Gentle reader,
You might find it hard to believe, navigating this mess of a town, but Los Angeles has everything it needs to be a shining example of civic success, right now.
No, really: we mean it.
With a few to-be-expected exceptions, there are many fine angels yoked in service to Los Angeles, if we would only let them soar.
Our Neighborhood Councils are filled with passionate, experienced community leaders, who volunteer countless hours to run good meetings and produce carefully considered policy recommendations that reflect the views of their neighbors.
Our appointed Commissions are staffed with skilled subject matter experts who can analyze issues, balance conflicts and suggest best solutions.
Highly educated professionals staff City departments, able to do good work.
Members of the public will show up or submit written comments, giving elected and appointed officials informed, heartfelt direction on how the City should act.
So why isn’t Los Angeles the envy of American cities?
Because over the last decade or so, entrenched politicians, well-compensated lobbyists and a small cadre of powerful City Hall lifers have taken advantage of term limits and the checked out, downsized, El Segundo-based Los Angeles Times to hoard power for themselves and leapfrog over the NCs, Commissions, civil servants and community voices, that’s why.
Add to that the illegal “gentleman’s agreement” around the horseshoe to trade votes and defer to one councilmember’s wishes on matters playing out entirely in their district and the illegal “rogue’s agreement” whereby senior staff decide how their bosses will vote on land use matters days before public hearings are held, and it’s a recipe for the failed city we’re privileged to love so much.
For a stark example of the rot on public view, see the video embedded at the top of this newsletter, or the selected highlights below.
We’ve written at length about how Mitch O’Farrell, Eric Garcetti’s hand-picked CD 13 successor, who immediately moved home to Oklahoma when he lost his last election, went behind the back of the Los Angeles Conservancy and Echo Park community to undermine landmark designation for Taix French Restaurant.
No other official Los Angeles “landmark” is comprised of a few random features salvaged from an historic building and slapped even more randomly onto the ugly modern tower that replaces it.
The honest, if not honorable, thing would have been for the councilmember to reject the landmark entirely and clear the way for Holland Partner Group to demolish Taix.
Such a rejection would have let everyone who loves Taix mourn and move on. This perverse fake designation instead creates an insulting precedent that unethical politicians in the future can apply to the projects of their developer donors and makes the citizens who worked and cared feel like hot garbage.
This footage was shot at the April 16, 2026 Cultural Heritage Commission hearing, when the pathetic matter of the “protected” “landmark”—yet about to be demolished—Taix came before the CHC.
You’ll hear the cynical presentation from representatives of Holland Partner Group, describing how much money the billionaire developer intends to squander on storing, in a climate controlled secure space, the insignificant junk salvaged before the best and the rest of Taix is hauled off to the dump.
And you’ll hear incensed public comment from Daniel Paul and Charlie Fisher, experts who volunteered time and talent to prepare the Taix landmark nomination, and then convince a reluctant CHC to accept their arguments about the significance of Continental Dining as a mid-century architectural and cultural form, only to have their hard work pooped on by the former cruise ship entertainer and star of the City Hall vanity project, L.A. River Follies.
You’ll want to stand up and cheer, or maybe puke, when preservation professional Kevin Kuzma—who famously moved a grand multi-family Craftsman apartment house from Echo Park to Angeleno Heights to save it from being demolished for a parking lot, steering the structure right past Taix!—tells the CHC the right thing to do is to strip Taix of its landmark designation entirely.
You’ll hear Andrew Salimian of the Los Angeles Conservancy lament that the developer walked away from fruitful conversations about keeping architectural elements that the community loved, while improving the large lot with a dense new housing project.
And our Richard Schave suggests the hearing is more of a Coroner’s inquest, investigating the crime of politically sabotaged heritage.
Then when the commissioners, disturbed and fired up, seek merely to talk about the situation, the Deputy City Attorney assigned to the meeting is quick to shut them down and shut them up. After all, they serve at the pleasure of the Mayor, and this Mayor doesn’t seem to know historic landmarks even exist.
The sheer contempt that so many elected and appointed officials demonstrate towards Angelenos is only exceeded by how much we hate these jokers back.
And while hate can be poisonous, this brand is righteous and healthy, because it is a response to how they are hurting our beautiful city and the best among us—selfishly and foolishly, too.
Los Angeles in the 1930s was every bit as corrupt as it is today. The blatant venality on display inspired Raymond Chandler to create a cynical white knight detective, Philip Marlowe, who had worked in City Hall and had the racket’s number.
But Mayor Joe Shaw’s crime family was smart enough not to throttle the golden goose. Los Angeles thrived under their malevolent rule, with beautiful parks and efficient public transit, thrilling nightlife, myriad business opportunities, museums and theaters and charming housing for every pocketbook.
And if it wasn’t for an idealistic nut running a couple of high concept cafeterias who decided to make a stink about it, they would have hung around a lot longer.
While the wrecking ball hasn’t swung yet, Taix is dead. Yet it lives as a talking point in the lively Council District 13 race and as a reminder that we do not have to settle for the moldy crumbs City Hall kicks our way.
Los Angeles can, and must, tap the vast resources of its most valuable product: Angelenos who give a damn and know what’s good for them. And when those angels finally get a chance to soar, buckle up.
There is no greater city than this one, and we believe it’s soon to rise again.
New tours are posted through August, so scroll down to see what’s new. And Saturday’s tour is a Highland Park Arroyo Time Travel Trip, a chance to cosy up to the ghosts of preservationists past and present, visit Heritage Square, Lummis House and the up-for-landmarking Mission Revival Bilderrain Residence and meet some quirky characters in a beautiful, historic neighborhood. 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, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens. New: some of these newsletters are on Medium, 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
• 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) • Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements of Yore and the Dutch Chocolate Shop (6/20) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 6/21) • Westlake Park (6/27) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (7/11) • Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
An old friend has had some work done, and might be the prettiest thing at the Stagecoach fest. Los Angeles rejected landmark designation, but Arby’s knows a star when they see one, and so do we.
The golden cluster of bulbs in the star gleams like a juicy berry. Trying to date the sign led us to Yelp reviews about New Look salon owner Gerardo Gutierez, who sounds like a wonderful guy, and who passed over in 2023. RIP. Love your sign, Jerry!
Zoning Administrator misbehavior around Walker’s Cafe redevelopment scheme in San Pedro—an actual Chinatown location!—is almost too ironic to be real. But it is all too real. Incensed locals are appealing.
Must read reporting from preservation pal Emma Rault (Friends of Walker’s Cafe) about how CSU Long Beach has been stalling for decades to avoid granting native people the right to care for the sacred site Puvungna next to a campus parking lot.
A Route 66 miracle! In 2015, we climbed up to see the mothballed The Trails cocktails sign with our Duarte Historical Society pals and have been hoping so hard it would be installed again on the Mother Road. And soon it will be! Click here for the Trails episode of our You Can’t Eat the Sunshine podcast.
We just peeped in the window and found Heat diner Kate Mantilini is still intact, booths waiting patiently for late night fans of “Those Potatoes” and everything else to come home again. Twelve years vacant due to a landlord who wouldn’t negotiate—why does L.A. (actually Beverly Hills) allow this?
Preservation pal Dina Lee Hoffman spotted the listing for the long shuttered Mac’s Texaco Service Station (1947) at 4th & Fairfax. Billboard income shouldn’t mean blight. It would make a swell ice cream stand, cactus nursery or...?
How does Raul Claros, who wanted termed out Herb Wesson to warm indicted Mark Ridley-Thomas’ council seat in ‘22, have so much free time running for Council District 1 to gather dossiers on coordination between Matt Mahan’s campaign and his Rick Caruso financed PAC? This requires sophisticated, Sacramento/consultant knowledge.
Architectural salvage hunters know it as Olde Good Things, but the structure was purpose built in 1922 as Shugers Mfg. Co., motor car roof makers. This whole neighborhood was Auto Row, but demolitions and fires are erasing that rich history. Hope someone who loves it buys the building.
For Slate, Evan McGarvey came to Los Angeles seeking answers for his own obsession with Beth Short on the true crime tour circuit. To us, her death is a window into the perpetual crisis: transient youth without safe housing; predators who circle them.
One of Westlake’s most beautiful vistas: the Power of Water and the Bryson neon. But after part of Lafayette Park became Bridge Housing, the Salvation Army fenced the statue off for parking / private park space. Photo snapped through the slats. Our public space needs a champion.
From Empty Los Angeles: “Getting into bed with Airbnb is a huge conflict of interest for a city with a vacancy/misuse problem, tens of thousands of still-displaced fire victims, and thousands of still-empty Project Homekey units...” And another lovely, boarded up Craftsman burns.
Terrific CD 13 candidates debate hosted by Windsor Square Association and neighboring orgs shows the benefit of keeping engaged citizens in the political feedback loop. This sort of volunteer civic advocacy gets frozen out of City Hall and we all suffer.
Tunnels! People keep asking for these Prohibition-era vice dens to be added to our private tour options, and now they are. Choose from Film Noir, Raymond Chandler, Black Dahlia, The Run (gay history) or Downtown L.A. in a Nutshell.
Weird merch alert. Now available only at the Elmer McCurdy Museum in West Adams is the world’s first adult coloring book honoring a mummified old west outlaw and his burlesque and carnie freak sideshow pals. We got our copy!
Marilyn Monroe landmark news: LA files a blistering motion to dismiss, as Pacific Legal Foundation joins the case working for free to press a Fifth Amendment property rights case. Is this lovely Brentwood house really “worth nothing”? Scroll to 3/19/2026 here to read what’s new.
Fascinating 1969 interview with Sam Yorty for WGBH’s City Makers, talking Watts riots, radical infiltration, public housing, beefing with the L.A. Times. Hearing a Los Angeles Mayor’s extemporaneous, no notes riffs on a city he clearly loves is refreshing.
Eunisses Hernandez and Karen Bass decided MacArthur Park—a protected landmark, with heritage trees on the perimeter—should be fenced. Why? Who knows. Locals have questions, and are being ignored. This is not leadership: it’s how you wreck a city.
Pity the jurors selected to hear the case against L.A. County Assessor John Noguez (not his real name). 13 years after his corruption arrest, it took three months to find some willing to become “intimately familiar with the lingo of the assessor’s office.”
David Allen wrote a wonderful farewell to Cole’s, honoring Pomona resident Tim Peron’s family ties to French Dip royalty, so we went to the shuttered landmark looking for ghosts. We found two, Jack & Inez, who moaned: “Re-open soon!”
Wild that the City of Los Angeles wants to shake citizens down for streetlight repairs that will be immediately undone by copper thieves, but has no interest in seizing the millions Deputy Mayor Ray Chan took in Jose Huizar PLUM vote related bribes. So why doesn’t L.A. want to claw back all that money and real estate tied to Jose Huizar and Ray Chan’s bribes for votes racket? Maybe because there are many unindicted co-conspirators still in City Hall and lobbying them. Cauterize the rot and we get our city back.
