Gentle reader,
Tomorrow morning, we’re debuting a brand new tour that feels like an old friend.
Hollywood Noir weaves together elements of twenty years of work seeking to reveal an untold history of Los Angeles, its darkness and light, the time capsule places associated with iconic books and films, the true crimes that inspired them, in celebration of the remarkable city where it all happened.
We were inspired to write the tour a few months back after a conversation with our friend Howard Rodman, when he shared the stunning news that the organizers of NoirCon had voted to honor us with the 2025 Anne Friedberg Award for Contributions to Noir and Its Preservation.
Howard asked in passing if we had ever given a tour about the film Double Indemnity.
We had—but it was back when we did bus tours, then we’d adapted it into a webinar.
We said we’d call him back, and an hour later we did, having worked out the basic beats of this new walking tour.
We got the Anne Friedberg Award because we give tours about Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Film Noir, but also because our work has evolved to include exposés of modern day Noir crimes committed by dirty politicians and crooked real estate developers—crimes that too often involve demolition of the landmarks from L.A.’s golden age of Noir.
Much of what we know of Noir era fiction and screenwriting was directly inspired by terrifying real life crimes in the 1930s, and we would never have these stories if Angelenos like Clifford Clinton and Thomas H. James hadn’t had the guts to stand up for what’s right, and if artists like Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder hadn’t found ways to fictionalize these incidents without getting sued for libel.
We tell the stories we do and try to make corruption compelling and infuriating, because the alternative is curling up into a ball under the sink. Raymond Chandler could probably relate to that.
We thought that people who didn’t make it to NoirCon last month might like to hear the acceptance remarks we made that night, so we’ve rerecorded them along with the slideshow presentation.
We’re so grateful to NoirCon for this honor, and for the inspiration to write a tour that’s got us excited to share new insights into this dirty old town and the L.A. angels who loved it enough to risk everything.
Their spectral shadows will be walking with us tomorrow—will you?
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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• For the holiday season, we’ve got a special offer that’s just the thing for the L.A. lover who already has everything: purchase four walking tour gift certificates, and get an additional ticket for free, which you can gift or use yourself.
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
• Hollywood Noir (11/29) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (12/6) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (12/13) • Know Your Downtown L.A. (Saturday, 12/20) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 12/21) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (12/27) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (1/24) • Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (1/31) • Hollywood Noir (2/7) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (2/14) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (2/21) • Weird West Adams & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (2/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (3/7) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (3/21) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (4/4) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (4/11) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (4/18) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (4/25)
