Sneak a Peek of our Real Black Dahlia Tour, Wednesday on the Dr. Phil Show
Gentle reader...
When Beth Short drifted into Los Angeles as a restless youth, she found a kaleidoscopic city, surging with new faces and distractions almost loud and colorful enough to drown out the voices in her head.
Raised without a father, given to romantic fantasy projection, she was looking for something she wasn't insightful enough to know she'd never find. Like many unhappy people, she made a series of bad choices that ensured she'd stay unhappy.
Maybe she would have grown out of these self-destructive habits, given time to mature. But in January 1947, when Beth was 22, an unknown person kidnapped and killed her, and left her corpse posed on a quiet suburban street, launching a campaign of psychological terror that convulsed the city for years.
72 years later, the Black Dahlia murder continues to inspire new theories, and on Wednesday, a conversation on the Dr. Phil Show, about Steve Hodel's conviction that his father George was the killer. Tune in at 3pm on CBS-2 in Los Angeles to see our Kim Cooper introduce the crime by humanizing the victim, in a preview of our flagship Real Black Dahlia tour.
Although we don't agree with Steve Hodel's theory of the crime, we have enormous sympathy for the heavy burden he carries. We've learned from our work bringing historic crimes back into the sunlight that these traumatic incidents send ripples out into the world and cause pain and confusion that can last for generations. When we tell these stories, we do so with a deep sense of responsibility for the dead, and for the living who still care for them. True crime might be trendy right now, but it's not trivial. These spirits cast long shadows.
The April 20 Real Black Dahlia tour is sold out, but we have room for you on the July 27 tour. Join us, do!
This Saturday's Mansonland tour with writer Brad Schreiber is sold out with a waiting list. 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)
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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. 3/30... 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.)
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.)
THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA - SAT. 4/20... 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. (Sold out with waiting list, repeats July 27.)
SPECIAL EVENT: JOHN FANTE'S DREAMS FROM BUNKER HILL - SAT. 4/27... Back on the calendar after many years hiatus is a love letter to the Downtown L.A. novelist who sparked Charles Bukowski's autobiographical fiction, and who paints a lyrical portrait of the lost Victorian neighborhood atop Bunker Hill and the bustling city below. The author's children join us on a time travel trip to the heart of Los Angeles, including a rare visit to the real Prohibition speakeasy that features in Ask the Dust. (Buy tickets here.)
Additional upcoming tours: 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!
AND FINALLY, LINKS
"It’s not clear at this point who would pay for thecl gondola..." or why anyone would spend $100 Million on an aerial tram to a rotting, neglected ship like the Queen Mary, which could sink in a few years.
At the Tom Bergin’s landmark hearing, concerned Angelenos learn the young actor who ran the place into the ground is bankrolled by his Las Vegas casino lawyer dad, who is fighting hard for the right to demolish this great joint. Transplants, don’t do this!
Alhambra's notorious, magnificent Pyrenees Castle is getting a chance to move on, as is Phil Spector's ex-wife, who benefits from the property sale.
Farewell to Burbank's beguiling Samuel's Florist (since 1937), not just an old school L.A. establishment, but a newly-discovered John Lautner building.
Almost a decade after a USC insider stole furnishings designed for Frank Lloyd Wright's Freeman House, LAPD publishes images of the purloined treasures. Have you seen this Schindler tea cart?
Culver City's late, lamented Dear John's is coming back to life in classic steakhouse guise, but with the clock already ticking for its scheduled demolition, you better not get attached.
The insanely detailed process of restoring Neutra’s Palm Springs masterpiece, with archives as the key.
Celebrating Leo Politi's activist artwork, which fought for the soul of Los Angeles when the Federal bulldozer took out Bunker Hill, and preserved it in gouache and ink. He inspires us!
This is the transit nerd love letter to William Pereira’s office that we have all been waiting for. Just look at that gleaming, futuristic Theme Building! But too many of Pereira's projects are threatened with demolition.
What a discovery, is Hazel's Garden. May its message be received.
From the sublime (Irving Gill's Dodge House) to the deliberately ridiculous (howdy, doggy!), these are 20 lost Los Angeles buildings worth remembering.
And if you're searching for something fresh and L.A.-centric for your bookshelf, you'll find it in poet and educator Mike Sonksen's genre-spanning list of 222 Los Angeles-themed books, among them The Kept Girl by our Kim Cooper.
Dig the Luxe: Downtown hotel offers free or suspiciously cheap venue rental, doesn't send an invoice unless the press asks questions. Planning a shindig? Unfortunately, you have to be on LA City Council to get this sweet deal.
There are some landmarks we just can't help but fret about, and top of the list is Monrovia's Aztec Hotel. This iconic Route 66 attraction, shuttered for years, desperately needs a preservation-minded steward.
Paru’s Indian restaurant in East Hollywood was a special place, and in closing down, shows why. Thanks for forty years of service, Kannan Natarajan, and for the lovely life lesson.
With the fly-by-night Ohio online voting company that ran the Skid Row Neighborhood Council election MIA, suit seeks to void the questionable digital vote tally and give L.A.'s most vulnerable citizens a voice.
The baffling waste of millions in Quimby funds to build a city park right next to LA County's Grand Park are questioned anew as costs spike. As with many policy decisions in CD14, it leaves us wondering if it was intended for Angelenos or for a developer.
The terrible day is coming when Frank Gehry's clients will be permitted to demolish the landmark Lytton Savings... unless some enlightened person or institution steps up to move the building and give it a new home. Ahem, LACMA?
10 Incredible, Insane, and Mostly True Stories About Downtown Los Angeles: featuring our Kim Cooper on the Bradbury Building and Great 11 Cult.
LACMA by Zumthor, 2019 edition: "under the newly released plans, the building would be 347,500 sq feet—40,000 sq feet smaller than the last version and more than 45,000 sq feet smaller than the four existing [Pereira] LACMA buildings that will be razed."
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric