A Vintage Xmas Wreath Factory Tour & Tough Times for the L.A. Times
Gentle reader...
There's nothing quite like a landmark business, still doing its thing more than a century after the seed was sewn. It's a pure, honest thing how a good idea, well-managed, can thrive through the generations.
A few months back, we had the happy chance to take a time travel trip to the old Rancho Santa Ana Del Chino, which for the past century has been home to a school for troubled youth called Boys Republic. It's the place that made a man out of Steve McQueen, and he remembered it generously throughout his film career.
The architecture, landscape and farm creatures of Boys Republic were all delightful, but the highlight of our visit was the tour of the historic holiday wreath factory, which since 1923 has churned out millions of aromatic seasonal decorations inspired by Renaissance-era designs. See for yourself on the Esotouric blog.
Old institutions gone astray are the unhappy flip-side to places like Boys Republic. The Los Angeles Times has been on a long, slow professional slide, and now some of the long-whispered reasons have been made public in a newly published Los Angeles Magazine feature. But just as news watchers lament what's happening inside, preservationists fret about the fate of the physical plant, a network of important historic buildings, completely unprotected by any landmarking status. Our recent walking tour about the demolition threat is online now.
We're back on the bus this Saturday with our final crime bus tour of 2016, Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice. Take $16 off this tour of Downtown L.A.'s beauty and heartbreak when using the discount code XMASEVIL.
Then on Sunday, we're in the teaching crime labs of Cal State Los Angeles for The Spider-Man Bandit & The Artificial Human Head: Breakthroughs in Crime Scene Investigation, a forensic science seminar that promises to be an eye-opening experience. Join us, do!
2017 will be our tenth anniversary as your friendly offbeat Los Angeles tour company, and we'll be celebrating all year long with special talks, tours and happenings. New on the calendar is a drive-in Downey shindig on January 8 in honor of the amazing preservation work that brought Harvey's Broiler back from the dead--it's free with RSVP!
Through Christmas Eve, you can take advantage of a special sale on Esotouric gift certificates with deep discounts on bus adventures into the secret heart of LA when purchased in bulk. Also available, themed packages for fans of Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski, and copies of our newest guidebook, How To Find Old Los Angeles. Orders are coming in from all over the globe, proving you don't have to live here to love Los Angeles (but it helps).
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RECENTLY TOURED
On the Pasadena Confidential tour, by Suicide Bridge, we met a fellow with a marvelous feathered hat. 180+ that he found on his rambles.
LAVA'S FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 12/11 & 1/22
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. On December 11, 2016 join us for The Spider-Man Bandit & The Artificial Human Head: Breakthroughs in Crime Scene Investigation. Track a fearless cat burglar/killer through the decades, as his 1970s-era crimes are exposed when the cold case unit tests old DNA. Then learn about new research in blunt force injury, with a chance to perform a hands-on assault on a head built for breaking. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. For more info, click here. Then on January 22, 2017, arson detective Ed Nordskog shares his most fascinating recent case, The Hollywood Fire Devil. Click here to reserve.
RECOMMENDED READING
New from our Kim Cooper and U.K. travel guide mavens Herb Lester is How To Find Old Los Angeles, a glove box companion for urban time travelers. Included within are 153 historic sites where you can eat, drink, wander and fall in love with our city's rich and often oddball history. Let Kim be your guide as you stamp your Angeleno's passport with giant donuts, notable neon, shadowy dive bars and secret gardens. Available as a souvenir on our bus tours or by mail, and wherever fine paperbacks are sold.
COMING SOON
HOTEL HORRORS & MAIN STREET VICE - SAT. 12/10... 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.)
FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR AT CAL STATE LOS ANGELES - SUN. 12/11... Professor Donald Johnson hosts The Spider-Man Bandit & The Artificial Human Head: Breakthroughs in Crime Scene Investigation. Track a fearless cat burglar/killer through the decades, as his 1970s-era crimes are exposed when the cold case unit tests old DNA. Then learn about new research in blunt force injury, with a chance to perform a hands-on assault on a head built for breaking. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. (Buy tickets here.)
ESOTOURIC'S HOLIDAY PARTY - SUN. 12/18... A potluck and mixer at historic Lummis House in Highland Park. Free with RSVP.
THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA - SAT. 1/7... 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.)
RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 1/14... 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.)
THE BIRTH OF NOIR: JAMES M. CAIN'S SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARE - SAT. 1/21... 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.)
Additional upcoming tours: The Lowdown on Downtown (1/28), South L.A. Road Trip (2/5), Special Event: Two Days in South LA: The 1974 SLA Shootout (2/11), Boyle Heights & The San Gabriel Valley (2/18) and Weird West Adams (2/25).
OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST
Episode #115, Hollywood Book Culture & Downtown’s Chimney Swifts, we talk about the golden age of bookshops with film historian Bob Birchard, then visit the Ornithology section of the Natural History Museum for an insider's look at Vaux' swifts, tiny travelers who nest in landmarks. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!
AND FINALLY, LINKS
Los Angeles sued by LA Conservancy over sketchy Lytton Savings preservation votes. West Hollywood sued, too.
The Story of the Discontented Little Elephant is the darkest children's book you've never read.
Video Vault: Unhappy Hunting Ground (1971) features the stories of uprooted American Indians trying to find a home for themselves along Main Street in Downtown L.A.
Dashiell Hammett’s literary legacy is in good hands.
At the Union Rescue Mission, Rev. Andy Bales tells it like it is. Housing First won't fix homelessness in LA.
Farewell to an Arts District pioneer, Jim Fittipaldi, who ran the tightest illegal venue ship we’ve ever seen.
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric