Saturday's tour is a celebration of Bunker Hill's modernism while honoring lost Victorian gems... plus another juicy City Hall indictment!
Gentle reader,
This Saturday, you’re invited to take a walk through Downtown Los Angeles redevelopment history on an all new tour led by two fellows obsessed with the stories, landmarks and characters who shaped and populated Bunker Hill: Nathan Marsak and Gordon Pattison.
Nathan is the author of three books about the neighborhood, and as a licensed operator on Angels Flight Railway has a rare and special Bunker Hill bond. Gordon is likely the last person who can tell us first-hand what it felt like to live in the old Victorian neighborhood before it was bulldozed in an ill-conceived redevelopment scheme. He was the youngest working member of a family that operated a boarding house in the prettiest converted mansions on the hill.
Together, they will guide us up and over the new and “improved” Bunker Hill, to discover modernist marvels and useful shortcuts, preserved relics of the past (yes, we’ll be riding Angels Flight!) and swirling visions of an idealistic Jetsons style future that never came.
The tour is a celebration of publication of the hot off the presses Marsak’s Guide To Bunker Hill, which you can get signed on Saturday’s tour. Join us, do!
Now on to matters where our preservation advocacy intersects with the sleazy schemes of elected and appointed figures in Los Angeles City Hall. It’s still a very noir town, one Raymond Chandler would recognize.
So when we heard on Tuesday afternoon that CD9 councilman Curren Price had been indicted on public corruption charges, we did the Snoopy dance. Although his South Los Angeles district is not a major site for preservation battles, as a prominent committee member with a heavily weighted vote, Price’s toxic impact pollutes all of Los Angeles.
This includes Hollywood, where Price’s wife Del Richardson has been embedded in huge rent controlled apartment complexes, where developers pay her a fortune to displace tenants so her husband and his City Hall cronies can then vote to demolish the buildings for new towers.
If that all sounds unethical, it’s because it is. We’re frankly shocked to see criminal charges brought for blatant violations that have been public knowledge for years. Thanks, George Gascón!
Curren Price himself appears to be pretty dim-witted. On the bombshell secret recordings from the Federation of Labor, his council colleagues Nury Martinez and Kevin de Leon express exasperation with Price’s inability to understand how to deal with Mark Ridley-Thomas after he was indicted!
And independent journalist Daniel Guss, who essentially made the criminal case against Price in blog posts starting in 2017, has chronicled his failure to pass the bar, accurately represent himself in bankruptcy court or obtain a legal divorce without perjuring himself.
But even a dum-dum can cause a lot of harm, if he’s installed in a powerful political seat and used as part of a corrupt machine that exists to enact bad public policy and disenfranchise Angelenos for the benefit of the developers, lobbyists and lawyers who make these “public servants” and their handlers rich.
Soon after Price’s indictment dropped, preservation pals concerned about the fate of the Los Angeles Times buildings got in touch. Did we think these new criminal charges might help save the landmark from Onni Group’s plans to demolish half the block for massive towers? Hmmm… could they?
After checking the 2018 voting record to remind ourselves of what went down when, we logged in to make a brand new public comment on the Los Angeles Times landmarking council file (and you can, too!).
Even though the Times Mirror Square / Historic-Cultural Monument was officially deemed “Council action final” on 12/7/2018, we’ve hoped that the truth might yet come out about the obviously corrupt vote that sabotaged our designation—before the wrecking ball swings.
This is what we wrote:
Dear City Council members, District Attorney’s staff, FBI, DOJ and citizens of Los Angeles reading this comment in 2023 and in the future,
As of June 13, 2023 40% of the PLUM Committee members who voted to rewrite our Times Mirror Square landmark nomination—which Marqueece Harris-Dawson told us was being done at the explicit direction of former chair Jose Huizar after he was raided by the FBI—have either been sentenced to Federal prison for corruption (Mitchell Englander) or indicted for corruption (Curren Price).
PLUM Committee member Gil Cedillo, Huizar’s replacement, was disgraced after the public learned of his participation in an illegal meeting seeking to disenfranchise voters by manipulating redistricting maps, and ignored calls to step down from the Governor of California and President of the United States.
That’s 60% of PLUM making major land use decisions that citizens have every reason to suspect were bought and paid for.
This vote to rewrite our nomination stunk in the immediate aftermath of Jose Huizar’s FBI raids, and it reeks today. If the Los Angeles Times building where Otis Chandler built a great American newspaper is actually demolished for Onni Group’s tower, then the stench of corruption will forever taint its near neighbor, Los Angeles City Hall. Reverse these crooked approvals.
Maybe this is just the civic equivalent of yelling into a hole in the ground. And yet, six years after his bigamy made headlines, Curren Price is finally being held accountable. This gives us a weird feeling—could it be hope? Also, we like the idea that forever after, our complaints will be part of these overpaid D students’ permanent record, available for futuristic Angelenos to discover while fighting their own elected monsters. Unless, by some miracle, this dirty town cleans up its act!
yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Psst… If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar and a subscriber edition of this newsletter, 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. Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
New! Bunker Hill’s Modernist Marvels with Nathan Marsak Walk (Sat. 6/17) • The Real Black Dahlia Bus Tour (Sat. 6/24) • Echo Park Book of the Dead Bus Tour (Sat. 7/1) • New! The Run: Gay Downtown History Walk (Sat. 7/8) •Westlake Park Walk (Sat. 7/15) • Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles Bus Tour (Sat. 7/22) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue Walk (Sat. 8/5) • Charles Bukowski’s Los Angeles Bus Tour (Sat. 8/12)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
The ghosts of Hollywood are laughing uproariously as they welcome a new shade: Milt Larsen, native son, co-founder of the Magic Castle, salvager of treasurers from Victorians under the wrecking ball and reviver of the variety arts has left us.
As we get closer to the June 24 relaunch of our bus tour programming with The Real Black Dahlia—it's filling up, book your seat soon—we're looking back at Kim's hilarious appearance on Ghost Adventures. See it here.
In Curren Price’s CD9, a pretty shocking LADBS report on the state of the LAPD fireworks blast damaged historic buildings on East 27th Street: most remain red or yellow tagged, with owners ignoring or refusing access to city inspectors. Massive blight and loss of housing units.
Save me! Demolition permit granted for the recently sold Hans P. Larsen residence at 2514 Pennsylvania, Boyle Heights (1892). To be replaced by a duplex and 6-car garage, a project not yet approved.
Parker Center was demolished by Jose Huizar for no reason, its public art packed away for years. Now Tony Rosenthal's The Family Group is coming back—to a prominent spot on LAPD HQ, looking onto City Hall where its old home's fate was corruptly sealed. This is in satisfaction of requirements of the EIR. No word on any plans for Joseph Young's colossal Theme Mural of Los Angeles mosaic wall removed from Parker Center's lobby before demolition.
Some wonderful vintage trolley route sleuthing by Paul Ayers on John Bengtson's blog places Harold Lloyd's flubbed suicide attempt in the fast lane of the 101. Echo Park then and now.
New on Diarmid Mogg's Tenement Town blog, nominally about the lives of Edinburgh apartment houses, a horrible story of a young woman wronged in 1875 San Francisco.
For National Donut Day, we unveiled a new design in the Esotouric souvenir shop, celebrating Randy's and L.A.’s other giant roadside stands, on a retro tote or T-shirt. And speaking of those sweet treats, we're in the New York Times with Nathan Marsak, talking about the mythic Cooper Do-Nuts Riot and the demo threat facing real Los Angeles LGBTQ history sites like Morris Kight's house.
What's up with L.A. County's William S. Hart Park? Santa Clarita ran the takeover numbers and it's a pretty bad deal. Plus the museum would lose accreditation and digital assets are safer at the Natural History Museum. City Council met Tuesday to discuss and we live-tweeted the contentious hearing, which you can watch here (last 30 minutes). Save the Hart!
The Barrington Plaza Tenant Association has sued to halt the scam Ellis Act evictions. We hope it goes to trial and L.A. learns how many illegal Airbnbs were in this RSO building—and if the last fire started in one!
There’s an update to our post about the illegal Airbnb listing of an RSO unit in Charles Bukowski’s East Hollywood bungalow court. Scroll down to May 30, where an out of state law firm with some "interesting" clients urges removal of this ugly story, just because.
LAist reports on concerns about Skid Row Housing Trust receiver Mark Adams: unpaid LLC taxes, a recent 39% overbilling and his having maxed out contributions to the campaign of Hydee Feldstein Soto, whose office recommended Adams without vetting him.
Congratulations Nathan on your new book. I know the tour with Gordon, Richard and Kim will be not only brilliant but amazing !!!!
Your work with corruption is very admirable and well needed. I continue to be amazed and disgusted by what you uncover. Babs
Onni bought the loft building across from Bestia, tried to evict all the tenants, got sued in court and lost, and place is still empty.