Announcing a new bus adventure celebrating Southern California's desert visionaries

Gentle reader...

2017 is our Tenth Anniversary, and the calendar is packed with special events, including some one-off tours. We're awfully pleased that the first of these, Saturday's Two Days in South LA: The 1974 SLA Shootout, is completely full.

So don't wait too long if you'd like to share in these unique bus adventures. Tickets are still available for the April 8 Palos Verdes: Ancient & Modern bus. And we've just announced Desert Visionaries: Llano Del Rio, Antelope Valley Indian Museum & Aldous Huxley's Pearblossom Ranch on June 17. Click the links to learn more about these time travel trips and reserve your seat.

After a few months on hiatus, our Southern California history podcast You Can't Eat The Sunshine returns with Episode #116: Miracle Mile and a Mid-Century Master. New shows will be published every month.

Still need that special something for that special someone? 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.

We're back on the bus this weekend with two special (but sold out) tours: on Saturday, it's Two Days in South LA and on Sunday, we host Batchelder By Bus, a tile tour for Pasadena History Museum. Then next Saturday, it's a cultural history tour of Boyle Heights & Monterey Park. Join us, do!

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RECENTLY TOURED

When visiting Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, be sure to pay your respects to the original TV Superman, George Reeves.

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

Inspired by a stop on our newly-announced Desert Visionaries tour is The Crows of Pearblossom, the only children's book by science fiction author Aldous Huxley, posthumously published with Barbara Cooney's great illustrations (the new edition with Sophie Blackall's charming art is easier to find). An Antelope Valley allegory about wickedness and wit, it's just the thing for Southern California kids questioning the weird world in which they find themselves.

COMING SOON

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.)

HOTEL HORRORS & MAIN STREET VICE - SAT. 3/25... 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.)

ECHO PARK BOOK OF THE DEAD - SAT. 4/1... New on our calendar, a crime bus tour meant to honor the lost souls who wander the hills and byways of the "streetcar suburbs" that hug Sunset Boulevard. See seemingly ordinary houses, streets and commercial buildings revealed as the scenes of chilling crimes and mysteries, populated by some of the most fascinating people you'd never want to meet. Featuring the Hillside Strangler, the Bat Man's Love Nest and a visit to Sister Aimee Semple McPherson's exquisite Parsonage, now a museum. (Buy tickets here.)

PALOS VERDES: ANCIENT AND MODERN - SAT. 4/8... On this Special Event tour celebrating our 10th anniversary as a tour company, join us on a deep dive into coastal California lore. From the Spanish Colonial Revival romance of Malaga Cove to Paul R. Williams' jazzy 1960s SeaView tract homes, from Frank Lloyd Wright associate Aaron G. Green's organic architecture to evidence of ancient plantations, you can expect the unexpected and a delightful cast of guest speakers. Sorry, no discounts accepted on this Special Event tour. (Learn more and 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: 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), Special Event: Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits’ L.A. (6/3), Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (6/10) and Special Event: Desert Visionaries: Llano del Rio, Antelope Valley Indian Museum & Aldous Huxley’s Pearblossom Ranch (6/17).

OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST

Back from hiatus! In Episode #116: Miracle Mile and a Mid-Century Master, we talk with land use consultant Bill Christopher about Wilshire Boulevard and with architect-historian Alan Hess about Aaron G. Green's mid-century organic architecture. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!

AND FINALLY, LINKS

Video Vault: The suburban mom who tried to shoot Gerald Ford speaks.

SurveyLA fieldwork complete, with web updates in progress—hopefully filling in those troubling gaps from launch time.

It’s disingenuous to use dark LAPD history to promote demolition of a building as significant as Parker Center. Instead, we should keep it, teach the history and respect the masterpiece.

Will cranky neighbors kill a proposal to adaptively reuse the gorgeous Art Deco Firestone building off Wilshire?

The ripples from a murder go on on on. A grandchild shares a tale of evidence tampering in the comments of our 1947project blog.

The story behind the illegal demolition of those Formosa Avenue apartments is even worse than it seemed.

yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric