Gentle reader,
It’s been disconcerting to see Westlake and MacArthur Park, places we visit often on our weekend walking tours and weekday preservation advocacy, used as political shorthand for all of California’s civic and cultural failings.
It’s true that the Alvarado side of the park, across from the Metro station and Langer’s Deli, is a gathering place for people struggling with drug addiction, mental health and homelessness. The city doesn’t help much, and there’s a lot we could do to as a society to improve their lives and the landscape they occupy.
But MacArthur Park is a very big park and most of it is just a park and not a public policy problem. We find it to be beautiful, peaceful and interesting, or we wouldn’t bring groups through while exploring the historic neighborhood, as we will be doing tomorrow on the Westlake Park Time Travel Trip tour.
When negative thoughts are directed its way, we wonder: what about the heritage trees, the wildlife, the fellows with fishing poles casting for a recently stocked whopper, the street preachers and picnicking lovers, the few bits of public art that haven’t been melted down yet, the iridescent grackles who cackle at a couple minutes into our video embedded above?
What about the ghosts of Angelenos past? Those spectres still haunt the shore and don’t want living citizens to abandon a great L.A. park or forget about them.
Those ghosts and we would sure like to share this special place with you, so maybe you’ll join us tomorrow—or on September 26.
Afterwards, you can tuck into a tall pastrami sandwich at Langer’s or old school crispy noodles at the noirish Bamboo Inn or both, then head home with odd tales to share.
Now scroll down for Closely Watched Trains and news you can use.
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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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
• Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (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) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
After a landmark nomination was filed, Hollywood Center Motel was left open to burn, then get demolished by the LAFD heavy equipment crew that took down the Lineage warehouse. The sign and wall are now “protected,” but on June 30, the powerful Board of Building & Safety Commission meets to consider the property as a public nuisance subject to a possible abate order. This is agenda items D-3 and D-4. The meeting is not live streamed, and public comment can only be made in person or in writing ahead of time. If found to be a public nuisance, city crews might be dispatched to demolish the standing bungalow court units at public expense. Decisions of the BBSC cannot be appealed.
Come down and bear witness to what is likely to be the bureaucratic signing of a death warrant.
Help Chaplin Keaton Lloyd Alley! This iconic silent cinema location was 5-star Google Maps destination, but all the rave reviews have vanished. It really needs the illegal gate unlocked, to be an official Hollywood landmark and for you to review and share. The whole story appears on silent cinema sleuth John Bengtson’s website.
No Taix no more. Demolition began on June 15, with no salvage of the good 1920s beams or brick, and soon there will be dirt where generations of Angelenos broke bread and were happy.
The Viking ship atop the Crossroads of the World lighthouse reminds us to post in memory of the visionary Mort LaKretz, the self-made Boyle Heights kid who restored this quirky Art Deco landmark as a creative hub. May it be fully occupied again very soon!
In 1911, architect Edward B. Rust (whose William Penn Hotel is where we meet for Saturday’s Westlake walking tour) built this lyrical Venetian Revival porch for the Mission Theatre, later a funeral home and church, with putti planters that long for posies.
Great news from Olvera Street: Cielito Lindo is back in business! Thanks to all the dedicated diners who helped spread the word or donated. The City doesn’t make it easy to operate in its aging structures, so it’s great that Angelenos stepped up.
Kathy A. McDonald reports there is an illegal Fast and Furious billboard on the side of protected landmark Bob’s Market in Angelino Heights, steps from the dangerous roundabout where fans burn rubber. Universal knows City Hall doesn’t care.
There’s a newly dedicated “park” on the edge of old Skid Row, honoring the Panorama exhibit hall that once displayed the massive Siege of Paris painting in the round. Inside you’ll find a weird tree spirit and the trunk of a Coral Tree killed by City Hall.
Somewhere within the reach of our social channel is a David Lynch superfan with hospitality experience and a dream. Winkie’s from Mulholland Drive is rotting away in Gardena, waiting for you to turn it into something odd. And when you do, we’ll buy the first chocolate shake.
You never want to lose a vintage theater, but we’re fans of respectful adaptive reuse projects that bring life into beautiful spaces. The Gym is opening soon in Huntington Park’s magnificent Warner’s, so you can zone out on Art Deco while getting buff.
In a dramatic hearing, after much passionate public comment, the Cultural Heritage Commission used its authority to put a hold on demolition of the landmarked Barry Building for no new project. Much more to come, but this was a refreshing and hopeful decision, and now the real work to find a collaborative compromise begins.
Preservation pal Mike Callahan helped get a local temperance zine digitized and dig this as Prohibition ended: Clifton’s Cafeteria was proudly dry, profits be darned! If you have a Newspapers.com subscription, you can search the White Ribbon here. And then there’s Kim’s weird experience with the WCTU archives.
Any time West Adams Heritage Association nominates a neighborhood landmark, the application is a fascinating, thoroughly-researched history lesson. Grant D. Venerable’s Craftsman house might be modest, but his life story is anything but!
When the Marco Place bungalow court in Venice was up for landmarking, the new owner objected, did unpermitted work the City ignored. Now Venice tenants have been displaced for a stark white remodel. It’s still RSO, though—no Airbnb allowed.
A modest proposal for the derelict City-owned LA Mall: lease the unused commercial spaces for $1/year to animal rescue volunteers, seed and tool libraries, zine making workshops, a mosaic class (there are some great ones here), book and movie clubs, etc. And fix the Triforium! Antonio Villaraigosa actually offered 10,000 feet of LA Mall retail space to Occupy LA as community organizing space. Negotiators walked away and city staffers flipped out. It’s not too late to turn the Civic Center into the heart and brain of the city. Welcome people back and see Los Angeles transformed.
Home at Last, the homeless nonprofit that rented below-market-rate space from indicted councilman Curren Price’s NGO until the landlord kicked Price out, had cash criminally seized by the IRS and is squabbling with LAHSA. A Federal indictment is likely coming soon—and nobody in City Hall is talking about it.
The Home at Last facility at 1426 Paloma Street was advanced by confessed racketeer Jose Huizar in 2019, and the excessive lease terms and long delay before any shelter was provided there was the subject of an investigation by journalist Jerry Sullivan, before he left Los Angeles to become national managing editor for The Real Deal. We’ve learned a lot from his reporting, and are honored that he thinks we are “citizen journalists of the first order.”
The Uplifters Foundation nonprofit is buying burned Pacific Palisades lots to construct period-appropriate, resilient new homes using a $200 million tax-exempt bond lease-to-own program. Displaced and looking for a path back to 90272? Click here for info.
Cheers to the Broadway-Spring Center, which installed a window in the parking garage elevator so you can gape at this incredible view of Angels Flight and the last undeveloped plot on Bunker Hill, Angels Knoll AKA Leo & Helen Politi Park. Open it up!
A revolutionary proposal from the O.C. Grand Jury that Los Angeles should adopt ASAP: create a simple path by which public officials who violate their oath of office can be removed from power. Criminal cases take years, as corrupt “leaders” ruin cities.
For as long as we’ve known him, Sergio the Mission Road Muffler Man has been holding nothing in his outstretched arms—no muffler, no miniature car, no plate of food, no Paul Bunyan axe, no nothing. It’s honestly kind of spooky.
Yes, this publication is as yellow as they come, but we’re glad someone cares: The Daily Mail has picked up Brittany Stillwell’s explosive lawsuit against L.A. and Jose Huizar-associated developers Onni Group, owners of Hope+Flower, where Heidi Planck was allegedly put down the trash chute she OD’ed.
Top down density meets lack of stewardship. “The problem isn’t SB 1090. The problem is that eighteen months after the Eaton Fire, Altadena still doesn’t have a comprehensive recovery plan.” This resilient community has so much to teach us. Listen, damn it!
The County Supervisors spoil the landscape with ugly buildings we have to pay for. That should change: design review board? In Boyle Heights, a late moderne ‘50s hospital by Paul R. Williams & Adrian Wilson has been replaced by an artless patchwork of tacky, off-kilter clutter.
Scrolling through our 2020 Los Angeles photo safaris, we found one shot of the Lineage cold storage warehouse and its sole decorative element: a corner notch for a handsome specimen palm (which survived the week-long fire). The solar panels were just permitted. They’re hiring. And the scale is obscene.
