by Kim Cooper | Jun 27, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
The following is a guest post by Beverly Hills city councilmember John Mirisch, which originally appeared on the Vintage Los Angeles Facebook page. We believe his observations on the June 21, 2022 Beverly Hills city council hearing, during which the way was cleared...
by Kim Cooper | Jun 18, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
On 12/22/2024 the Morrison Hotel was red tagged by LADBS. On 12/26/2024 it caught fire, but did not burn down. The building is at immediate risk of being demolished by the city. Please sign the petition asking L.A. to save this cultural and architectural landmark and...
by Kim Cooper | Jun 18, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
We were curious about membership numbers for the Los Angeles Conservancy through the pandemic, so looked up their their 990 tax filings on the California Charities Registry. Although we have viewed their page in the past, the Los Angeles Conservancy didn’t come...
by Kim Cooper | May 16, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
It’s election season in Los Angeles, and with Eric Garcetti termed out, the fight for the chief executive slot—a race which was Jose Huizar’s to lose and did he ever—has attracted a predictable mix of deep pockets, political lifers and idealistic long...
by Kim Cooper | May 13, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
Update September 21, 2022: The Bunya pine, which appears to have died, was chopped down today. Click here for a brief video memorial. RIP to a great sentinel tree which stood proudly for 134 years. May its memory be a blessing. Update July 31, 2022: Here’s a...
by Kim Cooper | May 4, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
Q: If a 1950s air raid siren falls in South Los Angeles, will anybody come and get it? Obsolete infrastructure can be beautiful in its decay, but not when it fails, spilling potentially deadly hunks of steel onto private property. When Siren No. 184 came down, we got...
by Kim Cooper | Apr 24, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
December 2024 update: Sign the petition – City of Los Angeles, don’t demolish the Morrison Hotel! Learn more here. December 2023 update: The Morrison Hotel was made famous when the Doors dropped by for an album photo shoot, but for Angelenos, it was a...
by Kim Cooper | Apr 1, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
Happy 1950 U.S. Census release day! It’s 72 years since enumerators with cute little clipboards and mechanical pencils fanned out across post-war America and asked every soul they could buttonhole for their stats. A decade ago, I blogged about the 1940 Census...
by Kim Cooper | Mar 16, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
Click play, then follow along with our live commentary on this hearing here. Taix French Restaurant is a beloved Echo Park landmark that has become the poster child for how billionaire developers continue to corrupt Los Angeles City Hall–even while multiple...
by Kim Cooper | Mar 15, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
Contrary to the story reported by CBS Saturday Morning on February 18, 2023, Cornelius Johnson’s Olympic Oak and family residence was not yet a protected Los Angeles landmark! On May 10, 2023, City Council finally voted to declare it a protected site. It was our...
by Kim Cooper | Feb 21, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
Welcome to our historic preservation advocacy page for Old Trapper’s Lodge, which was first published on February 21, 2022, two months before Pierce College allowed a crew associated with Valley Relics Museum to remove the Boot Hill Cemetery sculptures. If...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 22, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
The following is a guest post from Maryam Hosseinzadeh, a concerned local who asked us to share this timely alert and hopes that you’ll share it widely before the Monday noon deadline: ALERT! PASADENA – For more than 100 years, a sleepy corner of Pasadena...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 9, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
There’s something wonderful happening on “The Nickel,” the portion of Fifth Street that connects the gritty Skid Row neighborhood of Downtown Los Angeles with the business district to the West: the early 20th century residency hotels whose owner Izek...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 9, 2022 | The Esotouric Blog
75 years ago today, a 22-year-old homeless woman named Beth Short went missing in Downtown Los Angeles. She would become famous in death as the Black Dahlia, a nickname she’d briefly worn in life. In 2005, we launched a true crime blog called the 1947project,...
by Kim Cooper | Dec 28, 2021 | The Esotouric Blog
February 2026 update: After months of rumors, it’s been announced that Homeboy Industries will convert Monastery of the Angels into residential treatment facility, Home of the Angels. As part of the Friends of the Angels team who stood fast against earlier plans to...
by Kim Cooper | Dec 10, 2021 | The Esotouric Blog
In October, we shared the thrilling news that the almost completely empty Barclay Hotel had been sold to the Healthy Housing Foundation and would be immediately returned to use as affordable housing, instead of being converted into a boutique hotel at some unspecified...
by Kim Cooper | Nov 3, 2021 | The Esotouric Blog
On October 23, photos first circulated on social media showing workers on top of the awning of the historic Pig ‘n Whistle cafe at 6714 Hollywood Boulevard, covering the beautiful 1920s facade with cheap plastic signage for a Mr. Tempo Cantina and dropping the...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 20, 2021 | The Esotouric Blog
When people ask why we get so involved in historic preservation advocacy, despite the frustrations of fighting a pro-development City Hall that’s under multiple indictments for land use corruption, we answer that we feel called to do the work, want to be of...
by Kim Cooper | Oct 15, 2021 | The Esotouric Blog
UPDATE, JUNE 2023: Welcome, Ghost Adventures fans! You might remember seeing our Kim Cooper on the Black Dahlia episode in 2016, where she tried to teach Zak how to say “Figueroa,” or in Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel. We love the Hotel...
by Kim Cooper | Sep 20, 2021 | The Esotouric Blog
We got the tip late Saturday night: a screenshot from a Nextdoor post, shared by a worried Angeleno who knew we’d take the case. Esotouric is nominally a Los Angeles tour company, but like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe (the star of one of our more...
by Kim Cooper | Sep 15, 2021 | The Esotouric Blog
On Tuesday, September 14, 2021, the powerful PLUM Committee of the Los Angeles City Council convened a Special Meeting to quickly rule on the fates of a number of potential Historic-Cultural Monument designations recently approved by the Cultural Heritage Commission....
by Kim Cooper | Jun 15, 2021 | The Esotouric Blog
UPDATE APRIL 2024: Preservation pal Damian Sullivan reports that the deconstructed, numbered segments of the Pico Boulevard Chili Bowl, and the unique diamond pane roof sign and armature, have been hauled off to the dump by the property owner. The cleared lot—which...
by Kim Cooper | Mar 25, 2021 | The Esotouric Blog
Our newest special newsletter edition for subscribers is out now. (We also have a free newsletter packed with local historic preservation news and musings.) This month, we take a deep dive into a remarkable artifact held in the research collection of the Pasadena...
by Kim Cooper | Feb 1, 2021 | The Esotouric Blog
Yesterday we lost Big John, our dear friend who was the most extraordinary portal to the weird, creative, anything-goes Los Angeles that used to be. John was a master craftsman, a builder of car washes, a teetotaler nightclub owner, designer of crooked gambling...
by Kim Cooper | Jan 20, 2021 | The Esotouric Blog
(photo by architectural historian Michael R. Corbett, from SAFER’s appeal) Update after the hearing: read all about it here. In November 2018, the FBI raided the City Hall offices of Councilmember Jose Huizar. He has been charged with 34 counts of racketeering,...
