Welcome to 2017, the year of loving Los Angeles
Gentle reader...
Happy new year!
It's our 10th anniversary as a tour company and we'll be celebrating from now until the last dregs of December 31.
The festivities include special events like this Sunday's free historic preservation celebration at Harvey's Broiler in Downey and one-off tours like the Patty Hearst kidnapping-themed one on 2/11.
You can expect the unexpected as we ramp our passion for Southern California exploration up, up and away, and our hope is to share adventures with each of you during the year to come.
We're back on the bus on Saturday with a nearly-sold-out edition of our traditional year starter, The Real Black Dahlia, rolling in Beth Short's footsteps during the 70th anniversary week of her still-unsolved kidnapping and murder. Next Saturday, it's Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. 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
The Eye of God falls upon the Art Deco Title Guarantee Building on Pershing Square.
LAVA'S FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 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 January 22, 2017, join us as arson detective and author Ed Nordskog ("Torchered" Minds: Case Histories of Notorious Serial Arsonists) shares his most fascinating recent case, The Hollywood Fire Devil. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. Click here to reserve.
RECOMMENDED READING
From our friends at the Los Angeles Public Library, Bunker Hill in the Rearview Mirror is part of a series of little books celebrating the library's wonderful photographic archives and the lost buildings of Downtown Los Angeles. If you only know Bunker Hill as a sterile collection of skyscrapers and creepy plazas, get ready to be amazed by the hill's cool history, gorgeous buildings and charming characters. The story isn't a happy one, but its happily well documented.
COMING SOON
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.)
DOWNEY'S GOOGIE PHOENIX: HARVEY'S BROILER 10TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION - SUN. 1/8... 2017 is 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, like this drive-in Downey shindig in honor of the amazing preservation work that brought Harvey's Broiler back from the dead--it's free with RSVP!
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.)
FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR AT CAL STATE LOS ANGELES - SUN. 1/22... Professor Donald Johnson hosts arson investigator Ed Nordskog's presentation, The Hollywood Fire Devil. In this recently adjudicated case, you'll follow along in real time as the largest coordinated arson investigation in history pits a multi-agency team against a bold and increasingly dangerous perpetrator who is terrorizing Los Angeles. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. (Buy tickets here.)
THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN - SAT. 1/28... 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.)
THE LAVA SUNDAY SALON & BROADWAY ON MY MIND WALKING TOUR - SUN. 1/29... Our free cultural lecture series recently relaunched on the basement level of Grand Central Market. Starting in January, the Sunday Salon is combined with a walking tour. Join architectural historian Nathan Marsak on a time travel trip to the lost world of Richardsonian Romanesque Downtown L.A. architecture. Free, reservation required.
SOUTH LOS ANGELES ROAD TRIP: HOT RODS, ADOBES, GOOGIE & EARLY MODERNISM - SUN. 2/5... 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.)
TWO DAYS IN SOUTH LA: THE 1974 SLA SHOOTOUT - SAT. 2/11... On this Special Event tour celebrating our 10th anniversary as a tour company, we join forces with author Brad Schreiber (Revolution's End) to tour the locations where the radical Symbionese Liberation Army's political kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst came to a fiery end. Sorry, no discounts accepted on this Special Event tour. Seats are selling quick! (Learn more and buy your tickets here.)
Additional upcoming tours: Boyle Heights & Monterey Park (2/18), Weird West Adams (2/25), Eastside Babylon (3/11), Pasadena Confidential (3/18) and Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (3/25).
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
Doctor Death or a mensch? Maybe Raymond La Scola was both.
Video Vault: a jittery early 1960s trip to Knott’s Berry Farm, Movieland Wax Museum, Disneyland and the oil fields.
Genealogy thru tears.
125 years of helping folks up on the wagon brings our friends at the Union Rescue Mission to the Rose Parade. (See our Skid Row history blog here.)
Amen to Steve Lopez' year-end wish for civic involvement to get Angels Flight running again. C'mon, Los Angeles! (And thanks to the 2500 petitioners who agree.)
Also, it would be neat if the city took care of Angels Flight while using the funicular as naming inspiration for its real estate marketing.
The Bradbury Building gets a rare public amenity as Blue Bottle opens a street-facing coffee shop. Stay tuned, more changes to come.
2016 accomplishments from the LAPL Photo Collection (the newly scanned Mildred Harris images of Downtown redevelopment, demolitions and smog are our favorites).
When Mike Davis goes deep into Los Angeles, we listen.
After a barely announced hiatus, the Police Academy diner is back.
We predict no good will come from notifying property owners as soon as someone nominates a building as a landmark.
Video Vault: “The Very Personal Death of Elizabeth Schell Holt-Hartford,” an intimate portrait of a wry and lonesome old Angeleno, 1967.
A mysterious memorial placed in Pershing Square. What does it mean?
Is California AB1570 going to wreck the state’s antiquarian book fairs? Many petition signers say they won’t show here.
Can preservationists save an Echo Park bungalow court, and the historic integrity of the neighborhood?
With no notice or explanation, it seems that legendary noir Hollywood spot the Formosa Cafe is just… gone. It's been a long goodbye.
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric