Gentle reader,
The video embedded above is part of a wonderful radio story produced this week by Fiona Ng of LAist about our collaborative efforts to save Sunshine, a scrappy volunteer Queen Palm tree who is the last living thing that grew on old Bunker Hill before redevelopment cleared the beautiful Victorian houses and old gardens away.
The video appeared on Instagram, and you can listen to the radio piece here.
We love how Fiona describes Sunshine’s devoted, eccentric preservation pals as being like the Super Friends, and only wish we had our own space monkey Gleek to clambor to the top of this historic palm and whisper hopeful things into her fronds.
At our request, the builders of the new Colburn Center have graciously moved Sunshine away from the construction, placed her in a nice big pot, and have let her remain on site until she can be moved to an appropriate location. It’s so refreshing to encounter this kind of civic mindedness, which feels like how Los Angeles used to be in the last century, when things got done.
We think a great spot for Sunshine to land would be the Metro Plaza next to Angels Flight Railway, where she can help to tell the story of the lost neighborhood, while remaining a treasured part of our Downtown L.A. urban tree canopy.
Won’t you please join us in asking Councilmember Ysabel Jurado to make Sunshine’s move happen?
You can call (213) 473-7014 or email Councilmember.Jurado@lacity.org, and simply say that you care about Sunshine the Queen Palm from old Bunker Hill, and would like the city to facilitate her move the short distance—just .3 miles—from 2nd and Hill to the Metro Plaza next to Angels Flight Railway.
By calling or emailing the councilmember, you’ll be one of the Super Friends on Sunshine’s team, and help keep a bit of a lost and glorious world alive a little longer.
Like to plan ahead? We’ve updated our tour calendar through the end of the year, including new dates for the popular Know Your Downtown Los Angeles with the Dutch Chocolate Shop and a special Richard’s birthday edition of the Alvarado Terrace and South Bonnie Brae Tract tour. Dates are listed below and on our website.
Did you know that we give private tours? We do, and they can be even more immersive than a public tour, since we’re at your service to answer even your weirdest questions about the city we love.
Most of our tours can be booked on days when we’re not leading a public tour. But if you don’t have three hours to explore, or are on a budget, you’ll be glad to know about the newest option for private bookings: 90 minute nutshell versions of the Real Black Dahlia, Raymond Chandler, Film Noir / Real Noir and The Run: Gay Downtown L.A. History tours. For $250 you can bring up to six people, with the option to add more guests. Give us an hour and a half and we’ll show you the secrets of Los Angeles!
Saturday’s public outing is the latest version of our flagship Real Black Dahlia true crime tour, with a focus not on the grisly murder or the many screwball theories of whodunnit, but on how the investigation and reporting reveals so much about post-war Los Angeles and the strange, poignant and fascinating life of Beth Short. Join us to discover a lost world in the heart of the city, and to fall a bit in love with the elusive woman known in life and in death as The Black Dahlia.
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.
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 (7/19) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (7/26) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (8/9) • Weird West Adams / Elmer McCurdy Museum (8/16) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (8/23) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (8/30) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (9/6) • Film Noir / Real Noir (9/20) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (9/27) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/4) • Know Your Downtown LA: Bradbury Building, Basements, Dutch Chocolate Shop (10/11) • The Run: Gay Downtown History (10/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (11/1) • Highland Park Arroyo Time Travel Trip (11/8) • Richard’s Birthday: Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (11/15) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/22) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (12/6) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (12/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness (Sunday, 12/21) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Cases (12/27)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
Moving houses that have demolition permits to Altadena instead of knocking them down is just the right thing to do! Yesterday we dropped by Taft Avenue in Hollywood to check in on a lucky survivor, which is getting prepped for a very big ride.
While writing about the closure of Cole's, we dug up the late, great historic restaurant website Jonathon's Los Angeles Time Machines on archive.org. It's a lost treasure from the early blog era worth rediscovering.
File under empty Los Angeles: on 9/6/2024, a certificate of occupancy was issued to the 21 unit Citrine Hollywood at 1525 N Hobart, a "luxury" building with rents around $3300/mo. It's now for sale, with only 6 units occupied.
In a city of vacant lots and mini malls, developers find it more profitable to demolish existing RSO units for dense new "affordable" projects. New units rent for more than what is destroyed, displace our neighbors and they're so ugly. Save Bronson Court!
We’re excited about Theodore Payne's soon to be public native plant nursery Los Nogales at the Audobon Center at Debs in Highland Park. And it's great news for butterflies, too!
A very cool treat for guests on our last Film Noir / Real Noir tour: Angels Flight's very own Saturday station agent Will Campbell gifted them custom postcards of Yvonne de Carlo on old Bunker Hill in Criss Cross (1949). Native son Gordon Pattison was delighted to get one!
The French newspaper Le Figaro (est. 1826) sent novelist Gautier Battistella (Chef) and nature photographer Brice Portolano to Southern California in the steps of writers James Ellroy and John Fante. We served as their native guides, teaming up with our friends, novelist-screenwriter-WGA head Howard Rodman and affordable housing advocate Miki Jackson, to show them abandoned dive bars, speakeasies and century old erotic graffiti, and the empty buildings on the mean streets on the edge of Skid Row. The story’s out this week, and you can read it (translated) or en français here.
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