South LA tour February 3, 2013

Discover secret histories of urban Los Angeles with Esotouric's February architecture tours

WHAT: Esotouric's architecture and urbanism tour series, REYNER BANHAM LOVES L.A. includes four tours in February -- plus a FREE downtown walking tour THE FLANEUR & THE CITY: BROADWAY TOUR #2
WHERE/WHEN: ROUTE 66 tour departs Saturday, February 2, 11:30 am; SOUTH LOS ANGELES tour departs Sunday, February 3, 11:30am; THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN tour departs Saturday, February 16, 12pm; * NEW TOUR * BOYLE HEIGHTS & THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY tour departs Saturday, February 23, 12pm. All four bus tours leave from The Daily Dose, 1820 Industrial St., Los Angeles, CA 90021.
FREE TOUR: Tour host Richard Schave also offers a free downtown architecture walking tour after the free (back from hiatus) LAVA Sunday Salon on Sunday, February 24 (info at lavatransforms.org ). THE FLANEUR & THE CITY: BROADWAY TOUR #2 is free but reservations are required. Tour departs from Les Noces du Figaro, 618 S Broadway, Los Angeles, CA, 90014.
COST: $58/person for individual bus tours or $90 for a ROUTE 66/SOUTH LOS ANGELES weekend pass, walking tour is free.
INFO: Architecture tour series webpage http://esotouric.com/reynerpage – LAVA walking tour info http://lavatransforms.org/flaneur-broadway-feb2013
PODCAST: Esotouric's weekly L.A. history podcast is at http://esotouric.com/canteatsunshine
CONTACT: Email tours@esotouric.com or call 213-373-1947

LOS ANGELES- Los Angeles is a place that defies easy understanding or description. Love it or hate it, everyone has a strong opinion about the place. But what is Los Angeles, really? Even natives are sometimes baffled.

Join the Los Angeles natives of Esotouric, the offbeat bus adventure company whose tours reveal the secret heart of the southland, as they host a series of informative, educational and provocative excursions going deep into the region's most fascinating crannies. Take one REYNER BANHAM LOVES L.A. tour, or the whole series, for a richer understanding of a fascinating place.

Tours in the series roll along ROUTE 66 in the San Gabriel Valley, down along the 710 freeway to view the gems and oddities of SOUTH L.A, due east to explore the cultural histories of BOYLE HEIGHTS & THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY and into the heart of the urban core for THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN. Also offered is a very special event, Esotouric's Richard Schave's and architectural historian Nathan Marsak's free downtown walking tour, THE FLANEUR & THE CITY: BROADWAY TOUR #2, under the umbrella of LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association, immediately following the free (back from hiatus) LAVA Sunday Salon where Schave and Marsak will be presenting on 1940s-era downtown film footage. All tours begin downtown.

ABOUT THE ROUTE 66 TOUR (February 2):
It's a common misconception that ROUTE 66 only gets interesting in Arizona. But when Esotouric's Route 66 bus tour departs from downtown Los Angeles, passengers are in for a four-hour tour packed with stunning retro jewels plucked from L.A.'s own backyard. ROUTE 66 only exists today in small fragments, but many of the unique attractions that dotted its length survive and flourish today. Get on the bus to explore the real Southland, as no one but Esotouric's Richard Schave can reveal it. Richard's unique expertise on unknown Los Angeles has seen him as a featured guide on television's "Globe Trekker" (Grand Central Market) and "Cities of the Underworld" (downtown's prohibition-era tunnels) and speaking at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Hammer Museum. The ROUTE 66 tour explores California's original mass transit corridor and the building of its dream, from climate to citrus industry, Kalifornia Krazy architectural novelties to bucolic bungalows. Highlights in this edition of ROUTE 66 include a tour of E. WALDO WARD FARM (the oldest surviving commercial citrus facility in LA, where passengers can buy scrumptious preserves and almond-filled olives to take home), a stop at Robert Stacy Judd's 1924 masterpiece THE AZTEC HOTEL (currently being renovated), a swing around the homes of the feuding SLAUSON SISTERS tucked among vast cleared fields awaiting new development (hidden gems of Azusa lore and family dynamics, and a reminder of how fragile ecologies fall to the incessant crush of progress). Passengers will also tour the seldom-seen Civil War-era FAIRMOUNT CEMETERY and view the evocative BUNGALOWS of old Monrovia accompanied by host Richard Schave's lively rendition of a vintage bungalow booster tune.

ABOUT THE SOUTH LA TOUR (February 3)
The tour begins downtown and works its way south through Vernon, Bell Gardens, Santa Fe Springs and Downey, and through the past two centuries, exploring some of L.A.'s seldom-seen gems. Turning the West Side-centric notion of an L.A. architecture tour on its head—just like Banham's book did for the historical monograph – 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 the Southern California Dream. Tour stops include: Rancho San Antonio (circa 1840, one of the oldest adobe structure in Los Angeles County, 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); The Clarke Estate (1920, a lost masterpiece by tilt-slab concrete architect Irving Gill, this Mission Revival-inspired dwelling features symbolic leaves pressed into the walls and feels like a time capsule from a simpler California); Johnie's Broiler (1958/2008, a cautionary tale about historic preservation, this beloved Downey diner with its landmark neon sign was illegally demolished by a tenant who wanted to park used cars in its place. The site was barred from further commercial use due to public outcry, and has been restored as a Bob's Big Boy).

ABOUT THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN TOUR (February 16)
This is NOT a tour about beautiful buildings--although beautiful buildings will be all around you. This is NOT a tour about brilliant architects--although we will gaze upon their works and marvel.
The Lowdown on Downtown IS a tour about urban redevelopment, public policy, protest, power and the police. It is a revealing history of how the New Downtown became an "overnight sensation" after decades of quiet work behind the scenes by public agencies and private developers. This tour is about what really happened in the heart of Los Angeles, a complicated story that will fascinate and infuriate, break your heart and thrill your spirit. So join 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. THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN is a guided social history of the mysterious, complex and rapidly evolving center of L.A., a thriving neighborhood that was intentionally depopulated in the 1950s and is currently experiencing an extraordinary rebirth. Everyone complains L.A. lacks a center -- this tour explains why. Passengers will visit exquisite architectural gems, including some seldom seen by the general public, but they'll also enjoy a sophisticated analysis of the economic and social tools used to rebuild downtown, learn how gentrification sprung up on the city's meanest streets with all the conflicts that go along with a community's socio-economic shift, meet creative residents and explore unique destinations. Featured locations include the intentionally depopulated Bunker Hill and its Angels Flight funicular railway, Grand Central Market, the concrete design disaster Pershing Square (with its tribute to novelist John Fante), European-style dining alley St. Vincent's Court, the lyrical glass-topped Mercantile Arcade Building (an exact replica of a London landmark) and a visit to an underground art space. Get on the bus for the real Lowdown on Downtown, the story the boosters don't want you to hear.

*NEW TOUR * ABOUT THE BOYLE HEIGHTS & SAN GABRIEL VALLEY TOUR (February 23)
On the east side the Los Angeles River, some of the most fascinating Southern California stories are waiting to be told. Come take a century’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. Tour stops include The Vladeck Center, Libros Schmibros, Hollenbeck Park, Evergreen Cemetery, The Venice Room, El Encanto & Cascades Park, Divine’s Furniture, the endangered Wyvernwood Garden Apartments and Wing Hop Fung for a complementary tea tasting. 1) THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY SECTION: 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 area’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. 2) THE BOYLE HEIGHTS SECTION: 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 Mayor’s office.

ABOUT THE FLANEUR & THE CITY: BROADWAY TOUR #2 (February 24)
For the latest installment of urban historian Richard Schave’s site-specific discussion series "The Flâneur & The City," Richard (Esotouric bus adventures, In SRO Land) is joined by architectural historian Nathan Marsak (1947project, On Bunker Hill). The series 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 this excursion we’ll be casting our eyes northward along Broadway, from 6th Street up to 4th Street, an area that is part of the National Register designation footprint. Broadway has been a vibrant commercial artery and transit hub of Los Angeles since the 1890s, and we'll explore that rich history with a focus on the buildings, their architects, and their varied uses. This tour will be slightly different from others in this series, as nearly all of the buildings under discussion still survive. Tour guests will gather upstairs at Les Noces du Figaro as the LAVA Sunday Salon concludes. Please note that the final presentation of the free LAVA Sunday Salon immediately preceding this tour is important back story to the tour and attendance at the Salon is encouraged. Reservations are not required at the free Salon, but they are for the walking tour.

ABOUT THE REYNER BANHAM LOVES L.A. TOUR SERIES:
Inspired by the British architectural critic Reyner Banham, who tour host Richard Schave studied under at UC Santa Cruz, the REYNER BANHAM LOVES LOS ANGELES series offers a fresh way of looking at the urban web of history, mass transit, migration and mystery that somehow holds L.A. together. The Reyner Banham Loves LA series of Esotouric bus adventures provides fresh ways of seeing the Southland and mingling with fascinating fellow travelers, and are a must for urban explorers, architecture buffs, curious locals, daring tourists, and anyone who enjoys turning over rocks to reveal the secrets beneath. Come ride and see for yourself.

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour and special event schedule (free events starred)
Sat January 26 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's Southern California Nightmare
Sat Feb 2 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Route 66 (weekend pass available)
Sun Feb 3 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: South LA (weekend pass available)
Sat Feb 16 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The Lowdown on Downtown
Sat Feb 23 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Boyle Heights & the San Gabriel Valley
*Sun Feb 24 - Back after a 15 month hiatus - LAVA's free Sunday Salon (info at lavatransforms.org)
*Sun Feb - The Flâneur & The City: Broadway Tour #2 (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat March 2 - Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice
*Sat March 9 – Behind the Scenes tour of the Southwest Museum (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat March 16 - Pasadena Confidential crime bus tour (weekend pass available)
Sun March 17 - Eastside Babylon crime bus tour (weekend pass available)
Sat March 23 - Weird West Adams crime bus tour
Sat April 6 - John Fante's Dreams from Bunker Hill (weekend pass available)
Sun April 7 - Charles Bukowski's LA (weekend pass available)
Sat April 13 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's Southern California Nightmare
Sat April 20 - SPECIAL EVENT: Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits' LA
Sun April 21 - Crime lab seminar: Insights in Criminal Investigation and the Secret World of Street Gangs with Nick Guskos (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat April 27 - The Real Black Dahlia
Sat May 4 - Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour
Sat May 18 - Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles

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

For more on Reyner Banham, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reyner_Banham

And the BBC documentary "Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles"
http://youtu.be/WlZ0NbC-YDo

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