Gentle reader,
There’s a mythical creature that the pro-development lobbyists want you to hold in contempt: selfish people who have nothing better to do than to rally to keep affordable housing out of their neighborhoods. The word they use is “nimby” (for “not in my backyard”) and we believe it is a slur.
That’s not the Los Angeles we know. Angelenos are compassionate and generous.
The reality is that neighbors are far more likely to fight to keep existing affordable housing in their neighborhoods, and to help the nice people who live in it from being displaced to cheaper, distant housing or forced into street homelessness.
That’s what’s happening right now on Carlton Way, just off Western and around the corner from the celebrated Pink Elephant Liquor store in East Hollywood: a consortium of locals were so mortified when they heard about the proposed loss of seven historic apartment buildings where about 50 of their neighbors live that they’ve helped to organize a tenants’ union, posted fliers for blocks around, attended tedious public hearings and begged their councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez to stick up for the vulnerable renters who helped elect him explicitly because the longtime councilmember Mitch O’Farrell was a shill for big real estate who helped push thousands of renters out of Hollywood and wrecked the commercial corridors.
If you’d like to learn more about opposition to the tone deaf scheme that seeks to build luxury high rise housing by demolishing most of a block where low income people currently live, you can follow the CarltonSerranoTenants on Instagram or see and sign their Change.org petition here.
We recently stopped by to see the threatened buildings, met the resident squirrel, marveled at the lovely tree canopy and dignified old Hollywood buildings that are threatened with the wrecking ball and thought about the crusty old guy who used to live across the street.
Charles Bukowski’s eclectic Craftsman bungalow apartment home was demolished about a decade after he moved down to San Pedro in ‘78, and the north side of the block densely redeveloped with charmless beige boxes. Their ugliness inspired us to advocate for the landmarking of his previous East Hollywood home, on DeLongpre.
The doorknobs, window glass and spice racks of the Carlton Way residence are in some landfill now, but fans still seek Buk’s pungent essence around the corner at Pink Elephant Liquor, and marvel that a middle aged postal worker could reinvent himself as an internationally acclaimed confessional poet, novelist and screenwriter, spinning gold from the raw and raunchy things that happened to him in such an ordinary place.
Not everyone in Bukowski’s writing is a drunk or a sex worker—he lived in a working class, immigrant neighborhood and his neighbors show up, too.
Bukowski’s gone now, too, but we feel like his scrappy spirit is buoying the East Hollywood folks who are trying so hard to keep their vulnerable neighbors from losing their homes. When you’ve got a home, and people who know and care for you, you’ve got a life. Maybe the developer who bought all the buildings in the middle of this sleepy block has every legal right to kick these people out and tear their buildings down, but he does not have the moral right.
If elected officials in Los Angeles were serious about addressing housing insecurity, they would follow Spain's lead and block illegal Airbnbs (like this one in Bukowski Court). But it's far too profitable to force Angelenos into homelessness, then turn "solving" it into a systemic grift. The dense new buildings that have gone up everywhere, too many of them kept empty for mysterious reasons, are justified by this manufactured crisis.
We stand with the Carlton Way tenants, and their friends on surrounding streets. We all would be lucky to have neighbors as willing to drop everything, dig into the weeds of land use in Los Angeles, and speak up for what’s sane and what’s right.
And over in City Hall, at least one elected official is starting to do just that—at last!
Saturday’s tour is The Run, an excursion to a lost world of queer connections and activism in the heart of Downtown L.A. From rowdy bars to subterranean speakeasies, steam rooms to ball rooms, we’ll take you where the action was, to meet some extraordinary characters who changed the world while fighting for the right simply to be. Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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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
• The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/24) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/31) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/7) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (6/14) •Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury, Basements, Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/21) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (6/22) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (7/12) • The Real Black Dahlia (7/19) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (7/26) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (8/9) • Weird West Adams / Elmer McCurdy Museum (8/16) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (8/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (8/30) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (9/6) • Film Noir / Real Noir (9/20) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (9/27)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
We have a limited number of copies of Leo Politi's final book, Angeleño Heights (1989), a celebration of the architecture and community of his beloved Victorian neighborhood. A great gift for L.A. lovers!
Preserve the California Digital Newspaper Collection! After two decades, the state legislature has stopped funding this priceless resource, so UC Riverside is turning to history lovers like you to help keep the lights on.
New from Bunker Hill historian Nathan Marsak: yeah, he mourns the Victorians lost to bonehead redevelopment officers' pipe dreams of "progress," but have you seen the spectacular 1960s-90s high rise lobbies? Which one is your favorite?
We’re quoted and our photos used as SF Gate picks up the Downey butchery mystery: World's oldest neon McDonald's sign damaged in Calif. construction snafu. Can Speedee and his groovy golden arch perch be saved?
Tragic loss! The Million Article Thompson hardware store neon at 8938 S Vermont was one of South L.A.'s coolest relics. Roadside Architecture chronicler Debra Jane Seltzer notes it has collapsed. Survey LA says it was National Register eligible… and preservation pal Mike Callahan is digging into the likelihood that the City filed a code violation and forced the owner to take it down, with no notice to the preservation community or Office of Historic Resources.
"High end finishes" is what the present owners of 400 S. Mariposa Ave. call the hideous grey slop they imposed on half the units in this daffy aqua dingbat (1956)... but she's still got great bones, and a kidney shaped pool. Someone: fix her up!
No reasonable person could expect to get away with what L.A.'s Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Brian K. Williams just plead guilty to doing. Using his Google Voice account on his personal phone to call his city phone, triggering an investigation of the incoming call, is idiotic. Does he have post Covid psychosis? Was he being advised by online "friends"? Are others vulnerable? We need to know!
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