March Comes In Like A Lion... who lives on a farm in El Monte and purrs when he gets his bottle of warm milk
Gentle reader...
It's been a wet and windy week, with some spectacular fireworks shows in the sky. We trust you're staying warm and dry, and anticipating a season of stunning wildflowers as the parched earth recovers from our long drought years.
We're grateful for the refilled water table, but saddened that Saturday's heavy rains apparently contributed to the loss of a stately landmark of early Los Angeles: one of the four towering Moreton Bay Fig Trees, planted around the Plaza by Elijah Hook Workman circa 1875, tipped over and broke apart during the children's Lantern Festival. But nobody was hurt, and the handsome brick wall ringing the Plaza was not damaged. We visited yesterday, and were somewhat heartened to learn that artists and woodworkers would be making beautiful things from the fallen giant. The Fig is Dead, Long Live the Fig!
Another giant recently fell. Our beautiful, courtly friend Harold Nebenzal (b. Berlin 3/22/1922 - d. Los Angeles, 2/14/2019), who we met when he helped to save Angels Flight Railway. His was an extraordinary life, born into independent cinema royalty, educated on the Sam Goldwyn lot, Chevalier de la Legion D'Honneur, novelist (Cafe Berlin), producer (M, Cabaret), WW2 intelligence officer, mensch. We'll miss his wonderful, unfiltered stories about old Hollywood and his best pal Billy Wilder, and all the laughs we had together. The Academy remembered, too.
We spent last weekend unfurling a brand new tour with cinema locations sleuth John Bengtson, Silent Echoes. Usually we will give a new tour for the first time, make some notes on how to refine the route, then implement them some months later. But because the public has such an insatiable hunger for exploring the places where the giants of silent comedy used the young Los Angeles as their back lot, and because John Bengtson is a good sport, we gave the tour back-to-back, on a gray and rainy Saturday, and a bright and gorgeous Sunday. Here are some photos from a thrilling weekend of time travel in the footsteps of Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd. And here's John's latest blog post, inspired by a conversation he had with one of our gentle riders.
Silent Echoes is just one of a series of special event tours on our calendar. This Saturday's Mansonland with writer Brad Schreiber is sold out, as is the 3/30 date. But we still have room for you to join us on The 1910 Bombing of the Los Angeles Times (4/6) (featuring a once-in-a-lifetime chance to visit the Skid Row hotel room where the infernal device was constructed), John Fante's Dreams from Bunker Hill (4/27) (including a rare tour of the only real Prohibition-era tunnel-fed speakeasy that survives in Downtown L.A.), the musical love story Tom Waits' Los Angeles (5/11) and the counterculture freakout Two Days in South L.A.: The 1974 SLA Shootout (6/1)
The April 20 Real Black Dahlia tour sold out, so we added an additional date on July 27. Also coming up, the once-a-year Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour (4/13), packed with strange murders and fascinating oddballs, like the nice European couple who set up a ranch in the wilds of El Monte and bottle-raised nearly every enormous African lion seen on the silver screen in Hollywood's golden age. Join us, do!
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Recommended Reading from the Esotouric Emporium of Los Angeles Lore
history, architecture, boosters, bubbles, citrus and noir
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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
SPECIAL EVENT: MANSONLAND - SAT. 3/9... A journey through the 1960s counterculture, organized crime and Hollywood hustlers, with author Brad Schreiber illuminating the mysteries and connections informing the crimes of Charles Manson's family (sold out with waiting list.)
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: MANSONLAND - SAT. 3/30... See March 9 (sold out with waiting list.)
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, sold out with waiting list, repeats 7/27), Special Event: John Fante (4/27), Charles Bukowski (5/4), Special Event: Tom Waits (5/11), Special Event: The 1974 SLA Shootout (6/1), Raymond Chandler (6/15), Eastside Babylon (6/29) and The Real Black Dahlia (7/27).
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!
COMPLEMENTARY TICKETS THE OTHER ART FAIR, LA
This March 28-31, 2019 Saatchi Art present the Spring edition of The Other Art Fair Los Angeles at Magic Box at The Reef. Discover a hand picked selection of 140 independent artists from across the globe, browse 1000s of original works of art and start your collection from just $150.
To redeem this offer: Please click HERE and use code DUBLAB
Ticket terms: This offer is valid for Public Entry tickets (Friday 28 – Sunday 31 March 2019) only to The Other Art Fair Los Angeles. Valid online only until 31 March 2019.
For tickets to the Private View, click to RSVP.
AND FINALLY, LINKS
A love letter to the last two Pioneer Chicken restaurants in greater Los Angeles.
Lobbyist Morrie Goldman, whose name is in the Jose Huizar FBI warrants, kept a very close eye on absenteeism at PLUM hearings. Was the fix in on the Academy Museum CEQA challenge, like it was for Parker Center? Ask a rat!
We heard whispers about this cool project from our friends at the Huntington, and were sworn to secrecy. The cat's out of the bag now!
The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times is trying to own all extra-journalistic creative work by its writers. Newly unionized, they're fighting back.
Libraries are precious. Please sign and help save the Florence Library from a redevelopment hustle.
Commercial Observer: "A Jose Huizar Scandal Tour of DTLA? Oh, Yes!"
The Daily News has had enough: The rats are steering the sinking ship.
Bittersweet congrats to Bob Baker's Marionettes, announcing a new home on the very day the Los Angeles Ethics Commission considers banning property developers' ability to buy off City Hall, a corrupt process that contributed to the loss of their "protected" landmark theater.
Chilling update from Ted Rall, whose legal battle against the LA Times is being ignored by the media. "I have advice for journalists thinking about covering police abuse: don’t. The price for doing your job—termination, defamation and bankruptcy—isn’t worth it."
American Horror Story house lawsuit spotlight's the city's failure to hold owners of landmark properties like the Rosenheim Mansion accountable for putting their Mills Act property tax savings back into maintenance, as legally required.
Was abalone diver Robert Pamperin really devoured by a white shark in La Jolla cove in 1959? Rumors swirl on a genealogy website.
The fascinating problem of historic preservation in outer space.
Ever reach out to your Los Angeles City Council office and feel like you were getting the cold shoulder? It might be because staffers monitor social media and maintain an enemies list of constituents who complain.
Revised historic preservation ordinance heading to Laguna Beach city council--removing its teeth so developers and speculators can more easily wreck the charms of the artists' village.
Video Vault: Inside the Hodel House. Join the cast and crew of I Am The Night and Esotouric as they explore the dark history of an L.A. landmark. Stick around as Kim slips inside a secret passage, then take a 3-D tour.
Very to see Tom Bergin's owner smear its history and significance in an attempt to halt landmarking efforts so it can be demolished for redevelopment.
Copyright is a simple concept rooted in finance. Real ownership runs much deeper.
Thought question: if the landlord knew they might not have been able to demolish Twohey's, might they have come to a lease agreement?
Raphael Soriano's 1940 Lukens House is on the market, with an open house on Sunday afternoon. Drop by to see how European modernism took root in the flats of the Jefferson Park subdivided mansion district.
Why is soon-to-shutter Samuel French a lock-down crime scene after a break-in? LAPD doesn't handle burglary this way. Perhaps they just don't want to deal with broken-hearted customers all month.
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric