Los Angeles Visionaries Association

WHAT: The second of the quarterly LAVA Salons at Musso & Frank, featuring John Buntin.
WHERE: Musso & Frank Grill, 6667 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028.
WHEN: Monday, April 30, 2012 from 6-11pm.
COST: $100 per person, ticket price includes 3-course prix fixe dinner prepared by Musso & Frank chefs, Salon presentations and dessert service. Cocktails not included.
TO PURCHASE TICKETS: Call Musso & Frank at (323) 467-7788 or visit the restaurant Tuesday-Saturday between 9am and 5pm. You can also reserve your seats by email through the Musso & Frank contact page.
FOR MORE INFO ABOUT THE EVENT: Send an email through the LAVA contact page or call Kim Cooper or Richard Schave at 323-223-2767.

On Monday, April 30, you are invited to join John Buntin, author of L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City, for a fresh look at the Los Angeles underworld of the 1920s and ‘30s. This is the culture which informs noir master Raymond Chandler’s short stories and early novels. The corrupt civic machine (“The Combination”) fueled the biggest boom town this country has ever seen, and inspired the real life struggles between Good Guys and Bad Guys which in turn influenced much of the fiction and film of the mid 20th Century. At the Salon we’ll examine the crusading cop who was the real-life inspiration for Philip Marlowe, then shine our light onto other crusaders, prosecutors and policy makers, who through the decades shift from teetotalers to civil libertarians, but always retain those constants of every Chandler hero: a chance at redemption.

Also appearing at the Salon is Howard Prouty (Acquisitions Archivist at The Academy Foundation/Margaret Herrick Library and proprietor of ReadInk) with a talk on Jake Zeitlin, another in his ongoing Salon series on important booksellers in Los Angeles. And before and after the formal dinner and Salon presentations, guests will mingle with Hollywood historian Philip Mershon (proprietor of The Felix in Hollywood Tour Company) and actress Kasey Wilson, appearing in the character of the helpful female book clerk from The Big Sleep.

THE BACK STORY: For much of the mid-20th Century, to rub shoulders with America’s greatest novelists and screenwriters, one needed merely to go to the corner of Cherokee Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. Here, within the tight triangle of the Writer’s Guild offices, Musso & Frank Grill and the Stanley Rose Bookshop, flowed the commercial and social sap that nourished the tree of American letters. The famous minds who congregated still inspire awe: William Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald, John Fante, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, William Saroyan, John O’Hara, Dorothy Parker, Nathanael West and many more.

And at the center of it all was the famed “Back Room” of Musso & Frank, the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. Beginning in 1936, in response to the restaurant’s growing popularity, Musso’s expanded its operations into a small room tucked behind the Vogue Theater. A door was punched through the west wall of the dining room, and a haughty door man installed. His instructions were simple: the back room was to be the exclusive domain of Hollywood’s literary lions, their friends and romantic partners. It was called, informally, The Cocktail Room or The Round Table or the Algonquin West.

The party raged on, six nights a week, for twenty glorious years.

In 1955, Musso & Frank expanded to the east, and the contents of the “Back Room”—the long bar, chairs, light fixtures, coat racks—were moved wholesale into the “New Room.” The “New Room” was no longer the exclusive retreat of literary Los Angeles, but the writers kept coming. Today, Musso & Frank’s clientele still includes celebrated novelists, screenwriters, poets and songwriters, all of whom cherish the old world hospitality, traditional Continental cuisine and opportunity to soak up the same rarified air that nourished the greats.

In honor of this ongoing writerly tradition, LAVA (The Los Angeles Visionaries Association) is delighted to announce the January 2012 launch of The LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank, a quarterly literary salon and prix fixe dinner celebrating the great writers and personalities who have frequented the establishment. The LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank is the brainchild of Kim Cooper & Richard Schave, proprietors of literary tour company Esotouric—Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, James M. Cain’s Southern California Nightmare, Charles Bukowski’s Haunts of a Dirty Old Man, John Fante’s Dreams from Bunker Hill—who for the past twenty months have been hosting a free cultural Salon on the last Sunday of the month at Clifton’s Cafeteria (recently moved to the Los Angeles Athletic Club). With this new Salon series, LAVA expands its congenial, intelligent and unpredictable cultural programming into Hollywood with a quarterly literary Salon event held in Musso & Frank on a night when the restaurant is closed to the general public. Seating is extremely limited, and this intimate gathering is sure to sell out quickly.

LAVA co-founder Richard Schave, the Salon host and co-curator, says “I would argue that along the bar in the old Cocktail Room, somewhere between the drinking, bragging, fighting and general hell-raising, the better half of the Hard-Boiled School of American Letters was hashed out and put down on paper. The purpose of the Salon is two fold. First, to set the record straight on some basic milestones: the rise and fall of the original Cocktail Room and its reincarnation as the “New Room” and the symbiotic relationship Musso & Frank shared with the legendary bookshop next door, Stanley Rose’s. Secondly, a more ephemeral aim: in these hallowed rooms, that still bear the nicotine stains from Raymond Chandler’s pipe and Charles Bukowski’s cigarettes, we want to seek out and amplify the spark which all those great souls have left behind. Musso & Frank is just bricks and mortar, but incredible ideas and connections were forged here, and we believe that spark is waiting to be reignited and make its impression felt in Los Angeles again.”

Each Musso’s Salon evening will focus on different aspects of Hollywood’s literary lore, feature fascinating speakers and special guest historians, and be hosted by LAVA co-founder Richard Schave.

Mark Echeverria, 4th generation General Manager/Proprietor of The Musso & Frank Grill, says “For 93 years The Musso & Frank Grill has been a keystone in Hollywood’s ever-evolving history. Some of the world’s greatest people have walked through our doors, sat at a booth or a bar stool, and dreamt the unimaginable. That is what makes Hollywood so unique: unimaginable things come true. Musso & Frank Grill has always been that inspiration in people’s lives to make the impossible, possible, and it is now time to tell the true story of the people who put Hollywood on the map, and the restaurant they did it in—The Musso & Frank Grill. We are extremely excited to work with LAVA to bring you living history in a setting where history continues to happen, even 93 years later. So please enjoy an authentic dinning experience you would have found in the early decades of last century, and bring yourselves back to the time era of the literary giants, and truly get a journey through the history of Hollywood, in the restaurant that Hollywood grew up around, The Musso & Frank Grill.”

Future Salons will focus on the life and works of Charles Bukowski, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Nathanael West and other fascinating characters who’ve contributed to nearly a century of literary culture at Musso & Frank.

To sign up for this free event: First register as a user on this site, and then return to this page. Refresh the page and the signup tab will appear just to the left, above this paragraph. Click "signup" and reserve your spot. No plus-ones; each guest must register individually.

ABOUT THIS TOUR:

For the latest installment of urban historian Richard Schave's site-specific discussion series “The Flâneur & The City,” Richard (Esotouric bus adventures) is joined by architectural historian Nathan Marsak (1947project, On Bunker Hill, In SRO Land).

Part Two of the Victorian Downtown walking tour will cover First Street north to Aliso and Los Angeles Street west to Broadway. It is a distinct departure from Part One, which almost exclusively dealt with the development of the mature business block of the 1880s and ‘90s. This tour will deal, for the most part, with the hotels and early business blocks of the 1870s, whose unique stylistic developments in this “bust out” time are heavily influenced by the experiences of Angelenoes in the “tempestuous ‘60s.” This is an era which saw drought, disease, plagues (of grasshoppers no less), and the bottom falling out of the real estate market, and those citizens who dared remain were the toughest and most stubborn ones.

The Bella Union, US Hotel, Hotel de Paris, the Baker Block, the Temple Block, and the whole slew of county and city buildings surrounding Pound Cake Hill and Fort Moore will all be discussed as we orient you to their locations beneath what exists today.

It is a Los Angeles that you will not recognize, and yet, strangely, you will not be surprised at all. For as we hold as a vademecum for this tour that haunting quote from Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame: “When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.”

By the conclusion of Part Two of Victorian Downtown, with only the rich region of the Plaza left for Part Three, we will have covered sufficient ground and decades to begin to make sweeping generalizations about the aesthetics of Victorian Los Angeles and how they drove the growth, appearance and very spirit of the city.

ABOUT THE TOUR SERIES: “The Flâneur & The City” is an ongoing attempt to explore some of the more important issues revealed by the constantly changing heart of the metropolis. The core notion of the series is of culture and history as commodities that are packaged and sold to a target demographic; meanwhile, it’s the ignored and seemingly worthless scraps of meaning found on the sidewalks and marketplaces where the true remnants of positive public space can be found. All interpretations and nuisances of the word flâneur are examined—from the modern-day aesthete dreaming of Baudelaire while carried along in the human tide past the stalls and shops of Broadway, to its more recent and perhaps relevant use, someone who is loitering. At its heart this series is a celebration of the simple act of getting out of your car, walking through a neighborhood and learning to see it with your own eyes.

To purchase a ticket for this special event, click here. If you'd like to be contacted when another crime lab tour and lecture are scheduled, subscribe to LAVA's occasional Crime Lab Newsletter.

