The Lonely Death of Our Superman

Gentle reader...

If you've spend any time on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame, you probably encountered costumed characters hustling for tips. These scruffy human photo ops seem like an entrenched Los Angeles tradition, but they're actually pretty new.

The hustlers are on our mind because Christopher Dennis, the square-jawed Superman widely recognized as the original costumed Hollywood Boulevard character, has died in a heartbreaking manner that casts the cruelty and struggle of 2019 Los Angeles into stark relief: homeless, rooting around for clothes in a sidewalk donation box, he was asphyxiated.

Before his struggles with addiction and mental illness made it impossible to work, he made this city sweeter and cooler, giving thousands of visitors a personal brush with Hollywood magic.

In the Times, his neighbor Nita Lelyveld delivered a gut punch, and a beautiful piece of storytelling about our broken city, and the beautiful broken people who struggle to survive in it.

Christopher Dennis' lonely death haunts us. It seems like a parable of a city that's lost its soul to greed and misrule. Hollywood has been so recklessly overdeveloped since Eric Garcetti was its councilman that there is no safe, affordable place for people who lose their homes anymore.

Just a few years ago, when he first put on the tights and cape and discovered his place on the Walk of Fame, Hollywood was a neighborhood of affordable apartments inhabited by older people, working people, creative people, people like our Superman. If you lost your place, you could always find another, in the neighborhood you knew.

Christopher Dennis had friends trying to help him and a successful crowdfunding campaign, and yet he was on the street scavenging for clothes as the nights turned so cold. Now his friends are passing the cup again, to bury his ashes at Hollywood Forever.

It looks a lot like Los Angeles, but this is not the city we grew up in and love. Just over a year ago, the FBI raided City Hall over our elected leaders' corrupt service to developers. Now these sick, greedy policies have killed our neighborhood Superman, and the cranes still fill the sky, with more rent-controlled apartments torn down for hotels, illegal AirBnB compounds and speculative vacancies.

Hurry up, G-Men! Take out the trash and give us our city back again.
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AND WHAT'S THE NEXT TOUR? Saturday's excursion is Pasadena Confidential, a time travel trip through the weird side of local lore, from the black sex magic rites of rocket builders to monkeys amok. Join us, do!

UPCOMING TOURS & SPECIAL EVENTS

PASADENA CONFIDENTIAL - SAT. 11/23... 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.)

RICHARD'S BIRTHDAY TOUR - SAT. 11/30... An all-day cultural history and architecture-themed excursion that will never be repeated, which we're calling Lucky When You Live in California. (Sold out with waiting list. More info here.)

HOTEL HORRORS & MAIN STREET VICE - SAT. 12/7... 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.)

THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA - SAT. 1/4... 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.)

FORENSIC SCIENCE SEMINAR - SUN. 1/5... 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. Detective Story: The Hillside Strangler takes us deep inside a major serial killer investigation with Retired Sergeant Frank Salerno, who worked the case. Your ticket benefits graduate level Criminalistics research. (Sold out with waiting list. More info here.)

THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN - SAT. 1/18... 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 Roebling Tile Works office, a tiled wonderland not open to the public. (Buy tickets here.) Additional upcoming tours: South L.A. Road Trip (1/25)... The Birth of Noir (2/1)... Boyle Heights & Monterey Park (2/15)... Raymond Chandler’s L.A. (2/22) and Route 66 Road Trip (2/29)
MORE THAN SATURDAY AFTERNOON TOURS We offer private versions of most of our tours (up to 55 people), and Downtown L.A. walking tours for smaller groups. Does your L.A.-area library, club or historical society host guest speakers? Ask them to book us.

The Real Black Dahlia (1/4)
$64.00

Pasadena Confidential (11/23)
$64.00

The Lowdown on Downtown (1/18)
$64.00

AND FINALLY, LINKS

New on the Esotouric blog: Farewell to Fred Krinke, L.A.’s Fountain Pen King.

Recommended Reading: The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti by Susan A. Phillips, revealing a secret history hidden in plain sight. Read an excerpt here. Find more L.A. book recommendations.

Hear Esotouric on Take Two's Throwback Thursday: Kim on Simi Valley's oddball cult history (segment starts at 36:57) and Richard on the noir backstory of Cross Roads of the World (segment starts at 40:36).

Good buildings are being demolished at a fever pace. RIP Los Angeles hipped us to a Craftsman gem of old Hollywood and another in Koreatown, both doomed, and to neighbors raging over developer fraud on the preservation-minded owners of a showcase house.

The King Eddy Saloon lease is on the market, and we hope someone puts this Skid Row landmark back on its feet. We blame ourselves for finding the speakeasy fire door art, sparking the hype that led to the dive's decline.

A rare intact period row of storefronts is threatened by a redevelopment project which could block the Egyptian Theatre's backstage access and erase Red Stodolsky's Baroque Book Store, a significant Charles Bukowski site.

Video: Instead of spending $500,000+ per unit to house the homeless, we believe the historic Rancho Los Amigos, originally known as the L.A. County Poor Farm, should be put into service and not destroyed. 60 landmark buildings threatened with demolition!

Congratulations to our favorite neglected Elysian Park WWI memorial restoring couple, Courtland and Melissa. Their love for L.A.'s Victory Memorial Grove recently took a very sweet turn.

The Dutch Chocolate Shop is for sale. Who will be the next caretaker of this precious L.A. landmark and its secrets, like the quack clinic on the top floor?

The Getty Fire took Craig Ellwood's Zack (aka Henry) House (1952). RIP, beautiful.

An insightful profile of one of our favorite Angelenos, the bold seeker of public records and the secrets they reveal, Adrian Riskin of the Michael Kohlhaas blog.

The coordinated, high-level political disenfranchisement of Skid Row is deeply troubling. Why is Los Angeles a mess? Ask the people named in this suit.

Like a little folklore with your historic preservation and pretzels? Krampus is coming to Alpine Village.

Georgia debuts with musings on historic preservation and hyper-development in the Arts District, and gives the late, great Pickle Works the spotlight it deserves.

The Marciano brothers did a lot of damage to Millard Sheets' Scottish Rite Temple for their vanity "museum," and after just two years have closed the doors after staff unionized.

The Barry Building is an architectural and cultural gem (R.I.P. Dutton's books), rotting away while billionaire Charlie Munger lies that he can't afford to maintain it.

Video: Save LACMA board members (that's us!) speak out against Wilshire air rights gift. More updates here.

Bothwell Ranch, which the family claims grew citrus at a loss for decades, is a community landmark, soon to be an official one. (And as the Commissioners reminded the owners, it would be a the end of the world if the water was turned off, so don't do that.)

Islanders petition to keep Catalina's art deco Avalon Theatre open.

Residents of Spaulding Square made a video imploring Sacramento politicians not to impose one-size-fits-all development ordinances that will destroy their historic neighborhood.

Javi Anaya, whose uncle co-founded Cha Cha Cha in 1986, has strong words for the condo developers who appropriated the restaurant's name.

Bob Baker Marionette Theatre grand reopening festivities are free, and feature a special surprise we had a little something to do with.

Pasadena's "Father of Historic Preservation" memorialized with a permanent tribute. (And if you want to hear "The Bungalow Song" sung, join us on the Route 66 tour, when Richard will do the honors in Bob Winter's.)

A deep dive into the local activists who oppose the Olympic Games.

It's hard to get excited about food options at Wells Fargo's "Halo" development when you remember that Brookfield illegally demolished Lawrence Halprin’s Crocker Court, the landscape architect’s sole atrium design, over the 2017 holidays.

yrs for Los Angeles,
Kim and Richard
Esotouric