The Go Go Girl & Charles Bukowski edition
Observe the spark of a welding arc at lower left. Something is happening at Clifton's Cafeteria (via Instagram).
This is a longer newsletter that some email providers will have trouble displaying. Click "View this email" at upper right for a complete reading experience.
Gentle reader...
We're back on the bus on Saturday, with the second outing of our new crime bus tour, Echo Park Book of the Dead. This is an afternoon jam packed with truly weird tales told against the backdrop of L.A.'s loveliest collection of Victorian homes, with a stop to explore Sister Aimee's magnificent lakeside parsonage museum. Join us, do!
And this Sunday, we're hosting a very special LAVA Sunday Salon that's been more than forty years in the making.
In the early 1970s, Joan Jobe Smith's uptight grad school professors told her not to bother writing about her experiences go go dancing in rough clubs across the Southland. But her friend Charles Bukowski liked her raw, honest and soulful stories, and encouraged her to push on.
Late last year, after a successful career as a poet and magazine editrix, Joan's long-awaited memoir, Tales of An Ancient Go-Go Girl was finally published. And on Sunday, she'll tell her own astonishing story at the Sunday Salon, plus share some colorful Bukowski tales, too. It's free, of course, with reservations required, and we'd love to see you there.
And finally, we send this newsletter out with love, and a flash of pea-green plumage, in memory of Kiwi, the perfect wee parrot who was our Joan Renner's boon companion for the past two decades. He's flown off to the big perch in the sky, but won't be soon forgotten by anyone who knew him.
COMING SOON
ECHO PARK BOOK OF THE DEAD - SAT. 4/25... New from the deranged minds of Esotouric, an historical crime bus tour meant to honor the lost souls who wander the hills and byways of the "streetcar suburbs" (Echo Park, Silver Lake, Elysian Park, Angeleno Heights) that hug Sunset Boulevard. Climb aboard to see seemingly ordinary houses, streets and commercial buildings revealed as the scenes of chilling crimes and mysteries, populated by some of the most fascinating people you'd never want to meet. Featured cases include Edward Hickman's kidnapping of little Marion Parker and the bizarre "Man in the Attic" love nest slaying, plus dozens of incredible, forgotten tales of Angelenoes in peril. Guests will also see some of the most beautiful historic architecture in Los Angeles, including a visit to Sister Aimee Semple McPherson's exquisite Parsonage, her one-time home, now a museum. (Buy tickets here.)
CHARLES BUKOWSKI'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 5/2... Come explore Charles Bukowski's lost Los Angeles and the fascinating contradictions that make this great local writer such a hoot to explore. Haunts of a Dirty Old Man is a raucous day out celebrating liquor, ladies, pimps and poets. The tour includes a visit to Buk's DeLongpre bungalow, where you'll see the Cultural-Historic Monument sign that we helped to get approved, and a mid-tour provisions stop at Pink Elephant Liquor. (Buy tickets here.)
RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 5/9... Join us for a journey from the downtown of Chandler's pre-literary youth (but which always lingered at the fore of his imagination) to the Hollywood of his greatest success, with a stop along the way at Tai Kim's Scoops for unexpected gelato creations inspired by the author. We'll start the tour following in the young Chandler's footsteps, as he roamed the blocks near the downtown oil company office where he worked. See sites from The Lady in the Lake and The Little Sister, discover the real Philip Marlowe (the inspiration for Kim's novel The Kept Girl) and get the skinny on Chandler's secret comic operetta that we discovered in the Library of Congress nearly a century after it was written. (Buy tickets here.)
SPECIAL EVENT: CRAWLING DOWN CAHUENGA: TOM WAITS' L.A. - SAT. 5/16... In our very occasional guest tour series, a delightful excursion that only comes around once a year, the Tom Waits bus adventure hosted by acclaimed rock critic David Smay (Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth, Swordfishtrombones). This voyage through the city that shaped one of our most eclectic musical visionaries starts in Skid Row and rolls through Hollywood and Echo Park, spotlighting the sites where Waits was transformed through the redemptive powers of love and other lures: the Tropicana Motel, Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Studios, the raunchy Ivar Theatre and so much more. Join us for a great day out in 1970s Los Angeles celebrating the music, the culture and the passions of Tom Waits. (Buy tickets here.)
EASTSIDE BABYLON - SAT. 5/30... Go East, young ghoul. Come visit Boyle Heights, where the Night Stalker was captured and a mad dad ran amok. Roam the hallowed lawns of Evergreen, L.A.'s oldest cemetery and home of some memorable haunts and strange burials. Visit East L.A., where a deranged radio shop employee made mince meat of his boss and bride--and you can get your hair done in a building shaped like a giant tamale. Explore the ghastly streets of Commerce, where one small neighborhood's myriad crimes will shock and surprise. Visit Montebello, for scrumptious milk and cookies at Broguiere's Farm Fresh Dairy washed down with a horrifying case of child murder. That's Eastside Babylon, our most unhinged crime bus tour. (Buy tickets here.)
BLOOD & DUMPLINGS - SAT. 6/20... Forget Hollywood, babe, 'cause the quintessential L.A. town is definitely El Monte, its history packed with noirish murders, brilliant thespians, loony Nazis, James Ellroy's naked lunch and the lion farm that MGM's celebrated kitty called home. See all this and so much more, including the Man from Mars Bandit's Waterloo, when you climb aboard the daffiest crime tour in our arsenal, and the only one that includes a dumpling picnic at a landmark playground populated with fantastical giant sea creatures. Not frequently offered, you won't want to miss this ride. (Buy tickets here.)
AND FINALLY, LINKS
The ripples of injustice roll on.
Two oddballs: a love/terror story.
Heaven knows she's happier now.
Well, of course Billy Wilder's brother made weird low-budget science fiction films!
Auntie Beeb digs The Day of the Locust and so do we.
Your chance to tell Project For Public Spaces that you support the Restoration of Pershing Square.
Where have all the archives gone? Gone to Little Rock, every one.
The Villa Carlotta won't go quietly. Let's save this magnificent Hollywood apartment community!
A horrifying bombshell: 32 death sentences tied to worthless FBI hair match analysis...and a modest proposal to free forensic science from the inherently biased realm of police and prosecutors.
SUPPORT OUR WORK
If you enjoy all we do to celebrate and preserve Los Angeles history and would like to say thank you, please consider putting a little something into our digital tip jar. Your contributions are never obligatory, but always appreciated.
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric
RECOMMENDED READING
Released next Tuesday, this elegant mid-century time machine puts you in the pocket of Joe Mitchell, the great New Yorker magazine chronicler of urban characters, from gluttonous fishmongers to philosophical graveyard ramblers to the squawking Greenwich Village oddball Professor Seagull, whose secret curse would become his own. It's a lovely, scrupulously researched tale of a remarkable life that has long been understood to have ended in a decades-long writer's block. What a nice surprise to learn Mitchell was writing, not for the magazine, but in support of the historic preservation of old New York City! Definitely our kind of artist.
A novel set in 1929 Los Angeles, starring the young Raymond Chandler, his devoted secretary and the real-life Philip Marlowe in pursuit of a murderous cult of angel worshippers. Available on all Esotouric tours, or direct from Esotouric Ink, from Amazon and for the Kindle.
A collaboration between illustrator Paul Rogers and our own Kim Cooper, featuring 50 iconic noir locations and packed with surprising lore and gorgeous artwork inspired by the vintage Dell Mapback mysteries of the 1940s. Available from Kim or Amazon, and on our tours. (Looking for Aaron Blake's out-of-print 1985 map? Click here.)
FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINARS
Four times a year, we gather in the teaching crime labs of Cal State Los Angeles under the direction of Professor Donald Johnson to explore the history and future of American forensic science. Your $36.50 ticket to the Serial Killer Summer Session presentation benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. Join us on Sunday, August 16. For more info, or to reserve, click here.
In the latest edition of You Can't Eat the Sunshine, we peel back the curtains to reveal a day in the life of Union Station, and learn how fast-acting Downey folk managed to save their beloved Googie diner from an illegal demolition. Click here to tune in.
Help bring an L.A. icon back from the dead. Join the campaign to restore John Parkinson's 1910 design for our greatest lost park.
The LAVA Sunday Salon is our monthly cultural clearing house of new ideas presented by LAVA Visionaries, the most fascinating folks in town. Back from hiatus, the Sunday Salon returns on April 26 with Joan Jobe Smith's astonishing tales of her life as a 1960s go go dancer. Free, reservations required.
We discovered Raymond Chandler's most delightful literary secret. Now we need your help to stage his comic operetta in Los Angeles!
Need an L.A.-centric gift in a hurry? Visit The Esotouric Emporium of L.A. Lore, our curated guide to the best in regional books, films and artifacts. How about a gift certificate for a bus adventure into the secret heart of Los Angeles, a solo 6-Pack or shareable 12-Pack? We also carry vintage photos of lost Bunker Hill as well as earlier scenes, Charles Bukowski-inspired fine art prints, Raymond Chandler maps (vintage) or (contemporary) and 76 ball antenna toppers.
TOUR CALENDAR
Echo Park Book of the Dead (4/25)
Charles Bukowski's L.A. (5/2)
Raymond Chandler's L.A. (5/9)
Special Event: Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits' L.A. (5/16)
Eastside Babylon (5/30)
Blood & Dumplings (6/20)
Weird West Adams (6/27)
The Real Black Dahlia (7/18)
Charles Bukowski's L.A. (7/25)