You're Invited to Honor the Circus and Carnival Folk of Evergreen Cemetery, plus bombshell LACMA emails & a digital recreation of the 1974 SLA raid

Gentle reader...

One of our favorite cemeteries to visit is Evergreen in Boyle Heights. It's the oldest in Los Angeles (1877), and dense with beautiful monuments and grand trees. As a non-denomational burial ground, it is permanent home to a broad swath of Angelenos, and we love to stroll the paths reading the names, which reflect the many cultures that have found a home in our city. And it doesn't hurt that the best vegetarian sandwich in L.A. is available just outside the gates: the chipotle cheese marvel (#2 on the menu) from Cemitas Poblana.

We'll explore Evergreen's place in history on two upcoming tours, Eastside Babylon (6/29) and Boyle Heights & Monterey Park (8/24).

Last spring, we got wind that the Pacific Coast Showmen's Association annual memorial service for carnival and circus workers was coming up, and asked if it was appropriate for us, as strangers with an interest in their group's history, to attend. We were warmly welcomed, and ended up helping set up flags on the plots of the community burial ground and even saying a few words about a colorful character who was laid to rest in the shadow of the pink tiger almost a century ago. As we made our goodbyes, we offered to help out again this year.

The Pacific Coast Showmen's Association 2019 memorial will be held on Tuesday, May 21 at 11:30am, and the community is welcome. We hope you'll join us to honor the spirits of the dedicated entertainers who have traveled the back roads bringing laughs, thrills and deep fried treats to generations of Californians. For details, click here.

New on the Esotouric blog, a scoop: we filed a public information request and obtained emails sent to the Los Angeles County Supervisors ahead of their vote for LACMA's redevelopment. There were hundreds, including some very serious arts and culture professionals begging them to hit the pause button, as news spread about plans for a physically smaller museum with a reduced curatorial program and major exhibition challenges. The emails reveal the conversation Los Angeles needs to have about LACMA's future, and which hasn't happened yet. We hope you'll have a look, and if you agree that the proposed changes to the museum are too radical to adopt without serious review, join the LACMA Lovers League and sign the petition asking the supes to reconsider their rushed approval. And please, pass it on!

We don't have a tour this weekend, but return on June 1 with the once-a-year true crime excursion Two Days in South LA: The 1974 SLA Shootout, hosted by author Brad Schreiber with special guest, Detective Mike Digby. You don't want to miss this timely time travel trip.

It was 45 years ago this week that members of the Symbionese Liberation Army radical group were burned alive under a modest Los Angeles bungalow, in a televised SWAT raid that captivated and terrorized the nation, and concealed a shocking tale of undercover operatives, prison mind control experiments and a calculated decision to kill five people to silence an inconvenient witness. Follow us on Twitter (or Facebook or Instagram) Thursday and Friday, as dark history plays out in real time, and then book a spot on this special event tour and dig even deeper into one of the weirdest crime stories ever to unfold in L.A. Your mind will be blown!

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COMING SOON

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 Los Angeles? The weird tale is revealed through startling new research, including investigators' files interpreted by special guest, Detective Mike Digby. (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.)

EASTSIDE BABYLON - SAT. 6/29... Go East, young ghoul, to Boyle Heights, where the Night Stalker was captured and to Evergreen, L.A.'s oldest cemetery where we'll share newly unearthed tales of secret burials. To East L.A., where a deranged radio shop employee made mince meat of his boss and bride in the shadow of the world's biggest tamale. To Commerce, where one small neighborhood's myriad crimes will shock and surprise. To Montebello, scene of a horrifying case of child murder. That's Eastside Babylon, our most unhinged true crime tour. (Buy tickets here.)

PASADENA CONFIDENTIAL - SAT. 7/13... The Crown City masquerades as a calm and refined retreat, where well-bred ladies glide around their perfect bungalows and everyone knows what fork to use first. But don't be fooled by appearances. Dip into the confidential files of old Pasadena and meet assassins and oddballs, kidnappers and slashers, black magicians and all manner of maniac in a delightful little tour you won't find recommended by the better class of people. (Buy tickets here.)

FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 7/14... 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. The Serial Killer Summer Session is an inquiry into the impact of the Night Stalker murders on Southern California. Your ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. (Sold out with waiting list. More info here.)

NEW! WILSHIRE BOULEVARD DEATH TRIP - SAT. 7/20... Wilshire Boulevard is an iconic Los Angeles thoroughfare—from its prehistoric origins as a path forged by extinct megafauna to the spectacular Art Deco monuments of the Miracle Mile. It’s also ground zero for some deeply strange, only-in-Los Angeles crimes and oddities that played out against the backdrop of the boulevard. The deceptively simple route contains a multitude of horrors and mysteries. Join us for a dark day’out among the city’s most glittering architectural gems. (Buy tickets here.)

THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA - SAT. 7/27... 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. (Buy tickets here.)

THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN - SAT. 8/3... 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.)

Additional upcoming tours: 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

You love Angels Flight Railway, but how much do you really know about the wee funicular that's still rolling, despite every effort of the heartless fates to send her out to pasture? For the real skinny, pick up this illuminating history from her Edwardian origins to noirish (first) decline and long-promised renewal, Jim Dawson's Los Angeles's Angels Flight, a companion to Los Angeles's Bunker Hill: Pulp Fiction's Mean Streets and Film Noir's Ground Zero!

OUR HISTORIC L.A. PODCAST

Episode #132 is Illuminating Los Angeles: Elmore Leonard & The Triforium. Meet Gregg Sutter, who is hosting a new 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

We're glad to see the L.A. Conservancy rallying members to make calls today to oppose SB50, especially after the weirdness in Sacramento when their lobbyist told state senators that the non-profit was in support with amendments that were not part of the ever-evolving law, and their social media person denied it happened. (We've heard this described as the lobbyist going off script.) If you care about good planning and historic preservation, call your rep before Thursday’s vote.

Farewell Union Swapmeet. Whatever takes your place won't be better.

Florida billionaire Jeff Greene seeks to use Transit Oriented Communities incentives to demolish Dorset Village, a 1941 rent controlled garden court apartment complex, displacing hundreds of Angelenos.

In 2018, Richard Neutra's lyrical Chuey House was pulled from the Cultural Heritage Commission agenda amid whispers of a search for a sympathetic buyer who might balk if city landmark restrictions were applied. The gamble appears to have paid off.

Diana Jean Heaney was just a footnote in the Black Dahlia newspaper files, until Sarah McKinley Oakes sleuthed the teen’s nightmarish road trip and the trauma that followed.

Things take a noirish turn atop the James Oviatt Building, where the caterer who controlled the art deco penthouse has disappeared with wedding deposits from many couples.

Mapping the vanishing Arborglyphs of Nevada's Basque sheepherders.

Troubling reports of cracks appearing inside and out of the newly landmarked Los Angeles Times buildings--damage which could further slow progress on Metro's Regional Connector, which might fail to hit the 2023 deadline for a $670 Million Federal Grant.

Hurray! The Brite Spot to be a nite spot once again.

File under: Keep Laguna Weird, or How Aliso & Woods Canyon Park's "Mentally Sensitive" trail got its name.

The new Bob Baker Marionette Theater will have familiar trompe l'oeil painted curtain walls, and here's how they're doing it.

We're over the moon that Nita Lelyveld is reviving her L.A. Times column City Beat to tell the stories of Angelenos as only she can, but shaken that she was thinking about leaving L.A. So many dedicated Angelenos are talking about it, and some are already gone. We work hard to save landmark buildings, but there's nothing more worth preserving than our people. Save us!

yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric