by Kim Cooper | Mar 22, 2024 | The Esotouric Blog
Have you ever noticed Sunshine? That’s the name Downtown denizen Annette Zilinskas gave to a lonely, neglected Queen Palm that for many years had stood proudly above 2nd and Hill Streets on the dirt patch, the last piece of unflattened Bunker Hill topography, on a...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 17, 2024 | The Esotouric Blog
The great Eagle Tree, a native Western Sycamore (Platanus racemosa), stood for centuries in what is now the City of Compton as a natural landmark. The tree was so remarkable in size and distinction that it was recorded by Henry Hancock on his Rancho San Pedro survey...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 31, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
Last Saturday—as we have about four times a year since Esotouric debuted in 2007—we booked a coach class bus on which to guide a large group on a tour about the unsolved 1947 murder of Beth Short, a case that shares the victim’s real life nickname, The Black...
by Kim Cooper | Aug 31, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
Something worrying has been happening in the City of Santa Ana: bureaucrats, rushing to spend a $9.3 Million critical maintenance and infrastructure grant from the California State Library “Building Forward” program before the March 31, 2026 completion deadline and...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 26, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
In 1985, the husband-and-wife team of Aaron Silverman and Molly Maguire published the first of what the Library of Congress would later call “the decade’s most exciting American maps,” The Raymond Chandler Mystery Map of Los Angeles. This was soon...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 26, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
by Kim Cooper | Jul 26, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
Written by Esotouric’s Kim Cooper and designed by acclaimed illustrator Paul Rogers, this new, noir map from U.K. wayfinding mavens Herb Lester is a must for those who seek lost Los Angeles. Click here to purchase. In 1985, the husband-and-wife team of Aaron...
by Kim Cooper | Jun 14, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
Even though the matter of the Times Mirror Square / Historic-Cultural Monument was officially deemed “Council action final” on 12/07/2018, we keep that hoping new indictments will finally blow the lid off the obviously corrupt vote. This vote would result...
by Kim Cooper | May 14, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
This week, Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez introduced a motion acknowledging that the proposed redevelopment of the Lincoln Heights Jail into a “maker’s district” is not actually happening. Her idea for the massive, derelict...
by Kim Cooper | May 12, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
The following is a guest post from Kevin Trujillo Miller, about what he saw last night at Central Library during ALOUD’s program, Surviving Homelessness & Foster Care: A conversation with author David Ambroz and Mayor Karen Bass. Well, as the saying goes,...
by Kim Cooper | Mar 30, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
Bungalow courts are a distinctive, desirable and unfortunately endangered early 20th century form of workforce housing. These modest double (or sometimes single) rows of small cottages with shared community green space are usually under rent control, and are much...
by Kim Cooper | Mar 29, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
History doesn’t repeat, but in Los Angeles sometimes it rhymes something fierce. In the first verse, we’ve got Chicago émigré Raymond Chandler, the early 20th century downtown oil man who suppressed his literary ambitions while rising in the business world...
by Kim Cooper | Mar 14, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
Some weeks, it seems like every time we check our email or DMs, there’s a new preservation crisis brewing, and some desperate, caring, exasperated Angeleno who feels compelled to tell us what’s threatened in their corner of the city, and ask if there’s any hope at...
by Kim Cooper | Mar 9, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
This investigation is published on the 29th anniversary of Charles Bukowski’s death. In 2007, while writing our tour of Bukowski’s Los Angeles, we spotted a Craigslist ad that listed the writer’s longtime home in the 1920s bungalow court at 5124 De Longpre...
by Kim Cooper | Feb 10, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
Original post February 10, 2023 (scroll down for updates): On Tuesday, while we were trying to get away from L.A.’s problems by spending my birthday exploring inland empire landmarks, the Los Angeles Times broke the story of the collapse of Skid Row Housing...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 24, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
A sad update, 2/4/2023: according to angelenoheart, the roadhouse was demolished today. We confirmed this with a visit on 2/11/2023. Nothing new was built to replace it; it became a surface parking lot. If you’ve ever crossed the Los Angeles River into Boyle...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 17, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
January 17, 2022 To the Honorable John F. Walter United States Courthouse 350 W. 1st Street Los Angeles, CA 90012 Courtroom 7A c/o Courtroom Deputy Clerk Shannon Reilly shannon_reilly@cacd.uscourts.gov [update: by email reply, Deputy Clerk Shannon Reilly informs us...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 12, 2023 | The Esotouric Blog
A worrying photo appeared in a Facebook development group Tuesday afternoon, showing the backlit plastic readerboard on Broadway’s Orpheum Theatre marquee partially dismantled. The post was immediately shared among concerned preservationists. We too were worried...
by Kim Cooper | Dec 7, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
Welcome to auspicious #13 in a series of 3-D explorable tours of off-the-beaten-path Southern California spaces, created by Craig Sauer using cutting-edge Matterport technology. Jergins Tunnel If you’ve been paying attention, you know that we love tunnels,...
by Kim Cooper | Nov 15, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
In October 2022, we made a video expressing our concerns about the old Potter’s Field Cemetery at 11269 Garfield Avenue in Downey, and the unanswered question of what happened to many thousands of cremated remains of Rancho Los Amigos residents that were buried...
by Kim Cooper | Aug 30, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
About a month ago, the new owners of the Clairville Plumbing & Heating compound, which sold for $2.1 Million on 5/25/2022, applied for a demolition permit for the rare all-metal Standard service station on the west side of the lot. Because 1659 W. Colorado is on...
by Kim Cooper | Aug 16, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
On the occasion of the 102nd anniversary of the author’s birth, here’s something nutty we found in the Charles Bukowski’s archives at the Huntington Library, while researching the making of the film Barfly for our special audio track recording...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 25, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
Things are a little weird at the Hotel Cecil in Downtown Los Angeles these days. No, not serial killer tenants and unexplained death weird, though we’ve covered those narratives for years through our true crime tours, appearance as Skid Row crime historians on...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 21, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
Have you noticed that Los Angeles is falling apart? It is. And for those of us who have been here for a while, there’s a certain morbid fascination in watching it crumble—sometimes literally. You can see it happen in fast forward on the much-hyped Sixth Street...
by Kim Cooper | Jul 11, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
July 31, 2023: This campaign is dedicated to the memory of Paul Reubens, who loved William S. Hart’s house museum, and advocated for its preservation. In his 1946 will, the silent film actor William S. Hart left his 254-acre Horseshoe Ranch in Newhall, personal...
