Viva Angels Flight! edition
SEEN ON OUR TRAVELS
Yay! Horrible plastic panels coming off the Art Deco masterpiece that is Claud Beelman's Garfield Building.
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...
Wow, Angelenoes really love their Angels Flight Railway! (And honestly, what's not to love?)
Just four days after the launch of our viral petition asking Mayor Garcetti to step in and help get the historic funicular running again, he submitted a motion asking Metro to produce an Angels Flight report.
Yesterday, we joined the directors of many of Bunker Hill's cultural organizations in making public comment at Metro's Board of Directors' meeting, raising a chorus of sustained concern for the lovely little train that sits, dusty and neglected, halfway up its hill.
And Metro heard our plea--amplified by the passionate comments of more than 1800 petition signers--and agreed to look into the problem. Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas even offered to call the Public Utilities Commission himself.
Now this doesn't mean that Angels Flight is saved, or that you'll be able to take that quick time capsule journey on your next trip downtown, but it's a most encouraging sign after two years trapped in regulatory muck.
Keep watching this space, and we'll be sure to let you know when the heavenly gates once again open to admit human visitors.
We're back on the bus on Saturday with a trip through Charles Bukowski's Downtown and East Hollywood, following his lively creative path from daytime barfly to acclaimed poet and novelist. Join us, do!
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
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.)
RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 8/22... 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.)
HOTEL HORRORS & MAIN STREET VICE - SAT. 8/29... From the founding of the city through the 1940s, downtown was the true center of Los Angeles, a lively, densely populated, exciting and sometimes dangerous place. After many quiet decades, downtown is making an incredible return. But while many of the historic buildings remain, their human context has been lost. This downtown double feature tour is meant to bring alive the old ghosts and memories that cling to the streets and structures of the historic core, and is especially recommended for downtown residents curious about their neighborhood's neglected history. (Buy tickets here.)
THE BIRTH OF NOIR: JAMES M. CAIN'S SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARE - SAT. 9/12... Ride along on a very pulpy path on a wide-ranging tour that digs deep into the literature, film and real life vices that inform that most murderous genre, film noir -- from Double Indemnity (where Raymond Chandler's Hollywood career intersects with Cain's) to The Postman Always Rings Twice to Mildred Pierce and beyond. The tour rolls through Hollywood, Glendale and old Skid Row, lost lion farms, murderous sopranos, fascist film censors, offbeat cemeteries -- all in a quest to reveal the delicious, and deeply influential, nightmares that are Cain's gift to the world. (Buy tickets here.)
AND FINALLY, LINKS
The fox has left the hen house.
Edith on the road.
Bull's eye.
Starchitecture is rarely worth the cost.
Lawsuit says private BID security act as agents of LA in violating the right of the homeless on Skid Row.
Not so fast, multiplex!
Developer Jason Illoulian never met a landmark he doesn't want to demolish.
Small mercies.
The evening glow of Randyland.
Laid to rest.
Whither Rockhaven?
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
At the end of his life, the eloquent medical memoirist turns his eye to his own coming of age, as a buttoned-down Brit finding himself on Santa Monica's Muscle Beach and the open roads of the American West.
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
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)