Gentle reader,
Hollywood’s quirky Morgan Camera Shop, long shuttered and heavily vandalized, caught fire in October 2024, but the solid double storefront didn’t burn down.
We shot this video a few days after that, a sidewalk survey of two blighted Sunset Boulevard landmarks separated by the massive Wallace on Sunset apartment house, intending to share but losing track amidst all the other bubbling preservation crises.
Well, here it is now. Nothing much has changed on this bummer of a block since last October. Bert Morgan’s historic shop is still standing, boarded up, scorched and vulnerable. The Delaware corporation with a Dallas mailing address SVT II RETAIL LP that paid $5.3 Million to the Morgan Trust for it in 2022 has announced no plans for the site, and should you want to rent the storefronts and fix them up, there is no path to do so. We assume it’s yet another derelict investment property held with the intention of eventual demolition and redevelopment, one of thousands languishing on our prime commercial corridors.
Just to the east, as we first reported last October, the Earl Carroll Theatre is up for grabs, minus the long promised colossal neon sign restoration. Owner Essex Property Trust, the publicly traded REIT which landmarked the Earl Carroll, has failed to find a tenant to reactivate the site, despite big promises.
The psychedelic paint job left over from Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is flaking under vandals’ tags as the listing languishes in a stagnant market.
A challenge to future owner-operators: Essex’ massive Wallace on Sunset complex took out the surface parking lot that made the Earl Carroll viable as a venue or production studio. Without cheap or free access to the Wallace’s subterranean parking structure, it would be tough to make a go of the Earl Carroll Theatre.
The city could hold property owners accountable for maintaining their buildings and honoring restoration agreements made during development hearings, but chooses not to. Investors know they can park millions in Los Angeles with no obligation to maintain or secure their property, and can promise shiny things that never materialize.
And so perfectly good and useful buildings rot in plain sight, “valued” at obscenely high numbers that don’t reflect their actual usefulness, occasionally catching fire, polluting the environment and squandering LAFD resources, while Angelenos struggle to find places to live, work and create.
It’s against this backdrop of “city planning” that always defers to the interests of real estate investor profit over citizens that the systems failed so spectacularly during the January firestorm.
Los Angeles has needed a hard reset for a long time, and it’s terrible that so many people had to die and so much of our built environment and public lands had to be destroyed to bring us to a place where everyone can see that.
We believe demanding that the city starts to care for our collective heritage and holds the investors who trash it accountable is a way back into the light.
No tour this weekend, but we’re back on March 1 with our flagship true crime outing, The Real Black Dahlia. Come explore not who killed Beth Short, but who she was, and how this unfortunate victim of postwar violence reveals so much about Los Angeles and a lost culture of transient youth, her hopes and her tragedy set against the backdrop of Downtown L.A. landmarks. Join us, do!
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. New: we’re on Nextdoor now, too.
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
• 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) • Elmer McCurdy’s Main Street Revival (4/15) • Leo Politi Loves Los Angeles (Sat. 4/19) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (Sat. 4/26) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (5/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (5/10) • Highland Park Arroyo Time Travel Trip (5/17) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (5/24) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (5/31) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (6/7) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (6/14) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (6/22) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (6/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (7/12) • The Real Black Dahlia (7/19) • Broadway (7/26)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
Wonder what's been going on with the Oceanwide Plaza graffiti towers debacle, subject of this horrifyingly clueless Karen Bass interview? There's a court hearing on 2/24 about millions owed to debtor Lendlease and the recent sale of the stalled Ko-Olina resort parcels in Hawaii. But it appears no lawyers will be there represent the liquidated Chinese company that blighted a huge swath of Downtown: in-house counsel Ken Choi's mail bounced back return to sender, and Ralls Gruber & Niece LLP asked to withdraw from the case because the client won't communicate.
Van Nuys G Line tree massacre! Not mentioned in the EIR (now unavailable online): Metro intends to kill 500-600 mature San Fernando Valley street trees over 6.7 miles. Angelenos had no chance to object to this deceptive scheme to wreck sidewalk life.
Altadenan Jose Ortega filmed fallen, sparking power lines on 1/10, threatening houses that survived the Eaton fire. NPR has first responder radio chatter about line testing sparking new fires—possibly this one!
On 2/7, California State Parks Director Armando Quintero presented to the State Historic Resources Commission on staff efforts to save artifacts and buildings during the Palisades fire, and this astonishing experience at a Chumash site in Topanga State Park. Full video, including remarks on artifacts saved from Will Rogers house, is here.
Shared by Chick-fil-A to its LinkedIn followers: a video about the gut renovation of Googie landmark Corky's, Helen Fong's work on the project, proposed renaming. We'd hoped they'd restore the Stanley Burke's sign. Why not put C-f-A where the address is? Read the landmark nomination here.
See a lost world of cheap apartments and creative Angelenos having a blast: 40 Watts from Nowhere, the documentary about legendary Silver Lake pirate radio station KBLT, premieres Saturday night at Quixote.
Preservation pal Stella Stray Pop—check out her radio show on KXLU, est. 1980— pulls our sleeve to the central role of Norms La Cienega in the new Keke Palmer and SZA movie One of Them Days. The diner is a big star, too!
RIP to historic preservation’s enemy Mitch O'Farrell's motion to declare the Coastal (sic) Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia) LA's official tree, noting its ability to survive high intensity fires. Performative waste of civic resources—didn't even bother to call a vote for a report back!
New from preservation pal Rev. Dylan Littlefield: Friends of the Cecil, a volunteer crew keeping the vulnerable tenants in Downtown's biggest historic residency hotel fed, clothed and safe.
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