File under: L.A. Noir or, The American Cinematheque is supposed to screen "Chinatown"—not top it.

Gentle reader...

When you spend more than a decade studying the darkest crimes in Los Angeles history like we have, you develop a certain instinct for infamy.

And there's just something odd with how cagily the American Cinematheque is behaving following announcement of pending sale of its only asset, the landmark Egyptian Theatre, to Netflix. It took more than 11 weeks after everybody read about it in the trade papers for members to be informed via email, and even then, the name Netflix was suspiciously missing.

In light of the utter lack of transparency, we're petitioning the non-profit's board to open the Egyptian up for a public meeting, to explain why the AG is investigating, the organization has no Director, and the theatre is on the market. If you share our concerns, we hope you'll sign the petition, and pass it on.

Surely everybody getting this newsletter isn't hoping to sign a development deal with Netflix!

Next month, we're debuting a new type of Esotouric Salon at Lummis House, Preserving The Soul of Los Angeles (Sunday, 8/11), and it promises to be delightful afternoon in one of the Southland's most fascinating places. But ticket sales have been slow and we need your help! If you've been planning to attend this special talk, tour and social gathering, won't you please make your reservations soon? And spread the word to your friends who care about Los Angeles history and architecture and the people who work hard to preserve the places we love, like the recently landmarked, just-sold Tom Bergin's Tavern. To learn more about this Esotouric Salon or get your ticket, click here.

Tuesday at Book Soup in West Hollywood, come meet Pittsburgh-based author Barry Alfonso, at a multi-media book launch event honoring the fascinating Rod McKuen. Kim will even share a curious encounter with the poet from her past life as a zinester.

Just added to our calendar, and already selling briskly, is the fall forensic science seminar, on the LAPD's most shocking cold case homicide. The Lazarus Files would bring some measure of closure to a grieving family, but drop a metaphoric bomb into the highest ranks of the LAPD. You won't want to miss this brand new program with author Matthew McGough and criminalist Doreen Hudson on Sunday, October 13.

And if you're filling your Hallowe'en season dance card, you'll want to note that true crime and literary tours are now listed through October and early November, including Raymond Chandler, Charles Bukowski, Weird West Adams, The Real Black Dahlia and Echo Park Book of the Dead.

This Saturday, we're exploring the grim secrets of the Miracle Mile, with our newest true crime tour, Wilshire Boulevard Death Trip. Come discover how some of the city's loveliest landmarks became the scene of terror and mystery, including a very special interlude at Bullocks Wilshire and the far-out Victorian love story at the La Brea Tar Pits. Join us, do!

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COMING SOON

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, repeats 10/26. 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.)

PRESERVING THE SOUL OF LOS ANGELES SALON AT LUMMIS HOUSE - SUN. 8/11... Join us at the birthplace of the Southern California historic preservation movement for a very special afternoon, touring the landmark stone castle, learning about Charles Fletcher Lummis' passionate advocacy for keeping old stories, folkways, recipes and sacred places alive, then getting to know contemporary preservation activist Steven Luftman, who shares lively tales of his efforts to save Tom Bergin's, Lytton Savings, bungalow court apartments and miniature fairy castles from the wrecking ball. (For more info or tickets, click 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.)

BOYLE HEIGHTS & MONTEREY PARK: THE HIDDEN HISTORIES OF L.A.'S MELTING POTS - SAT. 8/24... Come on a century's social history tour through the transformation of neighborhoods, punctuated with immersive stops to sample the varied cultures that make our changing city so beguiling. Voter registration, citizenship classes, Chicano Moratorium, walkouts, blow-outs, anti-Semitism, adult education, racial covenants, boycotts, The City Beautiful, Exclusion Acts and Immigration Acts, property values, xenophobia, and delicious dumplings--all are themes which will be addressed on this lively excursion. This whirlwind social history tour will include: The Vladeck Center, Hollenbeck Park, Evergreen Cemetery, El Encanto, Divine's Furniture and Wing Hop Fung. (Buy tickets here.)

MANSONLAND - SAT. 8/31... 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, more info here.)

FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 10/13... 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 Lazarus Files is a cold case with a chilling twist: the killer was an LAPD detective! Your ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. (More info here.) Additional upcoming tours: 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), Eastside Babylon (9/28), Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles (10/5), Echo Park Book of the Dead (10/12), Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles (10/19), The Real Black Dahlia (10/26) and Weird West Adams (11/2).

Wilshire Boulevard Death Trip Tour - Saturday, July 20th
$64.00

The Lowdown on Downtown - Saturday, August 3rd
$64.00

The Birth of Noir (James M. Cain tour)-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

This newsletter goes out in memory of Jasper Rose, who taught us both at UC Santa Cruz and who recognized we were soul mates 18 years before we decided we could stand one another. A great teacher, friend and inspiration!

Cheers to our pal Rob Hollman, just one of the creative Angelenos trying to find a way to preserve the very special Bothwell citrus ranch. Sign the petition.

"Distressed" Arts Commission learns why Santa Monica lost its iconic Millard Sheets mural. This is a disgrace. The Hilbert Museum should gracefully step back and give Santa Monica a fair chance to keep this treasure at home.

The Tokio Florist property, a valuable slice of Silver Lake real estate with deep Japanese horticulture roots and a lovely main house, has been nominated as a city landmark.

Possible subtext of this Twitter war over the 710 stub: nobody wants to sit down and hash out land use policy with scandal-plagued Jose Huizar. The real losers are the citizens of CD14 and wider Los Angeles.

Farewell Tony’s Bella Vista of Burbank, the latest victim of rising rents in beautiful downtown Burbank. We'll always have Remains of L.A.'s blog post to remember it by.

More fallout from USC's failure to operate as a good steward for its historic assets: the Greene & Greene landmark is separating from the university & longtime director Ted Bosley to run the new Gamble House Conservancy!

When we visited the Trona Pinnacles in 2013, we pondered: "How many more centuries will they stand, before nature finishes breaking down what she has created?" Then came the Ridgecrest 'quakes.

Curbed asks "what will happen to the Happy Foot Sad Foot sign?" and we get to explain the powerful preservation concept of “affective ownership”—aka Kryptonite for greedy developers!

Hollyhock House is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. We just hope the city is up to the much greater responsibility of stewarding a landmark of this significance in years to come, and protecting its iconic views from over-development.

Alpine Village, and its sprawling parking lots, is on the market and at risk. Located in unincorporated L.A. county, it is a great test case for the new historic preservation ordinance.

A devastating take down of the planned, mindless destruction of 50 years of curation and collecting at LACMA, in the form of an open letter to Peter Zumthor, who is over in the old country, fingers in his ears, singing “La la la, I can’t hear you!”

Shammas Group, who ruined the Felix Chevrolet sign after their political connections killed its landmarking, has shut down rapper Bag of Tricks Cat. His grandma wrote the cartoon's jingle!

Thanks for the shout out, NBC-4, but it's important to note the vintage street lights in front of the Bureau of Street Lighting are not Vermonica, because artist Sheila Klein says so... and she should know!

yrs,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric