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Kim Cooper and Paul Rogers present at the LAVA Sunday Salon, March 2014

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On the last Sunday of each month , LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a loosely structured conversational Salon featuring short presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another.

At the March 2014 Salon, we featured a joint presentation centered around The Kept Girl (Esotouric Ink, 2014), LAVA co-founder Kim Cooper’s novel of 1929 Los Angeles starring the young Raymond Chandler, his devoted secretary and the real-life cop who is a likely model for Philip Marlowe. Kim dug deep into the book’s true crime and literary inspirations and the process of bringing the book to press. Artist Paul Rogers discussed his cover art for The Kept Girl, then offered a freeform discussion of his often historic L.A.-themed creative process, from the germ of an idea, to photos, sketches, all the way to a complete series of prints.

20 Years After: Charles Bukowski Memorial
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20 Years After: Charles Bukowski Memorial

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On the 20th anniversary of Bukowski’s death, LAVA – The Los Angeles Visionaries Association hosted an evening of poems, toasts and memories at the King Eddy Saloon on East Fifth Street in Downtown Los Angeles.

The evening was hosted by Richard Schave (Esotouric’s Haunts of a Dirty Old Man bus tour & the De Longpre bungalow preservation campaign) and included readings from five notable Los Angeles poets and friends of the late writer: Dan Fante, S.A. Griffin, Suzanne Lummis, Joan Jobe Smith and Fred Voss. The event concluded with a toast from S.A. Griffin.

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Joe Oesterle and Count Smokula present at the LAVA Sunday Salon, February 2014

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On the last Sunday of each month , LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a loosely structured conversational Salon featuring short presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another.

At the February 2014 Salon, back by popular demand, we welcomed LAVA Visionary Joe Oesterle, author of Weird Hollywood and the classics Weird California and Weird Las Vegas. Joe read some spooky stories from his books and share anecdotes from his weird road travels, and signed copies of Weird Hollywood. The multi-talented Joe Oesterle is a former Senior Editor of National Lampoon, a visual artist, musician, animator and curator of the strange and marvelous. At the Salon, Joe was joined by Count Smokula, a 496-year-old accordion-playing vampire from the vaguely Eastern-European nation of Smokesylvania. A mainstay in the Los Angeles Underground scene, the Count has been described as a cross between Bela Lugosi and Jackie Mason. The Count delighted us with several numbers on his accordion and some gems of home-spun philosophy.

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Joan Jobe Smith and Fred Voss present at the LAVA Sunday Salon, February 2014

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On the last Sunday of each month , LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a loosely structured conversational Salon featuring short presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another.

At the February 2014 Salon, Poet Fred Voss read from his Bloodaxe (UK) collections Hammers And Hearts Of The Gods and Carnegie Hall With Tin Walls and from Tooth And Fang And Machine Handle, his winning chapbook from Nerve Cowboy’s (USA) 2013 Competition. Poems mostly about his working experiences, reflections on those experiences, and his 35-year life as a machinist which will include non-machine shop philosophical poems and a couple domestic-comedy “Frank & Jane” poems which bear a striking resemblance to his marriage to poet Joan Jobe Smith.

A teenager in 1950s’ L.A., go-go girl in swinging 60s-70s, poet, writer, teacher, mentor, founding editor of PEARL, and confidante of Charles Bukowski for nearly a decade, Joan Jobe Smith read selected poems about the movies, lands of a 1,000 dances, and her friendship with Bukowski from her 2012 literary profile Charles Bukowski: Epic Glottis: His Women & His Art (& me), and the 2013 Bukowski Anthology, both published by Silver Birch Press.

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Marc Chevalier receives Visionary of the Year award and presents on James Oviatt at the LAVA Sunday Salon, January 2014

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On the last Sunday of each month , LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a loosely structured conversational Salon featuring short presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another.

At the January 2014 Salon, Marc Chevalier was presented with the 2014 LAVA Visionary of the Year award and presented on his research into James Oviatt and 1920s Los Angeles fashion merchandizing and architecture.

Marc Chevalier on James Oviatt and the Making of Modern Los Angeles History: Join Marc Chevalier, LAVA’s Visionary of the Year for 2014, as he traces the life of the iconic Angeleno, James Oviatt, the man behind the eponymous building and clothing store. The unfolding of this narrative doubles as Marc’s personal narrative of research, through false leads, dead ends, misinterpretations and out of the blue miracles, until by uncovering the untold story of James Oviatt, Marc Chevalier discovers his own voice, that of a major historian of lost Los Angeles.

Why look to James Oviatt, seller of upscale fashion, early proponent of the Art Deco, Machiavellian schemer and dreamer? Oviatt’s arc is a microcosm of the upwardly mobile in Jazz Age Los Angeles, and his story touches almost every major aspect of culture and commerce in pre-war Los Angeles. His influence is still felt on the city he left behind, and in the worlds of fashion, design, marketing and architecture. 

For more about the January Salon, click here

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The Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour

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“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.

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Darrell Rooney presents Harlow in Hollywood at the LAVA Sunday Salon, January 2014

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On the last Sunday of each month , LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles (noon-2pm), for a loosely structured conversational Salon featuring short presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another.

At the January 2014 Salon, Darrell Rooney presented on Harlow In Hollywood.

Harlow. The name resonates. Blonde Bombshell. Platinum Blonde. The labels applied by press agents during Jean Harlow’s seven-year career still carry a charge seventy years later. Harlow created the mold: the first blonde sex symbol who captured the attention of a nation, then touched their hearts with her genuine warmth and candor. At a time when Harlow’s star shone its brightest, Los Angeles and the movies gave birth to a district that exists as much in the mind as on the map. Harlow historian Darrell Rooney, co-author of Harlow In Hollywood (Angel City Press), discusses and presents images on the behind the scenes life of Jean Harlow and the city that helped mold her.

For more about the January Salon, click here.

 

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A Rrose in a Prose curated reading at the 2014 L.A. Zine Fest

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A Rrose in a Prose, L.A.’s most ramshackle monthly literary salon, is pleased to announce that this month’s event will be something very special: a curated reading onstage at the 2014 L.A. Zine Fest!

Founded by music journalist and editor D. M. Collins (L.A. RECORD) in 2012 out of a sense of desperation, A Rrose in a Prose is a cure for the boring open-mic readings and pushy poetry slams you may have suffered through at coffee shops throughout the Southland. Featuring writers from all genres, and we mean all of ‘em—poets, fiction writers, essayists, eroticists, educators, rappers, playwrights, political pundits, bards, braggarts, addicts, comedians, conspirators, and critics, to name a few—and from all walks of life, A Rrose in a Prose’s hand-picked, cross-pollinated, round-robin style readings are never dull, never safe, and might just help you find your next literary crush.

This month, of course, the theme is zines. And so for the first time, we’ll be bringing David Markey (We Got Power! Films), Kim Cooper (Esotouric Bus Adventures, LAVA, Scram Magazine), Allison Wolfe (LadyFest, Bratmobile), and Gene Sculatti (Rolling Stone, Billboard) together to read some of the pivotal early works that helped them mold themselves into the artists, pundits, and smarty-pants they’ve since become. We’re certain their stories, and of course their writings, will provide some laughter, some learning, and a sense of legacy for the crowd at Zine Fest.

Now in its third year, L.A. Zine Fest is an annual gathering of zine makers, DIY publishers, graphic novelists and readers, the kind of festival that hits that sweet spot between “convention” and “community.” This year, it’s all coming coming together at Helm’s Bakery in Culver City, where over 175 exhibitors of zines and indie publications are scheduled to spread small press goodies across countless booths and blankets and tables for your perusal (and purchase)!

There’ll also be a whole day’s worth of presentations, readings, and events; Doors open at 10am, A Rrose in a Prose hits the main stage from 4:15 to 5 p.m.

LAVA Broadway on My Mind walking tour #5: Poem Noir (November 2013)
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LAVA Broadway on My Mind walking tour #5: Poem Noir (November 2013)

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In July 2013, LAVA – The Los Angeles Visionaries Association launched a series of free walking tours along Broadway meant to raise consciousness about the Broadway Theater and Commercial District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the pending implementation of Strategy One, Phase One of the City of Los Angeles’ Broadway Streetscape Master Plan. Each walking tour follows and departs from the free LAVA Sunday Salon.

This month’s special Poem Noir tour, hosted by Richard Schave (Esotouric/LAVA), made its base at Third Street and Broadway. The tour migrated between Grand Central Market, Angels Flight and the Bradbury Building, with topics including the market’s opening in 1917, a remarkable WWI-era festival in the Boston Dry Goods Store, how the Bradbury Building was saved from burning, the history of Angels Flight, the murders of Stephen Nash, the rise and fall of Bunker Hill and the neighborhood’s starring role in the film noir genre, to developer Ira Yellin’s pioneering work of the 1980s.

Historical contributions from Kim Cooper and Gordon Pattison were interspersed with Poem Noir performances by Carl Weintraub, Brendan Constantine and Suzanne Lummis. Special treats: a sneak preview of Gordon’s fictional memoir of his father’s boyhood encounter with John Fante on old Bunker Hill and a poem written on the spot to honor Minnie Epp, the woman who saved the Bradbury Building from a fiery death. 

 Read about this tour here, and watch video of the walk here.

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Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice tour

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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.

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