If you don't pay attention to LACMA's fate now, kindly refrain from complaining later

Gentle reader...

On Tuesday, the County Supervisors will cast their final, deciding votes on the LACMA redevelopment plan. Better late than never, but pretty darn late, critics have a lot of questions and concerns about the shrinking footprint and radical changes to the institution's curatorial structure.

Want to know more? See Carolina Miranda and Christopher Knight in the L.A. Times and Joseph Giovannini in the L.A. Review of Books, with a scathing piece he claims was killed by the Times' editor-in-chief for political reasons, and at the behest of the museum.

If you're concerned after reading, you can email your Supervisor by Monday afternoon, or give public comment about the project on Tuesday morning. And to learn more about our Pereira in Peril consciousness raising campaign, and see video of a walking tour of his threatened 1965 LACMA campus, click here.

On Saturday, we're giving a very special tour with Detective Mike Digby, expert on historic Los Angeles bombings. Our path follows in the footsteps of the conspirators who blew up the Los Angeles Times with a dynamite bomb in 1910, including a visit to the actual hotel room where the deadly device was constructed. This time-capsule chamber is about to be renovated and become somebody's home, so Saturday will be your only chance to see it. Plus, we'll be joined by descendants of one of the bombing victims, sharing intimate details about the lasting impact of the crime. And every guest will receive a copy of Detective Digby's new book about L.A. bombings. Join us, do!

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RECOMMENDED READING

From Sarah Weinman, the suspense scholar whose sleuthing of the true crime roots of the Lolita story blew many minds, an anthology celebrating the neglected distaff face of mid-century crime fiction. Included is Dorothy B. Hughes' stunning In A Lonely Place, a Southern California love and mistrust story set against the backdrop of the Black Dahlia era of postwar trauma. The book was adapted into a terrific Nicholas Ray film starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. Dig this kind of fiction? Volume 2, The 1950s, is also available from Library of America.

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!

COMING SOON

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.)

CHARLES BUKOWSKI'S L.A. - SAT. 5/4... Come explore Charles Bukowski's lost Los Angeles and the fascinating contradictions that make this great local writer such a hoot to explore. Haunts of a Dirty Old Man is a raucous day out celebrating liquor, ladies, pimps and poets. The tour includes a visit to Buk's DeLongpre bungalow, where you'll see the Cultural-Historic Monument sign that we helped to get approved, and a mid-tour provisions stop at Pink Elephant Liquor. (Buy tickets here.)

SPECIAL EVENT: CRAWLING DOWN CAHUENGA: TOM WAITS' L.A. - SAT. 5/11... 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 (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.)

Additional upcoming tours: Special Event: The 1974 SLA Shootout (6/1), Raymond Chandler (6/15), Eastside Babylon (6/29), Pasadena Confidential (7/13), Wilshire Boulevard Death Trip (7/20) and The Real Black Dahlia (7/27).

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.

AND FINALLY, LINKS

If this post on an urban explorers website is any indication, the landmark Lincoln Heights Jail remains accessible to vandals.

And speaking of civic landmarks that the City of Los Angeles neglects, urban explorers also snuck inside the doomed Parker Center, and we're grateful for their documentary efforts.

Lummis wept! Abandoned by the Autry after removing its world class collection of Native American art, Highland Park's Southwest Museum is being shopped around to potential buyers. In a city that specializes in them, it’s a remarkable civic disgrace.

Here's something rare, weird and wonderful: a 1946 issue of The Hobo News (slogan: "A Little Fun To Match The Sorrow"), hawked on street corners by bindlestiffs of yore.

We imagine the FBI will be taking close notice of City Council's selection of a private developer to build the replacement tower where the landmark Parker Center is presently being demolished.

Programmatic signage has always been cool, but in the age of Instagram, it's a goldmine. Cheers to smart business people who recognize that customers love landmarks like Randy's Donuts!

“Who Was The Black Dahlia?” Video featurette with our Kim Cooper on the Dr. Phil Show streams here. We're pleased the producers left in the observation that murder victim Beth Short was homeless in a 1947 L.A. suffering a familiar housing crisis.

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is a war memorial. It's sleazy of lease-holder USC to seek to commercialize that with the United Airlines naming deal, and disturbing that the university sought to hide details from the public.

Monterey Hills residents crying foul over "unbuildable" Parcel S, sold off by the CRA as open space and potentially rezoned by scandal plagued councilman Jose Huizar to allow dense development. Legal fundraiser.

Thanks to the last in the line of Southern California's legendary Watson photo family, Santa Clarita Valley history will be preserved.

On April 13, Occidental hosts A Celebration of the Life of Bob Winter. His L.A. On A Six-Pack architecture tours were the inspiration for Esotouric, so it's perhaps fitting that we'll be giving a tour and unable to attend. Send him off with love for us.

Competition for young composers: score the erotically-charged border-crossing opening sequence of Raymond Chandler's Playback.

In memory of John Walsh, who fought for the soul of Hollywood, the best thing ever written about "The Freak Who Stopped The Subway."

yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric