French dip sandwiches and German royalties: celebrating Charles Bukowski in a changing Downtown L.A.
Gentle reader...
This Sunday afternoon, you'll find us down in the basement of Grand Central Market, conjuring up a lost Los Angeles where a middle-aged postal worker could reinvent himself as an internationally celebrated poet, novelist and live performer.
Won't you join us and poet-actor S.A. Griffin for the free (with RSVP) LAVA Sunday Salon all about Charles Bukowski, followed by a pilgrimage walk to the Terminal Annex Post Office and no-host snacks and libations at Philippe The Original?
We're back on the bus next Saturday with the once-a-year musical tour of Tom Waits' Los Angeles, from Skid Row's boozy dives to the Hollywood studio where he met his one true love and was transformed. Guest host David Smay gave Fodor's the rundown. Join us, do!
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RECENTLY TOURED
Portal of the Folded Wings at Valhalla Cemetery, Burbank. When the planes roar overhead, the dead aerialists rest easy.
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 LISTENING
Music for cats! Our friend Jim Karow's CD My Cat Tunes has an hypnotic effect on our felines. Features sounds only cats can truly appreciate, and they do! Click here to see how the Esotouric felines get into the zone. Get your copy direct from Mesmersonics and meet the composer at one of the stops on our forthcoming Desert Visionaries tour.
COMING SOON
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.)
SIEGE AT FORT ANTHONY - THURS. 6/8... Join us at Central Library for a program illuminating the greatest eminent domain battle in Hollywood history, when one idealistic ex-Marine took an incredible stand against the motion picture industry and Board of Supervisors, protecting his storybook hillside home and neighborhood from being leveled to build a motion picture museum with gun in hand. Don't miss this a once-in-a-lifetime event, years in the works. (Free, with RSVP.)
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.)
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.)
EASTSIDE BABYLON - SAT. 6/24... 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.)
THE LAVA SUNDAY SALON & BROADWAY ON MY MIND WALKING TOUR - SUN. 6/25... Our free cultural lecture series recently relaunched on the basement level of Grand Central Market with a walk to follow. June's Salon: A visit to the Subway Terminal Station and Tunnel. Free, sold out with waiting list, reservation required.
PASADENA CONFIDENTIAL - SAT. 7/8... 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.)
THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA - SAT. 7/15... 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 usually sells out, so don't wait to reserve. (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: THE 1910 BOMBING OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES WITH DETECTIVE MIKE DIGBY - Sat. 9/23... An all new bus adventure follows in the shadowy footstep of the labor activists who plotted the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times Building, part of a nationwide plot that played out some of its most dramatic scenes in the heart of historic Los Angeles. Included in the ticket price is a copy of guest host Mike Digby's new book on the Southland's most fascinating bombers. (Buy tickets here.)
Additional upcoming tours: 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), Boyle Heights & Monterey Park: The Hidden Histories of L.A.'s Melting Pot (8/26), The Birth of Noir (9/9), Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (9/16), Hollywood! (9/30).
OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST
Back from hiatus! In Episode #119: Secrets of Llano del Rio and Utopian Los Angeles, we preview the June 17 Desert Visionaries tour with guest hosts Paul Greenstein & Karyl Newman, plus Lummis House, Lytton Savings and Sinatra Bungalow news. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!
AND FINALLY, LINKS
Frozen in amber, marinated in guilt, Thelma Todd’s death house can be yours.
Chinese Theater facade illuminated with film projections? That's no way to treat an iconic architectural landmark.
Why fight to preserve buildings you care about? Because when the next historic structure is threatened, your fight might inspire someone else.
A contributing historic resource is not a canvas for your hipster mural. Shame on the owner of 2200 South Harvard for again defacing this beautiful West Adams house. (Here's what happened in 2015.)
Farewell to Stendahl Galleries, a Hollywood original, 1911-2017. Gallerist-author April Dammann tells the tale.
Koreatown home-in-exile of Mexican Revolutionary General Maytorena threatened with demolition.
The only thing tougher than the Night Stalker: teenaged insomnia.
A year after picking a winning Pershing Square re-design, L.A. funds a study to see if it is feasible to build it. But shouldn’t an uninvolved party be performing that analysis? (P.S. Restore!)
The neglected World War I memorial Victory Grove in Elysian Park is being rededicated on June 14 in a ceremony that evokes the original.
Beautiful, but doomed. An urban explorer shares tantalizing images from San Diego's California Theater (1927-2017?).
Public outcry halts hotel project seeking to reactivate Julia Morgan’s abandoned Pasadena YWCA while destroying the beautiful Civic Center.
Of course the Hollywood Reporter building is a landmark. But can it be saved?
Nine years after the Long Beach CRA forced Acres of Books (founded 1934) to close, the historic building will anchor a new development.
AND FINALLY, LINKS
Frozen in amber, marinated in guilt, Thelma Todd’s death house can be yours.
Chinese Theater facade illuminated with film projections? That's no way to treat an iconic architectural landmark.
Why fight to preserve buildings you care about? Because when the next historic structure is threatened, your fight might inspire someone else.
A contributing historic resource is not a canvas for your hipster mural. Shame on the owner of 2200 South Harvard for again defacing this beautiful West Adams house. (Here's what happened in 2015.)
Farewell to Stendahl Galleries, a Hollywood original, 1911-2017. Gallerist-author April Dammann tells the tale.
Koreatown home-in-exile of Mexican Revolutionary General Maytorena threatened with demolition.
The only thing tougher than the Night Stalker: teenaged insomnia.
A year after picking a winning Pershing Square re-design, L.A. funds a study to see if it is feasible to build it. But shouldn’t an uninvolved party be performing that analysis? (P.S. Restore!)
The neglected World War I memorial Victory Grove in Elysian Park is being rededicated on June 14 in a ceremony that evokes the original.
Beautiful, but doomed. An urban explorer shares tantalizing images from San Diego's California Theater (1927-2017?).
Public outcry halts hotel project seeking to reactivate Julia Morgan’s abandoned Pasadena YWCA while destroying the beautiful Civic Center.
Of course the Hollywood Reporter building is a landmark. But can it be saved?
Nine years after the Long Beach CRA forced Acres of Books (founded 1934) to close, the historic building will anchor a new development.
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric