Just When We Think We Know Los Angeles, She Throws Us A New, Noir Curve Ball.
Gentle reader,
Greetings from your friendly historic Los Angeles sightseeing tour company, now offering digital programming until we can again organize groups to gather and explore the city we love.
It was a year ago yesterday that we made the hard but necessary decision to cancel our upcoming tours and retreat from public life.
Then we rattled around for weeks, occasionally muttering, “How long can this possibly last?” and “What do we do now?” The answer came into focus by the fall, and since September we’ve hosted 24 live Saturday webinars, some of them based on our bus tours, others on more general obsessions.
It has been a year of deep, distracting research, and we’re daily so very grateful for our health, and for the opportunity to keep telling Los Angeles stories, and to provide a weekly diversion and sense of community to others who love the city’s history and yearn to explore.
We spend our days in the past, squinting at newspaper microfilm and faint snapshots, dredging up traumas that have lost their ache and crafting them into cozy narratives. We can’t begin to process or record all the present heartbreak, so we’re appreciative of journalists like Jeff Sharlet, who has been collecting obituaries, talking with the bereaved and leaving a record behind for historians not yet born.
The biggest surprise of our transition to digital programming is the new discoveries we’ve made about landmarks we thought we knew well. Last week on The Birth of Noir webinar, we revealed the real-world Los Angeles corruption symbolism of the Double Indemnity death house at 8301 Quebec: it was home to John E. Bauer, the red-ringed foreman of the 1937 Grand Jury who stood in direct opposition to Cafeteria Kid Clifford Clinton’s campaign to clean the city up! We had never researched the location before, because it was impossible to drive a coach class tour bus up that winding hillside street. No longer tethered to a bus, our Los Angeles is bigger and richer.
For this week’s Saving South Los Angeles Landmarks webinar, we’ve made another jaw-dropping discovery, one that transforms our understanding of Bunker Hill redevelopment and philanthropy in Southern California. Tune in at noon Saturday to learn how greedy Italian nobility very nearly destroyed the Hollywood Bowl, and devastated a budding research institution. Plus the hot rod history and incredible rebirth of Harvey’s Broiler, the trouble with Governor Gage’s Mansion and Margaret Bach’s personal tale of restoring an Irving Gill masterpiece turned crash pad. For more info, or to reserve, click here.
On Saturday, March 20, it’s A Celebration of Paul R. Williams, Architect: From Hollywood Regency to SeaView Palos Verdes. We’ve put together a terrific group of writers, photographers, historians and preservationists to explore the legacy of this groundbreaking Modernist, how his work still shapes the landscape, and the hands-on experience of restoring and updating a remodeled Williams tract home, while respecting its beautiful bones. Get the skinny here.
And just added for Saturday, March 27 is Art Deco Leisure Suits: How Los Angeles Preserved the 1930s in the 1970s. This webinar picks up where the Los Angeles Historic Preservation, 1900s-1980s webinar left off, to explore the rebirths of the Biltmore Hotel and Oviatt building, how redevelopment revived Spring Street, the early days of the Los Angeles Conservancy in the Eastern Columbia Building, the epic battle to save the Wiltern Theatre, and how Tom Waits sprinkled stardust all over its stage. For more info, or to reserve your spot, click here.
Stay tuned as we roll out a new webinar program each Saturday. And remember if you can’t watch live or need to leave mid-stream, you can watch the recording for one full week. There’s still time to see The Birth of Noir with James M. Cain & Raymond Chandler through Saturday night.
These webinars are now available as On-Demand recordings: Storybook Architecture • The Dark Side of the West Side • In The Shadow of the Hotel Cecil • L.A. Historic Preservation, 1900s-1980s • Touring Southern California’s Architecture of Death • Crawford’s Markets • John Bengtson’s Silent Film Locations • George Mann’s Vintage L.A. • Pershing Square 1866-2020 • Cafeterias of Old L.A. • Programmatic Architecture • Angels Flight • Grand Central Market • Ohio River Valley • Bunker Hill • Charles Bukowski • Raymond Chandler • Black Dahlia • Dutch Chocolate Shop • Bradbury Building • Tunnels • L.A. Times Bombing and 13 Uncanny Crimes & Mysteries.
And we’d love to see you tomorrow at noon for Saving South Los Angeles Landmarks.
yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Subscribe! In the latest subscriber's edition of this newsletter—$10/month, cheap!—A Hidden Victorian Elevator Cage With A Bloodthirsty Past—we peer into a hotel broom closet that is as beautiful as it is terrifying.
WANT TO SUPPORT OUR WORK?
If you enjoy all we do to celebrate and preserve Los Angeles history, please consider signing up for (or gifting) the subscriber’s edition of this newsletter, or putting a little something into our digital tip jar. Gift certificates are available for any webinar in our library or upcoming calendar, starting at $10. Printed matter? We’ve got a swell selection of books and maps, some written by us, others sourced from dusty warehouses. For a wider selection, Bookshop uses the power of distributor Ingram to help independent bookstores stick around. We've curated a selection of uniquely Los Angeles titles, and when you order from these links, it supports participating local shops, and us, too. You can also click here before shopping on Amazon... & if you love what we do, please tell your friends.
AND WHAT'S THE NEXT TOUR? WHO KNOWS?!
We're dark until public health officials determine that groups can gather safely. But in addition to weekly webinar programs, we've got 138 episodes of the podcast You Can't Eat The Sunshine free to download for armchair explorers, and videos of the Downtown L.A. LAVA walking tours, plus Cranky Preservationist videos.
AND FINALLY, LINKS
New silent film locations sleuthing post from John Bengtson: Buster Keaton’s Early Days on Los Feliz. It's all wide open country boulevards, perfect for comic chase scenes.
After death of Clint Gilmore, Long Beach’s last independent music store might shutter forever.
First the bad news: this groovy undulated roof commercial building at 18210 Sherman Way in Reseda has been demolished. Now the good: City of L.A. cleared half a block and Brooks + Scarpa are building a new roller skating and ice rink!
A tenant's rights eminent domain protest happened on Bunker Hill last Saturday night. 9000 Angelenos were displaced from this land, the largest eminent domain seizure in American history.
It’s been years since our visit, and we wondered how Cambria folk art environment Nitt Witt Ridge was faring. Robert Bernstein took a tour, and documented the paper figures by caretaker Michael O'Malley that now inhabit Art Beal's garbage man's San Simeon. His Sid Vicious is perfect!
Hooking kids on L.A. history through a cartoon about young ghost hunters is a swell idea.
The Brown Derby's cameo from Laugh-In Magazine's guide to the real kooks of Hollywood (August 1969).
RIP Boyle Heights Sears, a beacon on the Eastside that is flickering out in the coming weeks. This National Register landmark could become a hub for creative small businesses and dining. Or it could become vacant blight. What's it going to be, Los Angeles?
There is a huge, half-naked statue of Marilyn Monroe that is an insult to her craft and beauty, and to Billy Wilder's genius. Mid-century modern enthusiasts are fundraising to keep it far from Palm Springs' protected landmark architectural viewshed.
The lease to operate the Queen Mary is back on the market, after a bumpy, bridge-burning ride under Urban Commons' management, executive arrests in Singapore, and now Delaware bankruptcy filing. Will gala Art Deco Balls resume under new operators?
Vintage diner news: a little birdie shared this sign taped to the door of Rod's Grill in Arcadia, thanking the community for their patronage, condolences and love for owner Manny Romero, who died from Covid. They are working hard to reopen and will have more updates soon. Here’s how Rod’s was saved from eminent domain.
The Academy Museum is finished, while LACMA is in ruins, months and millions behind schedule after cranes started sinking in the tarry soil. The May Company should have been the "new" LACMA galleries, but Michael Govan leased it to Oscar, cheap.
Remember when Councilman Mitch O'Farrell proposed Target fund a childcare center / affordable housing for looking the other way on Eric Garcetti's illegal upzoning of their Sunset Blvd. store? That didn't happen, nor did a sale. So: Blight.
The unfortunate temporary fencing is coming down on the Colorado Street Bridge, to be replaced by more elegant suicide prevention barriers. You can weigh in on the design options and learn more here.
Ghost sign alert! Zip Stevenson captured this amazing hand-painted Boss Overalls billboard, revealed by a recent demolition on Broadway south of Slauson. Made in Los Angeles—demand this brand! See it before it's obscured again.
This 1935 Wilshire Boulevard driving footage has been available for years on the Internet Archive, but with digitally enhanced color and sound by NASS, it now feels a lot like time travel.
Our miniaturist friend C.C. de Vere is running out of space for her tiny replicas of demolished Los Angeles landmarks. If you bought Ray Bradbury’s house or Yolk, she’d have room to memorialize more.
A million dollar price chop for the black and gold Art Deco Selig Building, if you’re in the market for a rare bauble.
We’re raising monarch butterfly caterpillars again, and making them pose for photo shoots.