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Gentle Reader. . .
On the last Sunday of the month, since July, we’ve led free walking tours in the Broadway on My Mind series.
Our aim in offering these walks has been to raise consciousness about the fragile architectural and cultural ecosystem that thrives here, and the pending threats to Broadway’s appearance and function as the city nears the start of work on the proposed Streetscape Master Plan.
We’ve been blessed on these walks with the company of some of our favorite local historians and poets, and a growing community of passionate urban explorers.
This Sunday, we’re wrapping up the series for the season with a very special Broadway on My Mind tour. Our guests will be poets Suzanne Lummis, Carl Weintraub and Brendan Constantine, presenting Poem Noir interludes between the tour’s historic narratives.
We hope you’ll join us as we take our last Broadway walk of 2014, honoring this grand promenade with poetic punctuation and a celebration of all the creative Angelenos who have done great things on Broadway for more than a century. The end of the tour series doesn’t mean we’ll stop looking out for this wonderful boulevard, but it does mean we’d love to wrap up the season in your company.
We’d like to thank all the folks who have ordered a Subscription to the deluxe special edition of Kim’s mystery novel about the young Raymond Chandler, The Kept Girl. By popular demand, we now have shared Subscriptions good for two. Subscriptions remain available through Christmas, with the book out early next year. More info is here.
We’re on the bus this Saturday with Weird West Adams, a crime and social history tour exploring the fascinating old neighborhoods just west of downtown. On Sunday, we invite you to attend the free LAVA Sunday Salon, celebrating rebelious film starlet Ann Dvorak and a grandchild’s memories of her extraordinary grandmother, the creative force behind L.A.’s burlesque empire. After the Salon, Richard’s free Broadway on My Mind walking tour awaits, with Poem Noir interludes. Join us, do!
Upcoming Tours & Happenings
- WEIRD WEST ADAMS – SAT. 11/23
Here’s a most beguiling bus adventure to add to your butterfly collection. Come ride through the Beverly Hills of the early 20th Century, a mysterious neighborhood of decaying manors, dark secrets and souls that rest unpeacefully in their pretty graves. From the Krazy Kafitz family who simply could not behave, to the woe-begotten Marvin Gayes Junior and Senior, jazz age bootleggers, poison-gobbling kiddies, fiends and freaks, it’s a tour packed with oddities and the unexpected. And the architecture too is to die for, from courtly Alvarado Terrace to the lovely lawns of Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, where some of the most fascinating characters are buried. You won’t want to miss this grim day out, so join us, do.
- LAVA SUNDAY SALON and BROADWAY ON MY MIND WALKING TOUR – SUN. 11/24
You are invited to be part of a transformative downtown experience. The Sunday Salon is the free monthly gathering of our creative consortium LAVA – The Los Angeles Visionaries Association. From noon to 2pm, at Les Noces du Figaro on Broadway, we hope you’ll join L.A.’s most innovative artists, writers and performers to enjoy good company, hearty comfort food, and presentations from fascinating LAVA Visionaries. Afterwards, Richard leads a free Broadway walking tour with Poem Noir interludes (reservations required). This Salon features Christina Rice on her new book on the rebellious Hollywood actress Ann Dvorak, and Pepper Aarvold sharing tales of growing up backstage at the Follies burlesque theatre in downtown Los Angeles. The Sunday Salon is an amazing gathering of the nicest and most thoughtful folks anywhere–you don’t want to miss this one!
- RICHARD’S 45th BIRTHDAY BUS – SAT. 11/30
Come spend a very special day exploring the nooks, crannies, highways and byways of the Antelope Valley, and celebrating Richard’s birthday. Once a year we arrange for a completely unique bus adventure, and this promises to be a lively one, with stops at a couple of provocative museums, a stroll through an ancient Joshua tree forest, and visits with some of our favorite high desert curators. Plus birthday cake, rare film footage and a special appearance by Richard’s mother. This excursion will never be repeated, and we’d love to share it with you.
- HOTEL HORRORS & MAIN STREET VICE – SAT. 12/7
We’ve taken our favorite downtown “double feature” crime and oddities tour and made it even wilder, with more hotel visits and stunning vintage film clips that bring the lost world of downtown to life. Don’t miss this celebration of the ribald old neighborhood that’s not there anymore, the exquisite historic hotels that are, and rediscovered scandals to make you laugh and shiver.
- PASADENA CONFIDENTIAL – SAT. 12/14
Crimebo the Clown is the special guest on our final crime bus tour of 2014, a very proper excursion into all the horrid tales the white-gloved ladies of the town would rather we not tell. They say each community gets the crimes it deserves, and Pasadena’s have always been extraordinary. Climb aboard for rough trade, rocket science, monkeys run amok, suicide leaps, devil worship, madmen and assorted evils that will forever change the way you look at Pasadena.
- LAVA SUNDAY SALON – SUN. 12/29
You are invited to be part of a transformative downtown experience. The Sunday Salon is the free monthly gathering of our creative consortium LAVA – The Los Angeles Visionaries Association. From noon to 2pm, at Les Noces du Figaro on Broadway, we hope you’ll join L.A.’s most innovative artists, writers and performers to enjoy good company, hearty comfort food, and presentations from fascinating LAVA Visionaries. This Salon is dedicated to a single topic: the fascinating international initiatory order called the Ordo Templi Orientis, or O.T.O. While the roots of O.T.O. lie in Freemasonry, it separated from that tradition a century ago under the leadership of noted magician Aleister Crowley. O.T.O. has a rich history in Los Angeles stretching back to the 1930s, when Wilfred Smith and Jack Parsons led Agape Lodge in Pasadena, the only fully operational O.T.O. body in the world at the time of Crowley’s death in 1947. At the Salon, following a brief presentation on the nature of the O.T.O., Star Sapphire Lodge, the O.T.O. body serving Los Angeles, invites you to join in a celebration of the Gnostic Mass, the central ritual of the O.T.O. We are pulling out the stops to make the final Sunday Salon of 2014 a gathering to remember. Don’t miss it!
- THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA – SAT. 1/4
We kick off the 2014 tour season with our most popular crime bus tour, which we always schedule around the anniversary of this iconic, unsolved Los Angeles murder mystery. Our excursion begins in the historic Olive Street lobby of the Biltmore Hotel and ends in time for you to take tea and crumpets where Beth Short waited out the last hours of her freedom before walking south into hell. After multiple revisions, this is less a murder tour than a social history of 1940s Hollywood female culture, mass media and madness, and we welcome you to join us for the ride. This tour always sells out, so reserve your spot today.
AND FINALLY, LINKS!
- MONA breaks ground, and our friend the 76 Ball is a little closer to coming home.
- Important court ruling in the fight against selling off historic post offices.
- Pink for remembrance.
- Dino’s is dust.
- And Tower Records won’t be landmarked.
- Doris of the Market.
- Charlie of the counter.
- A modest proposal for the Autry’s Southwest Museum problem.
- De-bronzing begins for the Echo Park boathouse.
- Main Street burlesque lore.
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yrs,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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