Everything you ever wanted to know about Long Beach*... *but were afraid to ask (on Richard's birthday bus adventure)
Gentle reader...
We've added a number of tours to the calendar, stretching to the end of November. And as regular readers know, that's time for Richard's traveling birthday bus adventure. Each year, we present an all-new, never-to-be-repeated excursion into the secret heart of the Southland, and this time our compass points to Long Beach & the South Bay. We hope you can join us for great (and weird) buildings, offbeat lore, exotic wallflower lovelies, tasty birthday cake and good company.
New in the video vault: Skip Heller's musical history tour of Southern California at the LAVA Sunday Salon and a lost Bunker Hill and Angels Flight walking tour.
If you've been following our campaign to raise awareness of the threat to several important William L. Pereira buildings around Los Angeles, you'll want to visit this page, where you'll find video of a recent site visit and talk at the Metropolitan Water District campus, and an invitation to sign the petition and attend the landmarking hearing on September 15.
We're off the bus this weekend, but will be back next Saturday with the very occasional The Birth of Noir, a tour that tracks a literary and cinematic genre back to the source: some very fortunate Skid Row bar eavesdropping. Join us, do!
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RECENTLY TOURED
We took a piece of LA's long lost red sandstone courthouse to meet her sister building in Santa Ana. So marvelous that this 1900 landmark still stands! Now inside: a terrific surfing history exhibition.
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
Just out from our friends at the Museum of Neon Art and Angel City Press comes a celebration of the great signs that buzzed and sputtered above some of the Southland's finest mid-century establishments. Packed with 200+ rare photos and illuminating prose, it's a reminder that there was a world without backlit plastic, glaring LEDs and air-filled wiggling tubes, and it was magnificent.
COMING SOON
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).
LAVA SUNDAY SALON / WALKING TOUR - SUN. 9/25... Our free cultural lecture series recently relaunched on the basement level of Grand Central Market. For the September Sunday Salon, you're transported to the Ukulady's world, where she shares her music, mirth, cartoons and crafting in an interactive, hands-on experience. After the Salon, a free Broadway on My Mind walking tour explores lost jails and law enforcement spaces around the Civic Center. Due to limited space, reservations are required for both of these free events.
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), Weird West Adams (11/5), Eastside Babylon (11/12), Charles Bukowski's L.A. (11/19), Special Event: Richard's Birthday Bus Tour of Long Beach & the South Bay (11/26).
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
Street artist Wild Life shines a light on derelict, magical Angels Flight Railway, when she most needs it. (Signed the petition yet?)
The New Yorker muses about alternate world guided tours that would visit Thomas Mann's endangered house. Ahem… if Pacific Palisades wasn't such a shlep, we would!
File under: Last Call, Ports o'. A neglected city-owned complex with a lot of funky charm.
Tomo-Kahni (our blog post) is an ancient Californian ritual site near Tehachapi. Guided tours resume next month and will fill up quickly.
The tragedy of the old L.A. streetcar that, until recently, was sheltered under the P.E. Shed on Hill Street. The shed's coming down now, too.
Our favorite programmatic coffee pot is all perked up. (See it on the birthday bus!)
Turn-of-the-century Main Street storefronts, including the dive bar where the King Eddy patrons migrated, threatened with demolition.
Good news / bad news: the historic First Street Store murals are back, but there's no place to sit and admire them.
Asthma Vapineze (the first neon sign Kim ever loved) lives, thanks to the Museum of Neon Art.
Happy 100th birthday to Betty Markoff, one half of Bunker Hill's coolest combo. (She and husband Morrie shared the pleasures of downtown apartment life on our You Can't Eat the Sunshine podcast.)
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric