Blowing Our Own Minds edition
A neon welcome on El Camino Real.
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Gentle reader...
For nearly a decade, we've rolled across the city, stopping to share the stories of fascinating Angelenos at their highest, and lowest, points. Along the way, we've seen historic buildings demolished and restored, and even helped to save a few.
The only thing that's static on our bus tours is their names. The tours are living organisms, evolving as our understanding of the city and its characters deepens. Through archival research and casual conversation, luck and sweat, we manage to find some awfully good stuff.
It's hard to describe the thrill when all the tumblers turn in the figurative lock and we suddenly see a previously mysterious thread of history revealed... or the pleasure of weaving it in amongst the threads that inform one of our pet narratives.
The past seems alive, and friendly.
And this Saturday, on our 28th edition of the Pasadena Confidential tour, Richard will be sharing newly discovered insights into circumstances of the unexplained death of Jack Parsons: rocket scientist, black magician, poet, visionary and victim of one of the most mysterious explosions to ever rock the southland.
Join us, do, to be among the first to hear the name of the man who we think sent Jack Parsons into a premature orbit.
Free! On July 23, join Kim Cooper and other contributors to the acclaimed 2001 anthology Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth for an evening of storytelling and book signing at Pasadena's Central Library.
FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINARS
RESERVE SOON - SEATS ARE GOING FAST! 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.
COMING SOON
PASADENA CONFIDENTIAL WITH CRIMEBO THE CLOWN - SAT. 7/11... The Crown City masquerades as a calm and refined retreat, where well-bred ladies glide around their perfect bungalows and everyone knows what fork to use first. But don't be fooled by appearances. Dip into the confidential files of old Pasadena and meet assassins and oddballs, kidnappers and slashers, Satanists and all manner of maniac in a delightful little tour you WON'T find recommended by the better class of people! From celebrated cases like the RFK assassination (with a visit to Sirhan Sirhan's folks' house), Eraserhead star Jack Nance's strange end, black magician/rocket scientist Jack Parsons' death-by-misadventure and the 1926 Rose Parade grand stand collapse, to fascinating obscurities, the tour's dozens of murders, arsons, kidnappings, robberies, suicides, auto wrecks and oddball happening sites provide a alternate history of Pasadena that's as fascinating as it is creepy. Passengers will tour the old Millionaire's Row on Orange Grove, thrill to the shocking Sphinx Murder on the steps of the downtown Masonic Hall and discover why people named Judd should think twice before moving to Pasadena. (Buy tickets here.)
THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA - SAT. 7/18... Join us on this iconic, unsolved Los Angeles murder mystery tour, from the throbbing boulevards of a postwar Downtown to the quiet suburban avenue where horror came calling. After multiple revisions, this is less a true crime tour than a social history of 1940s Hollywood female culture, mass media and madness, and we welcome you to join us for the ride. This tour always sells out, so do not delay. (Buy tickets here.)
CHARLES BUKOWSKI'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 7/25... 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.)
SOUTH LOS ANGELES ROAD TRIP: HOT RODS, ADOBES, GOOGIE & EARLY MODERNISM - SUN. 8/2... This rare Sunday tour in our California Culture series rolls through Vernon, Bell Gardens, Santa Fe Springs and Downey, and the past two centuries, exploring some of L.A.'s most seldom-seen and compelling structures. Turning the West Side-centric notion of an L.A. architecture tour on its head, the bus goes into areas not traditionally associated with the important, beautiful or significant, raising issues of preservation, adaptive reuse, hot rod kar culture and the evolution of the city. (Buy tickets here.)
BOYLE HEIGHTS & THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY: THE HIDDEN HISTORIES OF L.A.'S MELTING POTS - SAT. 8/8... Come on a century's social history tour through the transformation of neighborhoods, punctuated with immersive stops to sample the varied cultures that make our changing city so beguiling. Voter registration, citizenship classes, Chicano Moratorium, walkouts, blow-outs, anti-Semitism, adult education, racial covenants, boycotts, The City Beautiful, Exclusion Acts and Immigration Acts, property values, xenophobia, and delicious dumplings--all are themes which will be addressed on this lively excursion. This whirlwind social history tour will include: The Vladeck Center, Hollenbeck Park, Evergreen Cemetery, The Venice Room, El Encanto & Cascades Park, Divine's Furniture and Wing Hop Fung. (Buy tickets here.)
THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN - SAT. 8/15... Come discover the secret history, and the fascinating future, of a most beguiling neighborhood. This is not a tour about beautiful buildings--although beautiful buildings will be all around you. This is not a tour about brilliant architects--although we will gaze upon their works and marvel. The Lowdown on Downtown is a tour about urban redevelopment, public policy, protest, power and the police. It is a revealing history of how the New Downtown became an "overnight sensation" after decades of quiet work behind the scenes by public agencies and private developers. This tour is about what really happened in the heart of Los Angeles, a complicated story that will fascinate and infuriate, break your heart and thrill your spirit. Come discover the real Los Angeles, the city even natives don't know. Guest hosts provide personal insight into life on old Bunker Hill, on the streets and in the lofts of the Arts District. A special treat will be a stop at the famous tile-drenched Dutch Chocolate Shop for the scoop on new plans to bring this stunning space back into public use. (Buy tickets here.)
AND FINALLY, LINKS
Who will love all the little things?
If you care about the lovely places in Arcadia, worry.
Quoting Voltaire to justify demolishing important buildings. Shame on Whittier & Brookfield.
After him, the deluge (of digitization).
The awakening conscience.
The trouble with documentary.
Villa Montezuma, our favorite derelict spiritualist mystery parlor, finally bids you enter.
A modest proposal to walk away from the Broadway streetcar.
We think a little history could go a long way in improving the LA Coroner's kitschy gift shop.
Be careful what you wish for... DNA cracks Paul Fronczak mystery, and the answers aren't pretty.
End of the trail.
Turf Terminators is the stucco man of landscaping, uglifying LA for profit.
A temporary assignment.
What price Unesco recognition?
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
As featured on our Pasadena Confidential tour, the stranger-than-fiction biography of a homegrown genius, whose passions sent Man to the moon, and himself to the farthest reaches of consciousness. The photo on the book jacket is quite significant.
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.)
FROM THE VIDEO VAULT
Now on the LAVA blog, video of Joan Jobe Smith's LAVA Sunday Salon talk on her career as a 1960s go-go dancer and literary colleague of Charles Bukowski. Click here to see.
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.
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
Pasadena Confidential (7/11)
The Real Black Dahlia (7/18)
Charles Bukowski's L.A. (7/25)
South L.A. Road Trip: Hot Rods, Adobes, Googie & Early Modernism (8/2)
Boyle Heights & The San Gabriel Valley: The Hidden Histories of L.A.'s Melting Pot (8/8)
The Lowdown on Downtown (8/15)
The Birth of Noir (9/12)
Weird West Adams (9/19)
Eastside Babylon (9/26)
Wild Wild Westside (10/3)
Hollywood! (10/10)
Charles Bukowski's L.A. (10/17)
The Real Black Dahlia (10/31)