Preserve Angels Flight (and get $18 off your next tour) edition
Filming a spot about saving Angels Flight for the KABC-7 evening news.
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Gentle reader...
Our love for the Angels Flight funicular railway is no secret. This wee vestige of the lost Victorian neighborhood of Bunker Hill is so packed with charm and significance that it seems more like a member of the family than an historic landmark.
So how painful it has been for these past 681 days to watch Olivet and Sinai, the Railway's biblically named wooden cars, sit idle in the center of the track, patiently waiting for the California Public Utilities Commission to sign off on a return to operation. Even the opportunity to climb aboard for a test run left us heartbroken that we couldn't share the experience with you.
As the days, weeks and months ticked by, it has become obvious that there can be no agreement between the PUC and the Railway foundation's hired engineers and consultants. A single, now-retired, inspector's determination that Angels Flight must install an evacuation walkway has halted all discussion of alternatives.
Meanwhile, vandals noticed our beloved Angels Flight. First they scrawled their names all over the track system. When nobody scrubbed the graffiti off, they returned to tag Angels Flight itself.
This indignity was, for us, the final straw. Sinai and Olivet cannot speak for themselves, but we can speak for them. On Monday evening, we launched a petition imploring Mayor Eric Garcetti to seek a political solution to the problem of Angels Flight, by personally reaching out to the powers in Sacramento and San Francisco to cut the red tape and free Angels Flight.
As of this writing, 1100 people have signed the petition, and in doing so sent their personal message of hope to the Mayor. We hope you, too, will speak up for Angels Flight and sign your name. After you do, you can click here to find news coverage of the Angels Flight campaign, from KNX, the Daily Breeze and Curbed LA. We'll share the link to yesterday's KABC-7 evening news story when it goes online.
And in the spirit of Angels Flight, this is our gift to you: take $18 off an upcoming Esotouric bus adventure when you use the discount code saveangelsflight. (Fine print: this offer expires on 7/20 at midnight. Limit 4 tickets per person but you may share the code with friends. Offer good for any tour through October 31; if rescheduling for a later tour you may apply what you paid towards a full-priced ticket.)
We're back on the bus on Saturday with The Real Black Dahlia, your chance to walk in the footsteps of one of our city's most fascinating murder victims, on a time travel trip to 1947. Join us, do!
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
SORRY, SOLD OUT! 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 get on the waiting list, click here.
COMING SOON
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
Monster in white.
Jeff Sharlet digs deep into the fatal shooting of "Africa" on Skid Row.
Emma E. Kemp gets under the hood of David Smay's once-a-year Tom Waits bus tour.
A better national librarian will help steer the course of all libraries.
If you read it for the articles, thank her.
Harper Lee's laundry list.
Fine bindings never cracked might hold great secrets.
I think that I shall never see…
We talk with the 99% Invisible podcast about the magical Bradbury Building.
Memories of Billy's, until recently our favorite deli.
A love letter to Florence-Firestone.
Second only to Houston.
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
A noir-tinged love letter to the vanished beauties of the redeveloped Bunker Hill neighborhood, not neglecting the cinematic appearances of that wonderful funicular railway we're struggling to save.
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
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)