Blowing our minds on a great eclipse road trip of Kentucky's offbeat landmarks - land, sea and cave!
Gentle reader...
Did you enjoy the partial solar eclipse last month here in Los Angeles, or travel someplace to enjoy a darker sky?
Our eclipse journey took us over 500 miles of blue highways through rural Kentucky, visiting strange roadside attractions and architecturally distinguished small towns, on a course for the point of maximum totality, which required a pontoon boat to reach. It was a wild and beautiful trip that really made us think, and you can find photos and our road diary here.
Can’t wait to ride Angels Flight, which returned to service last Thursday, partly in response to our petition? We couldn’t, so we shlepped down to Dana Point and rode their modern funicular. Meanwhile, Bunker Hill native son Gordon Pattison showed Lee Cowan his favorite seat for CBS This Morning. And on re-opening day, even The Cranky Preservationist was smiling. Unfortunately, four days of heavy service in the blazing heat proved too much for the little funicular, but it's expected to be rolling again tomorrow morning. Check the website for service updates before heading out for a ride.
Newly posted on our calendar are two tours that you won't want to miss. We're launching a brand new crime bus tour for Hallowe'en weekend, a straight line route packed with strange lore: Wilshire Boulevard Death Trip (10/28). And Richard's 2017 birthday bus (11/25) is an all-day adventure through Imperial California that will never be repeated. Also new: our 120th podcast episode, and November's forensic science seminar.
Saturday's tour is our occasional The Birth of Noir, celebrating the books and film adaptations of James M. Cain, from Mildred Pierce's Glendale to the Skid Row dives where the writer found his vernacular voice. Join us, do!
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RECENTLY TOURED
Two happy preservationists whose petition helped get Angels Flight running again.
LAVA'S FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 11/5
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 November 5, 2017, join us for From the SLA to DNA, an afternoon of insights into historic investigations and new crime science. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. Sold out with waiting list. Click here for more info.
RECOMMENDED READING
This is the updated edition of architectural historian Alan Hess' classic guide to those distinctly Californian dining palaces, the 1950s-era atomic drive-in coffee shops. As the summer cruising season winds down, why not celebrate the style with this insightful, illustrated guide to the revolutionary forms that followed pop culture function? And of course if you bring your copy on Richard's birthday bus, Alan will probably sign it on request!
COMING SOON
THE BIRTH OF NOIR: JAMES M. CAIN'S SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARE - SAT. 9/9... This tour digs deep into the literature, film and real life vices that inform that most murderous genre, film noir, rolling through Hollywood, Glendale and old Skid Row, lost lion farms, murderous sopranos, fascist film censors, offbeat cemeteries -- all in a quest to reveal the delicious, and deeply influential, nightmares that are author Cain's gift to the world. (Buy tickets here.)
HOTEL HORRORS & MAIN STREET VICE - SAT. 9/16... 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: 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.)
THE LAVA SUNDAY SALON & BROADWAY ON MY MIND WALKING TOUR - SUN. 9/24... Our free cultural lecture series recently relaunched on the basement level of Grand Central Market with a walk to follow. September's Salon: Lost French Los Angeles with C.C. de Vere. (Free, reservation required.)
HOLLYWOOD! - SAT. 9/30... This 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.)
THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA - SAT. 10/7... 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 usually sells out, so don't wait to reserve. (Buy tickets here.)
ECHO PARK BOOK OF THE DEAD - SAT. 10/14... On a crime bus tour honoring the lost souls who wander the hills and byways of the "streetcar suburbs" that hug Sunset Boulevard, see seemingly ordinary houses 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.)
RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 10/21... 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. 11/5... Professor Donald Johnson hosts "From the SLA to DNA," a program on vintage and cutting edge crime investigations. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. (Buy tickets here.)
Additional upcoming tours: Wilshire Boulevard Death Trip (10/28), Weird West Adams (11/4), Eastside Babylon (11/11), Charles Bukowski's L.A. (11/18), Special Event: In Search of Imperial California / Richard’s Birthday Bus (11/25)
OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST
In Episode #120: Boyle Heights Blossoming: Everything’s Different at Ray & Roy’s Market, we talk with market owner Yolanda Diaz and 15-year-old Isabel Peinado, creator of an ambitious mural on the market’s long west wall. Plus Angels Flight, Rives Mansion, & more. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!
AND FINALLY, LINKS
Relics of a lost library come back into the light.
After letting vandals in to trash the Lincoln Heights landmark, Los Angeles looks to develop the old Art Deco jail. But will it be for the neighborhood, or newcomers? The Cranky Preservationist visits, too.
Raymond Chandler wouldn't recognize the joint, but his old westside rental just sold for 3 million clams.
The death of a motion picture palace. Coming soon (assuming Huntington Park can get it together): some kind of retail.
Vintage Orange Julius stand to be integrated into new development.
An op-ed by a UK academic inspires the removal of a memorial to Confederate dead at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Video Vault: Our Barfly pal Kevin Hughes worked on a film about action chess in Leimert Park, Snapping Pieces.
Lawrence Osborne is writing a new, Chandler Estate-sanctioned Philip Marlowe novel set in the 1980s, with the detective as an old man.
In search of Southern California art tile, by land and by sea.
Family bankruptcy puts Richard Neutra's lyrical post-and-beam Chuey House (1956) at risk of demolition.
Concerned Palisades neighbors hope to landmark John L. Kennedy House, 1930 Spanish gem bought by notorious landlord Jerome Nash. (PDF link.)
Hollywood Heritage files landmark application for (Chaplin-owned?) Formosa storybook cottages whose pretty neighbor was just demolished. (PDF link.)
Daffy midcentury charm alert: the world’s first Cinderella Home is on the market in Downey.
The Cranky Preservationist, Episode 8: Los Angeles Times Parking Garage Historic Bas Relief Blues Blues.
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Kim and Richard
Esotouric