Gift certificates for the holidays & a 2-for-1 offer on Sunday's Miracle Mile tour
Gentle reader,
Greetings of the season from your friendly Los Angeles tour guides and historians, with the traditional December holiday shopping reminder that we do offer gift certificates redeemable on walking tours and bus tours.
These tours are a chance to dig deep into the secret heart of the city we love, in the company of others who are passionate about Los Angeles. We’re biased, of course, but there really is nothing quite like an Esotouric tour, and when you give one, you’ll get stories in return.
Certificates can be emailed for immediate distribution, and we can also print them and mail out a vintage Los Angeles history book or map from our souvenir shop with a gift certificate and a note from you tucked inside.
Plus here’s something brand new and pretty fancy: a pass good for the lucky recipient and nine of their friends to enjoy a private, three hour walking tour, with a choice of a dozen immersive time travel trips, including, Angeleno Heights, Evergreen Cemetery, Franklin Village, Raymond Chandler and The Run: Gay Downtown History.
So avoid the crowds and let us be a part of your holiday gift giving this year. Your purchase will help support our historic preservation advocacy, which is ramping up with some very interesting announcements we hope to share soon, and we sure appreciate the support.
As a small thank you to our gentle readers, and to make it easier for folks on a budget to join us on a tour, here’s a discount offer for this Sunday’s Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness. Two people can attend for the price of one, when you visit this special link (https://tinyurl.com/miraclemiletour) and purchase two tickets. As you check out from that tinyurl link, one of the tickets will be free.
That’s a $50 savings which we hope you’ll take advantage of, and join us for this rare Sunday walking tour featuring some strange and delightful tales shared in the shadows of familiar landmarks like LACMA (or what’s left of it), the May Company / Academy Museum, Johnie’s coffee shop, and the charming historic apartment district just below Wilshire Boulevard.
On this tour, you’ll meet a Love Rat and a psychic who communed with saber-toothed cats, a sticky fingered starlet and the scrappy conceptual artists who delighted in trolling LACMA’s curators, and you’ll experience the frisson of Cold War anxiety crossed with step-right-up showmanship. We don’t give this tour often, and it’s one of our favorites—hope to see you there… plus one!
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. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking and bus tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
• Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness Walking Tour (Sun. 12/17) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Walking Tour (Tues. 12/26) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 Walking Tour (Sat. 1/20) • Broadway: Downtown Los Angeles’ Beautiful, Magical Mess Walking Tour (Sat. 1/27) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive Walking Tour (Sat. 2/3) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip Walking Tour (Sat. 2/10) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue Time Travel Trip Walking Tour (Sat. 2/17) • The Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour (Sat. 2/24) • Echo Park Book of the Dead Crime Bus Tour (Sat. 3/9) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop Walking Tour (Sat. 3/16) • The Run: Gay Downtown History Walking Tour (Sat. 3/23) • John Fante’s Downtown Los Angeles Birthday Walking Tour (Sat. 4/6)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
The Real Deal reports that Relevant Group has sold the Morrison Hotel site at a loss to AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the entity that in May 2022 submitted the landmark nomination that the city has failed to move forward to a hearing. The sale is for $12.4 Million, with AHF and Relevant signing a development pact. Talk about making a deal with the devil (Relevant illegally gutted the potential National Register monument, and bragged about it to us in one of the freakiest meetings we’ve ever had)... but we think turning the Morrison back into affordable housing is worth it. It has been boarded up for almost twenty years!
File under: international real estate empire scandals. The older De Cotiis brothers claim their siblings defrauded them to control all of Onni Group. This Vancouver developer bribed Jose Huizar to change the Los Angeles Times landmark we submitted, and there are horrible allegations about Heidi Planck's death in their Hope+Flower building.
Angelenos watching HBO’s The Gilded Age and curious about Emily Roebling's work on the Brooklyn Bridge, try to sneak a peek into the original corner entry of Angel City Brewery building, where custom Batchelder tiles honor the family's woven wire rope innovations.
As The Strand publishes "Requiem," a late Raymond Chandler poem about the merciful death of his invalid wife, we're thinking how he wanted his archives accessible to Angelenos at UCLA, but the Estate placed its holdings at Oxford under strict control. Yes, we're still miffed the Raymond Chandler Estate quashed a centennial production of the lost comic operetta we discovered, which Chandler wrote in collaboration with Julian Pascal before stealing his wife. One day you'll see it!
A week after the attempted theft of one of the First Street Viaduct historic plaques was reported to LAPD, it is still in this sad shape. We spent yesterday advocating with different city and state entities to start protecting historic memorial metal. L.A.'s heritage ain't for melting!
Nathan Marsak's Bunker Hill guides are on sale for the holidays, and are a must for anyone trying to make sense of the original sin from which all Los Angeles City Planning failures flow.
Empty Los Angeles asks if Skid Row’s Southern Hotel really in compliance as it exits REAP? And are the taxpayers going to have to bail SRO Housing out, too? Skid Row Housing Trust's derelict SROs would not be a public expense had there been minimal enforcement by the city.