Gentle reader,
On Sunday’s afternoon tour of Franklin Village Old Hollywood, we’ll stop at the Monastery of the Angels, the Dominican nun’s cloister and chapel on the grounds of an old West copper king’s mansion. We have been advocating for this special place even before we got the tip that the Vatican had suppressed it.
Nothing much has been doing at Monastery of the Angels since the last few nuns moved out, the chapel and gift shop closed (no more pumpkin bread baked by holy sisters, though we might just enjoy some anyway) and the real estate agent charged with marketing the property as a tear down failed to find a buyer.
But recently, a strange sign appeared on the southeast corner outside the Monastery parcel, atop of a city street pole slightly obscuring the nameplate and bearing the seal of the City of Los Angeles.
It looks, to a casual observer, like any other official Department of Transportation (DOT) ceremonial sign honoring some distinguished place or person that’s made Los Angeles better.
Only there’s no paper trail.
Councilmember Nithya Raman recently honored the nearby Vedanta Temple with one of these signs, and the process required putting a motion forward, sending it to City Council committee, a report back, public comment and a full City Council vote, plus back and forth between the monks and a council deputy (thanks, Joseph Siroky!) to ensure the language was just right.
We helped out a little bit, as we knew the drill from nominating John Fante Square near Central Library. Then there was a formal unveiling, which was quite a celebration.
There is nothing like this for the Monastery of the Angels sign, which contains inaccurate, nonsensical text.
And around the back, the screws are screwy—different lengths and rusted!
When we asked Nithya Raman’s office about the sign, they had no idea. So they inquired with DOT, and received a bizarre response that this sign was a replacement for a missing one installed in the 1990s.
None of our friends who are Monastery of the Angels regulars recall any such sign ever being there, and there is no public record. And again, the text on the sign doesn’t make sense in 2024, and would have made even less sense thirty years ago.
We’re going to keep digging into the mystery of this apparently bogus ceremonial sign, and invite you to join us on Sunday’s tour, which will include many strange tales from around this lovely neighborhood on the shoulder above Hollywood Boulevard. And since we begin the tour at Vedanta, you’ll have the opportunity to compare the legitimate city ceremonial sign, front and back, to the oddity at Carmen and Gower. Join us, do!
Scroll down for upcoming tours and closely watched trains.
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
• Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/15) • Highland Park Arroyo (Sat. 9/21) • The Real Black Dahlia (Sat. 9/29) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels to Towers to the Dutch Chocolate Shop (10/5) • Broadway: Downtown Los Angeles’ Beautiful, Magical Mess (Sat. 10/12) • The Run: Gay Downtown L.A. History (Sun. 10/13) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sun. 10/27) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (Sun. 11/3) • The 1910 Bombing of the Los Angeles Times Walking Tour with Detective Mike Digby (Sat. 11/9) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice Downtown L.A. (Sat. 11/16) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (Sat. 11/23) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 12/7) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (Sat. 12/14) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sun. 12/22) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher (Thurs. 12/26)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
New from Nathan Marsak's Institute for Advanced Bunker Hill Studies: comparing the modernist redevelopment zone to its present, barely populated state. What's next for the asparagus patch that took out the greatest neighborhood any city ever obliterated? Buy his guidebook (on sale, cheap!) and find out.
Tuesday, September 17 at 1pm in the Plaza of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the St. Vibiana Circle meets to talk about historic preservation, tenant power and how we can come together to be better, stronger Angelenos. You may already be a member!
The Herald Examiner isn't digitized, which means a big swath of Los Angeles cultural history hides in the microfiche. Cheers to Khogyani for sharing the inspiring tale of an Afghani immigrant family that found success in the Fashion District in the '80s.
Just confirmed for the October 12 Broadway walking tour: meet the incredible Vilma, the tough chick camera girl from El Monte who prowled Clifton's Cafeteria like a tigress, her tale told by her daughters who read her diaries and took a trip back in time!
Disturbing claim in AIDS Healthcare Foundation's recent ethics filings: 100+ desperately needed SRO units cannot be occupied because Downtown L.A. lacks sufficient underground power lines and DWP is taking years to install new ones. See page 40 here.
Uncommon Commonwealth, a rare brick-lined Los Angeles street circa 1906. We love this kind of oddball infrastructure and it's impressive how well it's held up over a century and change. Maybe Street Services should go back to brick?
Cheers to San Pedro preservation pal Emma Rault, whose effort to keep the Port of Los Angeles from quietly demolishing the last Japanese structures on Terminal Island is top of the fold in the L.A. Times. She got the tip from feral cat caretakers!
Down on Silver Lake's Bug Row, there's a scary new mural on the Western Exterminator building, and we found a dead end vista to capture it for you.
This scheme to stock an art museum in Las Vegas with loans from LACMA's collection is interstate fraud on the Los Angeles County taxpayers. Elaine Wynn and Michael Govan are clearly not acting in the interests of the institution or its local stakeholders.
Per a leaked staff memo, LACMA's unfortunate new building is going to open very late, indeed.
Kevin de Leon's ICO to prevent developers from demolishing RSO housing in Boyle Heights will expire on 9/30. He's seeking to extend protections until August 2025. Admirable policy that is directly protecting the 1st & Fickett Bungalow Court tenants.
9/16 at 9:30am, the Rec and Park Commissioners will hear a report from Placeworks on the Griffith Park Pony Rides. Polls and public comments show Angelenos love the ponies, want them back and are furious with the city for caving to out of town zealots.
Settlement talks in Steve Ongele v. City of LA, the case of the LADBS whistleblower fired after confronting convicted racketeer Raymond Chan for defrauding ratepayers. It is tragic this won't be aired in open court, but he might not survive it.
What's new with Relevant Group, Hollywood hoteliers who gutted the Morrison Hotel? The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just rejected their RICO case alleging the Hollywood Athletic Club owner shook them down with sham CEQA suits.
Rev. Dylan Littlefield continues to serve his Hotel Cecil clients in thoughtful ways, like Dishes and Dignity, a welcome home kit that makes it easier to enjoy meals in their SRO rooms. Plus, longtime tenant Cal mends fences with his sister, may go home.
Globe Theater owners have kicked out operator Erik Chol and are appealing 70 corrective conditions imposed by the Zoning Administrator. It’s a chilling report: the packed nightclub had unpermitted electrical and plastic wrapped smoke detectors! If they don’t win, the owners threaten to gut the National Register landmark (Morgan, Walls & Morgan, 1913) and turn it into a hardware store! Also, it’s all Jose Huizar’s fault. Meanwhile, you can lease the Globe or take a virtual tour.
Council File 23-0953 just lit up with comments about a different endangered Brentwood landmark. Seems Los Angeles Conservancy has Marilyn Monroe's house on the brain, used its link when asking citizens to advocate for the Barry Building.
Stark evidence of Hollywood's death spiral: Cinema Mercantile / Omega-Cinema Props warehouse (est. 1920) is not being converted to creative office by Elkwood but to self-storage!
One less empty building. A few blocks away, Elkwood's TOC project has blighted the block west of Hollywood Forever, from 6104-6118 W. Santa Monica Boulevard. Minor movement in the permits, but that AVAILABLE sign (pic is summer 2022) made us wonder...
The latest streetview image, from June 2024, has much more tagging and big blue JUST SOLD signs on all these derelict historic buildings. (No sale info on ZIMAS yet.) Will the dead 6100 block of Santa Monica Blvd. be reactivated with tenants or demolished?
New permit application for the decades derelict, still magnificent Garfield Building: Hotel room count to be 166, with rooftop bar and pool!
Remarkable pettiness from the Los Angeles Times, reporting on the newly formed L.A Local News Initiative without mentioning Kevin Merida, Ex Executive Editor who departed complaining of owner interference. Here’s a better story from one of the founding partner organizations. We'll be watching with interest and hope they succeed. Maybe they can buy the vacant Los Angeles Times building and bring journalism back to the Civic Center, where the crooks have been running amok with minimal scrutiny.
Low-income Angelenos in historic bungalow neighborhoods, beware. When developers buy a mid-block parcel, evict your neighbors, demolish the buildings, string green demolition fence and erect scaffolding for a new 100% affordable apartment tower, you’re at risk of the unguarded, unfinished project catching fire.
It happened early 9/1/24 , at 217 E Vernon Avenue between Wall and San Pedro, where the cottages that stood since 1909 were recently torn down for a NEW 3 STORY 13 UNITS (100% AFFORDABLE HOUSING) APARTMENT TO INCLUDE 3 STORY TYPE VA APARTMENT, TIER 4 TOC WITH BASE INCENTIVE.
TOC is a discretionary perk that the City Planning Department hands out to developers who buy property near transit lines. In this case, it means that a pair of rent controlled units standing just one story high could be replaced by a single structure that towers over its neighbors.
Once completed, such a building casts long shadows. Unfinished, it can become a tinderbox, showering sparks and embers from above.
The blaze, categorized as a Major Emergency by LAFD, required 125 firefighters to extinguish, and spread to two nearby homes, displacing at least ten people.
This is nothing new on Vernon Avenue, where a mile and a half east, the entire 1500 East block was decimated when a massive ED1 project was torched in November, sending two neighbors to the hospital with serious burns and forcing demolition of several surrounding homes.
So long as Mayor Bass and her City Planning Department (which is still run by the people put in place by former Mayor Eric Garcetti) continue to impose upzoning on historic neighborhoods, we fear more existing affordable housing will be destroyed, some like 217 E Vernon demolished for new buildings, some lost because they had the bad luck to be next to one of these oversized projects that are too big for the block, easy for trespassers to access, and extremely flammable.
West LA Sawtelle Neighborhood Council expresses fresh alarm about Karen Bass' half-baked ED 1 upzoning scheme: it threatens the cultural core of Sawtelle Japantown with demolition! Don't Angelenos deserve the professional city planning our taxes pay for?
It happened again early this morning—a huge fire, leaving a 90 year old man in critical condition, displacing many tenants. LADBS was told homeless people were living in the wood frame 712 New Depot project six weeks ago! "New housing” keeps destroying homes in Los Angeles.
This is a piecemealed project, with a finished structure also developed by Sina and David Mehdyzadeh and designed by Labyrinth Design Studio directly behind at 849 Bunker Hill Avenue.
The Citizen footage is terrifying. The interviews with tenants are infuriating. "If they would've taken care of these apartments or left a security guard watching them, this wouldn’t have ever happened." “We knew this was coming and we have told our representatives this was going to happen and they have not listened to us. We have been abandoned and now this is where we are. We have neighbors who are in the hospital,”
The LADBS inspector referred the complaint to Inspection Bureau six weeks ago. Six weeks of people living in a wood frame unfinished building, cooking, tapping electric wires. These fires are no accident—they are civic failure at the highest level.
There is nothing stopping the city from forcing property owners to secure their abandoned projects, or tearing them down at owner expense. How many more fires will terrorize Angelenos before City Hall does something?
Is That A Bogus Ceremonial City Sign at Monastery of the Angels in Hollywood?