SOLD OUT! The Flâneur & The City: Downtown Los Angeles in the age of digital reproduction (“L.A. Noire” tour)
Update: Sorry, all spaces are now filled for the free walking tour, but anyone may attend the free Sunday Salon that precedes the tour (noon-2pm), and Nathan Marsak’s pre-walking-tour presentation (2pm+) on the architecture of “L.A. Noire.” Don’t miss the next LAVA special event: subscribe to the newsletter.
For the latest installment of urban historian Richard Schave’s site-specific discussion series “The Flâneur & The City,” Richard (Esotouric bus adventures) is joined by architectural historian Nathan Marsak (1947project, On Bunker Hill).
On this excursion we’ll explore the downtown cityscape, paying particular attention to some of the places that have been digitally re-created in the new video game L.A. Noire. We’ll explore how Rockstar/Team Bondi’s simulacrum of 1947 downtown Los Angeles holds up, where and how it succeeds and fails, and why you should care. We’ll visit the Spring Arcade, a 1923 reproduction of London’s iconic Burlington Arcade (1819), the Barclay Hotel (whose halls and color palate have been borrowed for various other places within the game), Clifton’s Brookdale (our rendezvous point), Angels Flight, and various historic sites which no longer remain, but which “live again” in what may prove to be a tremendously successful video game.
RECOMMENDED PRE-TOUR READING: Nathan Marsak’s 1947project preview of L.A. Noire.
TAKING THIS TOUR: Reservations will be required for this free walking tour, and space is very limited for all events in this series. Reserve your space for the May 29 event by clicking “Signups”.
ABOUT THE TOUR SERIES: “The Flâneur & The City” 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.
