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ABOUT THIS EVENT:

Please join Richard Schave of Esotouric, Prof. Paul Rood of BIOLA and Rev. Andy Bales of the Union Rescue Mission (URM) for a 90-minute walking tour along the historic paths that have delineated Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. This tour derives from the ongoing 1947project In SRO Land blog series that uses the archives of the URM (founded 1891) as a tool for exploring the social and architectural history of the forgotten people and places of Downtown Los Angeles.

The tour begins with a survey of the early history of the outreach by the URM through its gospel wagon and at two now-lost buildings: the original home at 145 N. Main (now City Hall Lawn) and the long-time location at 226 S. Main (now a parking lot next to the former St. Vibianaâ€s Cathedral).

The main themes will be the evolution of public policy on Skid Row from the private philanthropy of Lyman Stewart to todayâ€s Continuum of Care, the transformative work of the URM, and the architectural history of the neighborhood.

The route will include Main Street between 2nd and 3rd Streets (for a then/now comparison of the surviving and demolished locations featured in the 1949 URM-financed short film Of Scrap & Steel, which will be screened later in the evening in a free event that requires a separate reservation). At 3rd and San Pedro Streets we will discuss the Azusa Street Revival, a transformative event in the spiritual history of Los Angeles and the West. During the walk back to the current home of the URM, Rev. Andy Bales will talk about issues and challenges facing the neighborhood and the URM today.

The rendezvous point for the tour is the URM‘s headquarters at at 6th and San Pedro Streets. A free shuttle bus will take tour attendees to 2nd and Main Streets, where the walking tour begins. Registration is required, and each attendee must register separately, to ensure sufficient seating on the shuttle bus.

Parking is available at the URMâ€s underground parking lot for registered attendees. Just tell the attendent you are there for the walking tour. If everyone attending arrives with one other person in their car, there should be enough parking for all. Those arriving latter will have to leave their keys with the parking attendent.

Nearest Metro station is Little Tokyo.

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Join us in the Cal State Los Angeles teaching crime lab for an afternoonâ€s inquiry into the history and practice of forensic science in Los Angeles, in support of new research coming out of the Criminalistics Department. 

Presentation #1: V is for Vice

Mike Fratantoni, an LASD Jailer who sits on the board of the Los Angeles County Sheriffâ€s Museum and is organizing the new exhibition space in the Hall of Justice, makes a return engagement with a fascinating presentation on the unwritten history of vice in West Hollywood and corruption in law enforcement.

In 1940, West Hollywood madam Lee Francis was arrested on a morals charge, her first. Media coverage of the subsequent trial exposed the thriving trade in sin along the Sunset Strip, and had southland husbands quaking in their socks. But the papers never printed the name of one prostitute arrested in the “House of Francis” raid: LaVonne Weaver, soon-to-be wife of gang kingpin Mickey Cohen. For decades, mob historians have chased down rumors that “dance instructor” Lavonne was actually a “working girl.” Wonder no more, as in a LAVA exclusive, LaVonne Weaverâ€s mugshot will be unveiled. Lee Francis had a reputation, but madam Brenda Allen was an underworld superstar, as famous for her wardrobe and high-powered social connections as she was for the services available at her hillside brothel. Her 1948 arrest and subsequent Grand Jury investigation revealed deep veins of corruption within the Los Angeles Police Department.

Presentation #2: Beverly Hills Confidential

Clark Fogg, the lead forensics investigator at the Beverly Hills Police Department, and investigative journalist Barbara Schroeder share the sensational crimes and scandals of the glamorous city of Beverly Hills, as chronicled in their book “Beverly Hills Confidential: A Century of Stars, Scandals and Murders.”

Featured topics include:

The cityâ€s first blockbuster scandal — the Doheny murder mystery at Greystone Mansion — New information on who really killed gangster Bugsy Siegel — The true story of the death of Lupe Velez, the movie star known as “The Mexican Spitfire” — The mysterious execution of publicist-to-the-stars Ronni Chasen

Copies of “Beverly Hills Confidential” will be available for purchase and signing during the event.

Mr. Hughes will discuss the political and social issues that animated the Watts neighborhood in 1965, the true locational boundaries of the uprisings, the locations of low income housing projects in the area, such as Nickerson Gardens and Jordan Downs, and the factors that triggered the riots. Participants shall visit sites important to the Southern California African American experience like the 5-4 Ballroom, a venue favored by musical legend, Johnny Otis.

* Purchase tickets HERE

How did this East Coat sophisticate go from managing editor of “The New Yorker” to populist novelist accused of writing dirty books? Esotouric’s tour explores Cainâ€s L.A. from Hollywood to Glendale and along old Route 66, and includes illuminating visits to Forest Lawn Memorial Park (a Glendale institution and site of the funeral of Mildred Pierceâ€s “other” daughter, Ray), the Glendale Train Station where the “Double Indemnity” murder plot played out, and the punch line to a Billy Wilder joke so subtle, itâ€s taken 63 years for anyone to get. The tour will also cover the artisans who transformed Cainâ€s tales into film, including Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler, Joan Crawford and Lana Turner, each an important contributor to the Film Noir canon.

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.

This was Raymond Chandlerâ€s Los Angeles, which resonated under deft and melancholy fits from his writerâ€s bow.

Join Esotouric down the mean streets that shaped his fiction, and that in turn shaped his hard-boiled times, in a four hour tour of downtown, Hollywood and surrounding environs: The Los Angeles Athletic Club, the Larry Edmunds Bookshop, the Hotel Van Nuys, Paramount Studioâ€s gates, and much, much more, including a Chandler-themed gelato stop at East Hollywood cult favorite Scoops.

Through published work, private correspondence, screenplays and film adaptations, we trace Chandlerâ€s search for meaning and his anti-hero Philip Marloweâ€s struggle to not be pigeonholed or give anything less than all he has, which lead them both down the rabbit hole of isolation, depression, and drink.

Exclusive on this tour: the fascinating story of Raymond Chandlerâ€s lost comic operetta The Princess and the Pedlar, a bombshell in Chandler studies, discovered by our own Kim Cooper in 2014.

Tour passengers will have the opportunity to purchase an autographed copy of co-host Kim Cooperâ€s mystery novel The Kept Girl, inspired by this tour and starring the young Chandler and the real-life Philip Marlowe on the trail of a cult of murderous angel worshippers, as well as the new Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles.

What the Lowdown on Downtown is, is a deeply researched “warts and all” history, with a focus on urban redevelopment, public policy, protest and political power. It is the revealing tale of how the New Downtown became an “overnight sensation” after decades of behind the scenes work by public agencies and private developers. This complicated story will fascinate and infuriate, break your heart and thrill your spirit.

So get on the bus for the real Lowdown on Downtown, as no one but Esotouricâ€s Richard Schave, also the founding director of the Downtown L.A. Art Walk, can reveal it.

Our tour begins in the corporate public spaces of Bunker Hill and Pershing Square, each the result of deliberate social engineering. Bunker Hillâ€s redevelopment displaced 9,000 people, the largest eminent domain land seizure in American history. Down the hill, we find the formerly positive public space of Pershing Square paved over, rendering downtownâ€s “living room” into a place where even the indigent become architecture critics. In the historic core, weâ€ll explore the tragedy of St. Vincent Court, a thriving open-air restaurant district hobbled by the interests of rival property owners. Then down Broadway and Spring Street, where adaptive reuse and the monthly Art Walk have brought life to spaces which have been dead for decades, even as Broadwayâ€s longtime Latino vendors are leaving in droves. The tour concludes in the Arts District, with the bold urban explorers who reclaimed vacant warehouse space at great personal risk, the public policy shift that legalized this creative community, the astonishing growth of the “new” Arts District and what it means for the artists who remain.

On the east side the Los Angeles River, some of the most fascinating Southern California stories are waiting to be told. Join Esotouric, L.A.â€s most eclectic bus adventure company, on a centuryâ€s social history tour through the transformation of neighborhoods, punctuated with immersive stops to sample the sites, smells and cultures that make our changing city so beguiling.

Voter registration, citizenship classes, walkouts, blow-outs, anti-Semitism, adult education, racial covenants, boycotts, The City Beautiful, Exclusion Acts and Immigration Acts, property values, xenophobia, and delicious dumplings—all are themes which will be addressed on this lively bus and walking tour.

THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY:

In the mid-1920s, Monterey Park was poised on the brink of becoming the Beverly Hills of the east. The Wall Street crash put an end to opulent residential development, but left some beautiful remnants of what might have been. In the 1950s, a thriving Italian-American community settled in the hills, and established some of the areaâ€s most beloved landmark businesses. Since the 1980s, the communities of Alhambra, San Gabriel and Monterey Park have transformed themselves from sleepy suburban bedroom communities (bursting at the seams from a 1950s housing explosion) to the nexus of a pan-Asian megalopolis. Fueled by immigration and investment from Taiwan, Hong Kong and South-East Asia, these communities have found their 21st Century identity, and their economic base—but at the expense of aging long-time residents, who have seen familiar neighborhoods and retail zones become unrecognizable.

BOYLE HEIGHTS:

In the 1890s, Rev. Dana Bartlett ministered to and taught the Russian Molokons in the cramped riverside neighborhood known then and now as “The Flats.” Today, the area contains public housing projects–a belated mid-century solution to the social problems that worried Bartlett, and an ongoing challenge for residents and city planners. In the 1960s, the Chicano Moratorium emerged from the same streets where in the 1920s and 1930s Jewish activists helped change the face of labor in California and the nation. Using the organizing tools first honed by their Jewish neighbors, young Chicanos stood up and rejected the military machine that sent so many of their peers to die in Vietnam, and developed an empowered social identity that lead all the way to the Mayorâ€s office.

SO GET ON THE BUS:

This whirlwind social history tour of some of the most interesting and dynamic neighborhoods on the east side of Los Angeles will include stops at:

• The Vladeck Center
• Hollenbeck Park
• Wyvernwood Garden Apartments
• Evergreen Cemetery
• The Venice Room
• El Encanto & Cascades Park
• Divineâ€s Furniture
• Wing Hop Fung for a complementary tea tasting

This tour is just one of our California Culture tour series (formerly known as the Reyner Banham Loves L.A. series).

Turning the West Side-centric notion of an L.A. architecture tour on its head, the bus goes into areas not traditionally associated with the important, beautiful or significant, raising issues of preservation, adaptive reuse and the evolution of the city. The locations all speak to the power, mutability and reach of Southern California as a creative engine. Some of the tour stops are:

Rancho San Antonio (1840). One of the oldest adobe structure in Los Angeles County, it was built by the Lugo family, whose rancho spread all the way to South Gate–the south gate of the property. This fascinating home sits smack dab in the middle of a 65-year-old trailer park on the banks of the Rio Hondo River in Bell Gardens. Between the layers of context at this site is the history of migration and growth in the Southland, from Spanish land grants to the dust bowl to the vast waves of stucco suburbs.

Canning Hardware and the Ed “Big Daddy” Roth studio (1950s). This modest stretch of Slauson Avenue was ground zero for Southern California high performance and hot rod culture. Come discover how aerospace, social mobility and teenage ingenuity transformed the automotive industry and created new modes of self-expression that spread worldwide.

The Clarke Estate (1920). A lost masterpiece by tilt-slab concrete architect Irving Gill, this Mission Revival (with a smattering of Mayan)-inspired dwelling feels like a time capsule from a simpler era, and offers insights into how the California style of architecture was born and popularized through Gillâ€s modernist fans Schindler and Neutra.

Harveyâ€s Broiler (1958/2008). One of the most prominent stops on the South Los Angeles cruising circuit, the teen culture promenade of the 1950s and â€60s that had enormous influence on fashion, automotive design, popular music and leisure, Harveyâ€s is also a cautionary tale about historic preservation. The beloved Downey diner with its landmark neon sign was illegally partially demolished by a renter who wanted more space to park used cars. The site was saved due to public outcry, and has been restored as a Bobâ€s Big Boy built to the original specifications.

Casa de Parley Johnson (1926). The Downey Assistance League is inviting us into the courtyard and grounds of this residence designed by noted architect Roland Coate. This two-story Monterey-style house is a classic design which exemplifies the Southern California lifestyle of the 1920s and 1930s.

This tour is just one of our California Culture tour series (formerly known as the Reyner Banham Loves L.A. series).

Join us in the Cal State Los Angeles teaching crime lab for an afternoonâ€s inquiry into the history and practice of forensic science in Los Angeles, in support of new research coming out of the Criminalistics Department. 

Presentation #1: Stalking The Night Stalker

Almost exactly thirty years ago, Richard Ramirez was captured by a mob of enraged East Los Angeles community members, ending the reign of terror of the self-proclaimed Night Stalker, who laid siege to the city through a series of vicious home invasion attacks in the spring and summer of 1985.

Giselle Lavigne is a forensic investigator for the Los Angeles County Sheriffâ€s Department who worked on analyzing the physical evidence used for Richard Ramirez†murder trial. She will present in great detail on the full complement of forensic evidence that was gathered, revealing the actions of the killer through the trace, blood and other evidence he left behind.

Presentation #2: The 60 Freeway Slayer

Professor Donald Johnson, our host and the Director of the Criminalistics Department, will present on six murders of prostitutes in 1993-94, which were initially attributed to an unknown “60 Freeway Slayer.”

When Professor Johnson was a forensic investigator for the Los Angeles County Sheriffâ€s Department, he investigated the murders, and gathered the evidence which, almost a decade later with the introduction of DNA evidence into the courtroom, would result in the conviction and death sentence of the “60 Freeway Slayer,” who DNA evidence showed to be incarcerated felon Ivan Hill. The case is a pivotal example of the remarkable impact that new forensic technology has in the courtroom and the lab.

By the afternoonâ€s conclusion, attendees will have a deeper understanding of the evolving toolkit used to gather and interpret physical evidence for the benefit of investigating officers and juries, from the 1980s to the present.