L.A. Landmark Bob Baker Marionette Theater Needs Your Help
Gentle reader...
Although we're mad for beautiful buildings, one of our favorite Southern California landmarks is just a modest white box with a plastic marquee. But inside that box, real magic happens.
This is where Bob Baker, who was our friend and who died in 2014, created the charming musical productions of his namesake Marionette Theater. Five decades later, Bob's puppet shows continue to delight a new generation of children and whimsical grownups.
It would take a dozen newsletters to explain the convoluted transactions which resulted in the Bob Baker Theater property ending up in the hand of a real estate developer. But the important thing is this: that developer now wants to demolish it and erect a large apartment building called The Marionette Lofts, with a non-functional portion of the theater retained as the residents' lobby. But because the theater is a landmark, and the developer is seeking zoning variances, the Planning Department is taking public comment about the proposal.
We think it would be better for the community if the new development had a real theater in it, so that the Bob Baker Marionettes can continue to work their magic for the people of Los Angeles right where they started.
Please, if you agree, take a moment to read our email to the Planning Department, and then send one of your own, expressing your hope that there is always a place for the Bob Baker Marionettes at the site of Bob's landmark theater. Then share these links with your friends.
It will only take a few minutes, and could help preserve a gem of Los Angeles for many years to come.
We're delighted to announce the return from hiatus of our You Can't Eat the Sunshine podcast. The weekly schedule was a bit frantic, so look for new monthly episodes from now on. You can tune in to Episode #108: The Homeless and the Loft Dwellers: Public Policy Approaches to Housing in Downtown L.A.’s Arts District and Beyond here.
We don't have a tour this weekend, but we're back on the bus next Saturday, March 19 with The Birth of Noir, a celebration of the pulp fictions inspired by real Los Angeles crimes and characters. And on March 26, it's Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice. Both these tours are filling up, so don't hesitate to join us, do!
RECENTLY TOURED
We took a day trip to Rancho Camulos, a most picturesque place, containing many layers of California history, artifice and mystery.
LAVA'S FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 4/17
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 Murder Will Out: The Secret World of Trace Evidence benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. For more info, click here.
RECOMMENDED READING
From historian and geographer Dydia DeLyser, whose inspiring sleuth work into the mythology surrounding the first neon sign in America, supposedly right here in Los Angeles, has blown many minds among the sign geeks and was such a hit at our LAVA Suday Salon, a study of the colorful origins of California tourism and how Helen Hunt Jackson's fictional character of Ramona fueled a million road trips--including our recent excursion to the lovely Rancho Camulos.
COMING SOON
THE BIRTH OF NOIR: JAMES M. CAIN'S SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARE - SAT. 3/19... This tour digs deep into the literature, film and real life vices that inform that most murderous genre, film noir, rolling 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 author Cain's gift to the world. (Buy tickets here.)
HOTEL HORRORS & MAIN STREET VICE - SAT. 3/26... Through the 1940s, downtown was the true city center, a lively, densely populated, exciting and sometimes dangerous place. 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.)
HOLLYWOOD! - SAT. 4/2... This new tour reveals the unwritten history of the sleepy suburb that birthed the American dream factory, a neighborhood packed with fascinating lore and architectural marvels. You won’t see the stars’ homes or hear about their latest real estate deals, but we’ll show you where some colorful characters breathed their last, got into trouble that defined the rest of their lives and came up with ideas that the world is still talking about. So for unforgettable stories you won’t hear on anyone else’s Hollywood tour, climb aboard and tour Cross Roads of the World (Robert V. Derrah, 1936) and much more. (Buy tickets here.)
PASADENA CONFIDENTIAL - SAT. 4/9... 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, black magicians and all manner of maniac in a delightful little tour you won't find recommended by the better class of people. (Buy tickets here.)
THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA - SAT. 4/16... 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 don't wait to reserve. (Buy tickets here.)
LAVA's FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 4/17... Murder Will Out: The Secret World of Trace Evidence, a four-hour presentation held at the teaching crime labs of Cal State Los Angeles. (For more info, click here.)
ECHO PARK BOOK OF THE DEAD - SAT. 4/23... New on our calendar, a crime bus tour meant to honor the lost souls who wander the hills and byways of the "streetcar suburbs" that hug Sunset Boulevard. 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. Featuring the Hillside Strangler, the Bat Man's Love Nest and a visit to Sister Aimee Semple McPherson's exquisite Parsonage, now a museum. (Buy tickets here.)
CHARLES BUKOWSKI'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 4/30... 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.)
EASTSIDE BABYLON - SAT. 5/7... Go East, young ghoul, to Boyle Heights, where the Night Stalker was captured and to Evergreen, L.A.'s oldest cemetery. To 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. To Commerce, where one small neighborhood's myriad crimes will shock and surprise. To 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.)
RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 5/14... Follow in the young writer's footsteps near his downtown oil company offices to sites from The Lady in the Lake and The Little Sister, meet several real inspirations for the Philip Marlowe character 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. Plus a stop at Scoops for noirish gelato creations and a visit to Larry Edmunds Bookshop. (Buy tickets here.)
SPECIAL EVENT: CRAWLING DOWN CAHUENGA: TOM WAITS' L.A. - SAT. 5/21... 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.)
Additional upcoming tours: Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (6/11), Blood & Dumplings (6/18), Weird West Adams (6/25).
OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST
Back from hiatus! In episode #108, we explore policy challenges with Peter Lynn, Executive Director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, and discuss the new Hybrid Industrial Live/Work Zone Ordinance with Patricia Diefenderfer, Senior City Planner with the City of Los Angeles. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!
AND FINALLY, LINKS
Faux vintage red cars set return to Ports O' Call.
But the old Ports O' Call might soon be erased.
Video vault: a time travel trip to Clifton's Cafeteria in 1986. (Plus: a recipe to try at home.)
Whither sleepy El Sereno?
Is international money laundering fueling the downtown real estate boom?
Esotouric on the road: a visit to Cupples House, a Richardsonian Romanesque castle on the campus of Saint Louis University.
Once, urban parks were designed without consideration for how they can best be monetized. Not anymore.
Hurray for the 1923 bungalow court at 750 Edinburgh, L.A.'s newest historic-cultural monument!
Our Kim Cooper talks Black Dahlia, forensic science and the origins of Esotouric.
Someone should make a movie about the HOA war at Old World Village.
Bunker Hill-happy Nathan Marsak solves the mystery of a Mabel Normand rooftop peril film location.
Farewell to the old Long Beach Courthouse, a fine mid-century modern building demolished so the city can hand an empty civic center off to a private developer.
SUPPORT OUR WORK
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yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric