Lost L.A. Alert: we explore a weird time capsule hiding above the landmark Dutch Chocolate Shop

Gentle reader...

As much as we know about our beloved city, Los Angeles can still throw us for one beauty of a loop.

Consider Downtown's landmark Dutch Chocolate Shop, the 1914 tiled restaurant space that was Pasadena arts & crafts maven Ernest Batchelder's first and greatest commission. We've led hundreds of people through the space (and will again on Saturday), hosted lectures on its history, mused on its importance with journalists, located the maker's signature on a hidden clay panel, arranged for its 3-D scanning and traded tile tales with Batchelder biographer Bob Winter. We know the Dutch Chocolate Shop. Or do we?

This week on the Esotouric blog, you'll find the story of what we found when we left the warm, brown comfort of the first floor space and went exploring upstairs in the Finney Wilton Building. On the top floor, we marveled to see a 1930s quack medical clinic, frozen in time as if the doctor had just stepped out for lunch. It's discoveries like this one that keep us always excited about the study of the city, and eager to step through the next doorway. It's not often a time capsule reveals itself, but when one does, ooooh what a thrill!

If you're a podcast listener, we'd like to pull your sleeve to Built Blocks, a new show about buildings and cities from Portland cultural historian John Chilson. He's an old friend of Kim's from their days as zine publishers—John's Schlock and Kim's Scram were often reviewed on the same page—and Kim was honored to be John's first guest, for a wide-ranging conversation about Downtown L.A. history, preservation, redevelopment and true crime.

We're on the bus on Saturday with the Lowdown on Downtown, the last in our series of California Culture tours. This one includes a rare visit to the Dutch Chocolate Shop, which we're seeing in a whole new light now that we know its strange neighbor. Join us, do!

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.

RECENTLY TOURED

This was a thrill to see from the bus window! Last week was the first time we've given the Boyle Heights tour since we helped save the Peabody-Werden House.

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 the last program, Rituals: Sacred and Profane, here.

RECOMMENDED READING

In the early 1970s, Joan Jobe Smith's uptight grad school professors told her not to bother writing about her experiences go go dancing in rough clubs across the Southland. But Joan's friend Charles Bukowski (whose birthday was this week) liked her raw, honest and soulful stories, and encouraged her to push on. After a successful career as a poet and magazine editrix, Joan's long-awaited memoir, Tales of An Ancient Go-Go Girl is here. Pick up a copy to see what Bukowski loved, and for rare insights into a world that has rarely been chronicled, much less with such wit and sensitivity.

COMING SOON

THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN - SAT. 8/20... 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. Come discover the real Los Angeles, the city even natives don't know. Features a visit to the Dutch Chocolate Shop, a tiled wonderland not open to the public. (Buy tickets here).

LAVA SUNDAY SALON / WALKING TOUR - SUN. 8/28... Our free cultural lecture series recently relaunched on the basement level of Grand Central Market. For the August Sunday Salon, a merry band of musical mischief makers will bring their collection of altered thrift shop electronic toys and instruments for a hands-on Circuit Bending presentation. After the Salon, a free Broadway on My Mind walking tour explores lost tunnels and hills around Hill Street. Due to limited space, reservations are required for both of these free events.

THE BIRTH OF NOIR: JAMES M. CAIN'S SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARE - SAT. 9/10... 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. 9/17... 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. 9/24... 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).

HOLLYWOOD! - SAT. 10/1... 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).

Additional upcoming tours: 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

Episode #114, Lures and Snares of Old Main Street, we talk tattoo archives with author and ink-slinger Jonathan Shaw, and explore the life of early Downtown L.A. macher O.T. Johnson with historian Paul Rood. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!

AND FINALLY, LINKS

When poverty is criminalized, a stop on Skid Row can last a lifetime.

Beware of zombie urbanism: sanitized, privatized "public spaces" that give the public the heebie-jeebies.

A gadfly's videos prove Hollywood Boulevard BID targets nightclubs with non-white patrons for closure.

Eminent domain abused as Pasadena hands public park land (as well as historic Julia Morgan YWCA) to private hotel developer. A preservation alternative exists.

Thomas Mann's land worth more than his memory. (Another West Coast Weimer haven had a happier ending.)

yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric