The Governor and the Mobile Home Park edition
SEEN ON OUR TRAVELS
Richard Schave and Gordon Pattison at Angels Flight, recording an interview for KPCC's Off-Ramp about the preservation campaign.
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Gentle reader...
Once upon a time, a family named Lugo maintained adobe homesteads all across the vast plain of Southern California. The Lugos were famed for their hospitality and celebrations, a legacy of Spanish rule that survived, in somewhat diminished fashion, into the American era.
But with taxes and droughts and fraud and great-grandchildren, the assets of the old Californio families were stretched thin as a hand-me-down shawl. When Eastern attorney Henry Gage married into the Lugos, his bride Fanny Rains was given a dowry comprised of a dilapidated adobe structure by the banks of the Rio Hondo. Gage was charmed, and instead of knocking the old place down, he restored and expanded it, wrapping the thick walls in redwood siding, adding a wing, a porch and grand entrance gates. When Gage became Governor of the state in 1899, the home in Bell Gardens served as his southern headquarters.
But with time, the Gage Mansion grew shabby. Transient families camping along the Rio Hondo came and asked for water, and later for the right to stay. A trailer park sprung up around the old adobe, and a community grew there. The mansion became an official California landmark, among the oldest homes in Los Angeles County. But few people knew about it and fewer visited.
When we wrote our South Los Angeles tour, the Gage Mansion was prominently featured, and proved as beguiling to our gentle riders as it was to us. There is simply no other Southern Californian place that contains these precise layers of culture and change, in so beautiful a package. But as this tour has returned to Bell Gardens over the years, our access to the mansion has been restricted at the request of the trailer park's board. We never stopped visiting this stretch of Gage Avenue, or caring about the place, but we have been forbidden from entering the property for a number of years.
This Sunday, the South LA road trip rolls again, and we're delighted to announce that there has been some positive movement in our campaign to ensure that this extraordinary landmark remains accessible to the general public, as is required by virtue of its status in the charitable registry of the State of California.
So join us, do, as we return to the sylvan porch of the Gage Mansion, to peer inside this time capsule testament to several layers of the California Dream!
COMING SOON
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.)
WEIRD WEST ADAMS - SAT. 9/19... On this guided tour through the Beverly Hills of the early 20th Century, Crime Bus passengers thrill as Jazz Age bootleggers run amok, marvel at the Krazy Kafitz family's litany of murder-suicides, attempted husband slayings, Byzantine estate battles and mad bombings, visit the shortest street in Los Angeles (15' long Powers Place, with its magnificent views of the mansions of Alvarado Terrace), discover which fabulous mansion was once transformed into a functioning whiskey factory using every room in the house, and stroll the haunted paths of Rosedale Cemetery, site of notable burials (May K. Rindge, the mother of Malibu) and odd graveside crimes. Featured players include the most famous dwarf in Hollywood, mass suicide ringleader Reverend Jim Jones, wacky millionaires who can't control their automobiles, human mole bank robbers, comically inept fumigators, kids trapped in tar pits, and dozens of other unusual and fascinating denizens of early Los Angeles. (Buy tickets here.)
AND FINALLY, LINKS
A campaign is underway to inscribe Raymond Chandler's name on the Walk of Fame (big spenders get seats on our tour bus).
Remembrance of sassy service past.
Bugging Bukowski.
Noir enough for you?
He won't take "I don't know" for an answer.
Our bargain Bernini.
The whole world is watching.
In the red.
Echoes of the great Fair.
The slow death of New York, measured in beers and in millions.
History on the hoof.
Our Lady of Gentrification is here… for now.
Refried dreams come true.
To explore women's history through tales of anonymous murder you must be honest.
(Not so) Great Streets.
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric
RECOMMENDED READING
This new book, companion to the current exhibition, celebrates the Los Angeles Public Library's legendary collection of historic restaurant menus, a window into the Southland's evolving culinary and popular culture.
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.
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.
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.
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.
TOUR CALENDAR
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)