Announcing Two Brand New Tours: Los Angeles Bookland 1939 & Saving Los Angeles Landmarks - plus LACMA's Preservation Symposium
Gentle reader...
The trouble with spending so much time digging in the deep basement stacks of the Huntington Library is that reading new things about the history of Los Angeles tends to give us ideas. Some of those ideas have blossomed into a pair of brand new tours that we're launching in early September. Read on for the skinny!
On Saturday, September 7, it's the debut Saving Los Angeles Landmarks Tour, the first in a series of tours celebrating cultural history on a trip through the preservation trenches, where you’ll meet some of the passionate people who are keeping local history alive at the very places that inspire them, from the decaying mid-century beauty of Lytton Savings and the Metropolitan Water District campus to Sheila Klein's deconstructed "urban candelabra" Vermonica to big mysteries revealed in the search for Chinatown's lost Joan of Arc statue. Come discover a city worth falling in love with, and the rich and layered history that knits us together as Angelenos. (Learn more then book your seat.)
Then on Saturday, September 14, celebrate the 80th anniversary of Los Angeles Book Land, 1939. There must have been something special in the air that year, as the great Los Angeles novels tumbled onto the library shelves like sweet summer peaches. 1939 was the year of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, John Fante’s Ask the Dust, Aldous Huxley’s After Many A Summer Dies the Swan and The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West—four utterly original portraits of Los Angeles, each of them revealing the humor, darkness, romance, pastiche, cynicism and eccentricity of the town and its astonishing people. Come explore Downtown and Hollywood with visits to time capsule places that figure in the lives of the authors and in their books. (Learn more then book your seat.)
This might surprise you: almost two years ago, along with our Pereira in Peril collaborator Alan Hess, we began sitting down with Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of LACMA, to talk about historic preservation, our concerns about the planned demolition of the 1965 William Pereira campus, and our hopes that the museum could become a leader in advocating for adaptive reuse and restoration of threatened landmarks.
The museum still plans to demolish its mid-century buildings, and we're still not convinced that's the right decision. But we're very pleased that these conversations have developed into a free, two-day symposium at LACMA, Preserving the City of the Future: Civic and Corporate Los Angeles in the 20th Century (June 21-22). This is a conversation that Los Angeles needs to have, and we're delighted to see the museum leading the way.
You'll find us on a Saturday morning panel, talking about the preservation of Angels Flight Railway, the Dutch Chocolate Shop and the world's biggest tamale. Alan will be presenting about the glory of William Pereira’s Imperial California on Friday morning. Here's the full schedule.
RSVP (required) at the links below:
https://www.lacma.org/event/preserving-city-future (Friday)
https://www.lacma.org/event/preserving-city-future-0 (Saturday)
There's no tour this Saturday, but we return on Saturday, June 15 with Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles, following in the footsteps of the noir master as he learns the mechanisms of crooked power in the 1920s oil trade, becomes an acclaimed crime novelist in early middle age, then suffers the pleasures and horrors of screenwriting success. And the other newly posted September tours are Hotel Horrors and Main Street Vice (9/21) and Eastside Babylon (9/28). Join us, do!
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COMING SOON
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. Tour repeats 9/28.)
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.)
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 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. (Sold out with waiting list. More info 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.)
CURSE OF THE SHE-DEVIL: A TRUE STORY OF REVENGE, BETRAYAL, BOMBS AND REAL ESTATE IN 1919 LOS ANGELES - SAT. 8/10... In this sequel to his popular tour about the 1910 Bombing of the Los Angeles Times, arson and bomb detective Mike Digby takes us on a scrupulously researched journey through early Los Angeles, exposing a brazen conspiracy to kill, maim or terrorize anyone who stood in the way of a beautiful young woman inheriting the fortune of her estranged husband. While following the forensic leads of the unfolding case on a route rich in time capsule crime scenes, Mike will compare and contrast the historical investigation to the modern crime analysis methods he has used in his law enforcement career. And every passenger gets a copy of Mike's new book about the case. (Special event, buy tickets here.)
THE BIRTH OF NOIR: JAMES M. CAIN'S SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARE - SAT. 8/17... This tour digs deep into the literature, film and real life vices that inform that most murderous genre, film noir, rolling through Hollywood, Glendale and old Skid Row, lost lion farms, murderous sopranos, fascist film censors, offbeat cemeteries—all in a quest to reveal the delicious, and deeply influential, nightmares that are author Cain's gift to the world. (Buy tickets here.)
Additional upcoming tours: Boyle Heights & Monterey Park (8/24), Mansonland (8/31), Saving Los Angeles Landmarks (9/7), Los Angeles Book Land, 1939: Chandler, Fante, Huxley, Isherwood, West (9/14), Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (9/21) and Eastside Babylon (9/28).
Special Event-Mansonland - Saturday, August 31st
$73.00
In A Lonely Place: Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles- Saturday, June 15
$64.00
Eastside Babylon – Saturday, June 29
$64.00
The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's Southern California Nightmare---August 17th
$64.00
RECOMMENDED READING
You don't have to read every book by the authors featured on our newest literary tour Los Angeles Book Land, 1939, but the experience will be richer if you crack a spine or two before you board. Choose from Raymond Chandler's debut mystery The Big Sleep, John Fante's Bunker Hill love letter Ask the Dust, Aldous Huxley's questing After Many A Summer Dies The Swan and the wonderfully unhinged The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West. And Christopher Isherwood came to Los Angeles after completing Goodbye To Berlin, trading an iconic old world city for one very new and very different from all he knew.
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
New on the Esotouric blog: the fate of Bob Winter's library... revealed!
“Frankly, it smells.” – our Public Comment on the Times Mirror Square Draft EIR.
A moment of silence for Bobby Joe Maxwell, falsely convicted as the Skid Row Stabber, and for the victims in that terrible spree, who will never know justice. Fred Alschuler defended Bobby Joe until the end.
Cheers to Glendale for holding property owners accountable for illegally demolishing historic houses.
An allegation of developer payoffs to the VP of the Venice Neighborhood Council, with the memorable text message zinger "We need to show to get the dough.”
After stripping the Los Feliz "murder mansion" to the studs, attorney Lisa Bloom is shopping the ruined gem as an all-cash development opportunity. We talk about the crime on the 7/13 Pasadena Confidential tour.
File under: as if there wasn't enough drama around this joint already. The Good Luck neon bar sign has apparently been stolen.
"Tower project pits Gehry against the father of the L.A. Conservancy" - and everyone with eyes is wondering why Frank won't be the bigger architect and integrate Kurt Meyer's landmark Lytton Savings into his project.
Firestone is for cruising: Randy's Donuts, with a slightly slimmer giant donut on the roof, comes to Downey.
Instead of letting the redwood floor of Bob Baker's office/archive go to the landfill when the developer levels the landmark Marionette Theatre, the puppet crew packed and moved it to Highland Park.
Shame on Joel Silver, who let the Venice Post Office decay after making false promises to open it to the community and has now flipped it for $22M. Will we ever see Biberman's WPA Venice history mural again?
No surprise that the Boyle Heights side of the sadly redesigned (rather than rebuilt) Sixth Street Bridge is getting the shaft where public art is concerned.
If you've ever visited the sleepy central coast town of Guadalupe and wondered about the shuttered Royal Theater on the main drag, here's the frustrating reasons why it's unlikely to be restored any time soon.
Beloved Montebello sanitary dairy Broguiere’s is closing (or maybe not!) amid vague complaints about "government regulations," which seem to be the minimum wage increase.
Fix The City challenging the LACMA EIR on the Ogden Garage.
Something big proposed for the Miracle Mile. We'd quibble with the description of the tower as "Art Deco-inspired," but applaud the decision to preserve the Sontag soda fountain building at the base--in period appropriate sugar loaf white, please!
Survey of the upzoned TOC projects along Sunset Boulevard, including the enormous 1111 W. Sunset, which threatens William Pereira's Metropolitan Water District campus and seeks 20 (!!) liquor licenses. Here comes Hollywood?
Broke and overgrown, old Sunnyside Cemetery will close unless the City of Long Beach steps in.
yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric