In memory of Dr. Robert Winter (1924-2019), who used to give one heck of an L.A. architecture tour
Gentle reader...
On Saturday, with the death of Dr. Robert Winter, the Southland lost a giant, and we lost a friend and inspiration.
The irrepressible "Bungalow Bob" wrote the essential guides to the California bungalow and to the tiles of Ernest Batchelder, in whose home he lived, and was beloved by generations of Occidental students and Pasadena folk. Beginning in 1965 and concluding just last year, he compiled six editions of a must-have glove-box guide to Los Angeles architecture, originally in collaboration with Kim's graduate advisor David Gebhard, most recently with his staircase-walking one-time student Bob Inman.
Neither one of us studied formally under Bob, but a good friend of Richard's did, which is how Richard found himself traveling home from college to participate in Bob's legendary architecture bus tours, L.A. on A Six-Pack.
These freewheeling, immersive time travel trips were the direct inspiration for our Esotouric bus adventures, as well as for our "no booze on the bus" policy. Although Bob's health made it impossible for him to "get on the bus" in recent years, we kept him informed about the trials and troubles of our preservation work, delighted in his sly wit and contempt for bad design, and thanked him profusely for providing the spark that got us rolling.
In recent years, Bob conveyed his unique collection of Batchelder material to the care of the Pasadena Museum of History, which marked the occasion with a fabulous exhibition, and the launch of a tile registry, to identify Batchelder's work around the world. And we understand that Bob had special plans for the future of Batchelder's House of the Green Rabbit, which is now as closely tied to the historian as it was to the craftsman.
Long may Bob Winter's laughter and influence echo in the Arroyo he called home.
We spent the weekend at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, where Nick Coles' short film about our true crime tours, weird love affair and historic preservation activism screened twice to enthusiastic crowds. Stay tuned for news about the L.A. debut.
Last week, we lit upon the idea of a Jose Huizar crime bus tour and tweeted about it. Journalists immediately asked for more details, so we started scripting in earnest. We'll wait for the indictments to come down before finalizing the route, but it's shaping up to be a wild ride through a century of Los Angeles civic corruption, and the possibilities for a better city that lie before us.
Newly posted to our June calendar: the 2019 edition of Brad Schreiber's 1974 SLA Shootout & Patty Hearst kidnapping tour (6/1), Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (6/8), Raymond Chandler (6/15) and Eastside Babylon (6/29).
We're back on the bus on Saturday with a tour in the California Culture series inspired by Bob Winter's L.A. on A Six-Pack tours, Boyle Heights & Monterey Park: The Hidden Histories of L.A.'s Melting Pot. There will be antique shopping, tea drinking, gorgeous tile and inspiring tales of generations of new Americans who transformed Los Angeles into the city we love. Join us, do!
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LAVA'S FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 4/28
Four times a year, we gather in the teaching crime labs of Cal State L.A. to explore the history and future of American forensic science. On April 28, join us for an inquiry into Toxicology Trees & Canyon Cultists: The Gettler Boys & Krishna Venta’s WKFL Fountain of the World. Your $36.50 ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research.
COMING SOON
BOYLE HEIGHTS & MONTEREY PARK: THE HIDDEN HISTORIES OF L.A.'S MELTING POTS - SAT. 2/16... 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, El Encanto, Divine's Furniture and Wing Hop Fung. (Buy tickets here.)
THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN - SAT. 2/23... This is not a tour about beautiful buildings—although beautiful buildings will be all around you. This is not a tour about brilliant architects--although we will gaze upon their works and marvel. The Lowdown on Downtown is a tour about urban redevelopment, public policy, protest, power and the police. It is a revealing history of how the New Downtown became an "overnight sensation" after decades of quiet work behind the scenes by public agencies and private developers. Come discover the real Los Angeles, the city even natives don't know. Features a visit to the Dutch Chocolate Shop, a tiled wonderland not open to the public. (Buy tickets here.)
HOTEL HORRORS & MAIN STREET VICE - SAT. 3/16... 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. 4/6... You'll follow 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.)
BLOOD & DUMPLINGS - SAT. 4/13... 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.)
Additional upcoming tours: The Real Black Dahlia (4/20), Special Event: John Fante (4/27), Charles Bukowski (5/4), Special Event: Tom Waits (5/11), Special Event: Two Days in South LA: The 1974 SLA Shootout (6/1), Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (6/8), Raymond Chandler (6/15) and Eastside Babylon (6/29)
Tours that are full, with waiting lists: Special Event: Silent Echoes (3/2, also 3/3), Special Event: Mansonland (3/9, also 3/30).
OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST
Episode #132 is Illuminating Los Angeles: Elmore Leonard & The Triforium. Meet Gregg Sutter, who is hosting a new bus tour about the screenwriter he aided for 33 colorful years, then get the skinny on reactivating Joseph Young's 1975 musical phantasmagoria. Click here to tune in. New: find stories on the map!
AND FINALLY, LINKS
Friday at 11:30am: a new exhibition reveals the brave journey Bela Lugosi took when he asked a judge to send him to Metropolitan State Hospital. He found sobriety there, and love.
Fraud never looked so mod. Photo tour of the abandoned Theranos HQ, where "wet lab space was kept locked behind a gate to protect super secret blood testing intellectual property that didn't even exist."
We held our nose when 1305 Ocean Front Walk was owner-nominated as a landmark: a nice building, but illegally operating as an hotel. No more.
West Hollywood officially recognizes The Formosa Cafe as a Cultural Resource. A little sooner might have saved a lot of heartache when the last operator wrecked the joint.
Big congrats to our pal Louise Ivers, named 2019 Preservationist of the Year by Long Beach Heritage.
San Pedro project shudders to a halt, too late for the 1895 landmark house demolished to clear the site.
The owners who had just restored Frank Lloyd Wright's Arch Oboler Complex sue So Cal Edison for starting the Woolsey Fire, which consumed it.
For the first time Bob Baker Day is not being held at Bob's landmark marionette theater, because politicians (including event sponsor Gil Cedillo) approved its demolition by a property developer. A new puppet home will be announced soon.
Efforts to suppress the theft of priceless artifacts from Frank Lloyd Wright's Freeman House raise serious questions about USC's stewardship of architectural treasures.
Newly processed Huntington Library archive illuminates the life of "Lucky" Baldwin's fortunate daughter Anita, with a focus on her lost Arcadia mansion, Anoakia (1913-2000).
Those roadside El Camino Real mission bells didn't just grow up overnight.
An unfortunate side effect of being contracted by the Raymond Chandler Estate to write a posthumous Philip Marlowe novel: you might then feel obligated to defend the next film Marlowe's disturbing remarks.
This is why we landmark: demolition plans thwarted, developer Ilan Gorodezki puts William Kesling’s magnificent streamline moderne Wallace Beery house back on the market.
We told them save this modernist landmark! City Hall staff believe the rats, fleas and possible typhus infections came from Parker Center demolition.
Elsewhere downtown, stalled towers introduce the Chinese concept of "Lanwei" (rotten tail): enormous, unfinished towers halted when the flow of money and corruption is interrupted. They photograph beautifully.
The Apple Pan has new owners, but don't get out the pitchforks just yet.
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric