On Esotouric’s YouTube channel, you’ll find videos of our LAVA Sunday Salon lecture series and Broadway on My Mind walking tours, Literary Salons at Musso & Frank, Skid Row history walks & screenings, historic preservation site visits and public hearing testimony, plus visits to endangered landmarks with the irrepressible Cranky Preservationist, Nathan Marsak.

We are proud to partner with LAVA and Dr. Jay Vargas from the Cal State Los Angeles teaching crime lab to host a series of educational talks about the history and evolution of forensic science, a field that was developed on the campus by the LAPD’s legendary crime scene analyst Ray Pinker. The series features deep dives from detectives, criminalists, professors, prisoners’ rights advocates and true crime writers, with opportunities for hands-on lab discovery and revealing Q & A sessions. The events support new research coming out of the Criminalistics Department.

We created LAVA to continue the free cultural programming that we developed during our brief tenure running the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk. Our aim was to bring together the most intriguing creative promoters, artists, writers and thinkers in Los Angeles, to share their visions for making a better city. These Visionaries were spotlighted in the LAVA Sunday Salon lecture series (originally held at Clifton’s Cafeteria, then at Les Noces de Figaro, and finally landing in the basement of Grand Central Market), and in the walking tours that followed. Although the Sunday Salons are no longer happening, LAVA still presents the Forensic Science Seminars at Cal State Los Angeles. Many of the LAVA Sunday Salons and walks can be viewed on our YouTube channel as well.