Our Holiday Gift To You: A Trip In A Time Machine
Gentle reader,
Greetings from your friendly historic Los Angeles sightseeing tour company, now offering digital programming until we can again organize groups to gather and explore the city we love.
Picking the right holiday gift can be tricky, but recently we found something so strange and special that we knew it was just the thing we wanted to give to everybody on our list.
The only question was, how to package it? Luckily, we have a cool photographer pal, and thanks to Craig Sauer’s futuristic 3-D machinery and patience documenting a very challenging environment, a virtual time travel visit to La Fe Shoe Repair Shop awaits you when you click.
We hope you find this forgotten space as captivating as we did, and that you’ll share with us anything unexpected that you discover on the shelves or walls.
If you’re looking for a more interactive time travel trip, please join us on Sunday at 4pm (or later on-demand) for a live webinar with historian Colleen Adair Fliedner, based on her remarkable and hard-to-find book Rancho Centennial: Ranchos Los Amigos Medical Center, 1888-1988. (Note that our previously announced guest historian Paul Rood had to bow out due to circumstances beyond his control.)
We’ve learned so much while researching Know Your Los Angeles County Poor Farm / Rancho Los Amigos (1888-?), and are eager to share this the history of this beautiful, useful and endangered cultural landscape with you.
yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
🎁 GIFT CERTIFICATES & PRINTED MATTER AVAILABLE 🎁 If you’re looking for something unique to slip into their stocking, we have a variety of retro Los Angeles offerings from $6 up, including certificates good for online webinars, Literary L.A. maps, Route 66 maps and Raymond Chandler maps, the How to Find Old Los Angeles guidebook, history of Angels Flight Railway, and more. We strive to make it easy to give the gift of Los Angeles history, culture, mystery and delight. The special subscriber-only edition of this newsletter, too, can be a gift. If you prefer to browse visually, you can window shop here.
In the latest subscriber's edition of this newsletter—$10/month, cheap!—We visit a Rosicrucian healing temple high above Oceanside, only to get goosed by a ghost. Your support helps us go out and explore interesting landmarks that offer so much more than is listed on their National Register designations.
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
Friends of the Chili Bowl petition update: What just happened to the Chili Bowl at PLUM? Nothing good! But it's not too late to save this cool, weird gem of old Los Angeles.
Outgoing Downey Mayor Claudia Frometa says a desperately needed historic preservation ordinance is in the works and may be in place early next year. Please, yes! Save the Rives Mansion!
Interesting Southern California archival gig: somebody to process the Fairplex collection, a century of County Fair documentation. We can't wait to consult it.
Charlie Munger, who is seeking to demolish the landmark Barry Building, says “I regard architecture as the queen of the arts. Think of how much more good one nice building does for humanity than one damn painting.” We think he is demented.
Why bother renovating this pretty 1932 Monterey Colonial in the Huntington Palisades when the $10M buyer will just pull a demo permit?
There's been a run on Monastery of the Angels pumpkin bread at the Beachwood Market, and who can blame locals for packing their freezers with the delicious treat, as the Dominican Federation seeks to shut down the monastery and send our nun friends packing? What’s the latest? We’re quoted in this nationally syndicated story that’s just been picked up by the Washington Post.