Gentle reader,
We’re still on a brief public tour hiatus, so there’s no walking tour today.
Instead of showing nice folks around the town, we’re dusting and organizing our book and LP shelves, and finding forgotten gems (and some cat toys) tucked way back out of sight.
The housekeeping is needed to make room for the useful stack of reference books we picked up this week at the Southern California Genealogical Society Library at 417 Irving Drive, Burbank, a venerable volunteer-powered institution which has made the decision to deaccession some materials that have been digitized, in order to ease its move into a smaller building.
If you love Los Angeles-focused printed matter, you’ll want to pay a visit to see if any of those volumes marked “W” (for withdrawn, not want, as Kim suggested in the video above) are calling your name. The non-profit SCGS appreciates donations for the items you take, and you don’t have to be a member to use the library’s family history reference tools.
And no visit to Northwest Burbank is complete without a stop at Samuel’s Zaatar Factory & Bakery for a minty mashrouha wrap or slightly sour spinach burek pastry, or both.
A brief tour hiatus doesn’t mean we’re on vacation. In fact, we’ve never been busier, polishing long-simmering preservation, civic stewardship and storytelling tools we’ll be launching soon; trying to keep the city honest through sustained observation of what it does and doesn’t do, and helping folks who are trying to move houses to Altadena, salvage useful materials out of houses soon to be demolished, navigate the city’s impenetrable reporting mechanisms and stay sane, or sane enough.
We’ve been happy to see people using our new tool for reporting Los Angeles preservation concerns and discovering ways they can better handle the problems in their neighborhoods. This tool will continue to evolve, and we welcome your feedback.
We’re back next Saturday with Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue, a tramp up and over the time capsule Victorian suburb on the edge of the young city for tales of the fascinating characters who got up to such mischief once upon a time.
Plus, new on this edition, you’ll hear about how Sacramento’s war on historic housing has launched a missile to the heart of this dense, diverse mixed-income neighborhood, and what the people who love living here are doing to fight back.
Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens.
Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles’ past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city’s soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Know Your Downtown Los Angeles (9/19) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Highland Park Arroyo Time Travel Trip (10/17) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
If you’ve been reading Empty Los Angeles, you know about the Patton St Victorians and neighborhood scuttlebutt that the owner fought with his caretaker, called the cops, left these lovelies vacant to burn. Who can locals turn to for help saving housing?
City Hall’s south lawn lost some history—and a great spot to sit—when the stump of Overton H. Mennet’s felled redwood tree was ground into mulch without notice. The plaque honoring Union Civil War service remains, though like every metal monument in L.A., it’s vulnerable.
We keep seeing Charlie Chaplin, skinny and knowing, on our South Los Angeles demo-threatened landmark check-ins. Anybody know who is painting the Little Tramp?
Fascinating deep dive history of City Spa by longtime shvitzer Yitzhak Eliezer, who uncovers the lore of the original Pico Burnside Baths and its wild art freak era as the WET Magazine clubhouse.
Extraordinary public comment at Los Angeles City Council by Wayne Spindler. As councilmembers zone out, he explicitly names Herb Wesson as being behind the indictments of Curren Price, Jose Huizar and Mark Ridley-Thomas. Was the City Council President really working for the FBI?
We remain heartbroken over Boney Island’s long goodbye, but grateful that it gave us the opportunity to tell the Los Angeles Times about the “sadistic, demented element” in City Hall that seeks to crush Angeleno creativity. These haters must be stopped. P.S. Tell Boney Island you love it, and reach out here if you have a big space they can use this fall.
Lake Elsinore Dream Center, sister org to Echo Park, has a dream: revive one of So Cal’s last surviving Victorian tourist hotels. But years of blight has the city ready to force demolition. Send prayers and luck to the lawyers.
On August 13, we observed demolition of the Hollywood Center Motel before permits were approved. No masks on the crew at a known asbestos remediation site. We tried to warn them. Please be careful if you’re near Sunset and Las Palmas. City of Los Angeles: do your job and care for our heritage and our people!
We wanted to barf to see rubble clawed into the kidney-shaped pool where Captain Beefheart, Neil Young, Janis Joplin and Paul Revere & the Raiders sunned their tummies. A great roadside rest stop, wrecked for nothing.
If you’re not up to speed on the terrible tale of how the City did nothing to stop this landmark from being destroyed, click here and get ready to scream!
Sweet comment (scroll down) on our 2020 post about Pasadena’s rediscovered Adohr Milk Farm neon sign that was nearly lost due to unsourced online gossip, from Route 66 explorer Jamie who feels perfectly comfortable making up their own mind if it’s okay to love it.
This construction site with nasty picture windows is the rent stabilized 4061 W Melrose bungalow court that CD13 seeks to take control away from Karen Bass’ Planning Commission after it ruled it was cool apartments became tiny houses. But where are the tenants and who wants to live in cottages remodeled for transient guest use?
Gila monsters rarely kill people. In August 1915, “Poison Proof” Peruvian L.E. Debonnaire was nipped working a Main Street freak show. His pals poured so much hooch down his neck, it might be what did him in. He was still spouting carney patter when his heart stopped. RIP.
What’s oozing out around the edges of the LA Jazz Fest collapse is Airbnb lobbyist access to corrupt officials making backroom deals to turn housing Angelenos need into unlicensed hotels. (The DOJ said Mark Ridley-Thomas let Airbnb write County policy, but chose not prosecute that.) Also, the City Family shouldn’t use our money to prop up inept wannabe event promoters who do lousy work, if they do it at all.
The Aztec Hotel is shuttered a Route 66 marvel with unique challenges for small business owners in the storefronts. The Yelp buzz about the softly opening Mayan Bar & Noodles in the old Brass Elephant space is that it’s worth a detour. If you’re in the market for a Route 66 money pit, you can think about it over dumplings. (The listing came down, but we suspect the Aztec Hotel is still available.)
As Karen Bass tramps through the ghost town World Trade Center lobby with a fuzzy mic, Lisa Napoli reminds us the touted dense new affordable housing development occupies the ruins of the dense, demolished Bunker Hill neighborhood. Down with dumb planners!
We peeped over the change of ownership sign taped to the window and found the lights are on inside Cole’s Pacific Electric Café. The ghosts are enjoying the peace before the sloppy living return.
A sleeping Victorian dame, the Lewis Residence is looking a bit neglected. Let’s all keep an eye on 1425 Miramar, owned by a reclusive religious nonprofit with a very small membership.
For those of us who grew up in Los Angeles, the free weeklies could be where you found out who was playing at the Music Machine, or where you got a political awakening—or both. The derelict L.A. Weekly across from the ruined Hollywood Center Motel wants you to read this memory holed 2013 piece.
Landmark nominations submitted for Joe Gillis’ bachelor pad the Chateau Alto Nido (by Hollywood Heritage) and for moderne marvel Casa de Cadillac (by the Los Angeles Conservancy). Wild these iconic L.A. places are not yet designated. Soon! Visit the Alto Nido with us on the Franklin Village Old Hollywood walk on September 19.
The Perry Mansion only turns 150 once. Will you be there to toast this beautiful time traveler on her sesquicentennial?
Sam Quinones is uncomfortable with the DSA party platform Workers Deserve More and the neglect of working class LA communities where abandoned development projects are drug squats that burn. The comparison to the successful Drew Street crackdown is stark.
We’ve been watching Tokio Florist for years. Redcar sold without restoring or reactivating the landmark. In 2024, new owner Chris Amendola announced plans to turn it into a boutique hotel. After nearly two years with no progress on that plan, we have a double scoop and the second one is alarming. The bar up the block, Tenants of the Trees, is to be replaced by a mixed-use extended stay facility, and that development is seeking 22 parking spots at Tokio Florist, which would make it very hard to ever reactivate the vacant landmark.
Preservation pal Damian Sullivan reports the sudden closure of the Saharan / Sunset West (1954), which already had its great sign altered sans permits. No evidence of sale or homeless facility lease. Just no rooms. Where are tourists supposed to stay when they come to Hollywood, much less aging mafia dons in pink pajamas?
