New from Esotouric Ink: A Self-Guided Tour of Charles Bukowski's Gritty Los Angeles
Gentle reader...
We're delighted to announce a brand new Esotouric Ink publication: a self-guided tour of Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles. This is something many bookish visitors have asked about, since we only offer the Bukowski tour four times a year.
With our guide in hand, you'll follow the legendary writer from rough beginnings as an abused child in the West Adams district to his intellectual awakening in the stacks of Central Library, from wild nights in Westlake SRO hotels to tormented hours at the US Postal sorting station opposite Philippe the Original, from his landmark East Hollywood bungalow to the unmarked grave of muse Jane Cooney Baker—25 historic locations in all.
Along the way, he would find the voice within himself that was great, and a fresh way of telling the true and surprisingly touching stories of barfly L.A. lowlife.
Haunts and Havens of Charles Bukowski is available in printed chapbook form and for the Kindle, and serves as a companion or alternative to our quarterly Bukowski bus tour. It includes Downtown and Hollywood maps and recommended independent bookstores to shop en route. To reserve your copy, just visit Charles Bukowski Matters.
And it's no coincidence that we're back on the bus on Saturday with the Bukowski tour, which includes an immersive tour of the time capsule ballroom of the old Concordia Athletic Club, something you can't do when exploring solo. Join us, do!
RECENTLY TOURED
We explored the historic Spanish Colonial Revival stables, a gem of the Palos Verdes peninsula.
LAVA'S FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 6/5
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 Rituals: Sacred & Profane benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. For more info, click here.
COMING SOON
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.)
LAVA SUNDAY SALON - SUN. 5/29... The return of our free cultural lecture series, now located on the basement level of Grand Central Market. For the May Sunday Salon, LAVA Visionary Nathan Marsak presents on old Bunker Hill and Angels Flight. The Sunday Salon is now full, with a waiting list, so do sign up in case of cancelations. Reservations are still being taken for the Broadway on My Mind walking tour of Hill Street after the talk. Due to limited space, reservations are required for both of these free events.
LAVA's FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 6/5... "Rituals: Sacred and Profane," a four-hour presentation held at the teaching crime labs of Cal State Los Angeles. (For more info, click here.)
HOTEL HORRORS & MAIN STREET VICE - SAT. 6/11... 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.)
BLOOD & DUMPLINGS - SAT. 6/18... Forget Hollywood, babe, 'cause the quintessential L.A. town is definitely El Monte, its history packed with noirish murders, brilliant thespians, loony Nazis, James Ellroy's naked lunch and the lion farm that MGM's celebrated kitty called home. See all this and so much more, including the Man from Mars Bandit's Waterloo, when you climb aboard the daffiest crime tour in our arsenal, and the only one that includes a dumpling picnic at a landmark playground populated with fantastical giant sea creatures. Special on this tour: the secret diary of Vilma, El Monte's sassy Clifton's Cafeteria camera girl. Not frequently offered, you won't want to miss this ride. (Buy tickets here.)
Additional upcoming tours: Weird West Adams (6/25), Pasadena Confidential (7/9), The Real Black Dahlia (7/16), Charles Bukowski's L.A. (7/23), Raymond Chandler's L.A. (7/30), South L.A. Road Trip (8/7), Boyle Heights & the San Gabriel Valley (8/13), The Lowdown on Downtown (8/20).
OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST
In episode #109, pre-Prohibition photo and gambling machine collector Roger E. Kislingbury shares his adventures in search of the good stuff out on the blue highways of America, and curator Gail Phinney of the Palos Verdes Art Center walks us through her new Palos Verdes Modern architecture exhibition. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!
AND FINALLY, LINKS
Silver Lake's loss is Glendale's gain. Preserving in place is better.
Tell City Council: historic preservation staff matter to me!
The Phantom has left the Fox.
File under: fascinating / terrible: see implosion video of the last seconds of the Armour Meat Packing Plant, a beautiful industrial ruin in Illinois which we recently snuck into.
Chicken takes a road trip.
Democracy lives among ticked off Runyon Canyon fans.
Confidential to L.A.'s Rec and Parks department: turning interior decorators loose in an historic house isn't "restoration." Poor Wattles Mansion.
New blood, and we hope less bad blood, for the tiled fantasia Adamson House in Malibu.
Dig Gene Sculatti's magical, explorable, imaginary California cityscapes. (The scroll was a huge hit at our debut LAVA Sunday Salon at the old Clifton's Cafeteria.)
Will we ever know what happened that night at Lost Hills Station?
It's never too late to mark a grave.
L.A.'s sweetest vintage restaurant review blog visits Damon's of Glendale.
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. You can also click here before shopping on Amazon. Your contributions are never obligatory, but always appreciated.
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric