Bummed Out By The LACMA Demolition Vote? Here's a way to beat the blues and honor the place and its iconic architect, William Pereira
Gentle reader...
Thanks to everyone who took the time to call or email the County Supervisors before their final, deciding votes on the LACMA redevelopment plan. Although the critical and public consensus was unanimous in its opposition, a rarity in this opinionated town, the Supes voted as they had long ago determined: to demolish the historic 1965 William Pereira campus, to decentralize and break up the museum's curatorial departments, and bridge Wilshire Boulevard with a one-story showpiece building. Historically, such political arrogance is effective until it isn't anymore, and we suspect the five "little kings" will find they've kicked a hornet's nest. Angelenos love their museum and are waking up to the reality that they could lose it.
We love LACMA, too, as an institution and as a collection of interesting structures that tell a story about Southern California, from asphalt mining to space-age modernism and beyond. For those who grew up here, discovering the complexity of art, architecture and pre-history at the only-in-LA museum and park complex, the vote to demolish everything old particularly stings. Places shape us; returning to them feeds us.
Our Pereira in Peril campaign celebrates the original LACMA campus and calls for the neglected buildings to be restored and retrofitted rather than demolished. We still believe it's not too late, even as the shadows are gathering on the Miracle Mile, but we need your help. That's why for William Pereira's 110th Birthday, and all through California Preservation Month of May, we're encouraging people to go out and visit Pereira's beautiful buildings, especially the endangered ones but also the new National Register landmark, take a selfie and share on social media with the hashtag #PereiraForever. Because the greenest building is one that's already here, and everyone looks cuter with a landmark in the frame. Learn more and see the map of Pereiras here.
Something troubling at the L.A. Conservancy: we got an eyewitness report that they gave comments supporting the amended pro-development bill SB50 in Sacramento this week. Shocked, we tweeted about it. The non-profit replied that this was false and privately asked us to delete the tweet. But government video proves the statement was made. We hope there's a good explanation, and that the Conservancy is fighting hard to protect the thousands of California landmarks, not all of them municipally designated, that are threatened by this one-size-fits-all planning legislation.
Our tour calendar is up through August, including popular and occasional outings like The Birth of Noir, Curse of the She-Devil, The Lowdown on Downtown and Mansonland.
This weekend is packed with historic Los Angeles exploration, and we've still got room for you at both events. On Saturday, it's a literary history tour of John Fante's Dreams from Bunker Hill, from lost Victorian mansions to the seedy speakeasies off Main Street to the timeless majesty of the Plaza. Special guests include the author's children, and Bunker Hill native son Gordon Pattison, and we've marked the occasion by blogging some rare 1960s Main Street photos. And at Sunday's seminar in the teaching crime lab of Cal State LA, Detective Mike Digby reveals the secrets of the Simi Valley cult bombing, plus toxicology tales from the Jazz Age to today. Join us, do!
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COMING SOON
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.)
SPECIAL EVENT: TWO DAYS IN SOUTH LA: THE 1974 SLA SHOOTOUT - SAT. 6/1... Join author Brad Schreiber (Revolution's End) to discover how the radical Symbionese Liberation Army's political kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst came to a fiery end in a lengthy stand off that introduced a new form of police response, SWAT, to American television viewers. But how did these bumbling revolutionaries come to South Central. The weird tale is revealed through startling new research. (Buy tickets here.)
RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 6/15... 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.)
Additional upcoming tours: Eastside Babylon (6/29), Pasadena Confidential (7/13), Wilshire Boulevard Death Trip (7/20), The Real Black Dahlia (7/27), The Lowdown on Downtown (8/3), Curse of the She-Devil (8/10), The Birth of Noir (8/17), Boyle Heights & Monterey Park (8/24) and Mansonland (8/31).
RECOMMENDED READING
Read John Fante's Ask the Dust if you want to experience the Los Angeles that was swept clean by the Federal bulldozer, and spend some time up on Bunker Hill with the forgotten people who inhabited shabby rooms in once-fabulous mansions, soaking up the sunshine and forgetting why they'd come to California so long ago. Dropped among them like a bomb blast is Fante's alter ego Arturo Bandini, in search of literary fame and a little love and trouble on the way. We'll go out looking for Fante's Los Angeles this Saturday on a special tour last offered six years ago, including a visit to the basement speakeasy where Bandini blew his royalty check on the B-girls.
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!
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. July 14 seminar on The Night Stalker also available.
AND FINALLY, LINKS
A surprising tenant for the long-derelict Park Plaza Hotel, which has a very special cameo on our Raymond Chandler tours.
Netflix wants to buy The Egyptian Theatre, which the CRA "sold" to the non-profit American Cinematheque for $1. Aren't there other options for the only repertory theater on Hollywood Boulevard?
The Good Luck bar hasn't been around since the Noir era, it just looks that way. Enjoy it while you can: this charming retro watering hole is getting demolished for yet another mixed-use hotel project.
The old 8th Street hostess club El Gaucho is no more, and its new tenants are having fun documenting the artifacts hidden under five decades of drywall, dust and dreams deferred.
Encouraging press freedom news from Ted Rall’s anti-SLAPP case vs. the Los Angeles Times, which hung him out to dry after commissioning his cartoons and essays about LAPD: the California Supreme Court will hear his appeal. But will the Times cover it?
Not so fast, serial landmark demolisher Jason Illoulian! Historic Preservation Commission reviewing French Market Project.
Gary Stewart was a lovely guy and a great Angeleno. The city is diminished by his loss.
At $3800/mo, is this one-bedroom in the landmarked 1888 Luckenbach House on Carroll Avenue L.A.'s most expensive rent-controlled apartment?
Victor Hugo, too, knew that preservation is pain.
Thoughtful piece from Dan Akira Nishimura, one of our "gentle riders," on Robert Altman's deconstructed noir.
Our grassroots battle to save Angels Flight Railway from being lost forever made a big difference for Bosch Season 4.
"Clifton's A Jewel of a Cafeteria" was a gem of a ghost sign, but some philistine has whitewashed it.
Did the rushed demolition of Parker Center contribute to a City Hall staffer's typhus infection? Maybe yes, maybe no, but one sure thing is that the taxpayers will end up footing the bill.
When Bob Baker's Marionettes were evicted so a developer could tear their landmark theater down, they found a new home, and hatched a plan to help other threatened L.A. landmarks survive. Support their Department of Historic Sustainability and attend their yard sale at the doomed theater on 5/19.
RIP 1626 Silverlake Blvd. (1937-2019), illegally demolished by new owner, doubtless aware of Councilman Mitch O'Farrell's recent stunt "preservation" of the streamline moderne Texaco station just up the block. Easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission in pro-development LA.
Kurt Meyer, who put his architectural career on hold to ensure LAPL Central Library was preserved, is 1000x the Angeleno that Frank Gehry could dream of being. But Frank can still do the right thing and Save Lytton Savings!
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric