Los Angeles Visionaries Association

"[This tour is] a poetic journey full of rare insight into the life of a man who's come to represent the ghettoized contingency of the City of Angels.” - Tanja M. Laden, Flavorpill

"Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's LA" 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.

The tour 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.

To sign up for this free event: First register as a user on this site, and then return to this page. Refresh the page and the signup tab will appear just to the left, above this paragraph. Click "signup" and reserve your spot. No plus-ones; each guest must register individually. Registered attendees, please check in at the Education Center at the site at 12:30pm, where you will join the tour.

ABOUT THIS TOUR:

Rancho Los Cerritos, one of the few surviving two-story adobes in Southern California, has been remodeled at least four times in the past 168 years. Each “reinvention” reveals distinct aspects of abiding social, political, environmental and economic change.

Join LAVA for what we do best: pulling back the layers of history and providing context for the very old places in this very new city. The living history docents of Rancho Los Cerritos will take us through the Rancho, the new interpretive center, and the gardens to give us a glimpse into the lives of people of Rancho Los Cerritos, and by extension other surrounding ranchos, whose ties of kin, and commerce are a strong and clear thread across these nearly two centuries and three changes in sovereignty.

This three-hour event will break into three parts: a tour of the rancho and new interpretive center (90 miunutes), a talk by Rancho Los Cerritos’ Executive Director Ellen Calomiris about her 22 years at the site (30 minutes), and a garden tour (30 minutes).

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

This was Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, which resonated under deft and melancholy fits from 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, the Larry Edmunds Bookshop, 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.

"This bus tour... has established itself as an L.A. classic." -The Los Angeles Times

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.

From the founding of the city through the 1940s, downtown was the true center of Los Angeles, a lively, densely populated, exciting and sometimes dangerous place. After many quiet decades, downtown is making an incredible return. But while many of the historic buildings remain, their human context has been lost.

This downtown double feature tour, hosted by Kim Cooper, Joan Renner and Richard Schave, is meant to bring alive the old ghosts and memories that cling to the streets and structures of the historic core, and is especially recommended for downtown residents curious about their neighborhood's neglected history.

The Hotel Horrors portion 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 liked to stay and the hotel that saw a visit from the Skid Row Slasher, and where two traveling chocolate salesmen laughed so hard they fell backwards out a window to their deaths. You'll also explore the fiery curse that repeatedly leveled the St. George Hotel. Included are some light hearted stories to help the blood and gore go down.

The Main Street Vice portion is a social history tour celebrating 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, a street that every Angeleno knew offered more (yet less) of what could be seen anywhere else. On this tour, we'll visit the scenes of some more unforgettable debaucheries and share stories of crime, smut, passion and commerce.

Climb aboard for a time travel journey back to the downtown that's not there anymore, and the surprising amount of gems that survive.

On this guided tour through the Beverly Hills of the early 20th Century, Crime Bus passengers thrill as Jazz Age bootleggers run amok, marvel at the Krazy Kafitz family's litany of murder-suicides, attempted husband slayings, Byzantine estate battles and mad bombings, visit the shortest street in Los Angeles (15' long Powers Place, with its magnificent views of the mansions of Alvarado Terrace), discover which fabulous mansion was once transformed into a functioning whiskey factory using every room in the house, and stroll the haunted paths of Rosedale Cemetery, site of notable burials (May K. Rindge, the mother of Malibu) and odd graveside crimes. Featured players include drunken ice cream men, the most famous dwarf in Hollywood, mass suicide ringleader Reverend Jim Jones, wacky millionaires who can't control their automobiles, human mole bank robbers, comically inept fumigators, kids trapped in tar pits, and dozens of other unusual and fascinating denizens of early Los Angeles.

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.

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 LAHTF invites you to experience the Tower. Here’s a chance to discover its beauty and see many of

its innovations firsthand. You’ll get an insider’s look at the theatre from the attic and booth to the large

finished basement. Theatre historian Ed Kelsey will be on hand to present the Tower’s history. The

Delijani family has a wonderful future is in store for the Tower. Learn more about the Broadway Theatre

Group’s plans for the Tower, Los Angeles, Palace and State in this Downtown News interview with BTG

principle, Shahram Delijani. http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/family‐looks‐to‐upgrade‐fourbroadway‐

theaters/article_47ca51a4‐f907‐11e1‐bab8‐001a4bcf887a.html

The Tower (1927), architect S. Charles Lee’s first theatre commission, is truly one‐of‐a‐kind. Owner H.L.

Gumbiner required as many seats as possible, as well as commercial space along the Broadway and 8th

Street frontages, all on a long and narrow (50’) lot. An exceptional design, still regarded as one of Lee’s

finest, met the challenges and led to Lee’s next Broadway commission, Gumbiner’s Los Angeles Theatre

LAHTF Members: $1.00

General Admission: $10.00

LAHTF Membership & Admission: $35.00

TO purchase tickets, go to – www.lahtf.org

Parking info: Ample flat‐rate parking is available on Hill St, between 8th and 11th Streets

Registration for this event is closed.

All seats for this event have now been reserved. There is limited SRO space available for anyone who is eager to attend and doesn't mind standing or sitting on the floor. If you are eager, please use the contact link to request a spot on the SRO list.

ABOUT THIS EVENT:

WHAT: The LAVA Salon presents "Jim Tully: A Hobo in Hollywood," featuring Mark Dawidziak & Paul Bauer.
WHERE: The Larry Edmunds Bookshop, 6644 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90028.
WHEN: Monday, October 15, 2012 from 6:30-9pm.
COST: Free admittance and light snacks and beverages, but space is extremely limited and reservations are required. See above paragraph for directions on how to register.
FOR MORE INFO ABOUT THE EVENT: Send an email through the LAVA contact page or call Kim Cooper or Richard Schave at 213-373-1947.  Subscribe to the LAVA newsletter to stay informed about future literary Salons

OTHER TULLY EVENTS: Laughter in Hell screening at the American Cinematheque (October 10); Bonnie Cashin Lecture at UCLA Special Collections (October 11); Jim Tully's Hollywood walking tour (October 14).

ABOUT JIM TULLY: The son of an Irish ditch-digger, Ohio-born Jim Tully (1886-1947) hit the road in 1901, spending most of his teenage years in the company of hoboes. While chasing his dream of becoming a writer, Tully rode the rails and worked as a tree surgeon, boxer, and newspaper reporter. All the while, he was crafting his memories into a dark and original chronicle of the American underclass. When he began to set his experiences onto paper in a style that was Hard Boiled before the genre existed, he became a literary sensation.

Read the Jim Tully ‘One Sheet’

At October’s Salon, Jim Tully’s biographers Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer will seek to answer the fundamental question: “Why isn’t Jim Tully still a household name?” Tully exploded onto the scene with a stream of critically acclaimed novels, among them Beggars of Life (1924), Circus Parade (1927), Shanty Irish (1928), Shadows of Men (1930) and Blood on the Moon (1931). Yet the books were out-of-print for decades, their author forgotten.

To answer this question, Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer must look to the Hollywood of 1912, to the sleepy little suburb that Tully found and watched grow up around him, as he built his incongruous twin careers as motion picture publicist and independent writer. From his piercing insights into and deep ambivalence toward his longtime employer, Charlie Chaplin, to anecdotes of great friendships with W. C. Fields, Jack Dempsey, Damon Runyon, Lon Chaney, Frank Capra, and Erich von Stroheim, Tully exhibited a lust for life which was only surpassed by his devotion to his craft. By 1930 Tully was a major American author, and had launched a parallel career as a successful journalist. Both his novels and journalistic exposés shook the country and his peer group in Hollywood.

But Tully’s novel Ladies In The Parlor (1935), was declared obscene and most copies destroyed, and Chaplin successfully prevented Tully’s publisher from releasing a biography of the actor. By the mid-1940s, crippling physical ailments and family heartbreak left the writer on the ropes. With his death in 1947, his name quietly slipped from the front ranks of American Letters and into obscurity.

Since 2009, Kent State University Press has been rectifying this long neglect with a series of Tully reprints. And in 2011, it published Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer’s definitive biography, Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler, drawing on new information found in the Tully papers at UCLA Special Collections.

The time is ripe for a revival of interest in this fascinating American character, and we invite you to play a part in it at the October Salon.

Paul Bauer cowrote Frazier Robinson’s autobiography, Catching Dreams: My Life in the Negro Baseball Leagues. And, with Mark Dawidziak, he is the coauthor of Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler. He is a used and rare bookseller and lives in Kent, Ohio.

Mark Dawidziak has been the television critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer since 1999. A theater, film and television reviewer for more than thirty years, his many nonfiction books include The Barter Theatre Story: Love Made Visible, The Columbo Phile: A Casebook, Mark My Words: Mark Twain on Writing, The Night Stalker Companion, Horton Foote’s The Shape of the River: The Lost Teleplay About Mark Twain, The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula and, most recently, with Paul J. Bauer, Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler.

Also appearing at the Salon is Howard Prouty (Acquisitions Archivist at The Academy Foundation/Margaret Herrick Library and proprietor of ReadInk) presenting on a famous Los Angeles book seller, the latest in his ongoing Salon series. This time, this takes the form of a conversation between Howard Prouty and Aaron Epstein, son of Louis Epstein, founder of Pickwick Books.

It's time for the 10th annual gathering of the Robert Benchley Society. This national group holds its annual Robert Benchley Awards dinner in a new city each year. This year's gathering is in Los Angeles, home to Mr. Benchley and Mrs. Dorothy Parker from the thirties through the fifties. This year the Society will gather for various activities the weekend of October 12th, including an Awards dinner hosted by "LAUGH IN" star, Arte  Johnson, at a private club in Santa Monica on Saturday, October 13th.  Evening dress or 20s-30s attire required at the Awards dinner. Must purchase ticket in advance.