Gentle reader,
It’s probably a smart strategy, if you live in Los Angeles, not to get too attached.
Otherwise you’ll have your heart broken, again and again, as things that are cool, beautiful and useful are demolished, stolen for scrap, burned by vandals or otherwise disgraced.
But we can’t bring ourselves to grow a hard shell.
We loved the fairy-like figures on the metal globe plaque attached to the rock on which the statue of Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis (1837–1917) still stands, pointing across Wilshire towards the Otis Art Institute campus which replaced his longtime home, the Bivouac.
We will savor the loss of these fine figures—we think they were the most beautiful sculpture in MacArthur Park, the work of the celebrated Prince Paul Troubetzkoy —like a missing, aching tooth.
For everything that is will be lost in time, and it is a privilege to be alive and aware and able to mourn when something loved flickers out forever—in this case, presumably pried off the stone with a crowbar and tossed into the back of a truck to be melted down for its minuscule scrap value by a crooked dealer empowered by LAPD’s refusal to enforce state and local laws overseeing recycling yards.
Over the decades, the notorious General Otis has lost all his companions: the doughboy struck by a car, the paperboy recently sawed off at the ankles by metal thieves dressed as a City crew, now the girls.
And Buster Keaton only stopped by briefly to get this hilarious shot.
We had looked forward to introducing the worldly ladies to our guests on April 18, when we visit the Otis memorial on our Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends walking tour, but it is not to be.
Do you think the old man will still be on his rock by then? Sign up and see for yourself!
But all is not lost in Los Angeles—not hardly!
Saturday’s tour is Franklin Village Old Hollywood, a true crime, literary, cultural history and architecture ramble we wrote because we were spending a lot of time in this time capsule neighborhood on the shoulder of the 101 Freeway, advocating for a preservation solution for the Wallace Neff-designed Monastery of the Angeles on the historic Giroux Estate property.
This will be the first edition of the tour since it was announced that the State is helping Homeboy Industries purchase the campus to provide residential and outpatient recovery and mental health services—and that the 1940s buildings will be adaptively reused, not demolished, with the old trees also preserved. We’ve got some special treats in store on this walk and hope you will join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Franklin Village Old Hollywood (3/14) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (3/21) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore & the Dutch Chocolate Shop (3/28) • 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) • Highland Park Arroyo (5/2) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/7) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/30) • The Real Black Dahlia (6/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
This morning we attended the first hearing in the public corruption case of sitting councilmember Curren Price since Judge Shelly B. Torrealba ruled in January that there was sufficient evidence for a trial. Judge Larry P. Fidler and Price both made brief appearances as the two sides hashed out their schedules: Price will be back in Fidler’s courtroom on the high security 9th floor of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center to be arraigned on Friday, April 10. Watch this newsletter for a full account of the fascinating six-day preliminary hearing closer to that date. Does Price intend to fight or plead out? “I’m not gonna resign with a felony, no.”
What a kick to see Desmond Shaw’s SKYCAL flyover of Times Mirror Square. Confessed racketeer Jose Huizar rewrote our landmark nomination so his donors could tear part of it down. But it’s still here, and would be a great home for a scrappy newsroom!
When Cole’s first announced it was closing, we urged the owners to find a buyer to keep the oldest Downtown restaurant alive. Now after months of a long goodbye, March 29 is the final day... before new operators take over!
The first stop on our Film Noir/ Real Noir tour was the Bradbury Building, where the winds had peeled a slice of the original sandstone facade and dropped it on the Broadway sidewalk. Delicate little treasure, it now lives on our rare L.A. titles bookshelf.
On March 21, Victorian Bunker Hill shimmers back into view on a very special walking tour with historian Nathan Marsak and native son Gordon Pattison. Before riding Angels Flight, you can get a signed book or zine as a souvenir of a real time travel trip.
