Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles: In A Lonely Place May 19, 2012

Book An L.A. Noir Weekend touring Raymond Chandler's city and San Gabriel Valley murder scenes
WHAT: Esotouric's mid-May L.A. Noir bus tour weekend featuring RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES: IN A LONELY PLACE and BLOOD & DUMPLINGS (San Gabriel Valley crime bus tour)
WHEN: Raymond Chandler tour is Saturday, May 19, 11:30am-3:30pm; Blood & Dumplings tour is Sunday, May 20, 12-4pm
WHERE: Raymond Chandler tour departs from the Los Angeles Athletic Club, 431 West 7th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014. Blood & Dumplings departs from Nick's Cafe, 1300 N Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012.
COST: Raymond Chandler tour is $58/person and includes coffee and cookies, Blood & Dumplings tour is $62 and includes dumplings
INFO: http://www.esotouric.com, 213-373-1947
LOS ANGELES- This May 19th and 20th, the eclectic bus adventure company Esotouric offers a weekend's worth of tours that delve deep into L.A.'s noir past, from the fictional spaces inhabited by Raymond Chandler's legendary 1940s detective Philip Marlowe to the real-life horrors of the San Gabriel Valley's true crime scenes. Take one tour or both and you'll get a memorable experience deep inside the dark side of the City of Angels, and disembark with some wild tales to tell. The tours play out in this order:

1) RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES: IN A LONELY PLACE (5/19)
Esotouric's Raymond Chandler delves deep into a lost city that exists in shadowy parallels to contemporary LA.

Bungalows. Crime. Hollywood. Blondes. Vets. Smog. Death. This was Raymond Chandler’s city, which resonated from deft and melancholy fits of his writer’s bow. Join Esotouric on an exploration of the city that shaped Chandler's fiction, and that in turn shaped his hard-boiled times, in a four hour tour of downtown, Hollywood and surrounding environs: Musso & Frank, Union Station, the Hotel Van Nuys, Paramount Studio’s gates, and beyond. Through published work, private correspondence, screenplays and film adaptations, the tour traces Chandler’s search for meaning and his anti-hero Philip Marlowe’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.

Get on the bus for a revealing time travel journey into the literary history of Los Angeles, and discover the places and people who inspired Raymond Chandler's timeless novels, screenplays and stories. And as a special treat, the tour's complementary snack break features a selection of noir-themed gelato flavors from the creative kitchen of Tai Kim's Scoops, the most interesting and acclaimed ice cream shop in Los Angeles. Scoops doesn't announce the featured flavors in advance, but Chandleresque offerings on past tours have have included Coffee/Jack Daniels, Bacon/Caramel, Guinness/Chocolate and even Nicotine (made with Nicorette gum)!

2) BLOOD & DUMPLINGS CRIME BUS TOUR (5/20):
Ask most people to name a true crime location in Los Angeles and you'll hear about Nicole Brown's Brentwood condo, the Manson Murders scene in the Hollywood Hills, the Black Dahlia's disappearance from the Biltmore Hotel or Bugsy Siegel's Beverly Hills death house. But when the crack researchers of Esotouric go crime hunting, they throw out the map to the stars homes and cast their eye to less glamorous L.A. neighborhoods that prove to be packed with bizarre crime histories. True crime buffs have already heard the famous stories a dozen times before on cable TV, but the forgotten crimes Esotouric digs up are fresh, fascinating and truly chilling.

Case in point, that most demented crime bus tour: BLOOD AND DUMPLINGS. Starting from the premise that the secret heart of Southern California's weirdo pop culture beats strongest in the Eastern San Gabriel Valley, the tour introduces passengers to such fascinating local characters as the costumed Man from Mars Bandit, eccentric record producer and ladykiller Phil Spector, lion farmers Charles and Muriel Gay, and DIY filmmaking icon Timothy Carey, whose notorious "The World's Greatest Sinner" was shot on location in 1960s El Monte. Heading due East out of downtown, the tour explores several historic communities that reflect the growth and eccentricity that are hallmarks of 20th century Los Angeles.

Crime Bus passengers will discover notorious, strange, fascinating and forgotten tales from the past hundred years, each told at the scene of the crime. They'll thrill to the freakish case of the Man from Mars Bandit who stalked area supermarkets for months in 1951 before meeting his match in a police sharpshooter, shock to discover the deadly infighting among El Monte's hippie-era American Nazi Party members, mourn the Case of the Buried Bride dragged beneath her home on her wedding day by her secret lover, gnash teeth at the famous lion farm (home to every MGM lion) that served lion meat BBQ on special occasions, and view scenes of notorious cases including Phil Spector's spooky hilltop castle and James Ellroy's slain mother Geneva (the true-life inspiration for his "The Black Dahlia" novel). And since no visit to the San Gabriel Valley is complete without a delicious Chinese meal, the Crime Bus will stop at 101 Noodle Express (one of critic Jonathan Gold's picks for 99 L.A. restaurants not to be missed) to pick up a dumpling feast, which will be enjoyed picnic-style at Monster Park, a remarkable folk art playground environment recently saved from demolition and named a State monument. All this, plus wild shootouts, dope-dealing druggists, missing Salvador Dali paintings and the original "little girl down a well" 1940s television sensation.

Don't miss the Crime Bus tour that guide Kim Cooper calls "My personal favorite of all our tours, packed with more offbeat history, horror, roadside architecture and fabulous Route 66 vistas than any other."

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour and special event schedule (free events starred)
*Fri April 27 - The Trial of Mary Dugan (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat April 28 - Special event: Maja's Mysteries: Rapture & Release
Mon April 30 - The LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank featuring John Buntin (info at lavatransforms.org)
*Sun May 6 - Sunnyside Mausoleum Tile, Architecture and History tour (info at lavatransforms.org)
*Sun May 6 - Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum tour (info at lavatransforms.org)
*Thurs May 17 - Union Rescue Mission Walking Tour: 121 years on Skid Row (info at lavatransforms.org)
*Thurs May 17 - Of Scrap & Steel: free rooftop screening of rare 1949 color film (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat May 19 - Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
Sun May 20 – Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour
*Sun May 27 - The Flâneur & The City: Hill Street walking tour (info at lavatransforms.org)
*Mon May 28 - Savannah Cemetery tour (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat June 2 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The Lowdown on Downtown
Sun June 3 - Crime lab seminar: The Killer Behind the Camera (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat June 9 - Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice
Sat June 16 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's Southern California Nightmare
*Sun June 17 - El Ranchito: Tour of Pio Pico's Historic Whittier Adobe (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat June 23 - Weird West Adams
Sat July 14 - Pasadena Confidential (weekend pass available)
Sun July 15 - Eastside Babylon (weekend pass available)
Sat July 28 - The Real Black Dahlia
Sat August 4 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Route 66 (weekend pass available)
Sun August 5 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: South LA (weekend pass available)
Sat August 11 - Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
Sat August 18 - Haunts of A Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles
Sat August 25 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Boyle Heights & The San Gabriel Valley

Esotouric's Richard Schave, Kim Cooper and Joan Renner are proud members of LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association. http://www.lavatransforms.org

For more info on Esotouric, visit http://www.esotouric.com

Official Website: http://www.esotouric.com