“[This tour is] a poetic journey full of rare insight into the life of a man whoâ€s come to represent the ghettoized contingency of the City of Angels.” – Tanja M. Laden, Flavorpill

“Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowskiâ€s LA” focuses on Bukowskiâ€s great passions: writing, screwing and Los Angeles. Weâ€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, weâ€ll explore the people and ideas that made up the warp and weft of Bukâ€s rich inner life. This Esotouric bus adventure is hosted by Richard Schave and spans Bukowskiâ€s personal city, from Skid Row to once-genteel Crown Hill, to Bukowskiâ€s favorite East Hollywood liquor store, the Pink Elephant.

In honor of this tour and Bukowskiâ€s poem Bluebird, cartoonist Tony Millionaire has created The Bukbird, a pale blue version of his beloved alcoholic crow character. The Bukbird is available on T-shirts and fine art prints by plasticmuse.

Featured cases from co-host Kim Cooperâ€s crime notebook include the Capitol Records car pool slaying, the fake true crime magazine photographer / real serial killer Harvey Glatman and a fascinating and terrible tale of death by hypnotic suggestion.

No, you wonâ€t see the stars†homes or hear about their latest real estate deals, but weâ€ll show you where some colorful characters breathed their last, got into trouble that defined the rest of their lives and came up with ideas that the world is still talking about. So for unforgettable stories you wonâ€t hear on anyone elseâ€s Hollywood tour, climb aboard and discover the secret heart of the city we love. Tour stops include Cross Roads of the World (Robert V. Derrah, 1936), and the sites of the legendary Garden of Allah hotel and Schwabâ€s Drugstore.

Originally offered in Esotouricâ€s 2008-2009 seasons, this newly revived crime bus tour spotlights some of the weirdest, most horrific and downright unbelievable crimes of historic West Los Angeles, Venice and Santa Monica. Youâ€ll thrill and shudder to tales of teenaged terrors, tortured tots, wicked wives, evil spirits, cults, creeps and assorted maniacs.

Get on the bus to meet Weird Ward, the boy husband of the nefarious cult leader who compelled her followers to carry her departed victims all across 1920s L.A., and the peculiar Helen Love, who nearly escaped justice when she willed herself into a coma during her very odd murder trial. Along the Venice shore, youâ€ll see where a pair of real life witches tortured their own Hansels and Gretels as neighbors pretended not to hear the tots†cries, and marvel at the grand hotel that was formally a flop house for ex-junkies in the Synanon Cult. Come discover the real and terrible history of L.A.‘s westside, on a tour so wild, we had to say it twice.

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 centuryâ€s decay which only enhance the neighborhoodâ€s charm.

The tour also offers an overview of the neighborhoodâ€s many early subdivisions, and a groundbreaking court case that helped end housing discrimination nationwide.

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.

The Hotel Horrors section 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 dumped his blood-soaked clothing and where Canadian tourist Elisa Lam fell off the map, see the hotel that saw a visit from the Skid Row Slasher and the one where two traveling chocolate salesmen laughed so hard they fell backwards out a window to their deaths. Youâ€ll also explore the fiery curse that repeatedly leveled one building. Included are some light hearted stories to help the blood and gore go down.

The Main Street Vice section celebrates the social history of 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. Weâ€ll visit the scenes of some more unforgettable debaucheries and share stories of crime, smut, passion and commerce.

This “downtown double feature” tour is especially recommended for residents curious about their neighborhoodâ€s neglected history, and anyone fascinated by grim crimes and gorgeous architecture.

At the April 2015 LAVA Sunday Salon,  Joan Jobe Smith presented on her new memoir, Tales of An Ancient Go-Go Girl and on her long creative friendship with Charles Bukowski.

Tales of An Ancient Go-Go Girl by long-time Long Beach, California resident Joan Jobe Smith, is a picaresque True Tale, a 50-year Glotessey spanning the 1965 Los Angeles Watts Riots, near death at the hands of a homicidal ex-husband, the counter-culture go-go swinging let-it-all-hang-out 1960s-‘70s, single Motherhood and Feminism. Rarely does a natural poet and historian such as Joan Jobe Smith endure such ordeals and challenges and survive to tell the tale. It is a Tale written with go-going panache and patois, and heart, courage and humor to make our lives richer and wiser. The event took the form of a series of short Q&As with LAVA’s Richard Schave on milestones from the memoir and Joan’s relationship with the writer Charles Bukowski, punctuated by Joan reading poetry selections which span her career.

For more on Joan Jobe Smith, visit https://www.pearlmag.com/

To view, click this link or the image below.

Join Kim Cooper and David Smay, co-editors of the book Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth: The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop from the Banana Splits to Britney Spears, and contributors Becky Ebenkamp and Gene Sculatti, for an audio-visual celebration of the history and mythology of this under-appreciated musical genre, and the Saturday morning cartoons where many of the most memorable songs debuted.

After the presentation, copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing.

The event is free. Arrive on time to ensure you get a seat.  

The Black Dahlia murder in 1947 is the most compelling unsolved crime Los Angeles has ever known. What Jack the Ripper is to London, the Torso Killer to Cleveland, the Black Dahlia is to L.A. And yet unlike those other cases, the name Black Dahlia refers not to the killer, but to the victim. What was it about Elizabeth Short that keeps her the object of obsessive fascination by writers, musicians, artists, filmmakers, cops and readers, more than sixty years after she was slain?

The Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour seeks to answer this question by intimately exploring the last weeks of Elizabeth Short’s life, asking not “who killed her?” but “who was she?”

The tour takes us from the human hustle of Main Street to the serene lobby of the Biltmore (the second-to-last place she was seen alive), to the newspaper offices and the Greyhound station where she checked her bags, and concludes at the site where her bisected body was found in Leimert Park and with a little known suspect who lived nearby.

From the few personal possessions she left behind to the friends who scarcely knew her, from the mass hysteria of the investigation with its fruitless leads, wacko suspects and false confessions, the tour reveals all that’s known about this enigmatic black-haired girl who reinvented herself at whim, and shows how she came to be the unfortunate symbol of her time and place.

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. 

The tour also offers an overview of the neighborhood’s many early subdivisions, and a groundbreaking court case that helped end housing discrimination nationwide.

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.