That's a good looking L.A. Times building... be a shame if anything happened to it.

Gentle reader...

After 135 years as a bold beacon at the center of the city, the Los Angeles Times is flickering in and out of view. While still capable of breaking important stories, the paper has been hobbled by its out-of-state owners with a diminished staff and a succession of peculiar marketing philosophies.

Then, this week, came the announcement we've been dreading: a sale of the newspaper's compound at First and Spring Streets appears to be close.

This potential sale should be a giant wake up call for Los Angeles preservationists, as despite the clear signs over the past decade that Tribune (we can't quite bring ourselves to type "tronc") intended to flip its Los Angeles real estate, no part of the historic Times-Mirror compound is a protected Historic-Cultural Monument. The massed structure is ideal as a purpose-built newspaper office, printing plant and corporate headquarters. Any attempts to turn it into retail, residential or creative office will certainly result in major architectural alterations.

What next? Will the William Pereira addition be demolished for a tower? Will the Globe Lobby murals be sold at auction? Will the glass-faced Norman Chandler Pavilion become a swinger's club with City Hall views? Mortified Angelenos need to know. So as a public service, we've blogged some rare interior photos from the endangered compound. Behold, fall in love like we have, and get worried.

But in lighter news, it's a LAVA Sunday Salon weekend, and we'd love you see you for a free (though RSVPs are required) cultural history talk and walking tour.

We're back on the bus on Saturday, with a Weird West Adams crime bus tour, from prohibition hijinks to family-wrecking vamps, deadly cults and human moles, plus a stroll through lovely Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery. Join us, do!

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RECENTLY TOURED

The endangered art deco elevator lobby of the Los Angeles Times was designed to frame the rooftop eagle that survived the newspaper's 1910 dynamiting.

LAVA'S FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 11/6

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. Save the date of November 6, 2016 for our next program, with details to be announced very soon. See photos and video from last Sunday's Rituals: Sacred and Profane program here.

RECOMMENDED READING

B is for Bubblegum, and also for Belated... and video from last July's bubblegum music talk at Pasadena Central Library is now online. Featuring pop scholars David Smay, Becky Ebenkamp, Gene Sculatti and our own Kim Cooper sharing the chewy chewy back stories behind the bubblegum music, it's a live action companion to acclaimed anthology Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth: The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop from the Banana Splits to Britney Spears. Remember, there are no guilty pleasures: so enjoy!

COMING SOON

WEIRD WEST ADAMS - SAT. 6/25... 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.)

LAVA SUNDAY SALON / WALKING TOUR - SUN. 6/26... Our free cultural lecture series recently relaunched on the basement level of Grand Central Market. For the June Sunday Salon, Miriam Caldwell presents on her mother Vilma's secret 1950s diaries, documenting glamorous, opinionated adventures as a Clifton's Cafeteria camera girl and nightclub hopper. Following the Salon, a free Broadway on My Mind walking tour explores Hill Street. Due to limited space, reservations are required for both of these free events.

PASADENA CONFIDENTIAL - SAT. 7/9... 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 confidentialfiles 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. 7/16... 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).

CHARLES BUKOWSKI'S L.A. - SAT. 7/23... 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. New: souvenir Bukowski's L.A. booklet available. (Buy tickets here).

RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 7/30... 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).

SOUTH LOS ANGELES ROAD TRIP: HOT RODS, ADOBES, GOOGIE & EARLY MODERNISM - SUN. 8/7... 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 kulture and the evolution of the city. (Buy tickets here).

Additional upcoming tours: Boyle Heights & the San Gabriel Valley(8/13), The Lowdown on Downtown (8/20), The Birth of Noir (9/10), Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (9/17), Blood & Dumplings (9/24), Hollywood! (10/1), Wild Wild Westside (10/8), Echo Park Book of the Dead (10/15), Raymond Chandler's L.A. (10/22), The Real Black Dahlia (10/29).

OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST

In episode #111, our focus is the artist Wallace Berman, the center of a vibrant scene in mid-century Los Angeles. Hollywood gallerist Michael Kohn walks us through the new retrospective (up through June 25) and the artist's son Tosh shares insights into his father's craft and character. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!

AND FINALLY, LINKS

Hardscape triumphant. This is a plaza, not a park.

Musical chairs, with houses.

Our blue canopy.

A Pershing Square war memorial history lesson, from the guy who landmarked it.

An Esotouric road trip: descent into the Ball Mill Resurgence.

A bright idea.

Honoring the fallen from the dark days of free speech in Los Angeles.

Hollywood historian's modest proposal: move the (non-historic) Hollywood sign somewhere easier for tourists to visit.

Arcadia windmill spins again!

Sixth Street Viaduct: ground zero for displacement in gentrifying Boyle Heights?

Troubling rumblings about ownership of the land under Angels Flight Railway.

Gadfly'd out, Hollywood BID seeks to obscure what its private guards do to the homeless.

yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric