Take a time travel trip through 200 years of L.A. history as we celebrate Fort Moore
Gentle reader...
There is one legend of old Los Angele that captivates the imagination, and leaves even dogmatic historians wishing it were true. This is the tale of an ancient race of Lizard People, who were said to inhabit a tunnel fortress beneath downtown Los Angeles, and to have left vast treasures behind when they became extinct.
Downtown Los Angeles actually has some tunnels, and very interesting things have happened inside them, but the actors in all documented scenarios were red-blooded mammals. Still, the legend of the Lizard People and their gold is a fine yarn, and one that gives us a chance to look closer at a fascinating and largely forgotten place, Fort Moore Hill.
On Sunday, for the monthly LAVA Sunday Salon, we hope you'll join us for a free illustrated lecture and walking tour, illuminating 200 years of history and celebrating the current restoration of the Fort Moore Pioneer Memorial, which we will visit for a behind-the-scenes tour. For more information, or to reserve your spot, click here.
We're on the bus on Saturday touring Raymond Chandler's noir city, visiting time capsules that reveal his life and fiction, from Downtown oil company executive to tortured Hollywood screenwriter. 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
Time stands still at the Old Soldier's Home.
LAVA'S FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 8/13
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 August 13, 2017, join us for Bombs & Decomp, an afternoon of insights into historic investigations and how a body changes after death. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. Click here for more info, or to reserve your seat.
RECOMMENDED READING
Our just-announced August 13 forensic science seminar features a presentation from Mike Digby, whose 17 years in the LASD's Arson/Bomb Squad and relentless curiosity have made him the undisputed expert on Los Angeles bombings, some of the weirdest ever plotted. If you can't wait that long, pick up Mike's fascinating new book, The Bombs, Bombers and Bombings of Los Angeles.
COMING SOON
RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 4/29... 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 LAVA SUNDAY SALON & BROADWAY ON MY MIND WALKING TOUR - SUN. 4/30... Our free cultural lecture series recently relaunched on the basement level of Grand Central Market with a walk to follow. This month, our focus is the history and current restoration of the Fort Moore Pioneer Memorial, above Chinatown. Free, reservation required.
BLOOD & DUMPLINGS - SAT. 5/6... 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.)
HOLLYWOOD! - SAT. 5/13... 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 noir landmark Cross Roads of the World (Robert V. Derrah, 1936) and much more. (Buy tickets here.)
WEIRD WEST ADAMS - SAT. 5/20... 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. 5/28... Our free cultural lecture series recently relaunched on the basement level of Grand Central Market with a walk to follow. May's Salon: S.A. Griffin celebrates Charles Bukowski. Free, reservation required.
SPECIAL EVENT: CRAWLING DOWN CAHUENGA: TOM WAITS' L.A. - SAT. 6/3... In our very occasional guest tour series, a delightful excursion that only comes around once a year, the Tom Waits bus adventure hosted by acclaimed rock critic David Smay (co-editor with our Kim Cooper of Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth, author of Swordfishtrombones). This voyage through the city that shaped one of our most eclectic musical visionaries starts in Skid Row and rolls through Hollywood and Echo Park, spotlighting the sites where Waits was transformed through the redemptive powers of love and other lures: the Tropicana Motel, Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Studios, the raunchy Ivar Theatre and so much more. Join us for a great day out in 1970s Los Angeles celebrating the music, the culture and the passions of Tom Waits. (Buy tickets here.)
HOTEL HORRORS & MAIN STREET VICE - SAT. 6/10... 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. 8/13... Professor Donald Johnson hosts "Bombs & Decomp," featuring Mike Digby on historic bomb cases and Dr. Elizabeth Miller on decomposition of the human body. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. (For more info, or to reserve your seat, click here.)
SPECIAL EVENT: DESERT VISIONARIES: LLAN0 DEL RIO, ANTELOPE VALLEY INDIAN MUSEUM & ALDOUS HUXLEY'S PEARBLOSSOM RANCH - SAT. 6/17... Just one of the the unique events marking our tenth anniversary as a tour company, this day-long excursion celebrates the dreamers who have reinvented themselves against the particular landscape of the high desert through visits to places where their dreams crossed over into waking life. Featuring folk art, utopian colonies and literary retreats, it's sure to be a delightful day's adventuring. (For more info, or to reserve your seat, click here.)
Additional upcoming tours: Eastside Babylon (6/24), Pasadena Confidential (7/8), The Real Black Dahlia (7/15), Charles Bukowski's L.A. (7/22), Raymond Chandler's L.A. (7/29), South L.A. Road Trip: Hot Rods, Adobes, Googie & Early Modernism (8/6), Weird West Adams (8/12), The Lowdown on Downtown (8/19) and Boyle Heights & Monterey Park: The Hidden Histories of L.A.'s Melting Pot (8/26).
OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST
Back from hiatus! In Episode #118: Adventures in the Hollywood Preservation Trenches: Lytton Savings & Frank Sinatra’s Bungalow, we get to know two dedicated history lovers, Steve Luftman and Douglas Quill, and learn how they're working to save places that matter. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!
AND FINALLY, LINKS
A children's playground under Pasadena's Suicide Bridge. What could possibly go wrong?
So proud of our Diary of Vilma blog pals—their mom’s Clifton’s Cafeteria camera girl antics were featured in Charles Phoenix’ recent Union Station show. Meet them and hear all the dirt on the Blood & Dumplings tour bus on May 6.
Take a peek inside Frank Sinatra’s endangered motion picture bungalow. Can it be saved?
Our friends at Dearly Departed bring an iconic piece of cautionary roadside Americana to the heart of Hollywood with the Jayne Mansfield Death Car Exhibit. Kids, don’t drive in the fog!
What the Masons left behind.
25 years after, journalist Ruben Castaneda’s riot story spotlights the rage and the grace on the L.A. streets.
So relieved that sane heads prevailed and Monterey Park's loveliest historic vista will not be spoiled. (But we suspect the whole proposal was performance art.)
Looking forward to seeing Kent Twitchell’s Ed Ruscha on the American Hotel on our next Lowdown on Downtown tour.
Landmark San Diego nursery founded by Kate Sessions in 1910 is saved.
If you want to get a paleontologist riled up, ask about pre-pre-Clovis bone-smashing sites in California.
We can’t get behind a political mural, however attractive / progressive the message, becoming a permanent part of a landmark 1950s Googie coffee shop.
Hof’s Hut has great mod bones, is currently charred, and possibly not long for this world.
The “modest” pile Thom Mayne erected after demolishing Ray Bradbury’s home is about as ugly as you’d expect. Poor Cheviot Hills.
Hopes that South Pasadena’s derelict Rialto Theatre would be again become an entertainment venue dashed.
Not so fast, Frank Gehry: judge grants Lytton Savings a second chance.
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric