket—or tickets—are 50% off, too!

This Saturday’s walk is Film Noir / Real Noir, with special guests Bunker Hill native son Gordon Pattison and neighborhood historian Nathan Marsak. The tour honors Film Noir’s abiding influence through visits to select filming locations and the lost landscape of Victorian Bunker Hill, where real life noir narratives were captured by dogged crime reporters, bringing inspiration to Hollywood screenwriters in their daily newspaper.

Join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Know Your Downtown Los Angeles (9/19) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

New from Bunker Hill historian Nathan Marsak, a deep dive into the post-redevelopment licensing of the Angels Flight brand, including some extremely revealing disco duds and coked-out revolving restaurant hijinx on top of the BLOC!

In June we shared: Uncanny book people, we need your most powerful spell! Eviction-threatened bookman Todd Pratum’s quest for a new steward went viral and now his esoteric collection is bound for The Wu:uM in East Hollywood.

Incredibly, The Eames House is still zoned as a private residence, just as it was in Charles and Ray’s day. Now the board seeks change of use as a Public Benefit Project, to enshrine the museum and event space use for the future.

For too long, the stewardship of L.A.’s derelict architectural resources has been the province of passionate and increasingly angry citizens, doing it for free. It is long past time for those who have made fortunes in this city to step up and care for the places that matter, as Sony is doing with the Cinerama Dome.

As the world notes the incompetence of Los Angeles leaders through the foul lens of the Lineage warehouse fire aftermath, we’ve got a modest proposal for the prime Civic Center park parcel Karen Bass seeks to gift to AltaMed as a corporate branding space.

In June, we saw a City Council filing and broke news of the Uplifters Foundation’s proposed quarter billion dollar bond to build traditional homes on burned Pacific Palisades lots. Senator Ben Allen said he’s not on their board, then changed his tune (via ), and locals are squawking.

An anonymous fan of Southern California’s greatest surviving Googie drive-in, Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank, has launched a campaign to shame the owners into maintaining it—and removing clumsy illegal additions.

They grow up so fast!

It was just a few years ago that we poked and pestered until we gained access to the gated Chevron Oil fee strip in Compton.

This was where an enormous native sycamore called the Eagle Tree, famous as a map marker between Spanish-era rancho land grants, lived for centuries before being struck by lightning and toppling over into the apartment parking lot next door.

In the shadow of the hollow, dying mother tree, a many-trunked clone was already filling out, eager to grow to great size over the next four hundred years.

But Chevron, which drove its thirsty wells into California when the Eagle Tree was already mature, decided—landmark or not—that it shouldn’t stay and cause any more bother.

That’s when we kicked our advocacy efforts into a high, new gear.

No longer just asking that Compton and Chevron dedicate resources to stewarding the famous tree and provide occasional public access to the historic marker, it was now a race against time to gather biological material and find botanical partners willing to foster cuttings until they were viable and could go into the ground.

With pesky preservation pal Dr. Don Hodel by our side, those partnerships were quickly forged. Fresh twigs from the Eagle Tree were wrapped in wet towels, carried away in an ice chest, then placed in the care of the Huntington Gardens, the California Botanical Garden and the Theodore Payne Foundation.

And then, with no notice to historians or botanists, Chevron installed tall, razor wire fences, removed the young Eagle Tree and paved the entire fee strip. In an instant, an urban meadow alive with tiny creatures and a landscape that still suggested a time without internal combustion engines was no more.

But happily, the Eagle Tree’s story doesn’t end there. Because at the Huntington Gardens, where we’d delivered dozens of twigs into the hands of the botanists, senior staff were brainstorming how to honor the 250th anniversary of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence

Curators produced a special exhibition now on view, This Land Is…, while the botanical team expanded the theme outdoors with a new landscape plan for the meadow between the Conservatory and the Scott Galleries of American Art.

We’d noticed landscaping work in progress on our occasional visits to check in on the stubby Eagle Tree clones in the nursery and the tiny jarred ones in the Plant Tissue Culture and Cryopreservation Lab, where Dr. Don Hodel documented their progress for a future journal article.

One day we were asked, almost as an aside, did we want to see where the bigger Eagle Trees had been planted?

To see where the what now?!

We’re delighted, and profoundly moved, to share that two genetically identical descendants of Compton’s legendary Eagle Tree have been planted in places of honor at The Huntington’s beautiful new Oak Meadow, celebrating America’s semiquincentennial and the native species that tell the stories of the Southland.

When you visit the Huntington Gardens, we hope you’ll make time to meet the Eagle Tree—both of them!

The Eagle Tree Clone Distribution Project has tiny trees waiting in the wings to be hardened and planted at suitable historic places throughout Southern California, and we urge anyone who cares for such a place to contact us about reserving an Eagle Tree clone of their own.

Chevron chopped down the Eagle Tree and paved over the fee strip, but we’re grateful they allowed us to advocate for the tree through meetings and site visits, and to collect the precious biological material that carries its story forward. If that gate had stayed locked, there would be no Eagle Tree today.

In these newsletters and on our social channels, we howl and moan a lot about failed stewardship, corruption, blight, mismanagement, greed and empty buildings—all those tiresome things that carve away at the opportunities that Los Angeles is supposed to offer to dreamers.

When the city plays fair, this is where great ideas take root and change the world.

So it felt good, if strange, to stand on the Oak Meadow and tell a passing dad about a preservation campaign with a mostly happy ending, and creative and corporate folks coming together to do something wonderful for the future.

Maybe one year soon, we’ll sit beneath the Eagle Tree and tell it the dark days are in the rear-view mirror, and dreamers are once again welcome in Los Angeles.

But not today. We now return to our regularly scheduled neo-Noir programming, with scandals du jour and trouble brewing. Watch this space!

This Saturday’s tour takes us deep into the historic heart of Downtown Los Angeles on the trail of frustrated oil company executive Raymond Chandler, taking notes on the real crimes and offbeat characters that would populate the mystery fiction he could only write when he was truly desperate.

Then on August 8, join us for a Downtown walk that honors Film Noir’s abiding influence through visits to select filming locations and the lost landscape of Victorian Bunker Hill, where real life noir narratives were captured by dogged crime reporters, bringing inspiration to Hollywood screenwriters in their daily newspaper. Join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Know Your Downtown Los Angeles (9/19) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

Demolition pending with no new project for 334 N Carmelina Ave. (1930), a classic Spanish hacienda with red tile roofs, tiled stair risers, fountains, arches and....74 acres of primo Brentwood dirt. Salvaged or moved to Altadena, it could be of another century’s service.

Art seeks a home! Vermonica’s creator Sheila Klein has two stunning vintage streetlight pieces (Urband and Traffic Necklace) she wants to install in the public realm in the City of Angels. Got space on your building or grounds for one or both to shine?

Happy pub week to Alessio De Stefano’s The John Fante Tapes, the first book to tell how two fans—one the already famous Charles Bukowski—helped bring Ask the Dust, a lost 1930s LA masterpiece, back into the light. It’s in Italian only; surely a US house will translate?

Before this barn at 11161 W. Pico was Adventure 16, the successor to the venerable Hoegee’s mountaineering gear shop Downtown, it was D.W. Price’s precision machine shop for aircraft and rockets. In such modest places, Angelenos changed the world. RIP.

As creative Angelenos brainstorm on how to buy the Westlake Theatre, a history lesson: the City owned and sold it off cheap to Jamison, abandoning the plan that it would be restored and reactivated. Blighted, derelict landmarks are an L.A. policy choice.

Chavez Ravine historian Nathan Marsak is thrilled by LMU’s new archive and has already dug in to correct errors. His debunking of displacement myths might be why he wasn’t asked to assist, a pity. He loves the neighborhood, but he loves the truth more.

At 1610 Council in the Los Angeles oil field district, J.W. Creager was sure the geyser erupting out of his steps was a pure artesian well, but a city crew eventually showed up and took responsibility for the busted main. Protect the lovely 1895 duplex from the wicked stucco man!

Three years on, Empty Los Angeles revisits the derelict stalled redevelopment site 570 N Normandie (1923), after a neighbor chimes in on the LosAngelesPreserved subreddit about men with German shepherds seen chasing squatters out before it burned. W.T.F. L.A.?

Chinatown Victorian cottage lovers, don’t despair: when you see the demo notice posted at 825 W Bartlett, it’s for deconstruction and moving of the SurveyLA historic resource to 322 N Ave 59. The palms and vintage fence probably won’t be so lucky. (Or maybe not: since we posted about the permit on social media, the application has been withdrawn.)

Born into wealth, Faith Chevallier dedicated her life to aiding prison inmates returning to society and advocating for women on the bench—like Judge Oda Faulconer, who moved into Armstrong after Faith died in ‘35. Today, it’s on Airbnb by the month.

RIP Ye Olde Taco House #1, a quiet Covid casualty that’s been rotting in plain sight across from Angels Flight. Demo sought for no new project. Convenient to The Brass Rail (now La Cita) and the Pershing Square hustling grounds, if that A-frame could talk, you would blush!

The wreckers are coming for 456 N Bristol, the airy English cottage where Pam Lang was stricken months after her agent husband Jennings was maimed for being too attentive to client Joan Bennett. Another gem perfect for Altadena. Somebody, please save it!

Unlike Marilyn Monroe’s house, City Council punted on landmarking councilwoman Roz Wyman’s Residence, and now her Paul R. Williams designed mansion is slated for demolition. On the right Altadena lot, it could be magnificent again.

We talked with Dave Schilling for L.A. Material about the magnificent LAX Theme Building's exotic restaurant history and decades of demolition by neglect. This might be the poster child of squandered goodwill potential in a city that's made an art of it.

On this day in 1888, a baby was born in Chicago to an alcoholic railroad engineer and a highly-strung Irish immigrant.

They named him Raymond Thornton Chandler, and through a series of astonishing twists of fate and pique, he grew up to find himself in the oil business in Downtown Los Angeles, just as public and private corruption set their claws into everything of value in the town.

Chandler, who had wanted to be a critic and writer of fantasy fiction, but lacked the private income and connections to build a career in Bloomsbury London, turned his gimlet eye on the fascinating, horrible rogues who were carving up Los Angeles.

He imagined a white knight private detective called Philip Marlowe, rough around the edges but gentle as a cat, who could navigate the halls of power and the sleaziest dives, explaining Los Angeles and damning its villains in prose—even if they never were held accountable in life.

Lately, we’ve been waking up feeling like Marlowe coming back to consciousness after getting sapped as the morning mist forms, then crawls across the east side of the city. It brings with it the stench of millions of dead creatures, bound for restaurants and food trucks and supermarkets, who instead were cooked in the Lineage warehouse solar panel fire, flooded with fire suppression chemicals and now rot in place.

The rancid reek of decomposition is instantly recognizable to the lizard brain as a threat, and when it wakes you from a sound sleep, it’s with a racing, anxious heart and sense of dread.

We sleep more than five miles from the Boyle Heights disaster site, which is surrounded by homes and businesses. We can’t imagine how they are suffering.

Mayor Karen Bass told her donors whose building is filled with putrid death that they could take 45 days to clean it up. LA Material has just reported that the Mayor’s unpaid advisor Yusef Robb, recently hired to advise those donors on the P.R. crisis, was lurking on the Mayor’s WhatsApp channel, monitoring press inquiries, shaping their corporate response through the lens of the Mayor’s team’s discussions.

If that sounds unethical, it’s because it is unethical.

It’s still Raymond Chandler’s noir city, filled with rogues and self-dealers and well-placed idiots driving the civic ship onto the rocks while the happy few bank obscene profits. But in Chandler’s lifetime, the bad guys knew enough to take care of the city they were looting, to keep the rubes smiling while their pockets were picked. No more.

Next Saturday, we’ll be conjuring up the spirit of the author as we tour Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. in a belated 138th birthday stroll.

This period in his life is lightly fictionalized in Kim’s mystery novel The Kept Girl, which is on sale for 50% off on our website in honor of Chandler’s birthday from today through Sunday when you use the code word MIASMA.

Miasma theory dates back to the Greeks, who Chandler studied closely at Dulwich College. They believed that the heavy, foul night air that brought the stench of filth into peoples’ homes also brought communicable disease.

In the 19th century, the danger of miasma was still feared, and is one reason that the early Los Angeles cemeteries clustered around the Plaza were decommissioned and moved to the outskirts of town as the population grew.

On Saturday, we’re giving our tour of Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 and there is a slim chance that we will encounter whiffs of the Lineage warehouse fire stench on our walk. So if you’re joining us, bring a little jar of Vick’s VapoRub or Tiger Balm to cut the smell, a little trick we learned from our friends at the morgue, or a pocket full of posey like they did in Black Death plague times.

On this stroll through the oldest and most fascinating commercial cemetery in Los Angeles, we’ll encounter carnies and cult leaders, the real-life Perry Mason and the creative kids who brought Day of the Dead to California, and so many more wonderful characters of old Los Angeles whose stories will haunt you. Join us, do!

Plus, just added to our calendar, by popular demand: Know Your Downtown Los Angeles, with a stop to explore Ernest Batchelder’s tile wonderland Dutch Chocolate Shop. Tickets are going fast, so don’t miss your chance to see it for yourself.

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Know Your Downtown Los Angeles (9/19) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

There was a brief panic on July 12 when photographer Gary Leonard shared without context a photo of the recently shuttered Cole’s French Dip neon sign on the ground (it turned out to be several years old). We asked anyone nearby to go take a look, and that’s why we can share this scoop that the landmark has a new owner! Thanks Jeremy Fall for believing in this precious place and Cedd Moses for finding a new steward. Fans can show their support to preservation pal Raihan_ at Incense Route Aromatherapy & Crystals. We’re so grateful he ran over from his shop nearby to check on the sign and found this newly posted change of ownership notice.

RED ALERT: Section 106 protections could be eliminated via rewrites by the little known Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), which since 1966 has fostered the places that matter to Americans. Express your alarm and email before Friday.

Big news about the landmarked Scott Avenue bungalow court: after failing to produce a required historic assessment, the landlord has withdrawn the application to turn 10 rental cottages into tiny houses for sale!

Widescreen, geodesic cheers for Ben Steinberg, the fearless, tireless one-man movement who convinced the Forman family to ink a lease deal with Sony to reopen the Cinerama Dome and Arclight complex after six long years.

Down on St. Andrews, squatters in a vacant historic house slated for a stalled redevelopment project set a fire that destroyed the next door neighbor’s home and killed their dogs, CD4 knew all about the squatters, and nobody did anything to protect the neighbors, and still is doing nothing. The City told the victims they don’t know who owns the squatter house, but owner Vladimir Beron filed redevelopment plans five years ago and he is a maxed out donor to City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson. The burned-out site hasn’t even been cleared, so City Attorney candidate John McKinney shot a campaign video in the rubble.

A preservation party 150 years in the making! On Saturday 9/12, Heritage Square Museum observes the sesquicentennial of the Perry Mansion, a Boyle Heights landmark saved from the wrecking ball when it was moved in 1975. And get this: City Hall helped!

The Wilshire corridor can break your heart with derelict buildings and trashed landscapes, but then there’s Bullocks Wilshire, where the Southwestern Law School is such a great steward, offers tours, and even tricks out the show windows with vintage outfits. More of this, please!

Does Los Angeles City Council need a project management system? CF: 23-0930, Ellis Act/Tenant Habitability Program/Displacement Prevention/Habitability Improvements (Nithya Raman / Eunisses Hernandez) just expired with no action.

In June, City Council declared the Moorish Revival Sparkletts Bottling Plant a landmark—yay! But what about the neon roof sign, which came down just before the vote? Was it sent to the dump? Nope: it’s now installed at Primo Brands, just south of the 10!

Councilmember Traci Park commissioned a structural engineering analysis which found half the Business Block can be restored and returned to use. Thank goodness Rick Caruso never got his hands on this property: he wants the “eyesore” bulldozed.

Unsecured buildings burn as residents chant at their councilmember to do something. We remember the 1/7/25 blaze on this speculator-blighted block, which exhausted Downtown firefighters needed in the Palisades and Altadena. Something’s gotta give in Los Angeles.

We asked citizens to crowdsource a Los Angeles tunnel map: FrenchiesFrites shared Glassell Park lore of one under the 2 Freeway. Politicians wouldn’t help when gangs took it over, only sealing it off after a local was murdered. RIP Richard Cheesman.

File under: Empty Los Angeles. The lovely El Patio Apts (R.H. Clopine, 1925) has 18 RSO units not subject to the Ellis Act. The tenants disappeared during the pandemic and the vacant building burned in April. Fenced and lonely at 114 S New Hampshire. It’s a housing use crisis!

We write in haste because the City’s clock is ticking, with very little time left.

In recent weeks, we’ve heard from multiple Los Feliz neighbors who are worried about the future of the dense, Colonial-style 1937 bungalow court at 2806–2820 North St. George Street, across the alley from the landmarked Snow White Cottages.

Neighbors told us tenants still appeared to be living there, but alarming notices had begun appearing on the property.

We checked for demolition permit applications, didn’t find any, noticed that a proposed small lot development project had first been proposed for the site in 2016, and asked the neighbors to let us know if they noticed anything new.

It didn’t seem like a red alert. So many historic properties across Los Angeles are already running hot orange into red and can’t wait for a visit. We planned to stop by the next time we were in the neighborhood.

But to our horror, when we did finally visit, we found a posted notice of a Public Hearing—for a date that had very recently passed!

The City Planning Department had considered the matter of Case No.: VTT-74087-SL-M1, made its decision and issued its Letter of Determination. You’ll find the PDF file embedded below.

Letter Of Determination St George Bungalow Court July 9 2026

514KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

That means the clock is now ticking extremely loud and fast: The deadline to file an appeal is Monday 7/20 at 4:30 p.m. (See pages 20-21 in the Letter of Determination for the city’s instructions for filing in person or online, and particularly their advice on not waiting until the last minute to do so.)

Filing an appeal does not stop the proposed redevelopment project. It simply pauses the clock and gives the community time to understand what has been approved, what options remain, and whether the City’s decision deserves a second look.

Yesterday, after our Hollywood Noir walking tour, even though we were pretty hot and hungry, we went straight back to St. George to see if there was any sign of a posted notice that the deadline to appeal was Monday afternoon. Finding none, and concerned that neighbors and residents might not be aware of the decision and the deadline, we shot the video embedded above in the hopes that it will reach those who need to see it.

If you share our concerns about:

• the future of the existing Rent Stabilized bungalows and tenants,

• the mature trees on the property,

• or the extraordinarily compressed appeals timeline that leaves citizens scrambling to understand a complicated land use decision,

please consider passing this along to your Los Feliz and Disney fan friends and sharing on your social channels, and contacting Councilmember Nithya Raman’s office to respectfully ask them if they’ve looked into the situation and connected with the tenants.

One neighbor with a deep knowledge of Los Angeles' German refugee community pointed out something extraordinary: Disney special-effects pioneer Herman Schultheis lived in the St. George bungalows. Lovers of vintage Los Angeles photography might know him from the archive digitized by LAPL about 15 years ago.

To fans of Walt Disney’s feature film animation, he is legendary, a key participant in Fantasia, Dumbo, Pinocchio and Bambi, who kept precise illustrated records of just how the groundbreaking special effects were achieved.

His notebook, preserved by his widow Ethel in their St. George cottage home from his assumed death in 1955—he disappeared on a photographic trip to Mayan ruins—until her own death in 1990, was saved by archivists to transform our understanding of how Walt Disney Studios made cinematic magic.

Historians call Schultheis’ notebook “The Rosetta Stone of Disney animation.”

We cannot help think of all the old, unwanted buildings filled with the possessions of souls who have passed, things that are so often lost to squatter fires or smashed and taken to the dump. (The Hollywood Center Motel bungalows were still filled with papers when we walked the lot after the major fire in January.)

In Los Angeles, city of dreamers, stuff left behind in any old residential unit could be part of our collective history!

We believe that Angelenos deserve to have our history properly documented before it disappears. We have a right to serious consideration of ecologically sound alternatives to demolition—including salvage of good materials to keep them out of the landfill, or the relocation of useful, historic buildings when preservation in place proves impossible or undesirable for property owners.

We’ve seen that happen successfully just up the block at 2919 St. George, where a demolition threatened Craftsman house is now being lovingly restored in Altadena instead of smashed and hauled to the landfill.

It can seem like the City of Los Angeles believes demolition is inevitable, because the land use consultants and developers who submit projects are usually not interested in saving old buildings. But there are greener and more thoughtful ways of redeveloping, and to blaze such fresh paths takes time and hard work. But the more we do it as a city, the easier it gets!

Maybe someone reading this will decide to file an appeal and give the St. George bungalows a little more time. If so, we’re happy to help however we can, and we hope Councilmember Raman’s office will be, too.

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Update 7/20/26: A concerned citizen who contacted the office of Councilmember Nithya Raman about the St. George bungalows shared that they received the following email in reply:

Thank you for reaching out. The Letter of Determination approving the project at 2806–2820 North St. George Street was issued on July 9, and the last day to appeal is today, July 20, at 4:30 p.m. The proposed project is a subdivision of the existing lot to create 12 Small Lot homes, which would be similar in form to townhome‑style residences.

Based on our understanding, the property is not listed in HistoricPlacesLA and is not designated as a historic landmark or historic site. In our communications with the Department of City Planning and the applicant, it is also our understanding that the site is currently owner‑occupied and is not used for commercial purposes.

If you have any additional questions, please let us know. You can also reach out to the planning staff person for the project, who is Iris Wan, and her email is iris.wan@lacity.org.

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)

Since May 2024, when a concerned neighbor alerted us to a demolition notice posted on the oldest gay bar in Los Angeles, we’ve been speaking out for the Silver Platter and the lousy way the City has treated a Westlake treasure.

If threats to the bar’s survival are new to you, we suggest reading our original newsletter here, then coming back for this timely update.

Two weeks ago, a blog post titled The Fight To Preserve America’s Endangered Latinx Landmarks appeared on the Forbes.com website, published by contributor R. Daniel Foster.

Foster writes that “The Silver Platter has since found a new location nearby, with the original bar and neon sign installed there” and that “a preservation battle to save the original building has been ongoing.”

Nieman Lab has reported on the lax standards for contributor-branded posts and the use of the platform by publicists who pay contributors to generate pre-arranged press clips. We have no knowledge of how Foster came to publish this post, nor whether he was compensated for it.

What we do know is that neither statement accurately reflects the current situation.

The historic neon sign remains installed on its longtime home at 2700 W. 7th Street, no permit has been issued for its removal, and as recently as 7/11/2026, the Silver Platter was open for business.

We were curious about Foster’s claim that elements of the Silver Platter might be moving to a new address, so we decided to visit 1403 W. 3rd Street, the former Taxy Bar location a couple of miles away. The name wasn’t just snappy moniker—the bar doubled as the Yellow Cab Company hiring hall in the 1960s! Public records we obtained from Council District 1 had previously identified the property as a possible new Silver Platter location.

What we found posted on the shuttered storefront was a newsworthy surprise.

Silver Platter Conditional Use Permit Hearing

Tuesday, July 14, 2026 • 10:30 a.m.

A Zoning Administrator hearing has been scheduled concerning this address as a proposed new Silver Platter location.

Silver Platter owner Margarita Xatruch, represented by Jesi Harris of Brian Silveria & Associates, seeks a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) authorizing the sale and dispensing of a full line of alcoholic beverages together with approval for one 15-foot illuminated sign.

How to Participate in the Hearing

The hearing will be conducted virtually on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, at 10:30 a.m.

Join by Zoom

• Click: https://planning-lacity-org.zoom.us/j/83544966582

• Meeting ID: 835 4496 6582

• Passcode: 071822

Join by Telephone

• Dial: (669) 900-9128 or (213) 338-8477

• When prompted, enter Meeting ID: 835 4496 6582#

Speak During the Hearing

• On Zoom, click the Raise Hand button.

• By telephone, press *9 to raise your hand when staff calls the item.

To Submit Written Comments
Email the assigned planner (Marie Pichay, marie.pichay@lacity.org) before the hearing. If you submit written comments, ask that they be distributed to the Associate Zoning Administrator and included in the case file for ZA-2026-256-CUB-SPPC.

If you support the requested CUP, have questions about the relocation, or want City officials to pursue every possible option to preserve the Silver Platter at its historic location or to hire a professional photographer like Stephen Schafer to record this landmark for the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) as a binding public record deposited with the National Parks Service, this hearing is an opportunity to make your views part of the public record.

This is the first opportunity since the redevelopment project was submitted in 2020 for City officials to hear directly from the people who care about the Silver Platter in a public hearing devoted to its future.

Our Position

We love and support the Silver Platter, its extraordinary history as a gathering place for artists and marginalized communities, and its elegant neon sign, which we first spotted in the opening credits of Barfly, written by longtime neighborhood resident Charles Bukowski.

We do not oppose Margarita Xatruch’s request for a new Conditional Use Permit. If the Silver Platter has to relocate, we want the business to succeed.

But we also believe the Silver Platter never should have been placed in this position, and that there still could be a way out of it.

How Did We Get Here?

The Silver Platter should not be facing relocation because of a Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) redevelopment project that received ministerial approval, despite factual errors in the application submitted by the property owner under penalty of perjury—errors that City Planning staff failed to identify before granting project entitlements.

Because the project was approved ministerially, no public hearing occurred before the entitlements were issued. The public had no meaningful opportunity to review the proposal, question the factual errors, or explore alternatives that might have preserved both new housing and this important legacy business.

Had those errors been identified when the application was submitted, the public could have been alerted in 2020 that the Silver Platter was threatened. Preservationists, neighborhood stakeholders, the property owner and City officials might then have worked together on a solution that allowed the Silver Platter to remain an anchor tenant in a new development or otherwise protected the building’s historic character.

Instead, years later—after demolition notices were posted, when it was effectively too late to challenge approvals that the public never had an opportunity to contest—Silver Platter owner Margarita Xatruch has been forced to lease a second location and hire a land-use consultant, all while preservation organizations scramble to save pieces of a landmark that should never have been placed at risk.

The City Can Still Fix This Mess

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s Planning Director is Helen Campbell, who served on the Los Angeles City Planning Commission when the ministerial approval for the redevelopment project was issued. Although the Planning Commission never voted on the project—because ministerial approvals require no public hearing—Campbell’s name appears on the March 17, 2022 Letter of Determination granting the redevelopment entitlements.

Campbell has extensive experience in complex planning matters and is well positioned to work with the Los Angeles City Planning Department and the City Attorney’s Office to determine whether the administrative record should be corrected and what additional steps may still be available to protect and foster the Silver Platter.

Meanwhile, there is a very real question about if the Silver Platter needs to leave its home due to an imminent demolition threat.

The redevelopment entitlements for this project would ordinarily have expired on April 2, 2025, but Mayor Eric Garcetti’s pandemic-era tolling orders appear to have extended them until August 28, 2026—although as notes the precise expiration date is difficult to determine because City Planning has never fully integrated tolling information into its online planning portal.

As of 7/13/2026, however, we found no active redevelopment permit activity on the LADBS permit portal, and nothing new since 2024.

Many redevelopment projects never advance to construction. Vacant lots all over Westlake used to be older housing stock demolished for new housing that never happened, as at these parcels that “Cranky Preservationist” visited the same year the 2700 W. 7th Street project was submitted .

If no active project is moving forward at 7th & Rampart Streets, the obvious question is whether the Silver Platter should simply be allowed to remain where it has served the community for generations?

And if redevelopment ultimately does proceed, why shouldn’t the Silver Platter return as an anchor tenant, with significant elements of its historic space and iconic neon sign incorporated into the new building?

Those are questions City officials should be actively working to answer.

Long live the Silver Platter: it matters.

Now scroll down for upcoming walking tour listings, including Saturday’s Hollywood Noir, a ramble along the upscale residential Los Feliz Boulevard shoulder and down into the former adults only fun zone to talk about black magicians and unsolved murders, crooked cops and crusading cafeteria operators, miniature golf, teenage runaways, neon lights, mystery, history, lore and more. Join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)

Wherever you live, odds are your local municipality is sitting on a gold mine of fascinating, unpublished local history. And you’ll probably never get to see it!

Such is the way of government: passionate people pour into public meetings to speak their minds, or labor late into the night on written testimony about stuff they care deeply about—officials meet and confer—they vote (usually to do the exact opposite of what the passionate citizens want)—the vote is documented.

Then the record is quietly filed away, never to be read again.

We want to know everything that’s locked up in a file in Los Angeles, the dustier and deeper the better. We want it all to be digitized, so citizens can know their complicated past, survive the challenging present and shape the future.

And since the City isn’t going to do that voluntarily, we frequently submit public records requests for obscure and intriguing records that we think might exist.

Last summer, as part of a City Planning case file digitization initiative, some unusual items began to hit the planning portal: decades-old rejected Historic Cultural-Monument nominations that had been submitted by citizens and batted down by the appointed Cultural Heritage Board, the more powerful, nimble and activist predecessor of today’s Cultural Heritage Commission.

And one of these rejects purported to be a Los Angeles Volcano at the mouth of Elysian Park. We’ve never submitted a records request faster!

Once we got the file, we went out to see this supposed Volcano for ourselves, as documented in the video at the top of this newsletter.

What we found was something even more intriguing: a still-leaking relic of the city’s early infrastructure that drew Los Angeles River water up to a reservoir to be fed out by gravity along the Zanja Madre ditch system to serve the expanding town.

Also in that slim case file was evidence that being treated like a fly to be swatted away by elected and appointed officials is nothing new.

Volcano nominator Frederick Morrison was born in Northern Ireland in 1912 and emigrated with his family in the early 1920s. The Morrisons lived in a Craftsman cottage at 1020 North Avenue 51, Highland Park. It’s still there.

Frederick’s father, also called Frederick, was a glazier for a sash and door company and his mother Margaret (Madge) clerked in a tobacco and candy shop. All of his siblings grew up and moved away, but Frederick remained into adulthood, living in his parents’ home.

He worked menial jobs, including as a gardener in the County Parks system and in the Southern Pacific Railroad Shops (the footings of this Victorian-era maintenance facility were excavated by archeologists during the grading of the Los Angeles State Historic Park), and developed a passion for discovering local history, architecture and the fading cultural relics of the Arroyo Artist’s Colony.

So he was thrilled to learn that Los Angeles had a Cultural Heritage Board charged with assessing and designating significant sites as Historic-Cultural Monuments, and even moving significant structures that were threatened to the non-profit outdoor museum they’d helped to found, Heritage Square.

Naturally, the board members couldn’t know everything about his neighborhood, and would welcome recommendations from observant citizens.

In September 1973, he sent the Board a hand-written message steeped in oral history and apocalyptic anxiety:

“I think something ought to be marked as a cultural monument, + that is Los Angeles one + only volcano: that is a great sulphur spring, anywhere there is a sulphur spring, there is great volcanic activity down deep underneath the ground.

This tunnel into the spring is a few feet South of the Broadway Entrance of Elysian Park. This is one of the tunnels built by John Holland [sic for William Mulholland] with chain gang labor. The main purpose of building the tunnels was to release the pressure on the hill + keep it from sliding down into the railroad tracks. Every time a truck goes over North Broadway Bridge it trembles its very unsafe because of pressure: the entrance to the tunnel is closed off by an iron gratery, for a long time the bank above the entrance used to be discolored by the sulphur fumes until they piped the water away, you can see the pipes.

There should be a marker there even if it has no cultural influence scientists 2000 years later can dig around the base of the old volcano + say ‘The old inhabitants of LA were well aware of the sleeping giant that destroyed their city.’ This Volcano could be our Paricutín, the volcano in Mexico that broke out in a corn field. Los Angeles could also be covered by a volcano opened up by an earthquake. A great final drama of the disappearance of LA.

All the tunnels including the little one called the Chinees Smugglers Cave were all the work of John Holland [sic] the self taught engineer who conceived the Owens Valley Aqueduct. I was told this by an old switch man called Dewey Hardesty who was often on the chain gang and worked in all the tunnels as his sentence for being drunk and disorderly. There is quite a flow of water from this spring if you can judge by the size of the pipes.

It should be marked for the future discoverers of Los Angeles.

(signed) Yours till the Continent splits, Frederick Morrison”

He didn’t reckon with the Board’s powerful gatekeeper, Ileana Welch.

Welch was already annoyed by Morrison’s peculiar letter and that she had to respond to it. Somehow, she got a glimpse of him—maybe he attended one of the preservation hearings, or dropped by City Hall to talk about his latest obsession. And in directing staff to go out and assess this supposed sulphur-belching, pressure-easing, prisoner-carved Volcano, she actually set down in an official City memo this slur:

It’s a nasty way to describe a constituent, and as far as the public record shows, not accurate. When he registered for the draft around 1939, Morrison gave his height as 6’1” and his weight as 200 lbs. A strapping fellow in youth, at sixty he was certainly still tall, even if not as husky.

But was he dirty? Well, perhaps he was a bit dusty, as befits a hard-working fellow who spent his life poking around the mouths of obsolete reservoir outlets, picking the brains of alcoholic railroad switch men and peering between the hedges of neglected Arts & Crafts art colonies, looking for landmarks worth saving for future Angelenos to enjoy.

The Volcano nomination was determined to be a dud, rejected after the commissioners reviewed staff findings and Polaroids.

But Morrison had more potential landmarks to pitch, and while some were also rejected, others would find serious fans on the Commission.

• Two palm trees at 5120 Baltimore Street, which Morrison claimed were the oldest in Highland Park, located on the “Rogers Rancho” that had burned down a few years before he arrived in 1923. Nope!

• “Another worthy and usefull house that should be perserved is the house at 5300 Lincoln Ave that is currently up for sale, It is an adobe house and was built in 1904 out of the local black adobe and until 1968 I did not know it was an adobe untill the Mexican who built it told me so. It is so well preserved and taken care off it has stood there withstanding the elements and the earthquakes of 1906, 1924, 1933, 1942, 1961 the whol thing is a good example of what a well built adobe will do and that we should build more residences out of adobe and thus help preserve our forests and not use up so much wood… It is presently occupied by the Acunya family.” Nope!

• “Another house that merits preservation is the one occupied by Lubica Djukich and is located at 6255 Meridian Street right opposite the Garvanza Park and is a exact type of house a working man lived in in 1890. There are no bay windows balconies two stories but it is a house that has no additions only four rooms a back porch on the side and a little porch on the front its paint is peeling off but it looks in pretty good condition.”

Nope! But thanks to Morrison’s suggestion, this sweet cottage was photographed before the Stucco Man arrived with his Satanic trowel.

But not every Frederick Morrison landmarking suggestion was batted away. He wrote a letter, urging the Commission to come to Highland Park and visit two of his neighborhood’s gems.

The Board was skeptical—a recent visit to Venice had been a bust (“there wasn’t a thing there worth preserving!”)—but they trekked up the Arroyo anyway. And they were astonished by what they found.

Abbey San Encino, an Arts & Crafts marvel constructed by Jackson Browne’s master printer grandfather Clyde and still in the family, which Morrison warned was in immediate peril from the renters, was quickly declared a City landmark.

If the renters remained, they were presumably warned not to party too hard around the stained glass windows.

Also designated was Edward M. Hiner’s Home, a rocky realm for march music where pal John Philip Sousa lived and rehearsed in his namesake nook and socialized with Mrs. Anna Hiner, dedicatee of “The American Girl.”

Not a bad track record for a “little dirty old man” (not!) who came from Belfast as a wee kid, spent all of his life in Highland Park and fretted that if the Volcano ever blew, future explorers wouldn’t know the marvels and characters who had shaped the city he loved.

He wanted to leave a sign for them, so they’d recognize that they walked in the footsteps of giants.

Here’s to Frederick Morrison, one of those giants, and a preservation pal worth knowing!

Saturday’s walking tour is Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice, a sweetly sleazy visit to the lost XXX 24-hour fun zone that once lured slumming Angelenos and frisky sailors on shore leave to lose their inhibitions and get an experience they wouldn’t soon forget. From all-nite theaters to freak shows and tattoo parlors, cheap hotels and legendary burlesque halls, the stories are too good not to share. Join us, do!

Now scroll down for Closely Watched Trains, links and news you can use.

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (7/11) • Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

A surprise Walker’s Cafe motion from Tim McOsker, who knows this San Pedro landmark matters, sets aside the Harbor Area Planning Commission’s rejection of the appeal of the oversized back house. Could this iconic Chinatown location get a fair shot at reopening after all?

Late in Kevin de Leon’s scandal-hobbled City Hall term, his office hallucinated Los Angeles history like a drunken chatbot. When he sought to honor a mythical gay donut shop rebellion on Main Street, we brainstormed independently to turn the program into an apology by the LAPD to Nancy Valverde, a Lesbian activist who was repeatedly arrested for dressing in male clothing in the 1950s.

One of de Leon’s motions, to change the name of Pershing Square, quietly died with no action on June 26. We’d been tracking the council file and shared on social media that it had expired.

But then, after doing nothing to advance it since taking office in December 2024, councilmember Ysabel Jurado revived the zombie motion!

The problem? Both de Leon and Jurado propose to rename Pershing Square “Biddy Mason Park,” as a form of belated recognition for a remarkable woman who came to Los Angeles on foot as a slave, fought for her freedom and built a fortune as a healer, philanthropist and real estate developer.

Biddy Mason certainly deserves prominent civic honors. And she has had those honors, since 1989, when BIDDY MASON PARK was unveiled, three blocks away from Pershing Square, on the site of her original homestead!

Here’s what historian Nathan Marsak wrote when the motion was first introduced.

Read the public comments from Summer 2024 for reasons why local historians question the motion, including a thoughtful suggestion from legal scholar Bob Wolfe that Pershing Square should be renamed to honor our first Latino mayor Cristóbal Aguilar, as the one who dedicated the land for park use in 1866.

Because like de Leon before her, Jurado has not engaged in a public dialogue with historians and community members about her proposed civic renaming campaign, it’s difficult for the public to understand the reasoning behind the proposal—both the move to remove General John J. Pershing’s name, and to honor Biddy Mason in his place.

We believe proposals to rename significant civic places deserve to be hashed out in open dialogue with the community of concerned citizens, historians and other stakeholders before they reach the motion stage. The public has a right to weigh the historical evidence and express their opinions before public resources are used in this way.

Our sincere hope is that if elected officials want to honor significant people in historic spaces, they reach out to local historians and ask for suggestions, which will be freely given with a smile. This tactic of uninformed people in positions of power proposing inaccurate and unnecessary civic recognition seems to us a waste of time and City resources and it drives people who actually care about Los Angeles history nuts. JUST STOP IT!

We’ll keep watching Jurado’s revived motion and let you know if any public hearings are scheduled. In the mean time, concerned citizens are welcome to submit written public comments by clicking the red pencil button that says NEW.

In 1996, Jonathan Gold found just three perfect L.A. taquitos worth reviewing: Ciro’s Boyle Heights (where we named Esotouric!), Pepe’s No. 2 Downey and Cielito Lindo Olvera Street. Only the just reopened Cielito Lindo survives and Angelenos need to show up hungry and keep the grease pots sizzling!

Coming soon from Herb Lester and Esotouric: a new edition of How to Find Old Los Angeles, which was a map, grew into a book—out of print, we have a few copies left—and is a map again. It pained us to delete some beloved, shuttered favorites, but this city is still lousy with old school gems we want you to love, too. The map will available on tours and by mail soon, but if you can’t wait, you can order direct from Herb Lester.

Dozens of large 1920s multi-family RSO buildings are hitting the market in a wave. Will Los Angeles leaders act to keep modest, stable housing like The Fedora Arms Apartments populated? We fell in love with this facade visiting Papa Cristo’s (RIP).

The charming, perpetually vacant storefront at Pico and Stanley put those big plate glass windows to good use in 1949, when Television Boys showed off the latest in Hallicrafter console boxes. They’ll even lug one over to your place for a home demo. Out of town? Call collect!

Behold, the most beautiful entry on Crown Hill! The magnificent griffin and dolphin frieze symbolizes the power of the press, which is fitting, as the 1924 Stange Apartments, architect unknown, figures in the recall of dirty judges for a real estate scam.

A red alert from the Woman’s Club of Hollywood (est. 1905): after decades of internecine squabbles and last minute saves, its landmarked clubhouse at 1749 N. La Brea is up for foreclosure auction on August 30. They’re looking for an angel to keep it safe.

LACMA’s marketing team desperately wants to make the value-engineered Zumthor debacle into a star, but leave it to legendary architectural photographer Tim Street-Porter to call it straight: the Emperor is stark naked and “depressingly unattractive.” Our public records search that showed Angelenos overwhelmingly opposed this costly demolition.

We’re sensing an erotic/alcoholic theme on Vermont Avenue in South Los Angeles. Salud!

Farewell to Burrito King No. 1, the favorite late night stop of Echo Park rock ‘n rollers and all day regulars since 1968. Seeing the vacant stall, right after the cleared Taix lot, was non bueno. Y Que Trading Post on Vermont has permission to save the sign, so pirates, stay away from the l’il burro!

Three pretty turn-of-the-century cottages, boarded up with demolition notifications posted—even though no required email was sent to Councilman Curren Price—surrounded by dead grass. And this 4th of July, firefighters saved one and all. Thanks, LAFD!

Preservation’s greatest friend in City Hall was Billy G. Mills, a true leader willing to fight the establishment to serve his constituents and protect the neglected city-owned Engine House No. 18 (John Parkinson, 1904) from demolition to be an arts center. We’ll visit this landmark and honor its champion on the Weird West Adams tour on November 14.

Things got spicy on the LosAngelesPreserved subreddit this week. Come over and chat about places that matter. YIMBY: “Corruption is good, actually.” LACMA staffer: “Peter Zumthor’s toilets really stink!”

A modest proposal from the 7800 block of South Broadway: density doesn’t have to consist only of boring boxes. Southern California has so many cool architectural styles that could be incorporated into new projects, if developers or the City cared. Angelenos deserve beauty. Even the pro-development crowd agrees!

A short Library Commission agenda with a mighty big scoop: LAPL seeks to purchase a perpetual license for the digital version of the Herald-Examiner newspaper (1873-1989). It’s available through Genealogy Bank, but LAPL is free!

Wild cameo in this story about Mt. Washington residents dismayed by abandoned developments: Jose Huizar prosecutor Mack Jenkins, as frustrated with CD1 as everyone else! Meanwhile, a lawsuit on the far side of the hill exposes corrupt hillside permits.

Sacramento density (SB 684) meets the passionate preservationists of L.A.’s first HPOZ. Save Angelino Heights cites fire risk of aging hydrants with low water flow: “City must prioritize human lives and infrastructure over rushed developer deregulation.”

Meet Vilma: her red-hot Clifton’s Cafeteria camera girl diary is an only-in-Los-Angeles tale you want to hear straight from her beautiful daughters. Tune in for free on Zoom 7/15 with Society for Commercial Archeology and catch Vilma fever!

compared the maps, and believes Los Angeles City Planning is using outdated Very High Fire Hazard zone information. We’re concerned that this error could encourage speculators to buy and empty out residential buildings ineligible for SB-79 low rise development.

City Planning has exhibited an alarming pattern of carelessness that encourages demolition of existing housing. Even when the City maps say a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone exists, with accompanying restrictions for public safety, every permit must be scrutinized. A huge project was wrongly approved at Franklin and Whitley and a citizen appeal rejected. It’s now an entitled vacant lot on the market as a Development Opportunity in Prime Hollywood.

The yellow and brick and cowardly lions made these L. Frank Baum lovers fall hard for the McGonigle Apartments (Arthur L. Acker & Hudson and Munsell, 1924) at Vernon and Vermont.

A surprising item on the Cultural Heritage Commission agenda for 7/16: proposal to install digital signs on the roof of The Original Pantry Café. Seems unlikely, since Richard Riordan sold off the air rights to preserve the landmark.

Also on the 7/16 agenda: Commission review and comment on proposed perimeter fencing of the landmarked MacArthur Park. We’re very concerned about access, aesthetics, harm to heritage trees and the very high cost. The public can attend and address the Commission, or make their public comments virtually or in writing.

It’s been disconcerting to see Westlake and MacArthur Park, places we visit often on our weekend walking tours and weekday preservation advocacy, used as political shorthand for all of California’s civic and cultural failings.

It’s true that the Alvarado side of the park, across from the Metro station and Langer’s Deli, is a gathering place for people struggling with drug addiction, mental health and homelessness. The city doesn’t help much, and there’s a lot we could do to as a society to improve their lives and the landscape they occupy.

But MacArthur Park is a very big park and most of it is just a park and not a public policy problem. We find it to be beautiful, peaceful and interesting, or we wouldn’t bring groups through while exploring the historic neighborhood, as we will be doing tomorrow on the Westlake Park Time Travel Trip tour.

When negative thoughts are directed its way, we wonder: what about the heritage trees, the wildlife, the fellows with fishing poles casting for a recently stocked whopper, the street preachers and picnicking lovers, the few bits of public art that haven’t been melted down yet, the iridescent grackles who cackle at a couple minutes into our video embedded above?

What about the ghosts of Angelenos past? Those spectres still haunt the shore and don’t want living citizens to abandon a great L.A. park or forget about them.

Those ghosts and we would sure like to share this special place with you, so maybe you’ll join us tomorrow—or on September 26.

Afterwards, you can tuck into a tall pastrami sandwich at Langer’s or old school crispy noodles at the noirish Bamboo Inn or both, then head home with odd tales to share.

Now scroll down for Closely Watched Trains and news you can use.

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/27) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (7/11) • Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

After a landmark nomination was filed, Hollywood Center Motel was left open to burn, then get demolished by the LAFD heavy equipment crew that took down the Lineage warehouse. The sign and wall are now “protected,” but on June 30, the powerful Board of Building & Safety Commission meets to consider the property as a public nuisance subject to a possible abate order. This is agenda items D-3 and D-4. The meeting is not live streamed, and public comment can only be made in person or in writing ahead of time. If found to be a public nuisance, city crews might be dispatched to demolish the standing bungalow court units at public expense. Decisions of the BBSC cannot be appealed.

Come down and bear witness to what is likely to be the bureaucratic signing of a death warrant.

Help Chaplin Keaton Lloyd Alley! This iconic silent cinema location was 5-star Google Maps destination, but all the rave reviews have vanished. It really needs the illegal gate unlocked, to be an official Hollywood landmark and for you to review and share. The whole story appears on silent cinema sleuth John Bengtson’s website.

No Taix no more. Demolition began on June 15, with no salvage of the good 1920s beams or brick, and soon there will be dirt where generations of Angelenos broke bread and were happy.

The Viking ship atop the Crossroads of the World lighthouse reminds us to post in memory of the visionary Mort LaKretz, the self-made Boyle Heights kid who restored this quirky Art Deco landmark as a creative hub. May it be fully occupied again very soon!

In 1911, architect Edward B. Rust (whose William Penn Hotel is where we meet for Saturday’s Westlake walking tour) built this lyrical Venetian Revival porch for the Mission Theatre, later a funeral home and church, with putti planters that long for posies.

Great news from Olvera Street: Cielito Lindo is back in business! Thanks to all the dedicated diners who helped spread the word or donated. The City doesn’t make it easy to operate in its aging structures, so it’s great that Angelenos stepped up.

Kathy A. McDonald reports there is an illegal Fast and Furious billboard on the side of protected landmark Bob’s Market in Angelino Heights, steps from the dangerous roundabout where fans burn rubber. Universal knows City Hall doesn’t care.

There’s a newly dedicated “park” on the edge of old Skid Row, honoring the Panorama exhibit hall that once displayed the massive Siege of Paris painting in the round. Inside you’ll find a weird tree spirit and the trunk of a Coral Tree killed by City Hall.

Somewhere within the reach of our social channel is a David Lynch superfan with hospitality experience and a dream. Winkie’s from Mulholland Drive is rotting away in Gardena, waiting for you to turn it into something odd. And when you do, we’ll buy the first chocolate shake.

You never want to lose a vintage theater, but we’re fans of respectful adaptive reuse projects that bring life into beautiful spaces. The Gym is opening soon in Huntington Park’s magnificent Warner’s, so you can zone out on Art Deco while getting buff.

In a dramatic hearing, after much passionate public comment, the Cultural Heritage Commission used its authority to put a hold on demolition of the landmarked Barry Building for no new project. Much more to come, but this was a refreshing and hopeful decision, and now the real work to find a collaborative compromise begins.

Preservation pal helped get a local temperance zine digitized and dig this as Prohibition ended: Clifton’s Cafeteria was proudly dry, profits be darned! If you have a Newspapers.com subscription, you can search the White Ribbon here. And then there’s Kim’s weird experience with the WCTU archives.

Any time West Adams Heritage Association nominates a neighborhood landmark, the application is a fascinating, thoroughly-researched history lesson. Grant D. Venerable’s Craftsman house might be modest, but his life story is anything but!

When the Marco Place bungalow court in Venice was up for landmarking, the new owner objected, did unpermitted work the City ignored. Now Venice tenants have been displaced for a stark white remodel. It’s still RSO, though—no Airbnb allowed.

A modest proposal for the derelict City-owned LA Mall: lease the unused commercial spaces for $1/year to animal rescue volunteers, seed and tool libraries, zine making workshops, a mosaic class (there are some great ones here), book and movie clubs, etc. And fix the Triforium! Antonio Villaraigosa actually offered 10,000 feet of LA Mall retail space to Occupy LA as community organizing space. Negotiators walked away and city staffers flipped out. It’s not too late to turn the Civic Center into the heart and brain of the city. Welcome people back and see Los Angeles transformed.

Home at Last, the homeless nonprofit that rented below-market-rate space from indicted councilman Curren Price’s NGO until the landlord kicked Price out, had cash criminally seized by the IRS and is squabbling with LAHSA. A Federal indictment is likely coming soon—and nobody in City Hall is talking about it.

The Home at Last facility at 1426 Paloma Street was advanced by confessed racketeer Jose Huizar in 2019, and the excessive lease terms and long delay before any shelter was provided there was the subject of an investigation by journalist Jerry Sullivan, before he left Los Angeles to become national managing editor for The Real Deal. We’ve learned a lot from his reporting, and are honored that he thinks we are “citizen journalists of the first order.”

The Uplifters Foundation nonprofit is buying burned Pacific Palisades lots to construct period-appropriate, resilient new homes using a $200 million tax-exempt bond lease-to-own program. Displaced and looking for a path back to 90272? Click here for info.

Cheers to the Broadway-Spring Center, which installed a window in the parking garage elevator so you can gape at this incredible view of Angels Flight and the last undeveloped plot on Bunker Hill, Angels Knoll AKA Leo & Helen Politi Park. Open it up!

A revolutionary proposal from the O.C. Grand Jury that Los Angeles should adopt ASAP: create a simple path by which public officials who violate their oath of office can be removed from power. Criminal cases take years, as corrupt “leaders” ruin cities.

For as long as we’ve known him, Sergio the Mission Road Muffler Man has been holding nothing in his outstretched arms—no muffler, no miniature car, no plate of food, no Paul Bunyan axe, no nothing. It’s honestly kind of spooky.

Yes, this publication is as yellow as they come, but we’re glad someone cares: The Daily Mail has picked up Brittany Stillwell’s explosive lawsuit against L.A. and Jose Huizar-associated developers Onni Group, owners of Hope+Flower, where Heidi Planck was allegedly put down the trash chute she OD’ed.

Top down density meets lack of stewardship. “The problem isn’t SB 1090. The problem is that eighteen months after the Eaton Fire, Altadena still doesn’t have a comprehensive recovery plan.” This resilient community has so much to teach us. Listen, damn it!

The County Supervisors spoil the landscape with ugly buildings we have to pay for. That should change: design review board? In Boyle Heights, a late moderne ‘50s hospital by Paul R. Williams & Adrian Wilson has been replaced by an artless patchwork of tacky, off-kilter clutter.

Scrolling through our 2020 Los Angeles photo safaris, we found one shot of the Lineage cold storage warehouse and its sole decorative element: a corner notch for a handsome specimen palm (which survived the week-long fire). The solar panels were just permitted. They’re hiring. And the scale is obscene.

If you spend a lot of time in the courthouse reporting on public corruption in City Hall, you’ll hear some interesting stuff—and not all of it under oath.

When Los Angeles had newspapers based in Downtown Los Angeles, major stories could break after a clerk flagged an interesting filing and mentioned it to a reporter, who started digging to figure out of there was anything there.

A lawsuit is not reporting: it is an inherently biased assertion meant to advance the interests of one party in a conflict. It’s irresponsible to amplify the claims made in a complaint without clearly stating that these statements are merely opinion and have not been proven in a court of law.

Today, we’d like to share one such complaint, with that caveat.

The person who tipped us off wanted us to read and report on it.

We’d hoped that a year from now, the matter would be brought before a judge and argued, because the disturbing allegations in Kamelia Reed vs. Hope The Mission et al. (Superior Court Case No. 25STCV09838), a case brought against the primary operator of Los Angeles tiny home villages are of direct interest to citizens who have taxed themselves to fund transitional housing for people experiencing homelessness.

It is in the interest of every Angeleno that these facilities are well managed and that residents dealing with the trauma of recent homelessness are treated with the respect they deserve.

But in April of this year, both parties chose to settle, snapping a lid on any further airing of Kamelia Reed’s allegations.

We think citizens have a right to know what was alleged—especially because the case was not merely an employee-employer dispute, but a whistleblower claim. And by filing it as a public document, the blast of the whistle isn’t muted by a confidential settlement.

You can read the original complaint for yourself below.

Kamelia Reed Vs Hope The Mission Complaint Case No

389KB ∙ PDF file

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Here is what is alleged:

Between March 2021 and February 2024, Kamelia Reed was employed as a Case Manager, Housing Focused Case Manager and Assistant Program Manager by Hope the Mission, a faith-based non-profit previously known as Hope of the Valley Rescue Mission. (And speaking of Rescue Missions, shout out to the URM, which has a great model worth emulating.)

The organization grew significantly through contracts to manage tiny house compounds for the City of Los Angeles, a program financed with Federal CARES Act funds and pledged FEMA reimbursements to construct individual shelters early in the Covid pandemic.

Hope The Mission financials from its 990 filings:

Total revenue 2019: $7,710,565

Total revenue 2020: $15,196,291

Total revenue 2021: $32,523,146

Total revenue 2022: $49,061,246

Total revenue 2023: $119,352,333

Total revenue 2024: $88,440,127

Shortly before Reed was hired, Hope the Mission opened L.A.’s first tiny home village, on Chandler Boulevard in North Hollywood, with prefab 64-square foot Pallet structures tucked into a narrow parcel flanking the 170 freeway and Los Angeles River.

The compact campus with its Mondrian-inspired color scheme was designed by Lehrer Architects LA. It contained 39 units, which could each house two people, and shared restroom facilities.

Hope the Mission’s facilities ramped up quickly:

• Chandler Boulevard in North Hollywood opened in 2/2021 with 39 units

• Alexandria Park in North Hollywood in 5/2021 with 103 units

• Reseda aka Sycamore Cabin Community in 6/2021 with 52 units

• Tarzana aka Sun Flower Cabin Community in 7/2021 with 74 units, a site which is soon to shutter after years of serious issues

• Whitsett West in North Hollywood in 9/2021 with 77 units

Kamelia Reed was hired to work at the largest tiny house village, Alexandria Park. As could be expected with a new type of non-congregate social housing serving dozens of individuals dealing with complex trauma that was rushed online during the Covid pandemic, there were problems.

According to Reed, the following improprieties occurred, were reported to supervisors and human resources, and went unaddressed:

In September 2021, Reed observed a Hygiene Monitor named Jasmine recording a resident experiencing a mental health crisis and posting the footage on Instagram. Reed believed this conduct directly violated Hope the Mission’s policies regarding client privacy and confidentiality, as well as California law. When Reed objected, Jasmine cussed her out.

Reed complained about Jasmine to a Program Manager, got nowhere, and escalated her complaints to senior management.

Word got back to Jasmine, who subjected Reed to more verbal abuse and deemed her a “snitch.” Reed documented the behavior and kept trying to find a supervisor who would hold Jasmine accountable, without success. Soon, other co-workers began bullying Reed, using sexualized language.

In October 2022, Reed went out on medical leave due to ulcerative colitis. She returned in December to find her case load packed with only the most challenging, high-acuity clients, and those residents with whom she’d built a rapport no longer under her care. The workplace bullying continued.

Reed escalated her complaints to senior staff and further alleged co-workers were using drugs and engaging in time fraud. She reported there was no working fire panel on site.

In March 2023, Reed complained to senior management and human resources that she was being subjected to race-based discrimination.

In May 2023, Reed complained that a disabled resident had been denied access to an accessible restroom.

In summer 2023, Reed alleged that co-workers were using clients’ social security numbers to commit fraud. (Possibly by applying for EBT cards, similar to this recently filed case in Los Angeles County.)

In late 2023, Reed alleged that the Department of Public Health had inspected Alexandria Park and found the restrooms lacked hot water. The facility was ordered to fix the violation, but did not do so. (Oddly, we can find no inspection records for Alexandria Park on the DPH portal.)

She also complained about residents smoking in their units—a serious threat to their safety due to how flammable the structures are—and the continued lack of a working fire panel.

In February 2024, after shooting a video of a supervisor making what Reed characterized as racially discriminatory remarks, she was placed on administrative leave and terminated. In April 2025, she sued.

Again, the above claims are merely allegations that have not been proven in a court of law. Many workplaces are toxic, and it’s not uncommon for conscientious, busybody employees to be bullied by slackers.

But it troubles us that the City of Los Angeles has outsourced so many services to non-profits like Hope the Mission, that are often not subject to public records requests, which makes it extremely difficult to know what’s going on inside the City’s shelters.

When journalists actually seek out residents and let them tell their own stories, many of them support the allegations made in Reed’s lawsuit, including her complaints about lack of accountability when serious issues were reported to senior staff. Residents also complain about high turnover among case managers, which implies poor supervision.

We’re glad that the Feds, City and non-profit partners treated safe pandemic housing with such urgency, and grateful that so many people were brought in off the streets and given an opportunity to change their lives. It can’t have been easy to grow an organization like Hope the Mission so quickly.

But Los Angeles isn’t going to make it if it continues to hand out tens of millions of dollars without proper oversight, trusting the recipients to follow the law and abide by their contracts, against clear evidence that the failure to monitor encourages fraud.

Did a Hygiene Monitor actually publish video of a client in distress on their personal Instagram account? Were residents really forced to live without access to hot water or accessible restrooms? Did City and County inspectors look the other way about serious fire safety and hygiene violations? Were the identities of vulnerable residents stolen for financial gain?

These are all questions that should be answered, apart from any settlement entered into by Reed with her former employer.

We hope that the City of Los Angeles will take a long, hard look in the mirror and implement new policies by which a frustrated Case Manager like Reed can file complaints directly with City Hall and have their allegations investigated and issues resolved.

Had the City done this, perhaps the Feds would not have brought the hammer down and withdrawn funding from the city’s mismanaged and unaccountable pass-through agency LAHSA, after years of court hearings and missed milestones, forcing clients and employees to navigate serious lifestyle disruptions.

“Nobody is asking our providers what they did or what services they performed. We may have providers who committed fraud and we may never know. If we’re so short on money, why aren’t these providers being sued? - Judge David O. Carter

For years, this one Federal judge has been “investigating,” while people suffer and die on the streets. His public hearings barely made a blip in the news cycle unless a politician was called to testify. You can scroll through the public record of the docket on the L.A. Alliance case here, and we’ve pulled out one especially horrible transcript to highlight.

Part One is City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s slideshow about how tiny house villages aren’t a good use of resources (which hasn’t stopped the City from building them), Part Two is some LAHSA data, and Part Three is a 14-page public comment timeline of all the abuse claimed by a pair of senior citizens stuck in the homeless services system, including allegations of rigged legal settlements by City Hall cronies. It’s awful reading.

Dkt

1.31MB ∙ PDF file

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As above, these are merely claims not proven in a court of law, and as above, if 10% of this is true, we have got real problems and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.

The idea of the City cleaning its own house might sound nuts if you’ve tried to get help solving a community problem and encountered dismissive council staff who blow you off, checked out inspectors who close out unresolved violations or police officers who express sympathy, but suggest they’re “not allowed” to do anything.

But the truth is that all of this misrule is a choice that comes directly from those who are in charge, and it can change today. This is the only way forward for a great City that has lost its way.

This Saturday’s Know Your Downtown L.A. tour is sold out, with a waiting list. Email us with the number in your party if you’d like to know if spots open up.

And we’ve got room for you on June 27 for the Westlake Park Time Travel Trip, a jaunt through the peaceful western side of MacArthur Park and the lovely historic neighborhood that surrounds it. We won’t sugarcoat this: Westlake is having a tough time. But we think you’ll be surprised by the charm and hospitality of this special corner of Los Angeles, and fascinated by tales of the oddball and entertaining Angelenos who once called it home. Join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/20) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/27) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (7/11) • Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

On Thursday, June 18, the Cultural Heritage Commissioners meet at 10am in City Hall to discuss the proposed demolition for no new project of the landmarked, in-litigation Barry Building.

Angelenos for Historic Preservation and the Los Angeles Conservancy have sued the City and are urging concerned citizens to ask the CHC to impose an 180-day demolition stay during which efforts can be made to find a mutually agreeable solution. This could be a initiating plans for new development to surround the landmark, finding a preservation-minded buyer for the land or even moving the building in pieces to Altadena or Pacific Palisades.

Taking time to try to make things work is simply good public policy and how civilized people behave, and we really hope the Mayoral appointees on the CHC use their considerable powers to help save the Barry Building, that councilmember Traci Park will be consistent and show the same concern for this Brentwood landmark burdened by disgruntled owners as she has for Marilyn Monroe’s house, and that the Munger family will be willing to come to the table.

If the fate of the Barry Building and the dangerous legal precedent of using years of “demolition by neglect” to justify tearing down a useful and beloved landmark for no new project moves you, you are encouraged attend the hearing in person, email a written public comment, or Zoom or call in.

All the details are on this agenda with talking points here, and if you live in Los Angeles, you can ask your councilmember’s office for free parking in the City Hall lot.

At Rancho Los Amigos, where we’ve advocated for Los Angeles County to provide a water truck a few times a year for the benefit of the heritage trees, after all the irrigation lines were taken by metal thieves. The trees are so happy now!

Real estate broker Oleg Korolov is fascinated by adaptive reuse of old buildings. Yuval Bar-Zemer shares the tale of the Toy Factory Lofts and a very different time when visionary developers could work with the city on something cool: The Arts District.

Just posted in the bottom of the page updates to our Curren Price trial newsletter is Deputy D.A. Casey Higgins’ 25 page reply to the councilmember’s doorstop 995 motion seeking to throw the case out.

Higgins writes: “Defense asks this court to lower the bar of accountability for politicians, allow politicians to hide behind their at-will staff, and allow politicians to shirk their responsibility to the public. Our forefathers would roll over in their graves at such a proposal…. California chose to root out corruption and prevent the very scenario that unfolds in Washington, D.C., where politicians become millionaires in office…. If the court grants the defense motion and entertains the defense arguments, a giant loophole in Government Code 1090 will be created. California will be no better than Washington, D.C. and the will of the California voters will be thwarted. This is not hyperbole, but reality.”

Price’s next court date is August 7. For further analysis of the doorstop 995 motion, see ’ newsletter.

Meet the astroturfed movement that wants to shut you up, uses Sacramento to do it. New documents reveal Abundance/Yimby funders as self-proclaimed “elite” who hate democracy, boast they “flipped Santa Monica City Council”—where none of them live or vote.

Good news for citizens worried that Karen Bass would simply fence MacArthur Park without asking the community who uses it what they want: we’ve confirmed that because it is landmarked, the Cultural Heritage Commission must discuss any aesthetic changes, with public comment taken. We’ll be there to speak for the 19th century trees, whose roots spread flush up to the edge of the park.

File under: failed stewardship with a silver lining. One of the replica Port of LA Waterfront Red Cars, lost to Ports o’ Call redevelopment, will be moving to Griffith Park’s Travel Town. The matter is to be discussed at the 6/18 RAP Commission hearing.

If the allegations of District Attorney Nathan Hochman, that the Los Angeles Supervisors bankrupted the County by blithely signing off on a largely fraudulent $5B child sex abuse settlement are correct, what other dumb stuff have they done? (ahem, LACMA… which seems to be missing quite a lot.)

In Echo Park, a row of Victorian houses are held vacant for years with vague redevelopment plans, as squatters trash and eventually burn them. Your rent is high and your neighborhood filthy because the city lets bad property owners squat on good housing.

Holland Partner Group appeals haul route restrictions imposed by the Board of Building and Safety Commissioners for removing a mind-boggling 43,125 cubic yards of earth from the Taix French Restaurant site. It’s a fake landmark.

On a recent jaunt down to South Los Angeles to check in on some simmering preservation problems, we stopped for a picnic at Augustus Hawkins Nature Park, which we happen to think is the best park.

Carved out from a former industrial site, tucked between a residential neighborhood and busy commuter line, it’s rich with native trees and towering cactus, butterflies, a duck and turtle pond, happy families and some surprises.

We owe thanks to Raul, a friendly park interpreter who clocked us for cat lovers and pointed out the hidden pussycat in the picture. We hope the kitty’s sweet face reminds you to keep your eyes peeled for small bits of everyday magic, even in familiar places.

Saturday’s tour is Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue, and if you’ve been thinking of joining us, but counting your pennies, perhaps the Cheshire Cat’s special offer will encourage you to sign up.

Click the button for $35 tickets (regular price $50) good on the June 13 walk.

Cheshire Cat Discount

And check the website for tours now listed through November, including Franklin Village Old Hollywood, Film Noir / Real Noir, Bunker Noir, Richard’s birthday version of Weird West Adams walk and Hallowe’en Day exploring Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights.

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/20) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/27) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (7/11) • Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

Calling all cafeteria kids: after years of yo-yo hours, the under-new-management Clifton’s re-opens this week with World Cup match viewing. Read on for video from our visit to scope out the scene this afternoon.

In 2015, Angelenos flocked to Broadway to see their beloved Clifton’s Cafeteria once again. That version of the landmark never clicked, sadly, but the love never faded. As the building reopens, if only for pop-up sporting events, we’re thinking of absent friends and hoping it’s for real.

We stopped by on opening afternoon afternoon and here’s the skinny on Clifton’s: it’s not a cafeteria, you can bring your own meal (try Arto’s Broadway Deli half a block west in St. Vincent Court), the bars are open, it’s free to walk in and watch World Cup games and will be open every day at 11am for the next two months. (Also people are making out in dark corners.)

Our friend Dan Kapelovitz didn’t win election to the Los Angeles Superior Court, but he did put out an amazing campaign video with music by Thee Wylde Serfs.

To fix Los Angeles: make it a No Scoundrel Zone. Were you called LA’s worst landlord for terrorizing RSO tenants? Then no, you can’t work with the Mayor to flip senior housing into a Homekey shelter and skim millions off the top. We defy anyone to read the dossier prepared by the Cheviot Hills-based Integrity Project and tell us City Hall is anything but a racket. Citizens shouldn’t have to do this work, but in the absence of a robust press, it’s a last chance to save Los Angeles.

Here’s our livestream from Westwood Memorial Park with all the sweet fans who came to pay their respects to Marilyn Monroe on her 100th birthday. Sending love to that lonely Hollywood kid who felt safest in the dark watching movies and all who are mourning her still.

On L.A. election eve, we found Hollywood Center Motel—a compromised “landmark” that doesn’t protect the historic housing, only some of which was allowed to burn down—wide open to squatters, skaters and taggers. No signs warn of the asbestos danger.

Max Kutner writes in The Hollywood Reporter about the motel’s mysterious, convenient fire, with a pull quote from Kim: “This wasn’t about a cool Instagrammable sign. This is the soul of the city being ripped out inch by inch.”

Did you catch the Hollywood Center Motel PLUM hearing, after it was left open to burn suspiciously? Full video is here, including Kim asking Nithya Raman and her political pals to DO SOMETHING about demolition by neglect.

Urban warfare over the dome of St. Luke?! After the recent terrifying activities, called out by councilmember Rick Cole in what looks like battle reporting, we’ve taken our newsletter about this gorgeous, abandoned Art Deco landmark from behind the paywall. Did flash bangs harm the stained glass? Can it be revived?

Recommended, but tough, reading: Sam Quinones’ Dreamland dispatch about how the working poor who can’t afford to move have been driven mad by the outdoor asylums next door and civic contempt.

An abiding Los Angeles mystery: did Gaylord Wilshire ever see the towering neon sign atop his namesake apartment building? The permit was stamped on June 21, 1927 and he died in New York on September 7. We hope he did!

New from Rev. Dylan Littlefield: The Election Is Over. The Work Continues. The people of Skid Row, MacArthur Park, and the Hotel Cecil are not political talking points. They are image-bearers of God.

Preservationists have sued to force Los Angeles to protect the landmark Barry Building—and possible native village site underneath it—from the billionaire owners’ unconvincing claim of demolition for no new project. New on our newsletter about the demolition threat: scroll down for attorney Jamie T. Hall’s petition for writ of mandate to halt the bulldozers and all the ways the City puts its thumb on the scale for billionaires.

Among the allegations of wrongdoing by the City are improper ex parte communications and collusion with the property owner, deliberate suppression of public records, lack of quorum and disrespectful behavior by elected officials during public hearings, pre-PLUM hearing coordination with a possibly scripted vote, the taking of official actions after losing legal jurisdiction and the improper termination of tribal consultation.

And although the matter of demolishing the Barry Building is now in the courts, and the preservationists say the City no longer has any authority, the Cultural Heritage Commission meets on 6/18/26 to review the demo permit. Should be a weird hearing.

And check out this must-read anonymous public comment in the Barry Building council file: “I’m critical of Los Angeles’ government because I live here, I pay my taxes, and I want better for the city. I shouldn’t have to ‘just move away,’ our local government should be the one to change and have some… respect for the humans who choose to fight to continue living in and loving this city.”

The Farting Muffler Shop’s holy sidewalk relic, the candy striped telephone pole in front of the bland new housing project that replaced El Pedorrero, has been chopped down. RIP to the weird old East Los Angeles and a folk art marvel.

CIM Group has big plans for the derelict block of Hollywood Boulevard at Cherokee it’s held vacant and blighted for 5+ years, and they don’t include reactivating 100 year old commercial spaces or salvaging brick or vintage EXIT signs. RIP ghosts of Hollywood Book City & friends.

Remember when “Mr. Tempo” Jorge Cueva mocked Angelenos as he destroyed the Pig ‘n Whistle? His chain struggles with evictions, license woes and lawsuits and now Hollywood Blvd. tour guides say the ruined landmark has closed.

Cheers to preservation pals Steven Luftman and Save Iconic Architecture who landmarked the Standard Hotel / Thunderbird Inn (Herbert R. Kameon, 1962). Reopening in July as Ian Schrager’s PUBLIC—the “L” is not optional—it’s looking pretty sharp!

Nearly a decade ago, the Attie Building owner claimed to be developing the parcel, evicted Playmates and let the Art Deco landmark and its iconic You Are The Star mural (Thomas Suriya, 1983) rot. Enough already. Hollywood needs people, not spec projects!

One of our favorite spiritual time capsules, Theosophy Hall at 33rd & Grand, now has an in-house theatrical troupe. Debut production is “Antigone” (June 26-28).

MacArthur Park is a protected city landmark with vulnerable sentinel trees near the perimeter. Mayor Karen Bass wants to fence it off because it’s a perpetual PR problem, something a well-run city could manage without an expensive tree-threatening fence! We also have concerns about the aesthetic impact on the already vandalized General Otis sculpture and other vistas, and the public safety impact of restricting options for leaving the park in a hurry. Right now, if you want to get out, you just make a bee-line for the sidewalk, which is never far. We have confirmed that the matter of the fence will be heard by the Cultural Heritage Commission, and we’ll let you know when that’s scheduled.

Sunland locals are appealing a dense subdivision on 19 acres in oak woodlands off McGroarty, concerned about its location in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. L.A. doesn’t plan responsibly, so citizens have to go to court.

CEQA appeal of AltaMed’s attempt to build El Corazón, a corporate art museum, on park land at 1st and Broadway goes to City Council Committee on 6/23. Public comment is in-person only, but you can submit in writing before the hearing.

That city-owned neon hotel sign Diane Keaton somehow took possession of was auctioned off yesterday, and it sold cheap. Phooey!

Empty Los Angeles asked Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez for the “list of dozens and dozens of [rent-stabilized] units in my district… that are currently Airbnb units. This is happening.” We believe it’s true, but the CM refuses to provide the addresses.

New on the Los Angeles Bungalow Housing Map: residents of 2217-2223 W Laverna should be aware their landlord is seeking to subdivide the 1924 compound into tiny houses via SB 684. RSO units ought to be protected; know your rights.

In November 2025, Sonder shut down without notice, leaving guests scrambling and preservationists worried about their historic buildings. Good news for Lane Mortgage on 8th Street: it’s reopened as a Wyndham, and the Batchelder lobby is perfect.

Cheers to everyone who has read, shared and contributed to Cielito Lindo’s GoFundMe campaign to keep the nearly 100-year-old taquito stand at the top of Olvera Street serving. Now tell L.A. City Hall: maintain your buildings and forgive Covid rent debt!

Angelenos feel gaslit. Does this city have no project management system? At the other end of Olvera Street, a motion was passed to give the burro photo op stall a new lease after the City Attorney took it to eviction court. So why is Richard Hernandez Chase still getting evicted, pleading with Karen Bass?

Why did mayoral candidate Nithya Raman pose for a photo, but not come out to help him? Please read his letter to the mayor and let her know you care about this special family business that has served Angelenos for generations. Tell your councilmember to do something about the ignored motion to give him a new lease ASAP. Read more about the threat to Jorge the Burro in our newsletter.

If you’ve been meaning to join us on a walking tour, and watching your pennies, we hope our Summer Sale called Three’s Company will be just the ticket to bring us together.

From now until midnight on Friday, June 5, we’re offering a special gift certificate package of three walking tour tickets for the price of two.

Click to Save

You can use these gift certificate codes for solo tour bookings, or to explore with friends. Stock up for future tours: our gift certificates don’t expire.

Come and discover the beauty, history and madness of the most fascinating city in the world, and make new friends on an Esotouric walking tour into the secret heart of Los Angeles.

We lead public tours most Saturdays and occasional Sundays all year long, and spend the week on historic preservation advocacy, giving private tours and doing investigative journalism and court reporting.

And we’ll be back in the courthouse on Friday as councilmember Curren Price’s public corruption case heats up again, so stay tuned to this channel for some real life L.A. Noir!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/20) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (7/11) • Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29)

We write to alert our preservation pals—and anyone with a pending land use matter before any Commission or Department in Los Angeles County—to a nationwide financial scam that last week attempted to defraud every citizen with a potential Historic-Cultural Monument application pending before the Cultural Heritage Commission.

Do you still want your building to be included on the upcoming agenda on which it is listed? That’s gonna cost you thousands, payable before the meeting.

Fortunately, none of them fell for it—not this time.

Most Angelenos who take the time to nominate a building as a landmark in 2026, when there is no Mills Act tax relief available, are not very anxious.

Of course, they want to get a positive initial vote from the Commissioners, followed by a site visit and a recommendation that City Council approves the application. But when a bill arrives for $5200 to ensure their matter is heard at a meeting where they are already scheduled to present, they’ll rightly assume it must be a scam and reach out to their contact in the City Planning Department.

The people we talked to who received fake invoices did just that, and were told that City Planning was aware of the issue, they should not pay and to ignore any additional invoices.

They showed up at City Hall as scheduled and they were heard.

During General Public Comment, at 3:09 in the online recording which we have excerpted above, prolific landmark application author Charlie Fisher attempted to alert the Commissioners, and by extension any member of the public attending the meeting or tuning in to the recording, to the attempted fraud.

But before he could finish a sentence, City Planning staff jumped in, speaking over him to minimize the situation.

Had Charlie been able to finish his comment, the Commissioners would have learned that this is a highly sophisticated hustle, featuring a series of increasingly urgent, and convincingly official-looking, demands for immediate payment, that could easily fool a less sophisticated victim.

The scam, it turns out, is not just local, but national, and it’s been going for months. It appears not to be a hack of internal government servers, but an AI bot that’s scraping public contact information associated with planning matters and contacting the applicants.

On March 9, the FBI issued a warning about Criminals Impersonating City and County Officials in Phishing Emails for Planning and Zoning Permits, with a portal for submitting information about unsolicited emails.

In mid-February, some Neighborhood Councils posted that the City Planning Department was aware of fraudulent emails from planning.lacity.org@usa.com; City Planning also posted a warning on its website.

The County’s Regional Planning Department, too, posted a warning by late May.

Law enforcement is aware, as are civil servants. So why have government planning departments not proactively contacted every individual, land use consultant or LLC with a pending matter? It wouldn’t be hard to generate a mailing list of interested parties and give them a heads up about the ongoing crime spree.

We are particularly concerned about the potential for vulnerable, exhausted victims of last January’s Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires to be tricked by fake invoices as they struggle to obtain permits to grade and rebuild their homes. What’s one more invoice in a snowstorm of them?

As with so much in Los Angeles, it seems like the people in charge do the least they can get away with, and it’s up to citizens to look out for one another.

So we’re using this channel to spread the word about the data scraping scam targeting people with pending land use matters before local Departments, Commissions and Committees. Please share this information with anyone you know who might receive one of these fraudulent bills. We’ll include a redacted, full text copy of one of the fake invoices at the bottom of this newsletter so you know what to look out for.

It seems as if the Los Angeles City Planning Department isn’t generally keen on sending notifications out to citizens.

If you click on the City Clerk’s portal for Council File: 25-1083 - Impacts of SB 79 (Wiener) / Comprehensive Report / City Infrastructure and Utility Systems / Code Amendment (CA); Environmental Clearance (SE), you’ll find numerous public comments from citizens objecting to the City’s claim that it is “too expensive” to proactively alert homeowners and residents about the rezoning of their neighborhoods to accommodate tall, multi-family structures.

That’s balderdash, of course.

But it’s a small step for a department that’s decided not to alert citizens about one threat not to warn them of another. So pass this info on, and never click “pay now” on an unexpected bill without checking twice.

Saturday’s tour is Evergreen Cemetery, 1877, a stroll through L.A.’s biggest and most diverse burial ground, packed with interesting Angelenos, gorgeous monuments and offbeat lore. Come get to know the lively carnie folk who rest eternally beneath a prancing pink tiger—and the lady leopard charmer across the road—hear the lore of the unclaimed, meet the beautiful lady of the ivy, the zombie councilmember, the real Perry Mason and many more wild, departed characters. Join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/20) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (7/11) • Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

An iconic Hollywood residency hotel that’s featured on our Hollywood Noir tour is for sale. It was home to fascinating characters like Kenneth Anger and photographer Penny Wolin at the start of her career. The Gershwin will always be The St. Francis to us—it seemed unlucky to change the name.

Years after the City Hall machine crushed her scrappy congregate housing start up Haaven, Heidi Roberts names and shames the powerful players opposed to a program that helped keep vulnerable Angelenos housed and alive, fairly cheaply. It’s a rough read, but these stories need to be told if we’re going to fix the city.

It’s not just the burro (which is still hanging on, go take a photo this weekend!) or La Golondrina on the ropes. Now Cielito Lindo (est. 1934), the pretty stall at the top of Olvera Street, needs YOUR help. Chip in if you love it. And tell your elected officials you want L.A. to foster the landmark’s legacy vendors, repair City-owned buildings, forgive Covid debt and give Richard Chase Hernandez a new lease for his burro photo concession.

Steven Taylor, facing Federal charges for the Weingart Center Cheviot Hills homeless housing flip, now seeks $5,750,000 for the partially protected Little Country Church of Hollywood site at 1750 N Argyle. It must be made a park!

A year before the fires, we encouraged oddball investors to buy Glendora’s Route 66 mortuary and turn it into a grim inn or spooky restaurant, to no avail. It’s going to be town homes. Fine. But to not move the 1917 house to Altadena is a moral crime.

A neat benefit of attending Curren Price’s court dates on the secure floor reserved for high profile prosecutions: this stunning view of the Hall of Justice through the grubby window behind the snack machine.

Bunker Hill historian Nathan Marsak visits Glendale in search of gorgeous stained glass and other relics salvaged from the old neighborhood—and watches ecclesiastical history made.

Lovely effect through the prisms in the lobby floor of the Barclay Hotel (Morgan & Walls, 1896), the oldest continuously operated hotel in Los Angeles, when swinging a light around the basement. Maybe we’ll do this again on the Know Your Downtown LA tour next month.

Lyrical Queen of the Corn mural by Israel Valenzuela on La Blanquita Carniceria, just outside the oil spill cordon in East Los Angeles.

File under: empty Los Angeles. The caracol tower of the lonesome Southwest Museum, spied from the elevated Figueroa walk street. Every landmark held vacant diminishes the experience of being an Angeleno. How about we take our heritage spaces back?

Dead Outlaw, the musical about our favorite mummified Old West screw up, is getting a run at Chicago’s Porchlight Theatre. If you can sing with a twang and hold still real good, you can be the star, in the role originated by Andrew Durand.

The Pacific Dining Car, a long goodbye (1921-2020-2024, R.I.P.): Now updated with the new real estate listing for the torched, demolished, scraped clean lot and the mysterious reopening date on the archived Yelp page: June 24, 2026. If only!

We stopped to smell the feral roses at the scorched Charles W. Eliot Junior High School (Marston & Maybury, 1931). Altadena has lost too much and the iconic campus tower shouldn’t join the list. C’mon Pasadena Unified, preserve and rebuild, don’t demolish!

Last minute amended complaint by Marilyn Monroe house property owners claims the value of the cleared lot is $17 Million—but with the derelict landmark standing, it’s just $820,000. Plus, the famous 5th Helena gates survive, will be auctioned on June 4. Read all about it here.

As a lovely multi-family Craftsman burns, Empty Los Angeles finds that code enforcement complaints of abandoned or vacant building left open to the public were deemed “no violation” or “referred to Housing Department.” Typical buck-passing from bureaucrats who have no respect for the city that issues their paychecks.

Cultural Heritage in Los Angeles has no age requirement: The City Planning Department has accepted a landmark application from the M.T.O. Shahmaghsoudi, School of Islamic Sufism for its 20-year-old Reseda campus.

Let’s Talk Taix! https://esotouric.substack.com/letstalktaix The Board of Building and Safety Commissioners will meet on June 2 at 9:30am (agenda link) to consider Holland Partner Group’s application to export a mind-boggling 43,125 cubic yards of earth from the already congested Taix site. In June 2022, City Council determined there was “no environmental impact” in a project that will require thousands of truck trips between Echo Park and a landfill dump. The scale of the excavation raises questions about the impact of the increased traffic on public transit (Metro Local 2 and 4 bus lines) and commuter traffic, dust, truck exhaust and pedestrian safety—and why this project should be exempted from environmental guidelines.

After the vote, an anonymous public comment (likely submitted by appellants Silver Lake Heritage Trust) was uploaded to the council file, alleging corruption by city planners and deputy City Attorneys for deliberately hiding documents from the public and helping to draft the SCPE criteria section, and by councilmember Mitch O’Farrell through his sabotage of the Cultural Heritage Ordinance for the benefit of the developer and campaign donor.

Concerned? Citizens can make in-person comments or submit them in writing before the meeting.

Jamie T. Hall, who is fighting the city over demolition of the landmarked Barry Building for no new project, is representing SEIU Local 721 in an appeal of Karen Bass’ rushed, secretive El Corazon Art Park Project kitty corner from City Hall. Objections: operator AltaMed charging fees, possible stealth permanent development plans, zoning violations, conversion of a public park into a private food hall, liquor service without a CUP, violation of the park space Grant Deed, LA Municipal Code and City Charter. “The permissive language and inadequate protections of the License Agreement allow Altamed to effectively operate—on publicly-owned parkland—a private event venue and a private center for data collection and business referral.”

And a newly uploaded public comment in support of the appeal makes serious allegations of undue influence by Mayor Karen Bass, working with former councilmember Gil Cedillo and City Family lobbyists, to transfer public park space to AltaMed “at a minimal cost” to build a permanent Chicano art museum.

Our opinion: if AltaMed wants to bring its Chicano corporate art collection to Downtown Los Angeles, that’s great, and there are numerous empty buildings around Olvera Street that would be a suitable home where they can rent space and help foster the struggling small businesses.

FAKE INVOICE COVER EMAIL FOLLOWS:

From: CITY OF LOS ANGELES PLANNING COMMISSION <planning-dept.cityoflosangeles-ca@usa.com>
Subject: Outstanding Invoice – Historic-Cultural Monument Application Approval Fee

CITY OF LOS ANGELES PLANNING COMMISSION
201 N. Figueroa St, 4th Floor,
Los Angeles, CA 90012

We are writing in regard to your submission for the Historic-Cultural Monument Application – [redacted]. We are pleased to inform you that, following a comprehensive internal review and assessment by the relevant staff committee, your application has now received a positive recommendation for approval.

At this stage, the process is in its final administrative phase. However, before formal designation and final confirmation can be issued, it is required that the outstanding invoice for the Application Approval Fee be fully settled.

Please treat this matter as urgent, as the settlement of this invoice is a mandatory condition for completion of the designation process and issuance of the final approval documentation.

Importance of the Application Approval Fee

To ensure transparency and clarity, please note the importance of this fee in the overall process:

• Application Processing Completion

  • Enables final administrative closure of the review cycle

  • Confirms readiness for formal monument designation issuance

• Operational Efficiency & Case Management

  • Supports the coordination of multi-stage application review workflows

  • Helps streamline documentation verification and archival processes

• Staff Workload Offloading

  • Assists in offsetting administrative resources required for application tracking

  • Ensures staff can maintain timely processing of other heritage applications

• Compliance and Record Finalization

  • Facilitates proper filing within official heritage designation records

  • Ensures audit-compliant documentation and financial reconciliation

• Preservation Program Support

  • Contributes to the continued maintenance of heritage designation programs

  • Supports the sustainability of historic-cultural preservation initiatives

As noted above, staff have formally recommended approval of your application, and the file is currently pending only the settlement of the associated invoice. Once payment is confirmed, the approval process will be immediately finalized and the designation documentation will be prepared for issuance.

Next Steps Required

To ensure timely completion of your application, please follow the steps below precisely:

1. Reply to this email to request payment guidance and confirm receipt of the invoice settlement instructions.

2. Settle the issued wire instruction as provided in the attached invoice documentation. Please ensure all banking details are accurately followed to avoid processing delays.

3. Return the wire transfer receipt to the designated email address for verification and confirmation of payment.

Communication and Audit Requirements

For compliance, record-keeping, and audit integrity purposes, all correspondence relating to this application must be conducted via email only. This ensures a clear documentation trail and supports transparent verification of all steps taken during the approval process.

We appreciate your prompt attention to this matter and your cooperation throughout the application process. Timely settlement will allow us to proceed without delay toward the formal designation of the [redacted] as an Historic-Cultural Monument.

Should you require any clarification, please respond directly to this email.

Warm Regards,

Monique Lawshe,
Chair

CITY OF LOS ANGELES PLANNING COMMISSION
201 N. Figueroa St, 4th Floor,
Los Angeles, CA 90012

FAKE INVOICE FOLLOWS:

INVOICE BREAKDOWN

Description Amount

Application Review & Processing Fee $2,800.00

Zoning & Compliance Assessment $700.00

Legal & Administration Fees $1,000.00

Public Notification & Documentation $700.00

Total Amount Due $5,200.00

REMITTANCE INSTRUCTIONS

● Wire Transfer Instructions: Provided upon request

● Important: A signed copy of this invoice must be returned along with your wire payment

receipt to this email for confirmation.

● For any further details or inquiries, please reply to this email.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this payment.

Best Regards,

CITY OF LOS ANGELES PLANNING COMMISSION

201 N. Figueroa St, 4th Floor

Los Angeles, CA 90012

Two months ago, after Judge Lawrence Cho issued his bench trial ruling against Jorge the Burro and his human keeper, we shared the crushingly sad update on the City’s efforts to evict the Hernandez family’s generational Olvera Street photo op stall, La Carreta.

With no humane, human jury to see through this dry contract law case, the burro didn’t stand a chance.

And yet here we are, two months later, and Jorge the burro is still there, with his collection of colorful sombreros to shade smiling visitors as they pose for a photo celebrating their time on Olvera Street.

But barring a miracle, and it breaks our hearts to even type it out: Wednesday, May 20 might be Jorge’s eviction day.

Update May 31, 2026: Jorge is still on Olvera Street, waiting and hoping not to be evicted. Angelenos feel gaslit. Does Los Angeles have no project management system? For example: the burro concession at Olvera Street—a freaking MOTION was passed to give it a new lease.

So why is Richard Hernandez Chase getting evicted, pleading with Karen Bass? Why did mayoral candidate Nithya Raman pose for a photo, but not come out to help him?

Please read his letter to the mayor and let her know you care about this special family business that has served Angelenos for generations. Tell your councilmember to do something about the ignored motion to give him a new lease ASAP.

We visited our burro pal on Tuesday afternoon and caught him just as he was being wheeled down Main Street to his evening quarters. Even though Olvera Street was not busy, there was a palpable buzz in the air.

Later, we realized this was because Mayoral candidate and councilmember Nithya Raman had come over from City Hall to talk with some of the generational merchants about their frustrations with management.

If we had seen the councilmember, we would have asked her if she remembered when she had joined her colleagues in voting unanimously to give Richard Hernandez Chase a new lease to operate the photo concession on the Plaza? That was June 2024.

We’d ask why nothing was done after that motion passed, leaving this sweet, hard-working guy to take his case to court, where he lost at great financial and emotion cost, and is now facing eviction.

But we didn’t see the councilmember, which was maybe her good luck, because this is a maddening, unjust case of the city behaving like a bully that should have been resolved, in the burro’s favor, years ago.

Also, we’re still really mad at her for starting the process that evicted the Griffith Park Pony Rides, and for refusing to save the Boney Island Treehouse by initiating landmark designation.

The councilmember came, and went. The motion to issue a new lease remains stalled, with no explanation. And barring a miracle, tomorrow will likely be eviction day for Jorge the burro, after which, for the first time since 1968, members of the Hernandez family will not be making new friends and memories at El Pueblo.

But we believe in miracles, and in always demanding that our elected and appointed officials do the right thing and honor the will of the people.

If you love Jorge and don’t want him to be evicted, there are some decision makers that Richard Hernandez Chase hopes you will contact.

Call Mayor Karen Bass at (213) 978-0600. Call Councilmember Ysabel Jurado at (213) 473-7014. Call the El Pueblo Office at (213) 485-6855, Email the El Pueblo Commissioners at eptours@lacity.org. Email the L.A. City Attorney at cityatty.help@lacity.org.

Please call and/or email with a brief message along these lines: “Hi, I’m a concerned citizen and I’m urging you to intervene immediately and stop the eviction of the La Carreta stand and Jorge the Donkey on Olvera Street. Jorge is a historic and cultural landmark for generations of Angelenos, and the Hernandez family deserves to stay. The city needs to protect our living history, not evict it.”

Thanks to preservation pal Adrian E. Alvarez for crafting this message, which he posted with his AI song for Jorge and Olvera Street on YouTube.

And if you’re around tomorrow, Wednesday, May 20, stop by at the southernmost end of Olvera Street where Jorge is stationed to show your support and get a photo taken. We don’t know how long the burro and his person will be able to stay at their post, but it’s worth a try to see them if you can.

This is a frustrating newsletter to write. The government of Los Angeles has broken down, yet continues to run on fumes and smash the dreams of Angelenos. Our so-called leaders refuse to lead, and refuse to get out of the way. Good people do all the right things, and it’s not enough.

But giving up and staying down is not the answer. Let’s keep kicking, like a burro, until we get the city we all deserve.

Saturday’s tour is The Run, a ramble around Downtown Los Angeles to discover sites of gay history and lore, from neon-drenched tiki palaces to subterranean cruising zones to places where creative protest changed minds and laws. Come explore with us and see a different side of cultural history, in good company.

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/20) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (7/11) • Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

On the hunt for cool stuff in Gardena, we stumbled upon what might be the most beautiful no-tell motel in Southern California. Dare-U Inn offers clean rooms by the hour in a charming roadside Spanish Colonial Revival court setting. If you go, pet Blackie for us!

Must read from Bunker Hill historian Nathan Marsak on Karen Bass’ Sacramento funded shelter project inside the World Trade Center concourse, which is denser than any L.A. public housing project in history. Save the Tony Sheets murals and pedway access!

On our recent tour of Charles Bukowski’s Westlake, we visited LAFD Station #11, one of the busiest in America, to hear about their 24/7 service rescuing seniors when elevators fail, putting out fires in abandoned buildings, responding to ODs and generally keeping MacArthur Park folk safer.

And speaking of MacArthur Park and bring of service, Rev. Dylan Littlefield writes about his new ministry showing up in the park to build connections and help people who are ready to be helped, and his informed concerns about how political candidates talk about people in crisis on the streets.

When Relevant Group owned Downtown hotels, they planned to demolish three Linwood mansions for replacement units. Plans and ownership have changed, but the peril is back. We’re worried about the 1903 homes—prime Altadena move prospects—the remaining RSO tenants and the block.

“Fires caused by homeless squatters at abandoned or vacant properties routinely endanger nearby houses and families. So common are such fires that they are quickly forgotten, as are the stories of people who live nearby.” reports on L.A.’s real housing crisis.

calls out a City Council that passes motions about illegal construction and demolition by neglect, but never follows through to see them become enforceable law. If your neighborhood is a fire-prone hellscape, blame our lazy “leaders.”

A very cool opportunity on Atlantic in Lynwood: the wee La Playita mariscos joint, built in 1948 as The Iceberg ice cream parlor, is for sale with its roomy parking lot. Make all your roadside hospitality dreams come true.

Cat nip for book lovers: The Clark Library Acquisitions Salon is Thursday, May 21 at 3pm. Free event with the librarians of the greatest Oscar Wilde collection in the west. RSVP here.

ProPublica is launching a new investigative reporting hub in California, and holy cats, do we need it. (The illegal Airbnb reporting mentioned in the announcement drew on our ongoing investigations into LA’s housing use crisis).

Friends, we live in noir times—far darker than the era that inspired Raymond Chandler to create his hard-boiled detective anti-hero. Someone needs to buy the Art Deco Arcadia News-Journal Building, start a muckraking outlet and clean Los Angeles County up!

Concerned fans of the Cinerama Dome got a rare chance to be heard at a Zoning Administrator hearing. Our public comment was quoted by the L.A. Times: “[we] know that this has been hard and it has seemed like the citizens versus the ownership—that’s not what it is. People want to come together and help and bring this place back.”

On Mother’s Day, we visited Hope Street’s Speculator Row, where another huge blaze was devouring a nice old building—not one held vacant for years, but the beloved Bluebird Office Supplies. We couldn’t help think of 1/7/2025 and the Palisades Fire.

On ’s Zephyr Letter: seeking comment from realtors and curators on the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be the next steward of the Stahl House.

When the Aztec Hotel hit the market last summer at a shocking $15 Million, we stopped by with the Preservation Imp to scope out the site. As the Route 66 Centennial ticks on, the landmark remains shuttered, with no price drop. This wonderful place has been waiting a long time for an owner who cares.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said at a Budget hearing: “I have a list of dozens and dozens of RSO units in my district… that are currently Airbnb units. This is happening.” But when asked for the list, it was ignored—also illegal!

The aspirational Leo & Helen Politi Bunker Hill Park, FKA Angels Knoll, is now on Google Maps. If you review, please give 5-stars, even if you complain about the locked gates. We believe positive energy will be rewarded!

Last fall, JPL’s publicity team denied Shelby Eidson’s independent report that firefighters were pulled away from Altadena to protect the lab. That was not truthful: the official Los Angeles County’s Eaton Fire evacuation report describes “a potential catastrophic consequence” and resources diverted. You can read the report here. And you can read Altadena citizens complaining about it here.

Casa de Adobe (1925) was gifted to Angelenos, a faux Spanish Colonial hacienda filled with antiques, paintings and a 19th century garden. Shuttered alongside the Southwest Museum, the City landmark needs to be in use. No more fires in empty buildings. Why can’t we play here?

File under: guess they screwed up. Netflix is shuttering the Egyptian Theatre next month for more work, less than two years after the $70 Million restoration was completed. This community space, gifted to a member-based nonprofit, was taken from you, Angeleno.

For too many years, we’ve watched the handsome, vacant Phillips Hotel at Beverly and Vermont sink into dereliction and decay, with graffiti, squatters and repeated fires chipping away at the possibility that the modest apartments upstairs might again provide affordable housing to Angelenos and the fun bar downstairs buzz with good fellowship and bad decisions.

In 2019, Beverly Vermont Properties LLC bought the scorched and vacant Phillips, which came with an abate order dated 11/4/2017 for an abandoned or vacant building left open to the public, and finally in late 2023 proposed an 8-story, 60-unit housing development, which stalled.

When nonprofit housing developer Holos Communities bought the building for $4 Million in January 2026, we hoped they might preserve the 1925 brick facade and build up taller, while transforming the interior back into habitable space.

We also hoped that they would be open to including some reference to a very special person who was both a resident and employee of the Phillips Hotel in the early 1960s: Jane Cooney Baker, the brilliant, troubled and colorful alcoholic who was Charles Bukowski’s first love, his muse, and the inspiration for the unforgettable Wanda character in his autobiographical film Barfly (1987).

So we asked them. They didn’t get back to us right us right away, but we’re persistent, and here’s where it stands:

• The historic building, damaged by repeated fires and left open for a decade-plus, is coming down now; no part of it will be retained in the newly proposed 12-story, 113-unit affordable housing project. So if you want to pay your respects or see the demolition, visit soon.

• The desirable Simons bricks are being salvaged for reuse in other projects.

• And most importantly: Holos says they are open to honoring Jane Cooney Baker and Charles Bukowski in some capacity in the project!

We’ll be meeting with the development team to share the story of this literary love affair forged in the dive bars and residency hotels of the Westlake District, the profound importance that dignified, affordable housing played in their lives and in Bukowski’s work, and to discuss how Hank and Jane can be honored at Goody Square, named after the New Goody Goody bar, whose jazzy back-lit plastic sign remained for many years on the abandoned building, a reminder of when it was still alive.

Why do we advocate for civic and private recognition for deceased Angelenos in places where they lived, worked and played? Do signs and tributes really matter?

We think they do. Especially now, when the city feels so unmoored, it helps to look back to the past, to learn about the troubles that earlier Angelenos faced and how they made it through.

Walking through MacArthur Park, seeing young people strung out and lost, we think about Charles Bukowski when he was around their age and living in this neighborhood, a mean drunk who deliberately picked fights with strangers because he didn’t have the guts to go home to Longwood Avenue and punch his abusive father in the snoot.

But he found Jane in a bar—Jane who was pretty crazy and who hurt even more than he did, but who was smart and funny and liked him and made him feel like a human being with something to say to the world.

It wasn’t easy or quick, and there were fights and broken windows and trauma and trouble along the way, but eventually Bukowski got his act together and wrote some fine poems, columns, novels and one terrific screenplay.

And our hope is that, as more vacant and derelict Los Angeles residential buildings return to use—ideally through restoration—that we’ll see more creative, troubled people find their way out of the darkness and start to shine.

And that tough but beautiful process is what we’ll be talking about on tomorrow’s walking tour. Meet us at the historic Olympic Hotel behind Langer’s Deli as we gather to celebrate the poetry, prose and pugnacious persona of Charles Bukowski on a walking tour about his barfly true love Jane. Join us, do!

And afterwards, go see the Phillips Hotel, while there’s still something to see! Access is from the alley, in the back.

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/7) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/20) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (7/11) • Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

Help save a great piece of public art: email eabrown@calhfa.ca.gov at the CA Housing Finance Agency by 5/13 and say “I care about Tony Sheets’ History of World Commerce and pedway access and want them preserved and accessible in the Sky Tower Project!”

On top of These Days Gallery, Snoopy and Woodstock sun their tums in old Skid Row.

A feature about our friend Evan Chambers, who lost a year of his art nouveau glassblowing practice to help his West Altadena community fight for accountability, move a demo threatened Craftsman house from Hollywood to his burned lot and otherwise inspire.

We checked in on the Moreton Bay fig tree sapling that Dr. Don Hodel grew from seed and donated to the Carthay Circle community for Earth Day 2025 and found this future giant looking fine! If you’re on San Vicente west of LACMA, look for it in the median.

With planned demolition of Taix, the Venice Room (est. 1955) is even more precious, and it’s for sale for the second time since the Lombardo family let it go in 2018. Viva the V-Room and the regulars!

Ross Cutlery is L.A’s best knife shop, est. 1930. Ross became infamous after a customer was charged with double murder after buying a German-made Kissing Crane horn-handled stiletto. An identical knife and a tight black glove are still on view, but N.F.S.

What a sad story about Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch, caring for vulnerable folk art environments in harsh conditions and grief. We hope someone can help Elliott Long carry the weight.

On Meghan Daum’s podcast, Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt proposes replacing abandoned Skid Row warehouses with art deco high rises and elevated bike tubes. The most notable Angeleno to pitch such multi modal futuristic concepts was Ray Bradbury with Bunker Hill’s pedways.

If you stop by Johnie’s, the landmarked Googie diner where Community Solidarity Project did such great work for ten years, you’ll find workers prepping for Gary Baseman’s “Off the Menu” exhibit, opening today. But why are the booths all akimbo? Are they going back in?

The gem of southern MacArthur Park, the 7th & Grandview Building (Morgan Walls & Clements, 1922), which was most recently the surrealist art gallery Chez Max et Dorothea, is available for lease. More about the block here.

At Ingraham and Valencia in the Westlake District, we gasped to see the original plaster medallion for the Cummings Apartments (E.B. Rust, 1921) still installed at the back of the pretty courtyard. Shame about the chunky gate, but it’s reversible, should peace ever come to L.A.

And just down the street: It’s thrilling to think about Harold Lloyd filming Speedy (1928) in front of the Prince Rupert Apartments (Frank M. Tyler, 1914) and seeing these lovely fire escape brackets and tiles. Then we remember we can’t share the photos with John Bengtson.

Yesterday, Nithya Raman was taking questions on Reddit and her first long answer was about building more housing, so we asked if she was urged to get in the race by California Yimby. She ignored the question. The answer matters, because big tech and real estate is a lobby, not an organic movement.

We have serious reservations about Raman’s ability to lead and to protect places that matter to Angelenos after the debacles of the Griffith Park Pony Rides, Boney Island Treehouse and the natural artesian spring at the Kuromi-Ito Residence on Alexandria Street. These were all relatively complex policy challenges that a trained urban planner should have relished, and she failed to act and failed to help her constituents. These places matter to us, and the citizens who suffered due to these policy failures matter more.

The Route 66 Centennial postage stamp sheet is out now, and for unknown reasons, the highway’s terminus in Southern California is represented, not by Santa Monica pier, or the Aztec Hotel, or Clifton’s Cafeteria, but by... Beverly Hills City Hall. Huh?!

El Corazón Art Park drama! On May 7, the Rec and Parks Commission heard from DTLA residents who object to Karen Bass’ back room deal with AltaMed to turn Jose Huizar’s abandoned FAB Park into corporate art space. Of course, the commission decided it was fine. These commissions are really in the bag for the Mayor’s agenda, and it’s extremely troubling how little they care about sticking up for the community.

Architectural historian Antonio Gonzalez tours the Paul R. Williams residence near USC, saved from likely demolition for a big box co-living dorm by West Adams preservationists sounding the alarm, heard by architect John Arnold, who bought it to restore.

Happy early centennial to the brightest star in the sky. Judge “No Mercy” Percy Anderson dismisses the case seeking Marilyn Monroe house demolition permits, giving the property owners until 5/26/2026 to file an amended complaint. They can seek to move the landmark and we hope they will. More here.

You might find it hard to believe, navigating this mess of a town, but Los Angeles has everything it needs to be a shining example of civic success, right now.

No, really: we mean it.

With a few to-be-expected exceptions, there are many fine angels yoked in service to Los Angeles, if we would only let them soar.

Our Neighborhood Councils are filled with passionate, experienced community leaders, who volunteer countless hours to run good meetings and produce carefully considered policy recommendations that reflect the views of their neighbors.

Our appointed Commissions are staffed with skilled subject matter experts who can analyze issues, balance conflicts and suggest best solutions.

Highly educated professionals staff City departments, able to do good work.

Members of the public will show up or submit written comments, giving elected and appointed officials informed, heartfelt direction on how the City should act.

So why isn’t Los Angeles the envy of American cities?

Because over the last decade or so, entrenched politicians, well-compensated lobbyists and a small cadre of powerful City Hall lifers have taken advantage of term limits and the checked out, downsized, El Segundo-based Los Angeles Times to hoard power for themselves and leapfrog over the NCs, Commissions, civil servants and community voices, that’s why.

Add to that the illegal “gentleman’s agreement” around the horseshoe to trade votes and defer to one councilmember’s wishes on matters playing out entirely in their district and the illegal “rogue’s agreement” whereby senior staff decide how their bosses will vote on land use matters days before public hearings are held, and it’s a recipe for the failed city we’re privileged to love so much.

For a stark example of the rot on public view, see the video embedded at the top of this newsletter, or the selected highlights below.

We’ve written at length about how Mitch O’Farrell, Eric Garcetti’s hand-picked CD 13 successor, who immediately moved home to Oklahoma when he lost his last election, went behind the back of the Los Angeles Conservancy and Echo Park community to undermine landmark designation for Taix French Restaurant.

No other official Los Angeles “landmark” is comprised of a few random features salvaged from an historic building and slapped even more randomly onto the ugly modern tower that replaces it.

The honest, if not honorable, thing would have been for the councilmember to reject the landmark entirely and clear the way for Holland Partner Group to demolish Taix.

Such a rejection would have let everyone who loves Taix mourn and move on. This perverse fake designation instead creates an insulting precedent that unethical politicians in the future can apply to the projects of their developer donors and makes the citizens who worked and cared feel like hot garbage.

This footage was shot at the April 16, 2026 Cultural Heritage Commission hearing, when the pathetic matter of the “protected” “landmark”—yet about to be demolished—Taix came before the CHC.

You’ll hear the cynical presentation from representatives of Holland Partner Group, describing how much money the billionaire developer intends to squander on storing, in a climate controlled secure space, the insignificant junk salvaged before the best and the rest of Taix is hauled off to the dump.

And you’ll hear incensed public comment from Daniel Paul and Charlie Fisher, experts who volunteered time and talent to prepare the Taix landmark nomination, and then convince a reluctant CHC to accept their arguments about the significance of Continental Dining as a mid-century architectural and cultural form, only to have their hard work pooped on by the former cruise ship entertainer and star of the City Hall vanity project, L.A. River Follies.

You’ll want to stand up and cheer, or maybe puke, when preservation professional Kevin Kuzma—who famously moved a grand multi-family Craftsman apartment house from Echo Park to Angeleno Heights to save it from being demolished for a parking lot, steering the structure right past Taix!—tells the CHC the right thing to do is to strip Taix of its landmark designation entirely.

You’ll hear Andrew Salimian of the Los Angeles Conservancy lament that the developer walked away from fruitful conversations about keeping architectural elements that the community loved, while improving the large lot with a dense new housing project.

And our Richard Schave suggests the hearing is more of a Coroner’s inquest, investigating the crime of politically sabotaged heritage.

Then when the commissioners, disturbed and fired up, seek merely to talk about the situation, the Deputy City Attorney assigned to the meeting is quick to shut them down and shut them up. After all, they serve at the pleasure of the Mayor, and this Mayor doesn’t seem to know historic landmarks even exist.

The sheer contempt that so many elected and appointed officials demonstrate towards Angelenos is only exceeded by how much we hate these jokers back.

And while hate can be poisonous, this brand is righteous and healthy, because it is a response to how they are hurting our beautiful city and the best among us—selfishly and foolishly, too.

Los Angeles in the 1930s was every bit as corrupt as it is today. The blatant venality on display inspired Raymond Chandler to create a cynical white knight detective, Philip Marlowe, who had worked in City Hall and had the racket’s number.

But Mayor Joe Shaw’s crime family was smart enough not to throttle the golden goose. Los Angeles thrived under their malevolent rule, with beautiful parks and efficient public transit, thrilling nightlife, myriad business opportunities, museums and theaters and charming housing for every pocketbook.

And if it wasn’t for an idealistic nut running a couple of high concept cafeterias who decided to make a stink about it, they would have hung around a lot longer.

While the wrecking ball hasn’t swung yet, Taix is dead. Yet it lives as a talking point in the lively Council District 13 race and as a reminder that we do not have to settle for the moldy crumbs City Hall kicks our way.

Los Angeles can, and must, tap the vast resources of its most valuable product: Angelenos who give a damn and know what’s good for them. And when those angels finally get a chance to soar, buckle up.

There is no greater city than this one, and we believe it’s soon to rise again.

New tours are posted through August, so scroll down to see what’s new. And Saturday’s tour is a Highland Park Arroyo Time Travel Trip, a chance to cosy up to the ghosts of preservationists past and present, visit Heritage Square, Lummis House and the up-for-landmarking Mission Revival Bilderrain Residence and meet some quirky characters in a beautiful, historic neighborhood. Join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Highland Park Arroyo (5/2) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/7) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/20) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (7/11) • Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

An old friend has had some work done, and might be the prettiest thing at the Stagecoach fest. Los Angeles rejected landmark designation, but Arby’s knows a star when they see one, and so do we.

The golden cluster of bulbs in the star gleams like a juicy berry. Trying to date the sign led us to Yelp reviews about New Look salon owner Gerardo Gutierez, who sounds like a wonderful guy, and who passed over in 2023. RIP. Love your sign, Jerry!

Zoning Administrator misbehavior around Walker’s Cafe redevelopment scheme in San Pedro—an actual Chinatown location!—is almost too ironic to be real. But it is all too real. Incensed locals are appealing.

Must read reporting from preservation pal Emma Rault (Friends of Walker’s Cafe) about how CSU Long Beach has been stalling for decades to avoid granting native people the right to care for the sacred site Puvungna next to a campus parking lot.

A Route 66 miracle! In 2015, we climbed up to see the mothballed The Trails cocktails sign with our Duarte Historical Society pals and have been hoping so hard it would be installed again on the Mother Road. And soon it will be! Click here for the Trails episode of our You Can’t Eat the Sunshine podcast.

We just peeped in the window and found Heat diner Kate Mantilini is still intact, booths waiting patiently for late night fans of “Those Potatoes” and everything else to come home again. Twelve years vacant due to a landlord who wouldn’t negotiate—why does L.A. (actually Beverly Hills) allow this?

Preservation pal Dina Lee Hoffman spotted the listing for the long shuttered Mac’s Texaco Service Station (1947) at 4th & Fairfax. Billboard income shouldn’t mean blight. It would make a swell ice cream stand, cactus nursery or...?

How does Raul Claros, who wanted termed out Herb Wesson to warm indicted Mark Ridley-Thomas’ council seat in ‘22, have so much free time running for Council District 1 to gather dossiers on coordination between Matt Mahan’s campaign and his Rick Caruso financed PAC? This requires sophisticated, Sacramento/consultant knowledge.

Architectural salvage hunters know it as Olde Good Things, but the structure was purpose built in 1922 as Shugers Mfg. Co., motor car roof makers. This whole neighborhood was Auto Row, but demolitions and fires are erasing that rich history. Hope someone who loves it buys the building.

For Slate, Evan McGarvey came to Los Angeles seeking answers for his own obsession with Beth Short on the true crime tour circuit. To us, her death is a window into the perpetual crisis: transient youth without safe housing; predators who circle them.

One of Westlake’s most beautiful vistas: the Power of Water and the Bryson neon. But after part of Lafayette Park became Bridge Housing, the Salvation Army fenced the statue off for parking / private park space. Photo snapped through the slats. Our public space needs a champion.

From Empty Los Angeles: “Getting into bed with Airbnb is a huge conflict of interest for a city with a vacancy/misuse problem, tens of thousands of still-displaced fire victims, and thousands of still-empty Project Homekey units...” And another lovely, boarded up Craftsman burns.

Terrific CD 13 candidates debate hosted by Windsor Square Association and neighboring orgs shows the benefit of keeping engaged citizens in the political feedback loop. This sort of volunteer civic advocacy gets frozen out of City Hall and we all suffer.

Tunnels! People keep asking for these Prohibition-era vice dens to be added to our private tour options, and now they are. Choose from Film Noir, Raymond Chandler, Black Dahlia, The Run (gay history) or Downtown L.A. in a Nutshell.

Weird merch alert. Now available only at the Elmer McCurdy Museum in West Adams is the world’s first adult coloring book honoring a mummified old west outlaw and his burlesque and carnie freak sideshow pals. We got our copy!

Marilyn Monroe landmark news: LA files a blistering motion to dismiss, as Pacific Legal Foundation joins the case working for free to press a Fifth Amendment property rights case. Is this lovely Brentwood house really “worth nothing”? Scroll to 3/19/2026 here to read what’s new.

Fascinating 1969 interview with Sam Yorty for WGBH’s City Makers, talking Watts riots, radical infiltration, public housing, beefing with the L.A. Times. Hearing a Los Angeles Mayor’s extemporaneous, no notes riffs on a city he clearly loves is refreshing.

Eunisses Hernandez and Karen Bass decided MacArthur Park—a protected landmark, with heritage trees on the perimeter—should be fenced. Why? Who knows. Locals have questions, and are being ignored. This is not leadership: it’s how you wreck a city.

Pity the jurors selected to hear the case against L.A. County Assessor John Noguez (not his real name). 13 years after his corruption arrest, it took three months to find some willing to become “intimately familiar with the lingo of the assessor’s office.”

David Allen wrote a wonderful farewell to Cole’s, honoring Pomona resident Tim Peron’s family ties to French Dip royalty, so we went to the shuttered landmark looking for ghosts. We found two, Jack & Inez, who moaned: “Re-open soon!”

Wild that the City of Los Angeles wants to shake citizens down for streetlight repairs that will be immediately undone by copper thieves, but has no interest in seizing the millions Deputy Mayor Ray Chan took in Jose Huizar PLUM vote related bribes. So why doesn’t L.A. want to claw back all that money and real estate tied to Jose Huizar and Ray Chan’s bribes for votes racket? Maybe because there are many unindicted co-conspirators still in City Hall and lobbying them. Cauterize the rot and we get our city back.

On 2/5/2026, when the Cultural Heritage Commission met for the second and final time to consider declaring the Hollywood Center Motel a protected landmark, members of the nominating non-profit Hollywood Heritage filed into Room 1010 of Los Angeles City Hall with the demeanor of funeral attendees.

And who could blame them? After all, the central Edwardian-era house El Nido was no longer standing, victim of what may be a serial Hollywood arsonist and a rushed LAFD demolition.

In the immediate aftermath, much of the character defining street facing motel signage was stolen, presumably by collectors who figured if the property owner didn’t care about the place, they would “save” what they could.

Behind the breeze-block walls, the property was left wide open and unsecured for vandals and squatters to further wreck. It is still unsecured as we write this newsletter, more than three months later.

We didn’t envy Hollywood Heritage the chore of making one last impassioned plea that Hollywood Center Motel be declared a landmark.

Commission President Barry Milofsky and Office of Historic Resources staff had toured the property four days after the January 4 fire and LAFD demolition. The staff photos published in the updated case file were heartbreaking—and also provided an official record of the signs, just hours before they were stolen.

You could almost smell the place from the photos—and it didn’t smell like roses.

But the Cultural Heritage Commissioners, including newly seated member Laura Dominguez in her first meeting, were in no mood to slam the coffin shut.

And after hearing from concerned citizens making public comment (starting at 22:30 in the hearing, which you can watch on our video, or listen to in the higher quality City audio feed embedded above), including:

• Homeless services professional and Hollywood Heritage volunteer Jessica Sanchez, who said simply by the act of being left unsecured by an owner who wanted the historic buildings demolished, followed by the predictable fire and LAFD demolition, Hollywood Center Motel became a cultural landmark!

• Our Kim Cooper, who described how the property had been left unsecured to burn, and called for the CHC to demand an investigation into why the fire department demolished a supposedly “protected” and still standing historic structure on a Sunday morning, before the CHC could tour it. She also drew their attention to significant asbestos on the property and the possibility that City staff and Commission President Milofsky and the Hollywood community had been exposed to this dangerous material.

• Our Richard Schave, who likened the hearing to a Coroner’s Inquest

the commissioners moved to dismiss the staff recommendation that they “not declare the subject property an Historic-Cultural Monument per Los Angeles Administrative Code Chapter 9, Division 22, Article 1, Section 22.171.7.”

This rarely happens; the commissioners typically defer to the paid Planning Department staff that does the work of validating the increasingly elaborate nominations required by the City since Eric Garcetti became mayor in 2013.

The Cultural Heritage Commission is not a working commission, but one that is largely symbolic and toothless. This was abundantly clear as it sought to decide the future of a potential landmark that citizens had warned at the first hearing, in early December, would burn down if it was not secured.

Since charter reform stripped the CHC of its powers to independently declare landmarks, instead granting the appointed experts an advisory role with opinions sent on to City Council, where a confessed racketeer like Jose Huizar could “fix it in PLUM” for the benefit of his political donors, like he did with our Los Angeles Times landmark nomination, or an unindicted rat like Mitch O’Farrell could sabotage their Taix French Restaurant nomination by stripping it down to a few bits of salvaged junk.

Now that the demolition notices are on the restaurant and the contents have been auctioned off, the Taix debacle comes back to the CHC on Thursday 4/16 at 10am, and irked Angelenos are invited call or Zoom in, email or show up in person to ask the commissioners to reject property owner Holland Partner Group’s offensive proposal to store the restaurant’s billboard, cocktail sign and bar top in Orange County while the new apartment tower is being constructed.

Rallied by the newly launched Save Taix website, concerned citizens are encouraged to urge the commissioners to instead use their power to advocate for the win-win preservation solution that former councilmember Mitch O’Farrell killed when he told the Washington State developer it no longer needed to work with the Los Angeles Conservancy to find an adaptive reuse solution that preserved much of the beloved, historic building while adding apartment towers above and on the surface parking lot.

By making a mockery of the preservation ordinance and calling three insignificant relics tacked onto a new building sufficient to merit landmark designation, Mitch O’Farrell placed the developer under the direct authority of the CHC, and gave citizens a way to speak out and be heard and the commission the power to effect positive social change.

As Friends of Taix advocate and Silver Lake Heritage Trust President Carol Cetrone writes in her powerful letter to the CHC, a message echoed by dozens of other concerned Angelenos who have sent written public comment on Item #4:

I am writing as a concerned community member about the pending demolition of the Taix building at 1911 W Sunset Blvd (HCM No. 1227).

Taix is a true Los Angeles gem, not only as an excellent example of a classic Continental dining establishment, but also as the cultural hub it has been for decades. A true “public house” or pub, people from all walks of life are there every week, a testiment to LA’s diversity and the legacy that is Taix.

LADBS records show that on March 18, 2026, the developer filed two new demolition permits and eight sign removal permits for this site. Every permit shows “Historic monument” and “City Hist. Cultural Monument” as NOT CLEARED by City Planning. Despite this, building fixtures are already being auctioned off, and grading/shoring permits for the replacement building were approved on March 23, 2026.

I am asking:

1. That the Cultural Heritage Commission formally object to all demolition and sign removal permits and invoke the maximum Stay period (up to 180 days, extendable to 360).

2. That no permit clearance be granted until ALL Conditions of Approval are publicly documented as met — including the qualified preservation professional’s plan, the affordable housing covenant, and the demolition notification requirements.

3. That alternatives preserving the historic building alongside new housing be seriously evaluated during any stay period.

The City’s own Cultural Heritage Commission found this property significant to LA’s commercial identity. The current designation was narrowed by political intervention, not by lack of merit. The building can be saved AND housing can be built.

The 4/16/26 CHC agenda with instructions for participating in the meeting or emailing your comments is here.

Back to Hollywood Center Motel, and the February CHC hearing. The commissioners were visibly angry about the ongoing demolition by neglect and wanted to know what, if any, options existed for holding the property owner accountable for permitting an intact, eligible historic house to be burned and demolished before they could tour it.

They asked: was the property a good candidate for the Scorched Earth Ordinance, a penalty that was famously imposed on Geoffrey Palmer after he illegally demolished the last Victorian house standing on Bunker Hill in 2003, denying any new building permits for five years?

But this property owner claimed only to want to demolish all the residential buildings on the parcel, not to build anything new there, which made it unclear if that punishment would apply. No mention was made of how scorched earth would make the cleared lot less valuable as a potential flip.

It was troubling to see how the Los Angeles commission charged with designating historic landmarks appeared unfamiliar with the policy tools the City can apply to protect places suffering from intentional demolition by neglect.

These appointed experts don’t seem to be members of the 21st century Los Angeles preservation community, a collection of advocates who regularly debate the challenges and strategies while seeking paths forward to preserve and protect historic affordable housing and the tenants who call it home, to foster treasured legacy businesses and to stabilize vacant, derelict, unsecured buildings of all sizes.

But when the uninformed commissioners turned to the supposed public policy experts in the room for help, the civil servants from the City Planning Department and City Attorney’s office were unprepared to offer any useful advice for how the commission could wield its power.

It was all terribly convenient and infuriating.

Yes, by speaking out as a fierce preservation advocate, any commissioner risks triggering filing of the pre-signed resignation letter held by the Mayor’s office. But if this board is not made up of fierce preservation advocates with the courage to speak out in cases when heritage, history and community are being wronged, why does the CHC even exist?

We think it would be an honor to be canned for representing the will of the people.

We were reminded of the tragic failure in March 2025 to schedule an emergency hearing on 24 hours notice to potentially landmark the demolition threatened Boney Island Treehouse, after staff wrongly advised the CHC that it must wait two weeks to meet again—even though they knew that property owner Rick Polizzi was going to demolish the treehouse, to avoid prosecution by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office, in 48 hours.

(Parenthetically, Boney Island could have been saved had CD4 councilmember Nithya Raman initiated a landmark nomination, a step which would have stopped the absurd demands from LADBS that a playhouse for kids up in a tree be inspected and permitted as an inhabitable ADU. But Raman didn’t do that. And commissioner Diane Kanner, who spoke up for the treehouse, was removed from the CHC shortly afterwards.)

Exactly one month had passed from the initial CHC hearing on December 4, when the commissioners took the Hollywood Center Motel property under consideration after hearing public comment warning of ongoing demolition by neglect, to the preventable destruction of the El Nido residence on January 4.

After an open debate on the dais, with advice from staff and questions for Hollywood Heritage and the property owner’s rep, the commission proposed their own rewrite to the prospective monument nomination: they wanted to designate the breeze-block wall and the remaining signage!

From the audience, we were happily surprised by their enthusiasm for landmarking, but also aghast.

Hollywood Center Motel is a large compound that was until January 4, 2026 comprised of a 1904 residence, a ring of 1920s-era bungalow units and a 1950s kidney shaped swimming pool, with 1950s walls and signs on the Sunset Boulevard property line. Now the central residence and easternmost bungalow were demolished, and much of the signage stolen.

But the 1920s bungalows, while neglected and vandalized, are mostly still intact—and they are vacant, rent stabilized housing that could be used by Angelenos. (Zimas no longer has them listed as RSO units, but they were when the demolition permits were initially applied for, and Hugo Soto-Martinez the CD13 councilmember was opposed to demolition of RSO units for no project.)

The bungalows were called out in the landmark nomination, and deserved to be considered on their own merits. Yet the commissioners only honed in on preserving walls and signs, and with public comment having already happened, there was no opportunity for concerned citizens to ask for more.

That opportunity comes today at 2pm at the PLUM Committee hearing, discussed in our last newsletter. It is sure to be a lively hearing that will also include Angelenos for Historic Preservation appearing under protest, in order to retain their rights to appeal the Barry Building demolition debacle.

You wouldn’t know it if you read the papers, or whatever passes for papers in this benighted era, but the City seeks to completely gut the preservation ordinance by permitting the billionaire Munger family to demolish a protected landmark it has held vacant for years for (allegedly) no new project.

If they get away with it, Angelenos can expect many more useful historic buildings like the Hollywood Center Motel to be left wide open, with the gas and water on, to be torched for real estate speculator convenience.

Who says historic preservation is boring? We think these public hearings are the last true light of democracy in Los Angeles, a valuable opportunity to hear from and connect with our most passionate and informed citizen advocates, and an environment in which blatant public corruption can be exposed years before prosecutors catch up.

Maybe if more Angelenos listened to, and worked with, the preservation community, we could identify and eliminate the crooks in City Hall before they destroy everything we love about this place.

So if you love Los Angeles and want to rid it of rats, join us at PLUM at 2pm today and at the CHC at 10am on Thursday, and tell ten friends!

Saturday’s Early Hollywood’s Silent Hollywood Legends walking tour takes us in the footsteps of silent comedy legends Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy and Harry Langdon. Stand where the stars and their cameramen stood as we celebrate the artistry of early cinema and the Westlake District time capsule locations where movie magic was made. This tour was written in collaboration with silent cinema sleuth John Bengtson (1957-2026) and is dedicated to him. Join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (4/18) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (4/25) • Highland Park Arroyo (5/2) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/7) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/20) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

For most of its history, the Bradbury was an ordinary office building, just more beautiful than most, with businesses that could be accessed by stairs or elevator. There was an art gallery, restaurant and antique shop. The Christmas parties were legendary. We wish everyone could see this.

Councilmember Curren Price prosecution bombshell: in off-the-record chatter between attorneys at Friday’s arraignment, we heard Deputy DA Casey Higgins say “proffer”(!). But if any pre-trial cooperation deal has been offered to the councilmember, it was not presented to the judge. Next court date is 6/5.

Normally we’d gripe about cheap vinyl signage slapped on a National Register landmark, but any signs of life in the commercial spaces at the locked up Aztec Hotel are worth cheering.

We stood with our friend Bob Baker when he said he was defrauded of his theater and feared his life’s work would be lost. (Here’s the 3-D scan of the original theater that was targeted for speculative development.) But the Marionettes are still dancing! And now their human pals are about to buy their new home in Highland Park. You can help!

More on the changing ownership of Clifton’s Cafeteria: here’s the lease ad with information about what’s available, including a 3D scan that lets you explore the former cafeteria and nightclubs, and go backstage into offices and kitchen. Listen to Brother Pancake: bring it back!

Ex-LADBS GM Ray Chan’s new attorney Davina T. Chen seeks financial information from cooperating co-conspirator George Chiang, who controlled Synergy account used to bribe Jose Huizar to approve hotel projects. Why hasn’t L.A. moved to seize these funds?

Walker’s Cafe news: San Pedro locals and councilman Tim McOsker told the Zoning Administrator to protect the Chinatown location and community landmark from a backyard mansion plan. The City ignored them, illegally hid the determination, sending no notice to interested parties. Appeal!

Adrian E. Alvarez is excited about Spencer Pratt’s mayoral run, and is using AI to craft musical messages pitting the Palisades fire survivor against the City Hall machine. He objects to the eviction of the Hernandez family’s legacy burro photo op business La Carreta from Olvera Street. Listen and weep.

Kynd words for Esotouric from the postmodern medieval Chaucer Doth Tweet account on Bluesky: Ther are various groups/people that go arounde Los Angeles fiercelye protectinge everye landmark, famous buildinge, and former celebritye home. Ich am cheeringe these people on wyth all myne hearte. The passioun, commitment, expertyse, and sheer determinacioun ys awesome and impressive. (We replied: Gramercy, gracious sir! But ‘tis not everye place one fights for, save those few that vibrate with significance and charm, especially those that serve the people as humble shelter or as gathering places where they may forget their troubles, however briefly.)

Last March, we sounded the alarm about six demolition permits spotted in front of the Hollywood Center Motel, a decaying collection of residential and commercial buildings that ranged from an Edwardian house called El Nido to some of Sunset Boulevard’s best mid-century neon.

Many people have expressed interest in buying the motel property over the years, but the reclusive residents weren’t interested. Now, without it ever being listed for sale, a new owner had control and was seeking to tear everything down—with no new project planned.

Angelenos and distant fans objected to this, as did Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez because the empty housing on the parcel was rent controlled. Hollywood Heritage prepared a landmark nomination. Meanwhile, the buildings were left empty and unsecured. Squatters crawled through the fence and made themselves at home. Taggers practiced their script on the cottages. Urban explorers poked around shooting video. Hoarded possessions left behind by the old owners were strewn across the yard.

At the first Cultural Heritage Commission hearing, concerned citizens and the folks from Hollywood Heritage who presented the nomination all expressed their alarm about the ongoing demolition by neglect and warned the commissioners and the property owner’s representative that if nothing was done to protect the compound, it was going to burn.

And that’s exactly what happened one month later, on a rainy Sunday morning, when the El Nido residence exploded in an extremely suspicious blaze, but did not burn down. But before anyone could stop them, LAFD brought in heavy equipment and destroyed the house. When the CHC president arrived to tour the potential landmark, he found bungalows ringing a smoky ruin.

At the second and final landmark hearing before the CHC, city staff recommended against making the damaged Hollywood Center Motel property a landmark. But the CHC disagreed. They were upset that the house had been left open to burn, and expressed their belief that the parcel still had cultural significance worth protecting.

But when the CHC re-wrote the nomination during their hearing, they only protected the historic elements that are flush against the sidewalk: the tall neon sign and the breeze-block wall. That’s good, but it’s not enough.

If you care about Hollywood Center Motel, please let City Council know by noon on Tuesday 4/14/2026 that you want the property owner to restore the neon letters reading HOLLYWOOD CENTER MOTEL that were stolen after the fire, and that you want the surviving 1922 rent controlled bungalow court units and the kidney shaped pool where the Buffalo Springfield, Captain Beefheart, Janis Joplin and Paul Revere & the Raiders swam to be part of the landmark.

After the house burned and was demolished by LAFD, there is plenty of empty space if the owner wants to propose a new development. We want the history that is still here to be preserved, and the housing units to be cleaned up and rented to locals, or made available for tourists to experience something unique and cool in the heart of Hollywood.

If you’d like to attend the 2pm 4/14/2026 PLUM hearing, the agenda is here. Hollywood Center Motel is item #15, and we don’t know when it will be heard.

Spoken public comment can only be made in person. You can also send an email to the decision makers, and post that email to the Council File.

Send your email to the decision makers before noon on 4/14/2026: councilmember.soto-martinez@lacity.org, Councilmember.Nazarian@lacity.org, councilmember.blumenfield@lacity.org, contactCD4@lacity.org, cd10@lacity.org, councilmember.Lee@lacity.org.

Use this subject line: Accept and Expand the Hollywood Center Motel Landmark Nomination (ENV-2025-6243-CE).

Address your email to: Dear Councilmember Soto-Martinez and PLUM Committee members.

What to say? Speak from the heart about why Hollywood Center Motel matters to you and why you want it to be declared a landmark. If you live in Hollywood or have personal experience with the Motel, say so. If you are angry that the property owner left the buildings unsecured to be vandalized and burn, express that. And most importantly, be sure to say that the landmark designation needs to include the restoration of the neon signs that were stolen after the fire in January and preservation of the 1922 rent controlled bungalow units and the swimming pool, and not just the tall neon sign and breeze-block wall.

Then cut and paste the email you sent and submit it as a written public comment by clicking here.

Thanks for taking a few minutes out of your weekend to speak up for a special place in Hollywood that deserves so much more than to be treated like garbage and demolished for nothing. Let’s remind the City how much we care and help them see how to get this landmark nomination right and get these cool buildings back in use for Angelenos and visitors to enjoy.

The John Fante’s lost Bunker Hill and skid row speakeasy walking tour comes just once a year and it’s this Saturday. After the tour, we’ll serve cake and toast the mad spirits of Arturo Bandini and every hungry kid who came west to flower. Join us, do!

Also, we just added a new date for the very popular Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop tour on Saturday, June 20, a chance to see Batchelder’s amazing tiled restaurant space that’s rarely open to the public.

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (4/11) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (4/18) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (4/25) • Highland Park Arroyo (5/2) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/7) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/20) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

Scoop: Clifton’s Cafeteria is changing hands again, with building owner Robhana taking over the liquor license. A little birdie tells us they’re looking for a new operator, so if your dream is to run the most beloved restaurant/social space in Los Angeles history, maybe you can! Here’s the property listing, including a 3-D scan to get lost in.

Tony Anthony took his video camera to the King Eddy Saloon during the last heartbreaking hours before the Croiks lost their 50 year hand shake lease to hipsters. Sit a spell with Frankie, Mr. Pancake and the Regulars. And spread the word: it’s for lease! For more about the King Eddy Bar, start with a Skid Row Christmas poem.

Another fire in the derelict Phillips Hotel (315 N Vermont), final home of Charles Bukowski’s muse Jane Cooney Baker. Despite the massive blaze, this sturdy, handsome mixed-use structure stands—but with a demo permit. Let it once again house poor Angelenos, with a fun bar below. We’ll celebrate Jane, who changed Los Angeles letters and inspired Faye Dunaway’s most tender role, on our May 9 walking tour of Charles Bukowski’s Westlake.

Because Los Angeles “leaders” will let iconic tourist attractions like the Cinerama Dome rot vacant for years, a citizen activist Ben Steinberg had to step up. Now the owners have scared the hell out of him with legal threats. Something has to change.

We talked with Ed Condran of the Downtown News about what it means for Cole’s to close after 118 years, how seedy it was before Cedd Moses revamped the joint, and why it’s all the landlord’s fault. Plus vermin and sandwiches made with feet!

Have you seen the new blade sign on Lucy’s El Adobe Café? It’s just a movie prop, left behind by the crew when owner Patty Casado died before she could reopen her family’s Melrose landmark. Her friend Tony Castro’s memorial post tells the tale. Now what?

Sounds of Music, the old school record shop heart of Whittier Boulevard in East LA, needs you. Stop in to pay your respects at the Ruben Salazar memorial, buy something cool and keep the beat alive.

Our photograph of the Waring Avenue Bungalows before they were demolished inspired WetDirt2000 for the SketchADay prompt of “vacant.” Learn about these rent controlled Hollywood homes, illegally demolished for nothing, and how they inspired us to map all L.A. bungalow courts, here.

It’s election primary season in Los Angeles, and there are shadowy forces seeking to shape the outcome for reasons we cannot know.

Down in the Westlake District, a block south of MacArthur Park, a stark billboard atop of the Carpenters Local 25 calls out Council District 1 representative Eunisses Hernandez for permitting sidewalk tent encampments near schools.

We were curious about who had paid for the billboard, which criticized the incumbent without suggesting an alternative.

The small print identifies the sponsor as “Neighbors First, A Local Nonprofit.” Their website is © “a coalition of Los Angeles residents committed to promoting a safer, cleaner, more prosperous and more collaborative city.”

But as we quickly discovered once we started to dig, that’s not actually true.

Voters in the district have complained of unsolicited text messages and numerous fliers, all with an anti-Hernandez, tough on street homelessness slant.

We reached out to one unhappy text recipients and they shared this message, sent from an old school local 213 area code.

The neighbors-1st.org website was registered for one year on September 12, 2025 with the owner’s information obscured. Their first Instagram post, featuring an incoherent AI generated logo, was made on October 6, 2026; nobody liked it.

By early February, annoyed Angelenos were seeking out the account demanding to know who was behind the campaign and its unsolicited communications, with no response.

We found the answers on the California Secretary of State’s Charities Registry.

1841841 Correspondence From Org

43.6KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

According to a letter from AG Rob Bonta, quoting the entity’s founding documents, “Neighbors First… is a nonprofit public benefit corporation that does not solicit or hold assets for charitable purposes, and engages solely in the following public purpose… to promote the common good and social welfare of the people of Los Angeles by educating the public and advocating on important issues of public policy that will improve life within the many diverse neighborhoods of Los Angeles.”

The nonprofit’s agent is Steven S. Lucas, an attorney with waterfront offices at 2350 Kerner Boulevard, Suite 250, San Rafael, California 94901, on the San Francisco bay next to San Quentin State Prison.

Lucas is also associated with the similarly branded Neighbors for A Better San Francisco, an entity which effectuated the recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022.

There’s quite a tangled web of shadowy Bay Area organizations that continue to battle for power and influence up north.

Now it seems wealthy San Franciscans are spending significant funds in an attempt to influence the Los Angeles primary election in a district reeling from profound poverty, housing insecurity, drug addiction, street homelessness, metal theft, squalor and immigration raids on top of decades of poor leadership.

The hell with these guys. Los Angeles cannot afford to suffer the manipulations of deep pocketed outsiders using the legal loopholes of their 501(c)(4) status to deceptively claim they are our “neighbors” while seeking to shape our city’s future.

Anyone who has had the misfortune of trying to advocate with her staff for vulnerable bungalow court tenants, historic landmarks, legacy queer bars or reasonable planning standards on narrow hillside streets knows that Eunisses Hernandez isn’t up to the job, and that her pro-developer planning team might as well be working for Hernandez’ unpopular predecessor Gil Cedillo. (If you click only one link in this paragraph, make it the last one. Yikes!)

But that doesn’t mean it’s okay for dark money PACs to campaign against her while masquerading as concerned Angelenos.

Eunisses Hernandez stinks, but she’s our stinker, not yours, “neighbors.”

Here’s to a free and fair election and to better leadership ahead, and that’s a message from people who live in and love Los Angeles, in spite of everything!

Saturday’s tour is Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles, a walk that celebrates a couple of poor dreamers who fell in love with the raggedy old section of the city and helped shine it up into a jewel we can all enjoy nearly a century later. The annual Blessing of the Animals ceremony happens that afternoon, which means you’ll get to meet some of the sweet critters waiting to be blessed as they hang out on the Plaza. This is an especially magical day in old Los Angeles and we hope you’ll join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (4/4) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (4/11) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (4/18) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (4/25) • Highland Park Arroyo (5/2) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/7) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

According to u/supernormal on Reddit, the Original Tommy’s neon roof sign has been removed and placed on a truck. No permit has been sought for work on the sign or the roof. Where is this crew taking this L.A. treasure and why?

The Guardian makes one last visit to Taix, where dedicated patrons are skeptical of the redevelopment scheme. Great to see a link to Francophile L.A. historian C.C. de Vere’s Empty Los Angeles blog in this piece. She’s right!

And as soon as Taix locked the doors, LADBS opened (and promptly closed, perhaps wrongly) an inspection into a report of unpermitted construction (or demolition?) at the newly shuttered Taix. Has anybody seen a crew on site?

New on the Rancho Land blog: thoughts on an Esotouric Bunker Hill time travel walk with historian Nathan Marsak and native son Gordon Pattison, who keeps his lost neighborhood in his heart and on his tongue forever.

On Thurs. April 16 at 11am, all are invited to honor pioneering black LASD deputy “Major” Julius Boyd Loving (1866-1938) at his graveside in Evergreen Cemetery (204. N Evergreen, Boyle Heights) for a brief ceremony and history lesson.

What a treat when our Know Your Downtown LA tour guests encountered The Regulars’ Reunion outside the King Eddy Saloon with music, merch & good fellowship. Learn more or get a T-shirt or photo book from skidrowfolk on Instagram. Someone please bring this Skid Row dive bar back!

The “Once in a Generation” Development Opportunity that is the gutted facade of the Art Deco Fairfax Theatre is no longer listed for sale at an eye-watering $45 Million, nor $24 Million (September 2025 reduction) but for $13.7 Million. Will anyone bite on this slice of urban blight? Stay tuned!

A Hollywood landmark is saved! Reps from Homeboy Industries appeared at a Hollywood United Neighborhood Council meeting to discuss their plans for the Monastery of the Angels campus, which our preservation pal went to Rome to advocate for.

Angelenos for Historic Preservation, appealing demo of landmark Barry Building for no new project, object to City Council’s attempt to “do over” the voided PLUM vote. Then the property owner objects to their interpretation of the Los Angeles Municipal Code and considers the proposed re-agendized PLUM hearing on April 14 to be valid. This is wild procedural stuff a judge must straighten out.

Scoop: Trader Joe’s is moving into the long-vacant Fox Venice! The 1951 theater has great bones and history, and a neon tower just begging to be restored.

The Great Hotel Clark Chair Dump of 2026. Emptied by the Chinese government in 1992, the 555 room Hotel Clark is still vacant today. Reopening plans stalled in Jose Huizar’s office. Now all the chairs are in the dumpster! No guest ever slept in rooms completed in 2012.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while and thinking “one of these Saturdays, I ought to take an Esotouric tour,” why not this Saturday?

We still have some tickets available for the very popular Know Your Downtown L.A. walk, an outing that’s different from most of our culture and history tours, because we’ll be taking you inside several usually inaccessible landmarks.

If you are a fan of Arts & Crafts-era architecture and art tile, the quirky Dutch Chocolate Shop murals created by Ernest Batchelder and friends will beguile you.

Curious about how sleazy Prohibition-era kicks were kept hidden in subterranean tunnel systems in the shadow of City Hall? Then you’ll want to visit the basements of the King Edward and Barclay Hotel.

Want to hear about how communion with a dead brother inspired the design of the most beautiful Victorian office block in the west? Come with us to visit the Bradbury Building and explore its lore.

All of this, and more, will send you away with a renewed excitement about how L.A.’s past still feels alive the amazing buildings where it happened.

And since you’re coming Downtown, don’t miss out on a last opportunity to patronize Cole’s Pacific Electric Café before it closes on Sunday.

Operators Pouring with Heart have indicated that they are in discussions with potential new owners who could reopen the landmarked restaurant (est. 1908), but who and when and how are uncertain.

So if you want to visit Cole’s while you still can, make a plan! All weekend, the restaurant is partnering with L.A. chefs (and See’s Candy) to serve riffs on the iconic French Dip sandwich.

Last summer, when Cole’s first announced it had to close due to financial pressures—we’ve heard that landlord Essex Property Trust will not adjust rent downward to reflect the challenges faced by businesses in historic Skid Row—we put out a plea for them to sell rather than shutter.

It would be a pity if any business founded 118 years ago switched off the lights forever without giving somebody else the opportunity to keep its heritage alive.

Happily, the folks behind Cole’s agree and we’re hopeful about the new Cole’s.

Over in Echo Park, Taix French Restaurant (est. 1927) is also shuttering on Sunday, prior to demolition of its so-called “landmarked” building.

We’re skeptical of the promised revival of Taix in a tiny (and shrinking!) space in the proposed new tower, incensed by this assault on L.A.’s landmarking ordinance, perplexed by the mysterious #SaveTaix website that just went online years after this preservation battle was fought and lost, and sad there was no chance for an operator who understands 21st century neighborhood demographics to turn Taix into a thriving multi-use venue.

For all that, we do love the joint, and encourage Angelenos to stop in and soak up the mid-century Continental charm while they still can.

You can also scout some of the items that will be up for bid in the restaurant auction that closes on 4/7, including ceiling tiles, art and other relics. Le sigh…

You’ve already had your sleeve pulled to this week’s Know Your Downtown L.A. Next Saturday’s tour is Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles, a walk that celebrates a couple of poor dreamers who fell in love with the raggedy old section of the city and helped shine it up into a jewel we can all enjoy nearly a century later. The annual Blessing of the Animals ceremony happens that afternoon, which means you’ll get to meet some of the sweet critters waiting to be blessed as they hang out on the Plaza. This is an especially magical day in old Los Angeles and we hope you’ll join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, too.

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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Know Your Downtown L.A.: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore & the Dutch Chocolate Shop (3/28) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (4/4) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (4/11) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (4/18) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (4/25) • Highland Park Arroyo (5/2) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/7) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

After a questionable vote was reversed after citizen-shot video evidence caught councilmembers Nithya Raman and Bob Blumenfield unlawfully yapping through public comment about the threat to a Gabrieleño/Kizh Nation archeological site, the PLUM Committee will again hear the appeal by Angelenos For Historic Preservation against demolishing the landmark Barry Building for no new project. The hearing will be on April 14 at 2pm. This is the most significant preservation and Indigenous rights case Los Angeles has ever seen. We hope you’ll read up on it then speak up for preserving the landmark, in person or by submitting written public comment.

KTLA was the first to pick up our Olvera Street burro eviction ruling scoop, with quotes from operator Richard Hernandez, councilmember Ysabel Jurado and Mayor Karen Bass. The space on the Plaza will be open for competitive bidding—we hope quickly, and without evicting Jorge the Burro while a winning vendor is selected—and Angelenos can support the legacy vendor family here.

Speaking of legacy Olvera Street businesses: please support La Luz del Dia in the Simpson Building, right behind the burro. Gregory writes: “My family has run a restaurant on Olvera Street since 1959. We might not make it another year.”

There’s something new and painfully cute at the Heritage Square Museum: baby owlets hopping around inside Hale House’s upper roof gable! Visit soon to learn all about Victorian Los Angeles life and architecture and meet the babies. Our next Highland Park Arroyo tour visit isn’t until May 2. Wonder if they will have left the nest by then?

Mr. Bunker Hill Nathan Marsak revisits Death Race 2000 (1975) and finds that a stalled redevelopment zone makes a great exploitation film location. SPLAT!

When politicians violate Section 1090, property owners are enriched and communities blighted. Every illegal contract can be reversed, every bribed official fined and banned from serving. Coachella’s Mayor Steven Hernandez paid the piper. Why not L.A.?

After six+ years, the William S. Hart Mansion, the only intact Golden Age silent film star’s house museum, reopens for interpretive tours on 4/10/26. Paul Reubens was a preservation pal supporting our stewardship advocacy. We wish he could be there on this happy day!

Watch: D.A. Nathan Hochman is giddy to share the blatant texts exchanged by alleged co-conspirators Hong “Grace” Peng (LAUSD) and Gautham Sampath (Innive), accused of laundering millions in contract kickbacks.

As it’s announced the Oscars will be moving from the Peacock Theater at L.A. Live (in indicted Curren Price’s CD9), breaking the contract keeping the show in its purpose-built Hollywood home through 2033, we have a lot of questions about how this happened and who stands to benefit. We’re also furious because it shows that Hollywood redevelopment has failed, with hundreds of millions in tax dollars squandered and a once-thriving commercial district, including the legendary Book Row and C.C. Brown’s original hot fudge sundae fountain, was displaced for nothing.

In 2018, Steve Edrington’s Book Castle / Movie World (est. 1967) shuttered in beautiful downtown Burbank and the storefront is still vacant. The building’s for sale, a barren shell, but look what it could be for someone who cares!

The Conzevoy family’s Golden State Casket Co.(est. 1933) sells to the public under the first-in-the-phone book moniker ABC. The coffin factory compound just hit the market! Where will filmmakers and penny pinching mourners go now?

A sweet Thai Town half bungalow court (1917) is for sale, and we’ve added it to the Bungalow Court Housing in Los Angeles map—gotta catch ‘em all!

The 626 Wilshire building (Oscar de La Hoya’s Golden Boy/Central City Association) sidewalk was the birthplace of Occupy LA, which Kim writes about in “What I Did In The Chalk Wars.” Now the whole tower is in receivership. Seems like a great spot for a museum of protest history.

We just keep thinking about the hundreds of “eternal” residents of the Los Angeles County Poor Farm Cemetery on the western edge of the poorly guarded, arson-plagued, largely-demolished Rancho Los Amigos property, and about how very different their experiences were from those who have the misfortune to be desperately poor, addicted, mentally ill, infirm and alone in Los Angeles today.

Los Angeles County has vast resources, yet seems addicted to squandering them. If only there was some kind of rehab program to cure bad governance!

But the past holds lessons we can’t afford to ignore.

As the site’s official historian Colleen Fliedner writes, at the turn of the 20th Century, Los Angeles County was a beacon for progressive, ethical and fiscally responsible community care.

The Poor Farm was nothing like the places where citizens who would otherwise be homeless get warehoused today.

It was not a collection of tiny, highly flammable sheds down by the railroad tracks, nor was it a Skid Row tower with no services and scant security, where a vulnerable resident might lose their precious housing voucher after strangers trash their unit for clout and clicks—as seen in last week’s viral, can’t-look-away social media train wreck.

The dorms and cottages, medical wards and community spaces down on the farm in Downey were a real home to people who needed one.

And for those who lived and died there, they closed their eyes for the last time secure in the knowledge that they would have a real grave, where friends could come and think about them.

The terrible 1914 flood rendered the Poor Farm’s dedicated cemetery unusable for future casket burials, and today the ashes of Los Angeles County’s indigent and unclaimed are buried in the County’s cemetery in Boyle Heights.

But extensive research by us and others has shown no evidence that those buried in Downey decades ago were ever disinterred or reburied elsewhere.

Local lore in the Hollydale community knows this parcel as the old cemetery, though details are understandably hazy. And when we’ve stopped by to check on the excavation, on two different occasions, concerned citizens have come over to ask if we can tell them what’s going on.

The best way for them to get answers is through official channels, with an open dialogue with the powerful players responsible for changing the historic cemetery property into an affordable housing site.

But even though County Supervisor Janice Hahn has not yet scheduled such a community meeting, we learned some things during our March 4 visit that made us feel better, and that we hope will put other troubled minds at ease.

We arrived to find a crew from Cogstone Resource Management on site, with a large pop-up white tent obscuring apparent deep excavation work in the pit on the south side of the property.

According to their website, “Cogstone Resource Management provides competent and respectful cultural and paleontological resources compliance services that are reliable, cost-effective, and result in superior work products. We take pride in developing strong working relationships and collaboration with our clients, local Native American Tribes, and other stakeholders.”

After we stood on the sidewalk for some time observing, the crew broke for lunch and we engaged project leader John Gust in conversation through the fence. He was gracious and generous with his time, listening to our concerns and answering questions about the work Cogstone has been contracted to do.

We expressed our dismay that despite our first informing Janice Hahn’s deputy Ivan Sulic in January 2022 about the possibility of human remains still being present, and a recent ground penetrating radar survey showing evidence of uniform rows and anomalies consistent with burials, there had been no public notice that an historic cemetery was to be dug up.

We told him that the County’s two contracted historic assessments (by Sapphos Environmental in 2012, Rincon Consultants Inc. in 2025) were fatally flawed due to the false claim that all burial records had been lost. In fact, the names and plot numbers of several hundred people in the cemetery are known.

He told us that soil was being removed in thin layers, and that his team was finding clear evidence of serious water activity on the soil, likely from the 1914 flood or later incidents.

Numerous cement markers with numbers on them had been found underground, but they were jumbled up, not in neat rows.

He told us that so far no evidence of large quantities of buried cremains had been found, but they had located a small number of body parts and possible casket fixtures. They were also finding marbles and other artifacts consistent with the field having been used as a children’s playground and occasional carnival site.

He told us that that when potential remains were located, the area around them was marked off for more thorough excavation, fully documented and finds collected for removal to Cogstone’s lab in Orange. His understanding was that the County would arrange for the remains to be reburied at some unknown site and time. He did not know if any attempt would be made to collect DNA samples to match with descendants, or if the remains would be cremated or left intact.

He gave us his card and encouraged us to stay in touch if we had more questions, and we left him to his lunch.

While we remain distressed that the County is disturbing these graves instead of leasing space to build affordable housing on the massive, corpse-free Rancho Los Amigos property to the east, we felt better after talking with John Gust. He’s a pro and clearly cares.

It would be helpful if the County organized a community meeting so more people who are concerned can have their minds put at ease. If you agree, please:

• Send a message to Supervisor Janice Hahn—by phone at (213) 626-6941 or by email to FourthDistrict@bos.lacounty.gov—and let her know that you care about the Rancho Los Amigos Poor Farm Cemetery and want her to hold a public meeting explaining the plans for the site, the treatment and disposition of any human remains or grave goods that are uncovered during construction, and how the dead will be memorialized at the new housing development.

It is our sincere hope that in years to come, there will be a pleasant, peaceful and public place on the edge of the cemetery property where people can learn about how well Los Angeles County used to care for the least among us, and can carry those progressive ideals out into the community to implement them once again.

Saturday’s tour is Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive, co-hosted by neighborhood historian Nathan Marsak and native son Gordon Pattison. Come discover a fascinating Los Angeles neighborhood that was almost entirely lost to misguided redevelopment, the rare treasures that survive, and some cool things that were built on the cleared plateau. This is one of our more occasional tours, and we hope you’ll join us, do!

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

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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, 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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

Tour Gift Certificates

UPCOMING WALKING TOURS

• Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (3/21) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore & the Dutch Chocolate Shop (3/28) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (4/4) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (4/11) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (4/18) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (4/25) • Highland Park Arroyo (5/2) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/7) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27)

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

A crushingly sad update on the City’s efforts to evict the Hernandez family’s generational Olvera Street photo op stall, La Carreta: no humane, human jury to see through this dry contract law case means a huge loss for Los Angeles as Judge Lawrence Cho ruled against the burro at the Santa Monica Courthouse last week. The Plaza will be an uglier place without the sweet, familiar attraction where so many of us have gotten silly photos taken, and we are calling on Mayor Karen Bass and councilmember Ysabel Jurado to make this right. Save Jorge the Burro!

La Carreta Judgement

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La Carreta Minute Order

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Heritage Square is donating $50,000 to the Bureau of Engineering for development of its own Master Plan. To be studied: improving the Pasadena Avenue entrance gate and special event parking. And, we hope, saving more demolition threatened buildings! We’ll visit Heritage Square to talk about early preservation advocacy, housing moving and how the Bunker Hill mansions were lost on the Highland Park Arroyo tour on May 2.

In March 2016, Farmacia Y Botanica Million Dollar (Broadway’s most fascinating store) closed after 47 years. We just got a peek inside the long-shuttered space and found a cool relic from Downtown’s golden age. Click to see!

Deranged civic hostility/incompetence in Pacific Palisades: The Gas Company breaks a water line, box truck is diverted to smash into a protected sycamore tree, then cops hold citizens at bay as they beg city crew to follow arborist’s advice, not chop it down.

A lovely obituary in the New York Times for silent cinema sleuth John Bengtson, calling out Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd Alley in Hollywood as his greatest discovery. This astonishing site has been illegally gated since the pandemic, public space used as a nightclub lounge. C’mon, Hugo Soto-Martinez: free the landmark so fans can dash out of the alley like the silent comedy greats once did! We’ll be sharing some of John Bengtson’s discoveries on the Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends tour on April 18.

Attention L.A. book lovers and fire victims: if you salvaged scorched tomes and don’t know what to do with them, conceptual artist Heide Hatry wants them for a major museum installation—and will donate one intact book for every ruined one received.

Coolest auction of the season is Potter & Potter’s Scab Vendor: Rare Tattoo Flash and Underground Art from the Collection of Jonathan Shaw, featuring some wild pieces from the sailor-serving parlors of the Long Beach Pike, erased by redevelopment.

Here’s Jonathan Shaw’s appearance at the Litfest we organized at King Eddy Saloon, honoring Charles Bukowski in a farewell to the greatest Skid Row bar, itself wrecked by redevelopment. We’ll get a rare chance to explore this legendary time capsule on the Know Your Downtown L.A. tour on March 28.

Have you been yearning to see the lost Gower Gulch Medicine Show Caravan one more time? Now you can have your very own miniature of the coolest strip mall sign in Hollywood history: Kieran Wright aka Small Scale LA just released an edition of three.

What happened when City Council voted to demolish the Barry Building, then sent it back to PLUM, where councilmembers Bob Blumenfield and Nithya Raman had previously yapped through public comment from indigenous activist Roy Payan? They blew the case to benefit the billionaire Mungers, painting a bullseye on every Los Angeles landmark.

In 2021, Vladimir Beron pitched apartments to replace two Craftsman houses, but never broke ground. One house was demolished, the other left unsecured to be a drug den. reports on the inevitable fire that killed Juan Galicia’s pups and gutted his house next door.

Fascinating inside city politics piece by Julia Wick on L.A. Material’s launch day. What we want to know is who in City Hall or her kitchen cabinet urged Karen Bass to remove Nithya Raman from the AQMD board—a wonky side gig that she really enjoyed, and was angered to lose? This seems to have been the precipitating act that inspired Raman to get into the race.

The Hotel Cecil’s elevators might always be stigmatized after that creepy video circulated of the missing Elisa Lam talking to nobody. But this week, Rev. Dylan Littlefield reports that work is being done to fix the long-stalled 1957 Oliver & Williams car. Yay!

It’s probably a smart strategy, if you live in Los Angeles, not to get too attached.

Otherwise you’ll have your heart broken, again and again, as things that are cool, beautiful and useful are demolished, stolen for scrap, burned by vandals or otherwise disgraced.