Delight your Valentine with an Esotouric bus adventure

Gentle reader...

In the loving spirit of the season, we've created a special Valentine's Day offer for couples (or very good friends) who'd like to come adventuring with us.

Through February 14, you can purchase a Pair Pass, granting a couple two seats on two regularly scheduled tours for just $160, a savings of $72. Want to share one with your sweetie? Click here for more info, or to reserve.

Newly posted to our tour calendar are May excursions Blood & Dumplings, Weird West Adams and Hollywood! Plus the February (Poem Noir) and March (Parker Center) LAVA Sunday Salons and walks, both free with RSVP.

We're back on the bus this weekend with a rare Sunday tour, the South L.A. Road Trip. Special on this edition of the tour: architect and architectural historian Alan Hess will join us in Santa Fe Springs for a guided stroll through William Pereira's civic center complex (1961-72). In a time when Pereira's work is in considerable peril, this is an opportunity to get up close and personal with one of his master plans and hear from one of his greatest advocates. 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

Tucked away behind an orange grove, this crypt holds the earthly remains of the Huntingtons. If you love their gardens, stop by and say thanks.

LAVA'S FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 4/23

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 April 23, 2017, join us for From The Crime Lab To The Coroner's Office, an afternoon of historic murders and modern day investigation techniques. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. Click here to reserve.

RECOMMENDED READING

From historical novelist Laini Giles comes this affectionate fictionalized biography (with a dash of the uncanny) of the Ziegfield Girl and silent film star Olive Thomas, remembered today mainly for her mysterious Parisian death by Mercury poisoning and the ensuing scandal. Tag along with the young starlet as she climbs the gilded ladder at the height of the Jazz Age, dies, then swoops in again from the afterlife to get the last word. Coming soon, a second vintage Hollywood novel, The It Girl and Me.

COMING SOON

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. Sold out! (Learn more and get on the waiting list here.)

BOYLE HEIGHTS & MONTEREY PARK: THE HIDDEN HISTORIES OF L.A.'S MELTING POTS - SAT. 2/18... Come on a century's social history tour through the transformation of neighborhoods, punctuated with immersive stops to sample the varied cultures that make our changing city so beguiling. Voter registration, citizenship classes, Chicano Moratorium, walkouts, blow-outs, anti-Semitism, adult education, racial covenants, boycotts, The City Beautiful, Exclusion Acts and Immigration Acts, property values, xenophobia, and delicious dumplings--all are themes which will be addressed on this lively excursion. This whirlwind social history tour will include: The Vladeck Center, Hollenbeck Park, Evergreen Cemetery, The Venice Room, El Encanto & Cascades Park, Divine's Furniture and Wing Hop Fung. (Buy tickets here.)

WEIRD WEST ADAMS - SAT. 2/25... 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.)

THE LAVA SUNDAY SALON & BROADWAY ON MY MIND WALKING TOUR - SUN. 2/26... Our free cultural lecture series recently relaunched on the basement level of Grand Central Market with a walk to follow. Join poet Suzanne Lummis and friends for an afternoon of Poem Noir and hardboiled fiction readings and film noir monologues . Free, reservation required.

EASTSIDE BABYLON - SAT. 3/11... Go East, young ghoul, to Boyle Heights, where the Night Stalker was captured and to Evergreen, L.A.'s oldest cemetery. To East L.A., where a deranged radio shop employee made mince meat of his boss and bride in the shadow of the world's biggest tamale. To Commerce, where one small neighborhood's myriad crimes will shock and surprise. To Montebello, scene of a horrifying case of child murder. That's Eastside Babylon, our most unhinged crime bus tour. (Buy tickets here.)

PASADENA CONFIDENTIAL - SAT. 3/18... 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 confidential files 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.)

FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR AT CAL STATE LOS ANGELES - SUN. 4/23... Professor Donald Johnson hosts "From The Crime Lab To The Coroner's Office," featuring author Brad Schreiber's historic crime research and an introduction to crime scene investigations. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. (Buy tickets here.)

Additional upcoming tours: Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (3/25), Echo Park Book of the Dead (4/1), Special Event: Palos Verdes Ancient & Modern (4/8), The Real Black Dahlia (4/15), Charles Bukowski's L.A. (4/22), Raymond Chandler's L.A. (4/29), Blood & Dumplings (5/6), Hollywood! (5/13), Weird West Adams (5/20) and Special Event: Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits’ L.A. (6/3).

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

Preservation alert! Calvin Hamilton saved L.A.’s landmarks. Did metal thieves snag the Bunker Hill plaque that celebrates his work? Yes, but…

We're honored to be featured among L.A. Magazine's 50 Twitter accounts everyone in L.A. should follow. "Pics from the city's most interesting bus tour."

Kim is interviewed on The Secret Library podcast, about drawing on Los Angeles crime history for her debut novel.

This lovely 1925 Hollywood duplex, neighbor to the storybook Chaplin Court, just illegally demolished. But rumors of Chaplin Court’s impending demise appear premature.

Petition to save Gill’s old fashioned ice cream parlor in The Original Farmer’s Market. C’mon, Gilmore: work it out!

The Death Valley diva has passed over. Farewell, Marta!

The trouble with Westlake, packed with architectural gems… and with people.

Introducing Frank Lloyd Wright collaborator Aaron G. Green’s organic architecture. We'll tour the exhibit and take a cliffside house tour on the April 8 Palos Verdes bus tour.

Twin high-rises aim to demolish William Pereira’s important late modern Times Mirror HQ.

Fire at the historic Downey Poor Farm in flames. These neglected landmarks are frequently accessed by urban explorers. Meanwhile, thousands sleep rough.

yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric