Los Angeles Visionaries Association

WHAT:  Third edition of Esotouric's special guest hosted "John Buntin's L.A. Noir" bus and walking tour, which debuted in a sold-out September 2009 run
WHEN:  Saturday October 16, 12pm-4pm, departing from Clifton's Cafeteria, 648 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90014
COST:  $62/person including snack
MORE INFO:  visit http://www.esotouric.com/lanoir or call 323-223-2767
RELATED TOURS:  Esotouric's October noir series also "The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's Southern California Nightmare" (10/9, info at http://esotouric.com/cain) and their debut CSULA crime lab tour event (10/24, sold out, info at http://lavatransforms.org/crimelab)

LOS ANGELES, CA-- Other cities have histories. Los Angeles has legends. For more than sixty years, writers and directors from Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder to Roman Polanski and James Ellroy have explored L.A.'s origins, its underbelly, and (yes) its blondes in fiction and films like "The Big Sleep," "Double Indemnity," "Chinatown," and "L.A. Confidential." Yet this preoccupation with a mythic past has obscured something important -- the true history of noir Los Angeles.

Now John Buntin, the author of "L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City" (Random House), and Esotouric, L.A.'s most eclectic bus adventure company, have teamed up to explore the forgotten haunts, hits, and harems of underworld L.A. and the rivalry between the two men who shaped it -- one L.A.'s most notorious gangster, the other its most controversial police chief. The tour debuted in a sold out run in September 2009, with a repeat engagement in April 2010.

Featherweight boxer Mickey Cohen left the ring for the rackets, first as mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel's enforcer, then as his protégé and successor. Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, and Sammy Davis Jr. palled around with him; TV journalist Mike Wallace wanted his stories; evangelist Billy Graham sought his soul.

William H. Parker was the proud son of a pioneering law enforcement family from the fabled frontier town of Deadwood. As a rookie patrolman in the Roaring Twenties, he discovered that L.A. was ruled by a shadowy "Combination" of tycoons, politicians and underworld bosses. His life mission became to topple it -- and to create a police force that would never answer to elected officials again. In the process, he created the Dragnet-era LAPD, unwittingly paving the way for the Watts riots and creating a culture that LAPD police chief Charlie Beck continues to struggle with even today.

Novelist Michael Connelly calls "L.A. Noir" "fascinating, flat out entertaining." "[I]mportant and wonderfully enjoyable," says Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times. Kirkus Reviews raves, "A roller coaster ride... Gripping social history and a feast for aficionados of cops-and-robbers stories, both real and imagined," and USC historian Kevin Starr says the book is "a tour de force of non-fiction narrative." Together, Buntin and Esotouric take you on a journey to the sites where Hollywood madam Brenda Allen played and where Mickey's enforcers killed to enforce his will.

From Clifton's redwood-themed Brookdale Cafeteria downtown, L.A. Noir passengers will proceed on foot to the movie palace where 17-year-old Bill Parker worked as an usher -- and fell into a disastrous love affair -- as well as the site of 9-year-old Mickey Cohen's first holdup. Boarding a luxurious coach class bus, the tour will visit Mickey Cohen's childhood haunts in the old Jewish neighborhood Boyle Heights, as well as the site of one of L.A.'s most notorious attempted assassinations, en route to significant spots in LAPD and mob history. We'll stop by "the glass house," visit one of fashion plate madam Brenda Allen former haunts, visit an eerie mob body dump site on the edge of Vernon, stop by Cohen's old commission office, hear a first-hand account of how Mickey operated, tour the Los Angeles Police Academy and visit the old Lincoln Heights jail, site of the brutal Christmas 1951 events that inspired the opening of James Ellroy's "L.A. Confidential."

With Kim Cooper, the creator of Esotouric's true crime tours and creator of the new L.A. time travel blog In SRO Land (http://www.insroland.org) riding shotgun, there will also be plenty of surprises. So get on the bus as the whole filthy truth is spread out before you, as only the Esotouric crew and special guest stars like John Buntin can do.

ABOUT ESOTOURIC: Founded in 2007 by newlyweds Kim Cooper and Richard Schave, the company quickly cornered the market on offbeat true crime history tours and highbrow literary and architectural explorations. From their "The Real Black Dahlia" tour ("an L.A. classic" -- Los Angeles Times) to "Raymond Chandler's L.A.," sold-out personal history tours guest hosted by James Ellroy to alternative neighborhood guides like "Pasadena Confidential," Esotouric's weekly bus adventure has become a must for locals seeking to know their city better, and a lucky find for savvy travelers.

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour and special event schedule
Sat Sept 11 - Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice crime bus tour
Sat Sept 18 - Pasadena Confidential crime bus tour
Sat Sept 25 - The Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour
Sat Oct 9 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's So. Cal Nightmare
Sat Oct 16 - John Buntin's L.A. Noir
Sun Oct 24 - CSULA crime lab tour (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat Nov 6 - Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
Sun Nov 7 - CSULA crime lab tour (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat Nov 13 - Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's L.A.
Sat Dec 4  - Pasadena Confidential with Crimebo the Clown
Sat Dec 11 - Eastside Babylon crime bus tour

On Saturday, August 28th, come spend the day with the Slum Circus! See live painting and drawing, demon tattoos, breakdancing ninjas and live draping by Visionary A. Laura Brody!

This is a first time event for David Castro and the Slum Circus, and it should be a hoot.  He's deliberately picked artists and vendors who won't offer a dull  gallery experience- always a good choice!

Contributing artists and vendors include Alex Chiu, Donna Letterese, Beee Bello, DCastr, DWAP Prod, Ezra, Dreams By Machine (A. Laura Brody's repurposed leather and hardware designs), Taco Comics, Hyperwerks, Brandon Bracamonte, Jimmy Bell, Karl Altstaetter, Crude Dude Comix, Rebornz Art, Splatter Beast, James Riot, Scott Aicher, SMIF, Alexandra Gonzales, Amer Shihab, Tony Acosta, Drippy Bones Books, John Tomason, Tom Neely, Nathanial Ossello, Yuki Miyazaki, Miki Harris, Boleep, Lefty Joe, Nature's Mistake, Muze Wear, Edukation Athletics, Breakstarz and People Mover.

The place: Chuco's Justice Center, 1137 E. Redondo Blvd, Inglewood, CA 90302

The specs: August 28th, 2010 from 10 AM to 6 PM. Tickets are $8 at the door, $5 pre sale on line- and the first 50 attendees will be getting a limited Slum Circus swag bag. I can only guess what might be in it.

Visionary A. Laura Brody says: I'll be vending all day at the show, and while I'm there I'll be doing more detailed style of draping than I demonstrated at the LAVA Sunday Salon. These drapes will become patterns, which I'll use to create finished pieces as part of my line. Some fun and fabulous models have graciously agreed to come and be draped, including Prince Poppycock of "America's Got Talent" fame and the lovely burlesque queen Jewel of Denial.

If you missed your chance to see it before (or just missed the opportunity to be draped yourself), stop by and visit any time!  Enjoy the art, artists, books, comics, tattooing and live art... and, according to the flyer, we'll have "mystifying break dancing ninjas".

And you wouldn't want to miss THAT.

(Please note: this event was originally scheduled for July 12)

Pick up your pre-purchased copy of McSweeney's Quarterly #35 ($20+tax), enjoy food and drink.

Stay for a discussion and signing with McSweeney's contributor, Ellie Kemper (The Office) and others (TBA).

Plus a musical guest!

With tremendous new stories from Steven Millhauser and Roddy Doyle, an epic, genre-shattering novella from Hilton Als, and a really excellent special section on Norway's finest writers (featuring not just Per Petterson but also Kid Icarus and a woman named Blind Margjit)-along with, probably, correspondence from a man we can't yet name and an unbelievable disappearing-ink cover done by Jordan Crane-Issue 35 is a full-to-bursting edition in the tradition of the best ones we've ever done. For several hundred pages of unrivaled summer reading, this is your book.

FREE to attend, McSweeney's Quarterly #35 ($20+tax).
Click here to purchase and RSVP.

826LA is releasing its newest book, You Never Forget How to Ride a Bike: Lessons Learned by the Students of John Marshall High School. The young authors lead us through the moments that have shaped their lives- among them encounters with Def Leppard albums, wormy peaches, campus police, and Mara Salvatrucha-and share with us the things they've learned about the kindness of strangers, letting go of love, resolve in the presence of naysayers, and the value of a dollar.

Students from John Marshall High Sschool will read from the book at Skylight Books.

826LA & the Young Storytellers Foundation
invite you to a student performance
inspired by Brooke Berman's new book
No Place Like Home
with a reading by Brooke Berman and after-party

Free to attend, No Place Like Home can be pre-purchased for $26.

The Los Angeles City Historical Society and the History Department, Los Angeles Public Library Invite You to the 18th  Annual Marie Northrop Lecture Series:  “Growth, Graft, Grandeur:  Three Los Angeles Mayors” at the Mark Taper Auditorium of the Richard J. Riordan Central Library 630 West Fifth Street (between Grand Avenue and Flower Street). Lecture #2 in the series:  John Buntin on Mayor Frank L. Shaw, 1933-1938

ABOUT THE LECTURE: In 1933, Mayor Frank Shaw became the Mayor of Los Angeles, ushering in an era of corruption that scandalized the city and inspired writers from Raymond Chandler to James Ellroy. Yet in recent years, historians have begun to paint a more benign picture of L.A.'s most notorious chief executive. In his talk at the Central Library, John Buntin, the author of L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City, will take up the subject of Mayor Shaw and his relations with the LAPD. In the process, he'll discuss some of Los Angeles's most well-known lawmen — Chief James "Two Gun" Davis and his aide de camp, Lt. Bill Parker as well as some of Los Angeles's most notorious criminals, among them Guy "Stringbean" McAfee, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, and Mickey Cohen. Drawing on primary source research and historical photographs, Buntin's talk promises to be a fast-paced spin through the real Los Angeles underworld.

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.

For more info, see this short film on the landmarking of Bukowski’s former bungalow on De Longpre.

Bungalows. Crime. Hollywood. Blondes. Vets. Smog. Death.

This was Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, which resonated from deft and melancholy fits of his writer’s bow.

Join us as we go 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, Musso & Frank, the Hotel Van Nuys, Paramount Studio’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 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.

GHOULA meets for cocktails in haunted places on the 13th of each month. “SPIRITS with SPIRITS” is a casual gathering of regional ghost hunters and those that just like ghost stories. Open to all, from the curious skeptic to the passionate phantom pursuer. Make friends, and toast a ghost! Let's put the “Boo!” back into “booze.” All those who attend will receive a free G.H.O.U.L.A. button. If you already have one, please wear it so others can find you.

Note: At this month's gathering, a "lost" Disneyland artifact will be on display for the first time since its removal in 1982, and for this one night only! In addition, the last remaining copies of "Disneyland after Dark: An Unauthorized Guide to the Happiest (Haunted) Place on Earth" will also be available for purchase, and the author and illustrator will be present.