Gentle reader,
When we cut away from 7th and Broadway to visit the open air foodie bazaar of St. Vincent Court, we were just planning to split a grilled Halloumi sandwich and drink a cup of cardamom tea.
Instead, we stumbled onto a beautiful instance of Downtown L.A.’s cultural melting pot, bubbling away with a toasty, intoxicating scent on a portable stovetop set up on on a wee table outside our friend Arto’s Broadway Deli. And it stopped us cold.
For on this sunny afternoon, Arto’s friend Berch had decided to make halva just like his grandmother used to make in Northern Cyprus, the island home he and about 200,000 other Christians had been forced to flee after the Turkish invasion of 1974.
The landmarks and treasures and gravestones left behind live on in memory, but often nowhere else. Like in Bunker Hill Los Angeles, the Victorian mixed-use neighborhood lost to an ill-conceived redevelopment plan and mourned by our dear friend Gordon Pattison, home has been erased from the map.
But when someone leaves their homeland, even when very young, they bring things that don’t need to be packed or shipped or carried.
Things like the sounds of kind voices instructing them in community traditions, even before they understand spoken language. The smell of traditional dishes cooking on the fire. The clatter of the spoon in the pan as the halva thickens, the hiss of butter, the interested people who notice what you’re doing and come over to watch and cadge a taste.
All of that and more is in the baggage that Berch brought with him to Los Angeles.
Watching the process of halva making was hypnotic and very moving, and we’re grateful that Berch let us into his world and shared the memories stirred by his cooking in the shade of the old Bullock’s Department Store bridge in the historic heart of Los Angeles, a place we love fiercely and love to share on tours and with friends.
Our families didn’t come to Los Angeles from Northern Cyprus, but like so many Angelenos, we came here because things were bad enough in the Old Country that staying put wasn’t really an option.
This place promised opportunity and freedom, and it offered the closest thing in the modern world to a medieval metropolis where trade routes intersected and all different populations could form their own cultural pockets, and be welcome in others.
May the City of Angels ever welcome those who no longer have a home, and become a real home for our friends who had to leave their own.
Saturday’s tour is a cinematic and true crime extravaganza, featuring iconic Film Noir locations and the real life horrors that inspired screenwriters to craft their moody tales. And after the tour is over, you can stroll on down to Cole’s, which is scheduled to close after August 2, to make your own noirish memories. 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
• 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
New from Empty Los Angeles: a map of vacant, derelict buildings LADBS is tracking—some since the 1990s!—and illegal Airbnbs with citations. When they tell you we can build our way out of the housing use crisis, ask why they won't do anything about this. The map is featured in the new sidebar Wiki about the real roots of L.A.'s housing affordability crisis on the LosAngelesPreserved subreddit. Direct map link here.
Old school Cole's French Dip, when it was still called the P.E. Buffet, captured in this weird scene from Mind Over Murder (1979), a TV movie rip off of The Eyes of Laura Mars. We've got to save this 117 year old L.A. treasure for future generations! If you are interested in purchasing Cole's, please contact: Derrick Moore (213) 613-3334 derrick.moore@cbre.com.
RIP Jewel Thais-Williams, who turned the White Diana Ballroom (est. 1925) into the iconic Catch One, a disco for all at a time when most LA gay clubs had jerks at the door. What a thrill to see this vintage sign at the In the Mean Time Mens Group HQ!
The (union busting) Marciano is back. Free, reservations required. Worth it to explore Millard Sheets' great Scottish Rite lodge and the abandoned museum of So Cal masonry, but the magnificent mosaic forest can no longer be seen.
Happening right now: Melrose/Harper planning commission hearing. 250+ neighbors don't want another huge, underground river piercing project that floods the street like happened a block away. But California doesn't need CEQA, right?
155 years ago, the French Benevolent Society built a community hospital in what is now Chinatown. It doesn't look very old, but there's history within! Now, a developer seeks to knock it down. Not without an archeological survey. And C.C. de Vere of the Frenchtown Confidential blog is not amused!
While scouting our new silent film tour route in MacArthur Park, we gathered some Kigelia africana blossoms for General Otis of the Los Angeles Times. He was no hero, but he's our SOB, and as the last of three sculptural figures still standing, we always pay our respects.
Never surveyed as an historic resource because it's gated, the early Hollywood landmark Occidental Studios (est. 1913, before the Major Studio Era), is on the market for $45 million. Read all about it!
Our preservation pal Nathan Marsak's dream came true, and the angels sang.
After 2919 St. George sold for $1.9M, Kathleen Perricone wrote about Alice Blackburn's slow motion Hollywood Freeway condemnation party. New owners want to demolish for six spec houses. Preservationists wondered—could it be saved again?! It can—for Altadena! A great idea in 1948 is even better today. Stay tuned for more about the exciting project to find houses with demolition plans and save them for families who lost historic homes in the Eaton fire.
The charming A.E. Brucker Residence (Rudolph Meier, 1926) at 177 N. Citrus Ave. is a Citrus Square Historic District contributor. Owners just pulled a demo permit. Can it be moved to Altadena—or elsewhere in the district?
A lovely block almost entirely lost to upzoning, but these two perfect 1930s houses are still standing, now with demo notices. Can they be moved to Altadena before it's too late?
Feeling pressure from displaced Pacific Palisades families seeking to rent, Beverly Hills moves to impose a blanket Airbnb ban. This would be transformative in Los Angeles, which doesn't just ignore illegal listings, but hides complaints from prosecutors.
Are air raid sirens coming back? After Beverly Hills, West Hollywood is the second municipality exploring reimplementation of freestanding sirens for emergency alerts. This would have saved lives in Altadena. Where are the County and City and will they even inspect our derelict, dangerous siren inventory?
Bungalow court living is great... unless your landlord decides to boost his bottom line by taking away garages to become ADUs. Tenants at 640 Santa Clara, Venice were ignored at the hearing, are now appealing the City's approval.
As we were starting our recent Miracle Mile tour, we noticed that some jerk has snatched a fang from the La Brea Tar Pits' sabre tooth tiger statue! This ancient pussy cat looks ridiculous without it.
Do you remember the cat we found abandoned in front of the Hotel Cecil while leading a true crime tour? We put a photo online and angels came to rescue Peter, who is a sweet, fetching boy ready for his forever home. Contact Luxe Paws if that's with you!
L.A. Times story: Evicted from her apartment at 68, an artist starts anew in a sunny L.A. fourplex. We all lose out as Angelenos when community members get displaced, under the Ellis Act or through cash for keys. Ms. Weiss' former address on Palmerston is easily found online, and there is no recorded Ellis Act eviction on the city's ZIMAS portal, where it remains listed as RSO housing. The owner is attempting to sell it as a single family home for $3.2 Million, twice what they paid—and just dropped the asking price by $100K this week. The fragile coral reef of relationships around one's home also functions as a safety net. We look after the people we know, we notice changes that are worrying to properties and to people. Starting over somewhere far from home should be a choice, but this city incentivizes speculation and displacement.
In the Pico-Union district, storefronts with hand painted signs huddle close against the preserved mansions (now apartments) of Alvarado Terrace. The entire block is for sale, threatening to displace community serving stores, barber shop and banquet hall.
Checking in on the sad state of Diamond Bakery and the Fairfax Theatre, ruined and derelict, no friendly faces and nothing to nosh on, just puke on the sidewalk and a sense that Los Angeles deserves so much better than letting developers suck all the joy out of our town.
It's only a report back, and they often get lost in the City Hall weeds, but maybe, just maybe, Los Angeles can have herds of fire goats to munch dry brush. We advocated for them in 2007!
A snippet of Chief Deputy City Controller Rick Cole's exit interview at Los Angeles City Council, his voice breaking on the word "corruption."
H in Koreatown was the poster child for illegal nightly rentals of RSO units from the 2023 ProPublica/Capital & Main investigation. The city "cracked down,” but you can still book a room—and now it's for sale as a luxury hotel! If you see Mayor Karen Bass, ask why she won’t do anything to return existing affordable housing to Angelenos.
At last! Foreclosed, vacant, rat-infested 252 S. June has been tormenting Hancock Park neighbors for 16 years! New owners have a plan to demolish for a new Tudor Revival home. Thanks for nothing, LADBS (click the “code enforcement” pane).
At 801 Sweetzer, this spectacular Moorish Revival apartment house is the work of Carl Kay (née Kazanjian), best known for Philip Marlowe's pad in the High Tower. The family fled the Armenian genocide, bringing many stories.
Blight comes to Beverly Grove, or a Nightmare on Flores Street. Such beautiful apartments, all in a row and around the corner, tenants paid off to go away, demolition planned but delayed, and then the fires and the fights and the strangers coming and going. None of this is right.
Some of L.A.'s best apartments are unavailable for rent. 310-14 S. Crescent Heights, the Charles Walter Sahland Apartments (Milton Black, 1936) recently sold for $1.6M with 3 units empty, and the suggestion that Black's streamline garage can be replaced with ADUs.
Farewell to Dead Outlaw: the musical about Main Street's very own mummified old west train robber, has closed. But if you didn't catch Elmer McCurdy on Broadway, you can meet him at L.A.'s weird new museum on our August 16 tour!
For sale, with an upzoning pitch to attract a demolition minded buyer: Hollywood's session cat row, across from the original Musician's Local 47. Stein on Vine and Professional Drum Shop are irreplaceable treasures of this creative city and need to stay!
In long delayed response to a four year old court order finding that Relevant Group had illegally piecemealed multiple parcels on Selma into a massive Dream Hotel entertainment complex in an effort to avoid environmental review, subject of an appeal by Citizens for a Better Los Angeles and a lawsuit by The Sunset Landmark Investments, LLC, the City of Los Angeles finally rescinds the 2019 rezoning of the western portion of the site (6421-6429 1/2 West Selma Avenue / 1600-1604 North Wilcox Avenue). The Piano Bar and the other small businesses were displaced and four useful Hollywood buildings demolished for nothing. Days later, Relevant Group's lender facilitates the listing of 1220-1240 Hope Street, the partially burned parcels north of the Morrison Hotel, for sale with entitlements to build micro units. Lender involvement in the sale suggests this is an effort to avoid foreclosure.
Palmdale Noir! Mayor Richard J. Loa stripped of title and removed from committees pending investigation into “confidential allegations.” His predecessor Jim Ledford pleaded guilty to perjury for hiding payoffs from consultants. Loa cries foul. Watch the wild City Council meeting where it all went down:
Hop in the Los Angeles culinary history time machine with this 1968 episode of Mike Roy's KNX show, The Food News Hour, as a listener asks for help finding tamarind to put in her Indonesian Rijsttafel, and Mike tells her to call the Islander tiki bar!
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