Visionary Professor Donald Johnson, in association with LAVA and Esotouric, invites you to participate in a special four-hour event at LA’s regional crime laboratory, on the campus of Cal State LA. Space is very limited and pre-reservation required for this unprecedented opportunity to tour the crime lab, learn from working forensic investigators and educators, and discover the real art and science of crime scene investigation.

“Inside the Mind of the Arsonist” is an exploration of the scientific investigation of fire-related felony offenses, revealed through methods of evidence analysis, profiling and select case histories. Attendees will also have an opportunity to tour Cal State LA’s state-of the-art teaching and research facilities in the Criminalistics Department of the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center.

“Inside the Mind of the Arsonist” is hosted by Ed Nordskog, an active arson/bomb detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and author of the new book ‘Torchered’ Minds: Case Histories of Notorious Serial Arsonists. Copies of Mr. Nordskog’s book will be available for sale at this event, or you can purchase a copy from Amazon at this link.

The presentation consists of two lectures from Ed Nordskog, with a related breakout scientific workshop offering illustration of the concepts raised by the lectures.

LECTURE #1 is an introduction to the six main motives behind the crime of arson – spite/revenge, financial gain, crime concealment, excitement/recognition (hero fires), extremism, juvenile fires (curiosity/experimentation/vandalism)—and to Ed Nordskog’s investigative specialty, a modification of the standard arson investigation in which he “profiles” the arson scene in order to determine a “motive” for the crime. He does this by determining the actual “target” of the arson attack and the method of ignition for the event. This usually indicates a motive and the level of sophistication of the offender. Because arson is a very personal crime in which the victim nearly always knows who set the fire, it is relatively easy to identify a suspect—although proving they were involved is not so easy.

LECTURE #2 focuses on select cases studies of convicted serial arsonists, including nationally known crimes and cases on which Ed Nordskog worked personally. Included will be discussion of Glendale arson investigator / arsonist John Orr and the prolific Washington D.C. arsonist Thomas Sweatt.

Following this second lecture, attendees will have the opportunity to purchase copies of Ed Nordskog’s book ”’Torchered’ Minds: Case Histories of Notorious Serial Arsonists.”

By the afternoon’s conclusion, attendees will have a deeper understanding of the real work that’s done in the field by arson investigators, and the tools and techniques used to interpret crime scenes for the benefit of investigating officers and juries.

ABOUT ED NORDSKOG: Ed Nordskog is an active arson/bomb detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He has been a detective since 1990, working specifically in the arson and explosives world since 1997. He has conducted over sixteen hundred fire investigations and as of this writing has personally arrested and interviewed over 250 persons who were convicted of fire setting and related crimes. He has testified in court as a recognized expert in this field on over fifty-five occasions. He has been consulted by prosecuting attorneys on death penalty cases involving arson and murder on three occasions. He has been personally involved in over twenty serial arson investigations. The author has a master’s degree in emergency services management and is certified as a fire investigator by the California State Fire Marshal and the California Conference of Arson Investigators. He is a graduate of the National Fire Academy Arson Investigation Course, the ATF Advanced Arson Investigation Course, the Forensic Fire Death Investigation Course, and numerous other arson investigation courses. He is involved in course development and teaches fire scene investigation, major arson case investigation, serial arson investigation, and arson murder/fire death investigation. He is a course developer and instructor for the state of California’s Arson and Explosives Investigation Course. He is an instructor for the state of California’s Homicide Investigator’s Course. In 2004, the author was named Arson Investigator of the Year by the International Association of Arson Investigators and Law Enforcement Officer of the Year by the International Association of Special Investigations Units; both of these awards are for his work as the lead investigator on a massive arson for hire scheme, involving fifty-five burned properties. He has received over eighty-five commendations, awards, and medals throughout his law enforcement career related to successful criminal investigations. He is author of the book ”’Torchered’ Minds: Case Histories of Notorious Serial Arsonists” (website).

This tour is now full. If you want to try to get a space on the tour, you may attend the LAVA Sunday Salon and ask about openings before the tour departs.

ABOUT THIS TOUR: For the fourth installment of urban historian Richard Schave’s site-specific discussion series “The Flaneur & The City,” Richard (Esotouric) is joined by architectural historian Nathan Marsak (1947project, On Bunker Hill).

On this excursion we’ll focus on several landmark buildings by the architectural firm of Albert R. Walker and Percy A. Eisen. The firm’s significant contributions to the downtown skyline have been overshadowed by the massive structures erected since the 1957 ordinance permitting buildings to be taller than 150’. On this tour, we’ll ignore such behemoths while shining our spotlight on the modest beauties that Walker and Eisen constructed in the Historic Core.

Walker & Eisen made their mark on downtown during the building boom which immediately followed the first World War. What we think of as “Jazz Age” L.A. architecture is in large part defined by this very successful team. In the year 1923, Los Angeles recorded $185,000,000 in building expenditures. Walker & Eisen at that time employed fifty draftsmen in their office, while the great civic architectural firm Parkinson & Parkinson had just 13. In the 21 years of partnership (1920-41), Walker & Eisen were responsible for $40,000,000 worth of buildings.

Walker & Eisen were the spiritual heirs of the now-forgotten Victorian-era architects Robert A. Young & Burgess J. Reeve, who shaped Los Angeles during its early boom years and depressions, and on which our last tour focused. Standing on their shoulders, and in the shadow of C.C. Julian’s financial scandal, Walker & Eisen quietly, distinctly, and on budget, translated the hopes, dreams, and sometimes outright arrogance of their clients into beautiful meditations on surface treatment and the play between light, window and wall.

The two buildings of prime focus will be the Oviatt (1927) and the Fine Arts Building (1928). We will not be visiting the penthouse of the Oviatt, and it will be at the discretion of the building’s management if we are permitted a peek inside the the former Oviatt & Alexander haberdashery. The Fine Arts Building lobby will be open, and we plan on spending a fair amount of time in it, amongst the Batchelder tile.

While the calculus to minimize the route and maximize other Walker & Eisen buildings along its path has yet to be computed, attendees can be assured that there will be a great deal to see, and yet more to talk about.

The tour will begin in the exterior lobby of the Oviatt Building at 1:30pm. Please wear comfortable shoes and dress appropriately for the weather, as we will walking at least six blocks and possibly farther before the tour’s end.

ABOUT THE TOUR SERIES: “The Flaneur & The City” is an ongoing attempt to explore some of the more important issues revealed by the constantly changing heart of the metropolis. The core notion of the series is of culture and history as commodities that are packaged and sold to a target demographic; meanwhile, it’s the ignored and seemingly worthless scraps of meaning found on the sidewalks and marketplaces where the true remnants of positive public space can be found. All interpretations and nuisances of the word flaneur are examined—from the modern-day aesthete dreaming of Baudelaire while carried along in the human tide past the stalls and shops of Broadway, to its more recent and perhaps relevant use, someone who is loitering. At its heart this series is a celebration of the simple act of getting out of your car, walking through a neighborhood and learning to see it with your own eyes.

WHAT: The inaugural quarterly LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank featuring Dan Fante.
WHERE: Musso & Frank Grill, 6667 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028.
WHEN: Monday, January 23, 2012 from 6-11pm.
COST: $100 per person, ticket price includes 3-course prix fixe dinner prepared by Musso & Frank chefs, Salon presentations and dessert service. Beverages not included.
TO PURCHASE TICKETS: Call Musso & Frank at (323) 467-7788 or visit the restaurant Tuesday-Saturday between 9am and 5pm. You can also reserve your seats by email through the Musso & Frank contact page. (UPDATE: The event is now sold out.)
FOR MORE INFO ABOUT THE EVENT: Send an email through the LAVA contact page or call Kim Cooper or Richard Schave at 323-223-2767.

For much of the mid-20th Century, to rub shoulders with America’s greatest novelists and screenwriters, one needed merely to go to the corner of Cherokee Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. Here, within the tight triangle of the Writer’s Guild offices, Musso & Frank Grill and the Stanley Rose Bookshop, flowed the commercial and social sap that nourished the tree of American letters. The famous minds who congregated still inspire awe: William Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald, John Fante, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, William Saroyan, John O’Hara, Dorothy Parker, Nathanael West and many more.

And at the center of it all was the famed “Back Room” of Musso & Frank, the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. Beginning in 1936, in response to the restaurant’s growing popularity, Musso’s expanded its operations into a small room tucked behind the Vogue Theater. A door was punched through the west wall of the dining room, and a haughty door man installed. His instructions were simple: the back room was to be the exclusive domain of Hollywood’s literary lions, their friends and romantic partners. It was called, informally, The Cocktail Room or The Round Table or the Algonquin West.

The party raged on, six nights a week, for twenty glorious years.

In 1955, Musso & Frank expanded to the east, and the contents of the “Back Room”—the long bar, chairs, light fixtures, coat racks—were moved wholesale into the “New Room.” The “New Room” was no longer the exclusive retreat of literary Los Angeles, but the writers kept coming. Today, Musso & Frank’s clientele still includes celebrated novelists, screenwriters, poets and songwriters, all of whom cherish the old world hospitality, traditional Continental cuisine and opportunity to soak up the same rarified air that nourished the greats.

In honor of this ongoing writerly tradition, LAVA (The Los Angeles Visionaries Association) is delighted to announce the January 2012 launch of The LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank, a quarterly literary salon and prix fixe dinner celebrating the great writers and personalities who have frequented the establishment. The LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank is the brainchild of Kim Cooper & Richard Schave, proprietors of literary tour company Esotouric—Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, James M. Cain’s Southern California Nightmare, Charles Bukowski’s Haunts of a Dirty Old Man, John Fante’s Dreams from Bunker Hill—who for the past twenty months have been hosting a free cultural Salon on the last Sunday of the month at Clifton’s Cafeteria (recently moved to the Los Angeles Athletic Club). Now, LAVA expands its congenial, intelligent and unpredictable cultural programming into Hollywood with a quarterly literary Salon event held in Musso & Frank on a night when the restaurant is closed to the general public. Seating is extremely limited, and this intimate gathering is sure to sell out quickly.

LAVA co-founder Richard Schave, the Salon host and co-curator, says “I would argue that along the bar in the old Cocktail Room, somewhere between the drinking, bragging, fighting and general hell-raising, the better half of the Hard-Boiled School of American Letters was hashed out and put down on paper. The purpose of the Salon is two fold. First, to set the record straight on some basic milestones: the rise and fall of the original Cocktail Room and its reincarnation as the “New Room” and the symbiotic relationship Musso & Frank shared with the legendary bookshop next door, Stanley Rose’s. Secondly, a more ephemeral aim: in these hallowed rooms, that still bear the nicotine stains from Raymond Chandler’s pipe and Charles Bukowski’s cigarettes, we want to seek out and amplify the spark which all those great souls have left behind. Musso & Frank is just bricks and mortar, but incredible ideas and connections were forged here, and we believe that spark is waiting to be reignited and make its impression felt in Los Angeles again.”

Each Musso’s Salon evening will focus on different aspects of Hollywood’s literary lore, feature fascinating speakers and special guest historians, and be hosted by LAVA co-founder Richard Schave.

Appearing at the debut Salon is novelist, poet and playwright Dan Fante, reading from and discussing his new memoir Fante: A Family's Legacy of Writing, Drinking and Surviving (Harper Perrenial). Dan Fante’s parents, the novelist-screenwriter John Fante and the poet-playwright Joyce Fante, were regulars in Musso’s back room and at Stanley Rose’s book store. Dan’s stories about their adventures are ribald, hilarious and deeply moving. Also appearing at the first Salon is Howard Prouty (Acquisitions Archivist at The Academy Foundation/Margaret Herrick Library and proprietor of ReadInk) with an introduction to the culture of Stanley Rose’s shop. And before and after the formal dinner and Salon presentations, guests will mingle with Hollywood historian Philip Mershon (proprietor of The Felix in Hollywood Tour Company) and actress Kasey Wilson, appearing in the character of irresistible, murderous Phyllis Dietrichson (“Double Indemnity”), the only villainess jointly created by James M. Cain (novel) and Raymond Chandler (screenplay).

Mark Echeverria, 4th generation General Manager/Proprietor of The Musso & Frank Grill, says “For 93 years The Musso & Frank Grill has been a keystone in Hollywood’s ever-evolving history. Some of the world’s greatest people have walked through our doors, sat at a booth or a bar stool, and dreamt the unimaginable. That is what makes Hollywood so unique: unimaginable things come true. Musso & Frank Grill has always been that inspiration in people’s lives to make the impossible, possible, and it is now time to tell the true story of the people who put Hollywood on the map, and the restaurant they did it in—The Musso & Frank Grill. We are extremely excited to work with LAVA to bring you living history in a setting where history continues to happen, even 93 years later. So please enjoy an authentic dinning experience you would have found in the early decades of last century, and bring yourselves back to the time era of the literary giants, and truly get a journey through the history of Hollywood, in the restaurant that Hollywood grew up around, The Musso & Frank Grill.”

Dan Fante, speaker at the inaugural quarterly LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank, says, “For me Musso & Frank Grill is the last authentic remnant of Old Hollywood. To walk into the place is stepping into a time machine. The passengers riding with you are guys like Raymond Chandler, Nathanael West, John Fante, William Faulkner, and Charles Bukowski. Not bad company to tip a glass with.”

Future Salons will focus on the life and works of Raymond Chandler, Charles Bukowski, Nathanael West and other fascinating characters who’ve contributed to nearly a century of literary culture at Musso & Frank.

To purchase a ticket for this special event, click here. Last minute guests, yes, you can bring cash to the crime lab today (check in is at 11:30am for a noon showtime). If you'd like to be contacted when another crime lab tour and lecture are scheduled, subscribe to LAVA's occasional Crime Lab Newsletter.

Visionary Professor Donald Johnson, in association with LAVA and Esotouric, invites you to participate in a special four-hour event at LA’s regional crime laboratory, on the campus of Cal State LA. Space is very limited and pre-reservation required for this unprecedented opportunity to tour the crime lab, learn from working forensic investigators and educators, and discover the real art and science of crime scene investigation.

“Deep Identifications: Using National Evidence Databases To Solve Local Crimes” is an exploration of the scientific investigation of violent death, revealed through methods of database-driven evidence analysis and select case histories. Attendees will also have an opportunity to tour Cal State LA’s state-of the-art teaching and research facilities in the Criminalistics Department of the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center.

“Deep Identifications: Using National Evidence Databases To Solve Local Crimes” consists of one crime investigation lecture by LASD Criminalist Dale Falicon, a two-part crime investigation lecture by LASD DNA Tech Lead/CODIS Administrator Steve Renteria, and related breakout scientific workshops offering illustration of the concepts raised by Mr. Falicon’s investigations.

LECTURE #1 is Dale Falicon’s presentation on his role in a fascinating “cold case” investigation, the 2003 closure of a 1957 double homicide, resulting from the arrest and conviction of Gerald Mason. Mason, a transient, kidnapped four teenagers in Hawthorne, stripped them, raped one and stole their car. Pulled over about 1:30am at Rosecrans and Sepulveda for a routine traffic stop by El Segundo PD officers Richard Phillips and Milton Curtis, Mason shot and killed both men. Mason fled the scene and a 48-hour manhunt followed. No substantial leads were found, and the case remained cold until September 2002, when a deathbed confession (soon proved false) renewed El Segundo’s interest in the investigation. ESPD asked the LASD to re-examine the existing evidence in the hope that new clues would be discovered. Investigators turned to the evidence collected at the scene to see if modern crime investigation techniques could do something that was impossible at the time of the murders. Dale’s work with a composite fingerprint taken from two partial fingerprints resulted in a positive match against the recently introduced “IAFIS (Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System)”, and the name of a convicted felon: Gerald Mason. Tracked down in Columbia, South Carolina, Mason confessed to the crime and was imprisoned for two life terms. He had been a law-abiding citizen in decades since the crime, and was a wealthy retiree respected in his community.

LECTURE #2 is Steve Renteria’s presentation on his use of DNA evidence in two remarkable murder cases, and the provocative questions that were raised. Case #1 is the Phil Spector / Lana Clarkson murder investigation. Questions raised include: should DNA technology be used to answer questions which are not actually an issue in a specific crime scene purely to counter the impact of “The CSI Effect” on the jury? When should common sense take precedence over what the professionals think the jury needs to hear? Case #2 concerns the death of “Christina,” a woman kidnapped from an ATM and killed by her captors. Questions raised include: should crime labs apply an assembly-line approach for all cases in order to maximize numbers of samples tested? Why does each case and each item of evidence need special attention in order to get the most information possible?

By the afternoon’s conclusion, attendees will have a deeper understanding of the real work that’s done in the field by criminalists, and the tools and techniques used to interpret crime scenes for the benefit of investigating officers and juries. Come discover the reality, so different from and so much more interesting than, what you’ve seen on TV.

Cost: $36.50 per person. To reserve your spot, click here.  Last minute guests, yes, you can bring cash to the crime lab today (check in is at 11:30am for a noon showtime).  

A portion of the proceeds from this event supports the research of Criminalistics graduate students at Cal State Los Angeles.

LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association is pleased to announce a free roof-top screening of a newly-discovered circa 1949 short color film of Main Street and other downtown Los Angeles locations, the Union Rescue Mission-produced Of Scrap & Steel. The screening celebrates the launch of a new series of downtown stories on the In SRO Land time travel blog, featuring material from the Union Rescue Mission Archives. 

ABOUT THE FILM: In mid-1948 the Board of Directors of the Union Rescue Mission approved the expenditure of $5,000 to make the 30-minute film Of Scrap & Steel which portrays the redemption and good works of Arthur Hawkins, an alcoholic executive who ended up on the streets of Los Angeles and whose life was saved when he turned to the URM for help. Porter Hall (Arthur Hawkins) is one of only two actors in a film otherwise populated by real Los Angeles characters. (You may recall Hall's performance as the pesky guy on the train in Double Indemnity.) 

Of Scrap & Steel  was only shown in screenings organized by the URM or related organizations, and would have been completely lost if Liz Mooradian, URM historian, had not saved a deteriorating 16mm print and had it transferred to video before it was too late. Of Scrap & Steel is just one of the remarkable artifacts discovered in the Union Rescue Mission archives and explored in the In SRO Land blog.

This entertaining and powerful short film is a compelling snapshot of life on Skid Row (Main Street) circa 1949, and a fascinating document of the important work that the URM continues to do with the most needy in the community. Although downtown Los Angeles features in numerous noir films, it is extremely rare to see color images of eastern downtown, and rarer still to see full-color live-action footage of the vibrant street scene that included rescue missions, pawn shops, amusement parlors, bars, restaurants and the ever-patrolling paddy wagon in search of drunkards to haul away to jail or County work crews.

This free rooftop screening is jointly organized by LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association, the In SRO Land time travel blog and the Union Rescue Mission. Seating will be provided, and attendees are encouraged to dress warmly for the cool night air. 

Gourmet box dinners: “Meals with a purpose” will be available for purchase ($7, cash only), with a choice of sandwich (vegetarian, roast beef or chicken), cookie, fruit, crackers and beverage. 100% of proceeds from your meal donation goes to the URM, and the proceeds from each dinner will feed two other people.

Limited free parking is available at the URM’s underground parking lot. Just tell the attendant you are there for the film. Please carpool: if each guest arrives with one other person in their car, there should be enough parking for all. Those arriving later will have to leave their keys with the parking attendant. Should the URM lot fill up, there is also off-site, paid parking available at Joe’s Parking Lot at 1st & San Pedro. A free shuttle will run between this parking lot and the Union Rescue Mission from 5pm-9pm. Nearest Metro station: Little Tokyo.

Rain check: if it's raining on October 20, this event will be rescheduled for October 27. 

Schedule

6pm Doors open (reserved guests check in at the main entrance and are sent up to the roof)

6pm-7pm Box dinners available for purchase, guests can watch the sunset (6:13pm)

7pm

• Introduction to the URM by Rev. Andy Bales, CEO
• Historians Nathan Marsak & Richard Schave introduce the film in the context of the neighborhood's history, and their work on the In SRO Land time travel blog.

7:30pm Film screening

8pm Q & A

8:30pm Event ends

To sign up for this free event: First register as a user on this site, and then return to this page. Refresh the page and the signup tab will appear just to the left, above this paragraph. Click "signup" and reserve your spot. No plus-ones; each guest must register individually.

This tour is now full. If you want to try to get a space on the tour, you may attend the LAVA Sunday Salon and ask about openings before the tour departs.

For the latest installment of urban historian Richard Schave’s site-specific discussion series “The Flâneur & The City,” Richard (Esotouric bus adventures) is joined by architectural historian Nathan Marsak (1947project, On Bunker Hill, In SRO Land).

On this excursion we’ll explore the mostly lost architectural landmarks of the Northern Historic Core, starting from 3rd & Spring, east to Main, then north to the lawn of City Hall, then westward to 2nd & Spring. Within this small footprint, we will discover some of the most fascinating structures in L.A. history, most of them quite forgotten.

The tour is inspired by the September 2011 launch of a new series on the In SRO Land time travel blog featuring archival material from the collection of the Union Rescue Mission, which presents an opportunity for exploring the lost lore of the old commercial neighborhood which was largely cleared via eminent domain in the 1920s and 1930s in order to provide a clean slate for the erection of City Hall and other government buildings. This was a precursor to the much larger and more destructive eminent domain project by which the residential neighborhood Bunker Hill was cleared in the 1950s and 1960s.

Locations on the walking tour will include Joseph Newsom’s exquisite Bryson-Bonebrake Block (1888), first two Union Rescue Mission locations, and the original “civic center” encompassing the Courthouse (1887), the Hall of Records (1911) and the State Building (1931).

To start, we will seek to answer some basic questions about the early development of downtown Los Angeles:

• Who were the architects and financiers of 19th Century Los Angeles?

• Which buildings were most representative of these individuals’ aims, and which were the most significant architecturally?

• What did the Victorian-era Angeleno think of the architecture of his city?

• How did architecture reflect the growth of the city?

Having established these early themes, we will start to ask questions about the emotional and spiritual core of the city of Los Angeles –-its zeitgeist—and begin to draw the connection between architecture and the city’s culture.

An example is the discussion of the Union Rescue Mission’s first two buildings at 145 N. Main Street and 226 S. Main Street. More than a century ago, the URM’s unique mission brought them to the heart of Skid Row, a place filled with characters and scenery worthy of Victor Hugo, and it keeps them there to this day. The city has twice forced a move of the URM as it seeks to “move along” the disenfranchised and those who seek to aid them. These snapshots of lost architectural spaces that were once an intrinsic part of a dynamic urban core tell us much about the tensions and forces still at play in the community.

The tour’s closing thoughts are inspired by a quote from Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame: “When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.”

TAKING THIS TOUR: This tour is now full. If you want to try to get a space on the tour, you may attend the LAVA Sunday Salon and ask about openings before the tour departs. -- Reservations will be required for this free walking tour, and space is very limited for all events in this series. Reserve your space for the September 25 event by clicking “Signups” (THERE ARE NO "PLUS-ONES" - ONE RESERVATION PER PERSON, PLEASE!).

ABOUT THE TOUR SERIES: “The Flâneur & The City” is an ongoing attempt to explore some of the more important issues revealed by the constantly changing heart of the metropolis. The core notion of the series is of culture and history as commodities that are packaged and sold to a target demographic; meanwhile, it’s the ignored and seemingly worthless scraps of meaning found on the sidewalks and marketplaces where the true remnants of positive public space can be found. All interpretations and nuisances of the word flâneur are examined—from the modern-day aesthete dreaming of Baudelaire while carried along in the human tide past the stalls and shops of Broadway, to its more recent and perhaps relevant use, someone who is loitering. At its heart this series is a celebration of the simple act of getting out of your car, walking through a neighborhood and learning to see it with your own eyes.

On the last Sunday of each month, LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a loosely structured conversational Salon featuring short presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another. If you're interested in joining LAVA as a creative contributor or an attendee, we recommend Salon attendance as an introduction to this growing community. Please note that due to ongoing renovation work at Clifton's Cafeteria, we are moving to a nearby location. 

Special program at the October 30 Salon.

• Science and art can play well together as evidenced in "Circuitry & Poetry" where LAVA Visionary JEFF BOYNTON's DIY electronics accompany LAVA Visionary MONA JEAN CEDAR’s communicative arts of dance, poetry and sign language. More black art than science, circuit bending entails the subversive act of ripping open inexpensive electronics devices -- ranging from children’s toys to professional keyboard instruments -- exposing their circuit boards, and attacking their vulnerable insides by poking, probing, and prodding in the spirit of exploration to search for new sounds which are then activated at will. Mr. Boynton’s deep classical music background influences his performances on these ingenious circuit-bent instruments, providing a soundscape over which Mona Jean Cedar performs. Ms. Cedar creates her singular multi-layered approach to spoken word and movement by composing and choreographing with sign languages, both American and foreign. Concurrently cryptic and clearly communicative, the highly visual nature of sign language exponentially increases the expressiveness of the poetry and the dance. Together their unique talents create performances that astound with sound, pique with poetry and delight with dance. SALON WEEK UPDATE: In proverbial "Good News; Bad News" fashion, Mona Jean Cedar wished to share the following: The "Bad" News is that Jeff Boynton will be unable to join us at the LAVA presentation because -- ta da! -- he has been chosen to be a finalist in Moog's (as in synthesizers) 2nd Circuit Bending Contest in Asheville, North Carolina next weekend! In his stead will be fellow bender/musician/actor/partner-in-art, ANDY BEN. Andy will be explaining and demonstrating a few of Jeff's toys and some of his own.  We will be bringing props from our marching band, The Thursday Evening Gentlemen's Society Circuit Bending Marching Band and Ladies' Auxiliary and perhaps even recruiting marchers.

• Back by popular demand, LAVA Visionary JOE OESTERLE, author of the newly-released Weird Hollywood and the classic Weird California and Weird Las Vegas. Joe will be reading some spooky stories from his books as well as sharing some anecdotes from his weird road travels. Joe also promises to bring along one of the real life Weird Hollywood characters from his book. The multi-talented Joe Oesterle is a former Senior Editor of National Lampoon, a visual artist, musician, animator and curator of the strange and marvelous. Joe will be signing copies of Weird Hollywood.

The Los Angeles Athletic Club is located at 431 West 7th Street, on the north-east corner of 7th and Olive Streets. When you enter the Athletic Club, inform the person at the desk that you are there as a guest of club member Richard Schave attending the LAVA event. They will sign you in, and send you upstairs to the fourth floor. It will be possible to order light meals of sandwiches in the 8th floor snack bar, however, please note that service will be slower than at Clifton's, and that arriving early and ordering promptly will be very helpful. We recommend parking under Pershing Square at Fifth and Olive, which is also the nearest Metro Station. If you order food, the Athletic Club will validate for their parking lot.