Los Angeles Visionaries Association

MAJA'S MYSTERIES is a guided excursion to some of the city's most fascinating spiritual sites hosted by Maja D'Aoust, the White Witch of Los Angeles, in association with Kim Cooper and Richard Schave of Esotouric. Come join us on an Esotouric bus adventure into the hidden realms of Los Angeles spirituality, with stops at some of the most unique and compelling worship spaces in the Southland.

TOUR THEME: This tour explores the fundamental contradiction in the two primary paths to salvation: Grace or Karma. The concept of Grace sees salvation and the Messiah (rapture) as imminent and tangible. Karma is predicated on reincarnation, the cycle of many, many lives lived through selflessness and right action as the soul strives to achieve release. These two notions, while irreconcilable, both inspire real and profound relationships with God in Los Angeles, from the church basements where believers speak in tongues, or in brightly light congregation rooms praying over gigantic crystals. Join Maja as we explore tantric Vedic practices, the Pentecostal rapture, the channeled Venusian stylings of an alien entity and other fascinating paths to salvation.

TOUR LOCATIONS: The Aetherius Society. A center for cosmic consciousness and healing founded in 1955 by UFO contactee Dr. George King, where we will hear actual recordings of an extraterrestrial voice conveying significant messages. Krotona Apartments. A former Theosophical retreat founded in 1914, where we will have a rare opportunity to visit the central courtyard and view the Rosicrucian window of this now-private residence. Parsonage of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson. On the northern edge of Echo Park lake is the rock upon which Sister Aimee Semple McPherson built her Foursquare Church. One of Los Angeles’ most charismatic characters, Sister Aimee spread her technologically-inspired Pentecostal gospel from the Angelus Temple, while enjoying quiet moments in her adjoining Parsonage home. Recently restored, the Parsonage is now a museum of her life and work, which to this day contains to ring clear to millions of believers worldwide. The Vedanta Society of Southern California. Founded in 1930 to bring sacred Hindu philosophy to the West, where we will be given a presentation on the Society’s history and programming, and browse in its fine gift shop.

PRESS CLIPS: Whole Life Times feature on Maja's bus tour.

Early editions of this Esotouric tour lamented John Fante's obscurity. On April 8, 2010, the City of Los Angeles declared the corner of 5th & Grand, beside the Central Library, JOHN FANTE SQUARE. Today John Fante might be best described as the most famous unknown writer in America. Climb aboard to hear his story and that of the lost neighborhood where he found his voice.

Before Kerouac, before Bukowski, there was John Fante, author of "Ask the Dust," "Dreams of Bunker Hill," "Full of Life," "The Road to Los Angeles" and "Wait Until Spring, Bandini." This five-novel cycle, written over sixty years, introduced the world to Arturo Bandini, an outspoken, down-and-out Mr. Hyde to Fante's Dr. Jekyll.

As Bunker Hill's prodigal son, Fante-as-Bandini chronicles a forgotten Los Angeles neighborhood teeming with immigrants, criminals and dreamers like himself. With genuine compassion and wonderful craft, he sketches the hopes and dreams which fly round their heads, and in the process finds his own voice, a revelation which carries him all the way to Hollywood. Once there, he is distracted by fame and fortune, and settles for easy answers to the questions of faith in oneself, the nature of inspiration, and the duality of failure and redemption. "Dreams of Bunker Hill" was dictated by a blind Fante two years before his death, and "Road to Los Angeles" was published posthumously. Bunker Hill is gone now, flattened, its mansions torn down, long since redeveloped by corporate and civic interests. But in today's downtown communities the same stories play out, in thriving micro-climates where artists and writers find their voices, where some are making it big and others breaking up on the reef, some moving away and others coming back in search of what they have lost. Arturo Bandini is alive and well, and his lament is as relevant today as it was 75 years ago. So please join us as we follow in his footsteps, to the Goodwill store, King Eddy's, Clifton's Cafeteria ("pay what you can"), the Los Angeles Library's Reading Room and the Post Office Terminal Annex (important landmarks for Bukowski and Fante), aboard the newly-restored Angels Flight Railway, and other evocative scenes of old L.A.

This tour is a meditation not only on John Fante, but the preservation of Public Space. The depopulation of Bunker Hill in the early 1960s became the benchmark for Community Redevelopment across the country-the term "Federal Bulldozer" came out of the many lawsuits filed against the city at the time. And now that corporate interests have decided it is time to repopulate western downtown Los Angeles with market-rate housing the ensuing catastrophe has spawned many new monikers (elegant density is one of the more polite ones) and problems. Public Space downtown can be saved and Arturo Bandini can lead the way. Please Note: This tour will have several sections which involve walking through parts of Downtown for up to ten minutes at a time. Walking shoes and sunscreen are advised.

The LAHTF is especially honored to present All About the El Capitan. This immersive tour will take you from the basement to the booth. Trained docents will lead you backstage and behind the footlights, where technicians operate sophisticated performance systems to make the live shows come alive. The tour continues under stage where the performers prepare. There are some amazing special stage effects to see, as well. All About the El Capitan is an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of America's most successful single screen theatre. Don't miss it!

Before the tour begins, theatre historian Ed Kelsey will present a photographic history of the El Capitan - first as a legit house then its transformation into the Paramount. Ed Collins, El Capitan Executive Director, will pick up the story from the beginning of the Walt Disney Company's restoration and operation of the theatre. El Capitan organist, Rob Richards, will present a demonstration of the Mighty Wurlitzer. 

Doors open at 7:45 am. Presentation and tour begin at 8:00 am. Advance reservations are strongly recommended.

Reservations: (through PayPal only)
Current LAHTF and Hollywood Heritage Members: $5; General Public: $12 

See the LAHTF website at www.lahtf.org  to make your reservations.

This tour focuses on Bukowski’s great passions: writing, screwing and Los Angeles. We’ll take in the canonical locations of his life and myth: the Postal Annex Terminal where he gathered the material for “Post Office,” the De Longpre apartment where he briefly experimented with marriage and fatherhood, one of his favorite bars and liquor stores, and many other spots. Along the way, we’ll explore the people and ideas that made up the warp and weft of Buk’s rich inner life. This Esotouric bus adventure is hosted by Richard Schave.

"Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's LA" spans Bukowski's personal city, from Skid Row to once-genteel Crown Hill, to Bukowski's favorite East Hollywood liquor store, the Pink Elephant.

Esotouric has made its name with true crime bus tours (Black Dahlia, Pasadena Confidential) and explorations of literary LA (Raymond Chandler, John Fante, James M. Cain). Now they turn their creative attentions to Bukowski, the prolific poet, novelist and screenwriter whose rough-hewn tales of boozing, wild women and rotten jobs never obscure the deep vein of sweetness and hope that runs through all his work. In one of his finest poems, he described this as a bluebird he kept caged, and that bluebird is been represented in the Bukbird, a pale blue version of his beloved alcoholic crow character, represented by a logo created by cartoonist Tony Millionaire exclusively for this tour. The Bukbird is available on T-shirts, beer coasters and fine art prints by plasticmuse.

Go East, Young Crime Fiend!

For years, the devoted and demented crime historians of Esotouric have been stockpiling hideous 20th century crime tales from the east side of the Los Angeles River, and waiting for the perfect moment to spring them upon an unsuspecting world. That moment has arrived. On the EAST SIDE BABYLON tour you'll discover fascinating, little-known neighborhoods and the grim memories they hold. Come visit Boyle Heights, where the Night Stalker was captured and a mad dad ran amok. Roam the hallowed lawns of Evergreen, L.A.'s oldest cemetery and home of some memorable haunts and strange burials. Visit East Los Angeles, where a deranged radio shop employee made mince meat of his boss and bride--and you can get your hair done in a building shaped like a giant tamale. Explore the ghastly streets of Commerce, where one small neighborhood's myriad crimes will shock and surprise. Visit Montebello, for scrumptious milk and cookies at Broguiere's Farm Fresh Dairy washed down with a horrifying case of child murder. All this, and so much more on EAST SIDE BABYLON, Esotouric's exploration of L.A.'s most horrifying forgotten crimes.

The Crown City masquerades as a calm and refined retreat, where well-bred ladies glide around their perfect bungalows and everyone knows what fork to use first. But don't be fooled by appearances. Dip into the confidential files of old Pasadena and meet assassins and oddballs, kidnappers and slashers, Satanists and all manner of maniac in a delightful little tour you WON'T find recommended by the better class of people! From celebrated cases like the RFK assassination (with a visit to Sirhan Sirhan's folks' house), "Eraserhead" star Jack Nance's strange end, black magician/rocket scientist Jack Parsons' death-by-misadventure and the 1926 Rose Parade grand stand collapse, to fascinating obscurities, the tour's dozens of murders, arsons, kidnappings, robberies, suicides, auto wrecks and oddball happening sites provide a alternate history of Pasadena that's as fascinating as it is creepy. Passengers will tour the old Millionaire's Row on Orange Grove, thrill to the shocking Sphinx Murder on the steps of the downtown Masonic Hall and discover why people named Judd should think twice before moving to Pasadena.

On this guided tour through the Beverly Hills of the early 20th Century, Crime Bus passengers thrill as Jazz Age bootleggers run amok, marvel at the Krazy Kafitz family's litany of murder-suicides, attempted husband slayings, Byzantine estate battles and mad bombings, visit the shortest street in Los Angeles (15' long Powers Place, with its magnificent views of the mansions of Alvarado Terrace), discover which fabulous mansion was once transformed into a functioning whiskey factory using every room in the house, and stroll the haunted paths of Rosedale Cemetery, site of notable burials (May K. Rindge, the mother of Malibu) and odd graveside crimes. Featured players include drunken ice cream men, the most famous dwarf in Hollywood, mass suicide ringleader Reverend Jim Jones, wacky millionaires who can't control their automobiles, human mole bank robbers, comically inept fumigators, kids trapped in tar pits, and dozens of other unusual and fascinating denizens of early Los Angeles.

There are even some celebrity sites along the route, including the death scenes of Motown soul sensation Marvin Gaye and 1920s star Angels baseball catcher Gus Sandberg. And the architecture too is to die for, as the Crime Bus rolls down the elegant streets of old West Adams, lined with gay mansions, adorable bungalows and signs of a century's decay which only enhance the neighborhood's charm.

Passengers on this eye-opening, funny and informative tour will forever see the West Adams district in a new light. It is highly recommended for natives and newcomers alike, crime and history buffs and anyone who likes to seek out the unexpected.

From the founding of the city through the 1940s, downtown was the true center of Los Angeles, a lively, densely populated, exciting and sometimes dangerous place. After many quiet decades, downtown is making an incredible return. But while many of the historic buildings remain, their human context has been lost.

This downtown double feature tour, hosted by Kim Cooper, Joan Renner and Richard Schave, is meant to bring alive the old ghosts and memories that cling to the streets and structures of the historic core, and is especially recommended for downtown residents curious about their neighborhood's neglected history.

The Hotel Horrors portion is a true crime and oddities tour featuring some of the wildest, weirdest, goriest and most memorable happenings in historic hotels like the Alexandria, St. George, Barclay and Cecil. Get on the bus to see inside some of these legendary locales and find out where Night Stalker Richard Ramirez liked to stay and the hotel that saw a visit from the Skid Row Slasher, and where two traveling chocolate salesmen laughed so hard they fell backwards out a window to their deaths. You'll also explore the fiery curse that repeatedly leveled the St. George Hotel. Included are some light hearted stories to help the blood and gore go down.

The Main Street Vice portion is a social history tour celebrating the ribald, racy, raunchy old promenade where the better people simply did not travel, but kicks were had by all who did. Burlesque babes and dirty picture parlors, mummified western outlaws and old time tattoo parlors, wax museums and pawn brokers, "professors" offering sex lectures and magazine peddlers with nudie Marilyn Monroe calendars under the counter, sophisticated steak houses and nickel donut dives -- these were the pleasures and the people to be found along Main during the first half of the 20th century, a street that every Angeleno knew offered more (yet less) of what could be seen anywhere else. On this tour, we'll visit the scenes of some more unforgettable debaucheries and share stories of crime, smut, passion and commerce.

Climb aboard for a time travel journey back to the downtown that's not there anymore, and the surprising amount of gems that survive.

Join your host Richard Schave, the founding director of the Downtown LA Art Walk non-profit, on a tour that reveals the secret history, and the fascinating future, of this most beguiling LA neighborhood.

This is a tour about the populated, vibrant mid-20th Century Downtown Los Angeles you've only heard about, and about the 21st Century Downtown which will rise again with a richness of heritage and quality of life that leaves natives and visitors gaping in disbelief. This is a tour about Downtown's invisible neighborhoods and great public spaces which managed to escape the wrecking ball. This is a tour about how gentrification sprung up on the city's meanest streets, with all the conflicts that go along with a major socio-economic shift in a small community. This is a tour about the real Los Angeles, the city even natives don't know. Get on the bus for the real Lowdown on Downtown, as no one but Esotouric's Richard Schave can reveal it.

Our tour begins in the corporate public spaces of Bunker Hill and Pershing Square, each the result of deliberate social engineering (the razing of old Bunker Hill which displaced 9,000 residents; the elimination of positive public space in Pershing Square to thwart public address and gatherings). We segue to the underappreciated yet extremely successful public spaces of the Historic Core and then to the emerging live/work community of The Old Bank District, where developer Tom Gilmore’s gentrification and the popular monthly Art Walk are bringing life to spaces which have been dead for decades. The tour concludes in the DIY loft spaces of the Arts District for a reception at an artist's gallery.

Having studied under architecture critic Reyner Banham in the mid-1980s, tour host Richard Schave has taken it upon himself to correct his teacher’s gross oversight of downtown Los Angeles, relegated to a dismissive coda in his seminal Los Angeles guidebook Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. Richard and his wife Kim Cooper work extensively with the history and lost cultures of downtown in their bus tours, in their work placing Art Walk into a non-profit, on blogs including On Bunker Hill and 1947project, and through public lectures on the subject.

This tour has a significant walking component, down the stairs along Angels Flight, around Pershing Square, through several other pedestrian locations. It is broken up, but please be advised to be ready to stretch your legs.

Locations on the tour include:
Angels Flight
Grand Central Market
Mercantile Arcade Building
Bloom's General Store
A visit to artist Dave Hollen's studio

This tour is just one of our Reyner Banham Tour Series.

Esotouric’s “Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles” tours each explore themes of industry, infrastructure, architecture and the built environment.

In this third installment in our ongoing architecture series, we explore California's Mother Road and the building of its dream. The dream manifests at the turn of the 20th century as we explore how the climate was sold, the growth of the citrus industry and Tuberculosis hospitals. Then come the programmatic roadside architecture of the 1920s and 1930s and postwar V-8 visions fueled by gasoline and good climate (too bad you can't run an engine on it).

The Reyner Banham tour series is dedicated to revealing greater L.A.'s infrastructure, history, the built and natural environment, transportation corridors, drive-ins, attractions and oddities.

This tour will focus on the built environment along the Mother Road with an emphasis on old and historic alignments of Route 66 as well as signage.

Highlights of the Route 66 tour include:

E. Wald Ward Farm. Purveyors of fine preservatives and other delicacies. We will visit the barn store of this venerable Sierra Madre citrus family which has been in business of producing and selling the highest quality preserves from their orchards since 1918. We will tour the orchard and hear more about the history of this family from 4th generation member, Jeff Ward.

Aztec Hotel. Though really Mayan in decoration, this 1924 Robert Stacy Judd-designed gem in the San Gabriel Valley's crown is becoming the place again to get your kicks. Judd's buildings in Southern California were an important influence on Frank Lloyd Wright's Mayan houses.

The McNeil & Vosberg Residences (The Feuding Slauson Sisters of Azusa). A hidden gem of Azusa lore, and family dynamics. It also serves as a reminder of the fragility of ecologies to the incessant crush of progress.

Fairmount Cemetery, a remote and fascinating Civil War-era hillside burial ground.

This four hour tour will include a complimentary coffee and cookies stop in the early afternoon. We recommend bringing a bag lunch as well. Please note: comfortable walking shoes recommended. One of our shorter tour stops takes us over slightly rugged ground, and less agile passengers may prefer to remain on the bus.

Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles Tour Overview page