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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210909T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210909T220000
DTSTAMP:20260409T025915
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SUMMARY:A Love Letter to Los Angeles Streetlights (1867-2021)\, featuring the triumphant rebirth of Sheila Klein’s “Vermonica”
DESCRIPTION:This is a recording of a webinar that previously streamed live. You can purchase a ticket to watch the recording\, but you won’t be able to participate in the live chat or Q&A.  \nTo sign up\, enter your name and email address and click the “Buy Ticket” button below. If for any reason the check out page doesn’t appear\, just click this link. \n\n\n\nJoin Esotouric\, L.A.’s most eclectic sightseeing tour company\, for an immersive cultural history webinar that’s a deep dive into the artistry\, history\, oddities and infrastructure of the streetlights of Los Angeles. \nEven when Los Angeles was a sleepy\, dusty village of 5000 souls\, its vibrant night life demanded a consistent source of illumination. The first privately financed gas lamps were installed along Main Street in 1867\, a modern convenience that helped shape the development of Downtown’s commercial core. \nIn 1882\, electricity arrived\, not in the familiar form of a regular row of bulbs at second story height\, but with spectacular 150’ poles that cast a spreading moonlight glow from 3\,000-candle power arc lamps. Beneath them\, Angelenos enjoyed all the benefits and troubles of a 24 hour city.   \nWith the 20th century came an explosion of urban and suburban development\, illuminated and accompanied by a fascinating assortment of artistically designed streetlights\, many of them installed exclusively along one street or in a single neighborhood. \nIn this webinar\, we’ll go on a then-and-now treasure hunt introducing you to some of those iconic streetlight designs\, their history and evolution as a living part of the urban streetscape. These designs have poetic names like the Broadway Rose\, the Vine Double\, Metropolitan Standards\, Wilshire and Hollywood Specials. \nOn an obscure stretch of East Los Angeles streetscape inches away from the Golden State Freeway\, you’ll discover the charms and mysteries of the Commerce Historic Lighting District\, a striking stand of obsolete streetlights left behind when modern poles were installed. \nIn Angeleno Heights\, you’ll learn about the Carroll Avenue Historic Preservation Overlay Zone\, and how the preservation-minded home owners worked with the city and utility companies to turn back the clock by hiding unsightly overhead wires\, turning their time capsule street into a world class filming location. (This section of the webinar is informed by original\, unpublished archival material that we purchased at the estate sale of the neighborhood’s premier historian.) \nAnd we’ve got special guest streetlight lovers on hand to talk about the poles that beguile them. \n\nInfrastructure historian Jack Feldman — who sits on the board and maintains the virtual museum of Water and Power Associates (W&PA)\, an essential resource for anyone interested in the history of Southern California\, will guide us through the development of streetlighting in Los Angeles\, drawing on the Early Los Angeles Street Lights exhibit.\nHistoric preservation advocate and chronicler of the early French history of Los Angeles C.C. de Vere shines a light on Disneyland’s Main Street USA\, home to a selection of salvaged Llewellyn Electroliers.\nArchitectural historian Nathan Marsak\, author of Bunker Hill Los Angeles: Essence of Sunshine and Noir and Bunker Noir! tells how Patty Hearst and her Symbionese Liberation Army kidnappers left an indelible mark on one Inglewood streetlight.\n\nPlus\, we’ll look at two-high profile instances of Los Angeles artists using historic streetlights in sculpture. While Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” (2008) on LACMA’s Wilshire Boulevard side is museum director Michael Govan’s signature achievement and a favorite spot for social media selfies\, the piece is strikingly similar to Sheila Klein’s “Vermonica” (1993)\, that artist’s response to the 1992 Rodney King uprising placed in one of the looted East Hollywood mini-malls. \nFor 25 years\, Vermonica enlivened the commercial streetscape and sparked conversation and discovery. But in 2017\, “Vermonica” was mysteriously removed from the parking lot at Santa Monica and Vermont with no notice to the artist or public. Soon after\, its vintage streetlight components were reinstalled in front of the nearby Bureau of Street Lighting HQ\, in a different configuration that the artist repudiated. \nAs longtime Vermonica fans with a special interest in public policy and the strange workings of Los Angeles city government\, we worked closely with Sheila Klein to figure out what had happened to her sculpture\, then lobbied the city to support a proper reinstallation and to add “Vermonica” to the civic art collection. “Vermonica” can now be found on Santa Monica Boulevard at Lyman Place\, opposite the Cahuenga Branch Library. This relocation was completed with help and cooperation from Bureau of Street Lighting\, City of Los Angeles and Amador Architects. \nSheila Klein says: “‘Vermonica’ is a love letter to the city of L.A. that would not have been delivered without the support of Esotouric’s Kim Cooper and Richard Schave. This work was originally created in 1993 to look at the sculptural aspect of streetlights and it illuminated a hopeful civilized path forward for Angelenos out of the trauma of the 1992 uprising. It seems appropriate that ‘Vermonica’ is shining again as the city grapples with the challenges of COVID\, unrest\, inequality and climate change. Domesticating the street\, makes the city a place you want to be.”   \nAnd Mike the Poet\, educator\, author of the recent Letters to My City and civic advocate\, will lift our spirits with a poem celebrating the restored Vermonica. \nThis webinar is an illustrated lecture packed with rare photos that will the history of Los Angeles streetlights to life. And you’ll find the look of an Esotouric webinar is a little different than your standard dry Zoom session\, with lively interactive graphics courtesy of the mmhmm app.   \nSheila Klein will join us to talk about creating the original temporary “Vermonica” installation and the strange path to reinventing it as a permanent piece of public art\, and will answer your questions\, so get ready to be a part of the show. \nCan’t join in when the webinar is happening? You’ll have access to the full replay for one week. Please note: the 2-hour running time is just an estimate\, and we often run long because the stories take on a life of their own. You can always come back and watch the last part of the webinar recording later. \nSo\, tune in and discover the incredible history of Los Angeles\, with the couple whose passion for the city is infectious. \nFYI: Immediately upon registering\, you will receive a separate\, automated email containing the link to join the webinar. The webinar is reliable on all devices\, Mac\, PC\, iOS and Android. \nPlease visit our FAQ for details about our webinars. \n\n\nAbout Esotouric: As undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz\, Kim Cooper and Richard Schave inexplicably hated one another on sight. (Perhaps less inexplicably\, their academic advisor believed they were soul mates). A chance meeting 18 years later proved much more agreeable. Richard wooed Kim with high level library database access\, with which she launched the 1947project true crime blog\, highlighting a crime a day from the year of The Black Dahlia and Bugsy Siegel slayings. The popular blog’s readers demanded a tour\, and then another. The tour was magical\, a hothouse inspiring new ways for the by-then-newlyweds to tell the story of Los Angeles. Esotouric was born in 2007 with a calendar packed with true crime\, literary\, architecture and rock and roll tours. Ever since\, it has provided a platform for promoting historic preservation issues (like the Save the 76 Ball campaign and the landmarking of Charles Bukowski’s bungalow)\, building a community of urban explorers (including dozens of free talks and tours under the umbrella of LAVA) and digging even deeper into the secret heart of the city they love.\n \nRights and permissions: By attending an Esotouric webinar\, you acknowledge that the entirety of the presentation is copyrighted\, and no portion of the video or text may be reproduced in any fashion.
URL:https://esotouric.com/event/los-angeles-streetlights/
CATEGORIES:virtual,Webinar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210930T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210930T220000
DTSTAMP:20260409T025915
CREATED:20210909T210217Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211018T171532Z
UID:10000466-1633032000-1633039200@esotouric.com
SUMMARY:Los Angeles: City of Neon Light
DESCRIPTION:This is a recording of a webinar that previously streamed live. You can purchase a ticket to watch the recording\, but you won’t be able to participate in the live chat or Q&A.  \nTo sign up\, enter your name and email address and click the “Buy Ticket” button below. If for any reason the check out page doesn’t appear\, just click this link. \n\n\n\nJoin Esotouric\, L.A.’s most eclectic sightseeing tour company\, for an immersive cultural history webinar that’s a deep dive into the history of Los Angeles neon signs\, and how this new art and science grew up with and shaped the city.   \nOur guests for this program are some of the Southland’s most passionate and knowledgable sign geeks\, scholars and artisans. So pull up a virtual chair in the cool green glow of your screen and let’s talk L.A. neon! \nSetting the stage\, neon historian\, geographer and Museum of Neon Art (MONA) board member Dydia DeLyser and her sign crafter / historian husband Paul Greenstein (authors of Neon\, A Light History) will take us on a time travel trip to Los Angeles in neon’s boom years. We’ll learn about the technological benefits and limitations\, get to know iconic local signs and and discover just how these brilliant stripes and whorls defined the urban landscape and helped sell the Southern California dream. \nSignage historian\, tour guide and MONA board member J. Eric Lynxwiler (author of Signs of Life: Los Angeles Is the City of Neon) will focus on Wilshire Boulevard\, pointing out great rooftop and storefront signs lost and still standing and explaining how they interact with and improve the boulevard’s Art Deco\, Beaux Art and Modernist architecture. Plus\, he’ll introduce us to MONA’s work as a collecting institution that restores some historic signs for gallery display\, and works to get others back out into the open air where the community can enjoy them.   \nArchitectural and signage historian Nathan Marsak (author of Los Angeles Neon) puts on his Bunker Hill detective hat for a rare view of the lost neighborhood’s neon signs\, explains how expensive incandescent signs were converted to ultra-modern neon\, explores the city’s vintage hotel rooftop signs and how they were relit\, and shows a little love for his personal post-neon obsession: delicate and endangered artist-designed backlit plastic signs.   \nThis webinar is an illustrated lecture packed with rare photos that will bring the history\, preservation and future of Los Angeles neon to life. And you’ll find the look of an Esotouric webinar is a little different than your standard dry Zoom session\, with lively interactive graphics courtesy of the mmhmm app.   \nOur guests are eager to answer your questions\, so get ready to be a part of the show. \nABOUT OUR GUESTS: \nUrban anthropologist J. Eric Lynxwiler is a Board Member of the Museum of Neon Art (MONA) and\, 22 years running\, the affable host of its nighttime Neon Cruise which takes guests on a convertible double-decker bus from downtown Los Angeles to Hollywood and back. For the Museum of Neon Art\, he has saved numerous neon signs from the wrecking ball. Downtown LA preservationists know him as an LA Conservancy docent for the Broadway theater district and he hosts walking tours of Wilshire’s Miracle Mile district for the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles. Lynxwiler is the co-author of three books of local history: Spectacular Illumination: Neon Los Angeles 1925-1965\, Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles\, and Knott’s Preserved: From Boysenberry to Theme Park\, The History Of Knott’s Berry Farm. \nDydia DeLyser is a feminist cultural-historical geographer at California State University\, Fullerton who forwards her research interests through community engagements in participatory historical geography. For over a decade she has undertaken scholarly research on how neon signs have transformed the American landscape and\, as part of that work\, has served on the Board of the American Sign Museum and serves as Secretary of the Board of the Museum of Neon Art. Her collaborative research with Paul Greenstein revealed that the Los Angeles sign widely heralded as the first neon sign in the US was in fact not first. Their most recent collaborative effort is the richly illustrated book Neon\, A Light History. \nPaul Greenstein has been one of the most influential Los Angeles neon-sign designers and restorers of the past forty years\, helping keep neon in the public eye and preserving neon’s history for our future. He began in 1977\, a time when neon signs were nearly extinct\, by designing\, building and installing the then-revolutionary neon\, cast resin\, and plastic guitar sign for “Granny’s\,” a rock-and-roll tailor on West Hollywood’s Sunset Strip\, leading to other bespoke neon signs for businesses on what would become the very trendy Melrose Avenue. But even as Greenstein designed\, engineered\, and crafted iconic new signs for new businesses\, he has always also been a leader in sign restoration\, restoring signs like the Hollywood Columbia Drug store sign in 1979-one of the first neon sign restorations possibly in the country\, Hollywood’s 1930 “Castle Argyle” sign\, Westlake Park’s 1928 “Hotel Californian” sign\, and Echo Park’s 1924 “Jensen’s Recreation Center.” Devoted to the art and craft of neon\, as well as to its potential for community beautification and invigoration\, Greenstein uses his neon skills to serve the greater Los Angeles community. He is the co-author\, together with Dydia DeLyser\, of Neon\, A Light History. \n Nathan Marsak  is the author of the books Bunker Hill Los Angeles: Essence of Sunshine and Noir\, Bunker Noir! and “Los Angeles Neon” and can be found spitting tacks in the character of The Cranky Preservationist. His blog is Bunker Hill Los Angeles. \nCan’t join in when the webinar is happening? You’ll have access to the full replay for one week. Please note: the 2-hour running time is just an estimate\, and we often run long because the stories take on a life of their own. You can always come back and watch the last part of the webinar recording later. \nSo\, tune in and discover the incredible history of Los Angeles\, with the couple whose passion for the city is infectious. \nFYI: Immediately upon registering\, you will receive a separate\, automated email containing the link to join the webinar. The webinar is reliable on all devices\, Mac\, PC\, iOS and Android. \nPlease visit our FAQ for details about our webinars. \n\n\nAbout Esotouric: As undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz\, Kim Cooper and Richard Schave inexplicably hated one another on sight. (Perhaps less inexplicably\, their academic advisor believed they were soul mates). A chance meeting 18 years later proved much more agreeable. Richard wooed Kim with high level library database access\, with which she launched the 1947project true crime blog\, highlighting a crime a day from the year of The Black Dahlia and Bugsy Siegel slayings. The popular blog’s readers demanded a tour\, and then another. The tour was magical\, a hothouse inspiring new ways for the by-then-newlyweds to tell the story of Los Angeles. Esotouric was born in 2007 with a calendar packed with true crime\, literary\, architecture and rock and roll tours. Ever since\, it has provided a platform for promoting historic preservation issues (like the Save the 76 Ball campaign and the landmarking of Charles Bukowski’s bungalow)\, building a community of urban explorers (including dozens of free talks and tours under the umbrella of LAVA) and digging even deeper into the secret heart of the city they love.\n \nRights and permissions: By attending an Esotouric webinar\, you acknowledge that the entirety of the presentation is copyrighted\, and no portion of the video or text may be reproduced in any fashion.
URL:https://esotouric.com/event/los-angeles-neon/
CATEGORIES:virtual,Webinar
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