Gentle reader,
Holiday shopping can be tough, especially when you’ve got a lot of nice people who you’d like to make happy, and limited time to pick something unique for each of them.
Thinking about our newsletter subscribers, most nearby and others living far away, but all caring about Los Angeles enough to read our sometimes hopeful, but too often infuriating reports about the state of the City and its precious cultural and architectural landmarks, it occurred to us that you might enjoy something happy and quirky and L.A.-centric that doesn’t take up any space.
So embedded above is Miniature Los Angeles: Meet the Artists Who Craft Tiny Versions of the Historic Landmarks Angelenos Love, a complementary three-hour webinar from our lockdown series (all of them available for monthly or yearly streaming or individual downloads) that originally aired live in August 2021.
At the bottom of this newsletter you’ll find all the information about this crafty program and the artists and historians who participated, sharing their passion for cool buildings made small enough to hug. We hope you enjoy this time travel trip, and are inspired to craft your own wee landmarks, or to seek out some of the featured artists, who share their work on social media and sometimes sell it.
So that’s our gift to you. And if you’re still trying to cross names off your holiday list, may we suggest an Esotouric gift certificate, good for the tour of their choice into the secret heart of Los Angeles?
Through the end of the year, we’re offering some special perks for gift shoppers:
Buy 3 gift certificates ($150) here and 1 person gets 1 month’s complementary video viewing access (regular price $50) to our streaming webinar channel. You can gift or use the link yourself. Offer expires 12/31.
Buy 6 gift certificates ($300) here and 2 people get 1 month’s complementary video viewing access (regular price $100) to our streaming webinar channel. You can gift both links, use one and gift the other, or use both months yourself. Offer expires 12/31.
Buy 10 gift certificates for the price of 8 ($400) here, and help cover the legal fees incurred when we got subpoenaed by the owners of Marilyn Monroe’s house.
Buy a private Esotouric walking tour ($500) here, and you may bring up to 15 people at some future date at the base 10 person rate. Offer expires 12/31.
And if you’re just looking to treat yourself before the end of the year, we’re offering two Christmas / Hanukkah week walking tours: Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness on Sunday 12/22 (noon-3pm) and Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher on Thursday, 12/26 (10:30am-1:30pm). Join us on both of these tours at the discounted rate of $75 (regular price $100) when you click the special link here. Already have a ticket on one of these tours and want the deal? Email us and we’ll take care of it.
Thanks for being part of our merry band of preservation pals, and here’s wishing you and yours a season of joy and good cheer and none of your favorite places getting demolished!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens.
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 and a subscriber edition of our main 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 tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
• Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sun. 12/22) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher (Thurs. 12/26) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 1/18) • Broadway (Sat. 1/25) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sat. 2/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (Sat. 2/15) • The Real Black Dahlia (Sat. 3/1) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice Downtown L.A. (Sat. 3/8) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (Sat. 3/15) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (Sat. 3/22) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (Sun. 3/30) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (Sat. 4/5) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 4/12) • Leo Politi Loves Los Angeles (Sat. 4/19) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (Sat. 4/26)
Miniature Los Angeles: Meet the Artists Who Craft Tiny Versions of the Historic Landmarks Angelenos Love Webinar
Join Esotouric, L.A.’s most eclectic sightseeing tour company, for an immersive cultural history and crafting webinar celebrating local artists who shrink beloved Southland architectural landmarks down to pocket size for fun, love and profit.
Model making from commercial plastic kits has long been a popular hobby, but in recent years there’s been an explosion of scratch built miniature production by Los Angeles artists who specialize in replicating vintage signs and buildings. Fans can vicariously enjoy watching the tiny treasures take shape on social media, buy a finished model, or even commission something completely original for their own collection.
In this webinar, we’ll meet some of the city’s most prolific miniature model makers to learn about their passion for replicating local landmarks both lost and still standing, their working methods, inspirations and research techniques, and some of the interesting experiences they’ve had while crafting and sharing L.A. history that fits on a tabletop.
Our special guest miniaturists are:
Mike Battle (@mikesbattle)— When Rochester native and The Simpson’s show color modelist Mike Battle started planning his wedding to Simi Valley’s Kelly Brooks, the couple cooked up a plan for him to build miniature L.A. and Rochester vintage signs as centerpieces for their guests’ tables. After the ceremony was postponed due to the pandemic, Mike just kept making more elaborate miniature places that have significance to the couple’s relationship, and taking the illuminated finished pieces out for night time photo ops with the originals that survive. Local landmarks that light up like real neon include Burbank’s Safari Inn motel, Felix Chevrolet, Samuel’s Florist, Larry’s Chili Dog, Compton Shoe Repair, the Brown Derby and, of course, NoHo’s towering and terrifying Circus Liquor clown.
Chris Casady – Chris is a retired Hollywood animator and Los Angeles native with a soft spot for L.A.’s cultural landmarks. After attending local California Institute of the Arts as a member of its first student body in the early ‘70s he lucked into a position as a Rotoscope artist at Industrial Light and Magic, then in Van Nuys, working on the first Star Wars movie, as his first job. This catapulted Chris into a career in “special effects" and he built his own studio patterned after the one he worked in at ILM, specializing in optical effects, hand drawn animation and rotoscope techniques, all before the advent of CGI. Chris worked on many iconic movies of the 1980s like TRON, The Empire Strikes Back, Galaxina, Battlestar Galactica, Airplane!, Piranha, My Science Project, Short Circuit, Beetlejuice, Dreamscape, Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Running Man, His directing credits include an animated music video for the Beastie Boys, and a duet video between Eddie Murphy and Michael Jackson. His animated film, Pencil Dance, won awards at festivals in Canada, France, Japan and Italy. His film Puddle Jumper was shown at MOMA, NY and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. He was a judge at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 1990, where his film won first place in 1988. But for this webinar, Chris is going to talk about his personal work in Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI). In the mid 1990s, Chris bought a $100 software program for the Macintosh computer called Bryce, after Bryce Canyon. They called it a landscape generator, but you could do simple modeling with it. He became obsessed with this program because it was so easy to use and delivered great results. Driving around Los Angeles, Chris would see things that looked like good Bryce modeling challenges. He couldn’t resist making his own CGI versions of favorite landmarks, and Bryce delivered great results. Chris will share a selection of these virtual landmarks, including Griffith Park Observatory, the Shakespeare Bridge, Krotona Apartments and the original, since demolished, circular Velaslavasay Panorama in Hollywood. Chris used Bryce obsessively until around 2006. The program was discontinued in 2010.
C.C. de Vere (@littlelostangeles)—Historic preservation advocate and chronicler of the early French history of Los Angeles through her Frenchtown Confidential blog, C.C.’s Little Lost Angeles series honors architecturally and culturally significant structures that should never have been demolished. Among her recent builds are Henry’s Tacos, Mrs. Von’s tiki hut from Clifton’s Pacific Seas, the streamline moderne Yolk store in Silver Lake, the 1904 Tabor farmhouse as featured in the Little Rascals and Ray Bradbury’s house encased in a vintage television set (now on permanent display at the writer’s local Palms Rancho Park Library). C.C. is currently working on The Brown Derby. She also makes illuminated Rainbow Bar and Grill signs and tiny programmatic lemons and Tail o’ the Pup models.
Bruce Heller (@cornerstonebrickdesigns)—A professional Lego block artisan and fan of the architecture of John Parkinson, Bruce has crafted meticulous miniature replicas of two of the architect’s iconic Los Angeles landmarks: City Hall and Bullocks Wilshire (both of which have been exhibited on site), with Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Union Station in the works. Bruce’s City Hall was honored with the Best Microscale award at the 2016 BrickCon convention. He has made a microscale LAX Theme Building from 47 Lego pieces, and builds custom replicas of private homes on commission. His Lego miniature of the historic house where Brentwood Sunshine Preschool operates was the grand prize in their fundraiser auction.
Kieran Wright (@smallscalela)—A newcomer to miniature model making and to Los Angeles, the New Zealand native took up the craft in earnest after he was laid off from his travel marketing job early in the pandemic. Kieran’s models honor iconic Los Angeles businesses and cultural touchstones, and have been offered as prizes in charitable fundraisers. His miniatures include the Black Cat gay bar, Philippe The Original, Fugetsu-do Sweet Shop, Rae’s coffee shop, Morgan Camera Shop, The Apple Pan, Taix French Restaurant, Tiki-Ti, Beverly Cinema, Tail o’ the Pup, the Hollywood Bowl’s curved clock sign, the Frolic Room and Fry’s Electronics flying saucer crash entryway.
Donna Williams – After graduation from Claremont Graduate University with an MFA in sculpture, Donna translated her experience in the fabrication and repair of three-dimensional art objects to establish Williams Art Conservation, Inc., a private art conservation studio located in Hollywood, where she has lived since 1979. Over twenty years of private practice has given Donna a wide variety of hands-on experiences with many kinds of art objects. She has travelled the world to treat and maintain objects owned by museums as well as private, government and corporate collections, and has worked with many well-known artists, including Chris Burden, Donald Judd and Jaume Plensa. Donna has experience with every scale of three-dimensional art, from twenty-foot-tall Calder stabiles to microscopic fragments of Roman glass. When Hollywood Heritage leased a retail space and installed Hollywood in Miniature, as a board member, Donna assisted in formulating plans for its conservation and restoration, and the challenge and thrill of bringing this historically accurate model of Hollywood’s core from the 1930s, into the present day.
Also joining us is architectural historian Nathan Marsak — author of Bunker Hill Los Angeles: Essence of Sunshine and Noir and Bunker Noir! to share the curious history and educational possibilities of the city of Los Angeles’ famous 3-D Downtown Los Angeles architectural model, a hands-on urban planning tool developed under the Works Progress Administration that is on permanent display at the Natural History Museum.
This webinar is an illustrated lecture packed with rare photos that will bring the work of the city’s miniature architectural crafting community to life. And you’ll find the look of an Esotouric webinar is a little different than your standard dry Zoom session, with lively interactive graphics courtesy of the mmhmm app.
So, tune in and discover the incredible history of Los Angeles, with the couple whose passion for the city is infectious.
Rights and permissions: By attending an Esotouric webinar, you acknowledge that the entirety of the presentation is copyrighted, and no portion of the video or text may be reproduced in any fashion.
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