Announcing R.I.P Los Angeles, the feel-bad blog this city deserves

Gentle reader...

Last Saturday, our Mansonland tour took a spin down a sleepy section of Sunset Boulevard just east of Fairfax. Until recently, the stretch was home to Parisian Florist, with its exceptionally lovely mid-century storefront with integrated neon and sculptural signage, famous as a favorite of Marilyn Monroe.

But five years ago the whole block was purchased by serial landmark wrecker Jason Illoulian of Faring Capital, who announced plans to demolish the historic storefronts, a project that seems to be stalled. Still, some of the small business tenants have shut down or moved away rather than wait for an eviction notice. Parisian Florist recently moved on, donating one of its historic signs to the Museum of Neon Art.

With no permits in place for the proposed mixed use new building, and strong opposition from the neighbors to upzoning, surely the prominent corner storefront would be listed for lease. We wondered what business would take the place of Parisian Florist? A coffee shop? Bookstore? How about a vintage guitar dealer?

How about nothing? Today the joint is sealed up tighter than a tub of Tupperware, with fake doors and windows painted in an amateurish fashion. Driving by during the tour, we were shocked and filled with rage to see this simulacrum of a Sunset Boulevard storefront that has taken the place of one of the loveliest shops L.A. has ever seen. The rooftop sign armature now reads Eat Gluten, which we assume is supposed to be "funny" or "art."

It isn't funny, and certainly it isn't art. It might be an illegal billboard. It is also a blight on the landscape. There's no street life here, no tax revenue, no emotional connection, no eyes on the street from a caring proprietor, certainly no dahlias or babies breath.

It's obvious that the erasure of the retail space is meant to grind the neighborhood down, and leave exhausted neighbors wondering if a mixed use monstrosity is better than an ugly dead zone. When there's nothing left to fight for, the fight tends to go out of people. (We notice the Save 7500 Sunset petition is no longer active, leaving 7000 concerned signees in the dark.) And when you're as rich as serial landmark wrecker Jason Illoulian, not even a vacancy tax will make you behave like a mensch.

Family owned Parisian Florist has been serving the Hollywood community since 1924. You can't walk over the same threshold as Marilyn when you shop for blooms anymore, but you can still support them, a few blocks east. In the mean time, avert your gaze when passing the old location.

And in other news of wealthy property owners behaving badly, the family trust that recently purchased the home of pioneering Hollywood screenwriter Gladys Collins Lehman (Paul R. Williams, 1938) illegally demolished the Toluca Lake landmark under the guise of some minor renovations.

Neighbors were mortified. They were also uninformed.

A gentle reminder for all Angelenos who care about our precious built environment: an illegal demolition can be stopped, but you've got to move fast. If you see fences and bulldozers around an historic property and there are no backdated permits (stating "demolition") posted, place an immediate call to the AQMD at 1-800-CUT-SMOG. They will quickly dispatch an inspector who can stop unpermitted work. You can also call your city councilperson or the police, and drop us a line. It's too late for Miss Lehman's lovely house, which was itself a movie star. But it's not too late for the next gem in the cross hairs of greed.

All of this woe and tribulation is just the wind up to an announcement we're excited to share. R.I.P. Los Angeles is a blog chronicling the escalating losses of cool local buildings told through the record of demolition notices newly filed with the Department of Building and Safety. It is written by our longtime collaborator Nathan Marsak, and we're working closely with him on the project. Our aim is to inform, amuse and infuriate the public, and to see preservation become a major part of public policy in the city. Read it and weep!

And if you like what you see on the blog, you'll definitely want to join us tomorrow for the debut Saving Los Angeles Landmarks tour. Nathan Marsak is just one of the citizen preservation activists sharing his passion for Los Angeles history at threatened sites that are worth fighting for. We've added Times Mirror Square and some other surprises to the already packed program. You won't want to miss it, especially because the next time we offer this tour, it will be all different locations and preservation battles. Join us, do!

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COMING SOON

SAVING LOS ANGELES LANDMARKS - SAT. 9/7... A new tour, a little different every time, celebrates the passionate citizen preservationists who adopt a threatened building or artifact and bend heaven and earth to bring its story into the light. From the progressive bank as arts center Lytton Savings to L.A. Riots memorial light sculpture Vermonica, William Pereira's woefully remuddled MWD to mysteries revealed by Chinatown's vanishing Joan of Arc sculpture, it's a wild day out in the preservation trenches, telling offbeat Los Angeles stories that will have you rooting for these cool landmarks, and the preservationists who love them. (Buy tickets here.)

LOS ANGELES BOOK LAND, 1939: CHANDLER, FANTE, HUXLEY, ISHERWOOD, WEST - SAT. 9/14... 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. Join us on a new excursion through Downtown and Hollywood, celebrating the literary and cultural history of an incredible literary year, with visits to time capsule places that figure in the lives of the authors and in their books. From the new Union Station to a scandal-wracked City Hall, from forgotten speakeasies of old Skid Row (you'll explore the legendary King Eddy Cellar) to fantastical castles in the sky, from star-studded opening nights to mornings after in the gutter, to Larry Edmunds, the last great Hollywood bookstore standing, we’ll go out in search of the ghosts of that magical year. (Buy tickets here.)

HOTEL HORRORS & MAIN STREET VICE - SAT. 9/21... Through the 1940s, downtown was the true city center, a lively, densely populated, exciting and sometimes dangerous place. But while many of the historic buildings remain, their human context has been lost. This downtown double feature tour is meant to bring alive the old ghosts and memories that cling to the streets and structures of the historic core, and is especially recommended for downtown residents curious about their neighborhood's neglected history. (Buy tickets here.)

EASTSIDE BABYLON - SAT. 9/28... 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.)

RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES - SAT. 10/5... 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 visit to Larry Edmunds Bookshop, the last survivor of a once-great Hollywood literary district. (Buy tickets here.)

ECHO PARK BOOK OF THE DEAD - SAT. 10/12... On a crime bus tour honoring the lost souls who wander the hills and byways of the "streetcar suburbs" that hug Sunset Boulevard, see seemingly ordinary houses revealed as the scenes of chilling crimes and mysteries, populated by some of the most fascinating people you'd never want to meet. Featuring the Hillside Strangler, the Bat Man's Love Nest and a visit to Sister Aimee Semple McPherson's exquisite Parsonage, now a museum. (Buy tickets 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.)

CHARLES BUKOWSKI'S L.A. - SAT. 10/19... 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, the library where he found his "god" John Fante, a rare chance to tour one of Hank & Jane's pads and a mid-tour provisions stop at Pink Elephant Liquor. (Buy tickets here.) Additional upcoming tours: The Real Black Dahlia (10/26), Weird West Adams (11/2), Wilshire Boulevard Death Trip (11/16) and Pasadena Confidential (11/23).

Saving Los Angeles Landmarks Tour - 9/7
$64.00

Los Angeles Book Land, 1939: Chandler, Fante, Huxley, Isherwood, West - 9/14
$64.00

Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice - 9/21
$64.00

RECOMMENDED READING

Musician-magician Rob Zabrecky's compulsively readable memoir, which could be subtitled "I Was A Teenage Libertine," is trip through time to a funkier, cheaper and infinitely weirder L.A., where a self-conscious Burbank kid could try on different versions of his future self while navigating the dangers that swallowed up too many of his sweetly drawn friends. Brave and funny, Strange Cures should be required reading for anyone who arrived in town in the last ten years and loudly promotes the demolition of old buildings for shiny new mixed use towers. Zabrecky's Progress shows all that's lost with the funky, cheap and weird places where young people could take their time and find their path, with detours that either killed or gave them wings. Recommended for actual and aspiring Angelenos.

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: Celebrating 61 Years of Neon, Bowling, Booze & (now) Booza in Anaheim’s Little Arabia.

From the hard working preservationist who brought you the successful campaign to preserve Covina Bowl until a developer with vision came along comes a new campaign to Save Palos Verdes Bowl.

Tom Bergin's is coming back, in a nice win for community preservationists. Also, the sooner the whiney former(?) owner stops browbeating people for caring about this place, the better!

It shouldn't be so refreshing that discussion about for redesign of the Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits campus is happening in public, but compared to the secrecy and community suppression surrounding LACMA’s Zumthor mess, it is.

1930s road trip footage of Angelus Temple, Toluca Lake, back lot sets, Earl Carroll Theatre, Angels Flight Railway, plus points north including S.F. and Muir Woods.

They say it's not au revoir, so let's instead say "Oh, ferchrissake! Not Les Freres Taix!" A timeless piece of Echo Park's soul, sold to a Washington state developer for yet another bland mixed use project.

A beautiful historic preservation and immigration story out of Boise: Soviet defectors fall in love with Googie style Phillips 66 station. 40 years later, their son hopes to use National Register tax credits to restore their American dream, preserve it from a road widening scheme.

A preview of the institutional bait and switch that’s roiling our encyclopedic museum: “LACMA, largely closed, has become an expensive ghost town.” Sign the petition: it's not too late.

Inside hyperlocal Spectrum News 1. We've been so impressed with the thoughtfulness of the reporters we've worked with (and we don't let just anyone hop onto one of our tours with a camera crew).

Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist - Hollywood (Howard Elwell, 1960) is a protected city landmark threatened with demolition for an apartment complex. Turns out the janitor worked his way up, sold the building and pocketed most of the $13M proceeds. He's facing 250 years.

Until the owner evicted everyone and let it fall into blight, Edinburgh Bungalow Court was a lovely example of that iconic Los Angeles type. As expected, following a backroom political deal, the derelict property has been listed at a grossly inflated price, $2M more than when last sold.

Ever wonder what Ernest Batchelder's Dutch Chocolate Shop would look like if it were magically transported to a realm of medieval fantasy? Wonder no more.

A new low in real estate hustler jargon: "the developer said the façade will be laser scanned and recreated." Next thing, they'll want preservation tax credits!

Updates on our campaign to Save the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre: the first festival cancellation, and real estate journal Commercial Observer weighs in.

The Los Angeles Conservancy fills out its Alpine Village page with info on the proposed new use that would require demolition of this cultural landmark. Not mixed use, hotel or housing: truck parking and cargo container storage. Hell no!

What starts out as a piece enumerating some of Raymond Chandler's snazzier turns of phrase ends somewhere quite surprising.

A dip into the archives of Frenchtown Confidential: "'Vive la France! Vive la Republique!” And Vive Los Angeles!

French Le Monde covers the building frenzy on the Miracle Mile, concluding with our petition plea to preserve and adaptively reuse William Pereira’s historic campus and not demolish it for a smaller example of starchitecture. “Ce n’est pas sérieux.” (“This isn’t serious.”)

Something strange by Angels Flight Railway: a mini, faux Ferguson Building, one of the lost landmarks demolished in the Bunker Hill redevelopment scheme, recreated for Perry Mason set dressing.

The enormous Hotel Cecil is legally mandated to operate as 50% low-income housing for 55 years, and is presently home to 9 (count ‘em!) souls. We hope this historic and stigmatized property is reactivated soon.

The latest chilling report from inside City Hall: A city auditor was investigating DWP contracts. She says she was warned not to be ‘thorough.’

Silver Lake's beloved Happy Foot Sad Foot sign appears to be coming down! Sad to see this, especially after the grassroots campaign to preserve it in place.

Criminal allegations flying over the pseudonymous individual who West Hollywood Councilmember John Duran appointed to the Historic Preservation Commission.

Fascinated by LACMA conservator Kamila Korbela's quest to replicate mid-century Day-Glo pigments, then worried when we remembered there's no space for a conservation lab at the wee new museum. Maybe that's why she started her own firm?

No questions asked TOC project demolition permits are destroying L.A.'s historic buildings at a horrifying pace, as you know if you read RIP Los Angeles. Will large preservation organizations like the Los Angeles Conservancy join Fix the City in their lawsuit?

yrs for Los Angeles,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric