LAVA Exclusives

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FULL NO MORE SIGNUPS – SAVE THE DATE–Cellar Tour of the King Eddy Saloon 7:30pm

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The time has nearly come when we must say goodbye to our dear King Eddy Saloon, the last Skid Row bar. But eight days before last call on December 16th, LAVA presents a rare opportunity to tour the historic basement speakeasy, where a select group of fortunate explorers can see the remnants of Prohibition-era decor. Join us to soak up the considerable atmosphere of this place that is memorably featured in John Fante’s great downtown novel Ask The Dust.

THE RULES: Space is extremely limited and promptness required for these small, free group tours, which are hosted by third generation proprietor Dustin Croick and Esotouric’s Richard Schave. Please visit the landing page to see a list of all available tour times. Registration for each tour slot will open at 10am on Thursday, and we expect reservations to go quickly. Please sign up for a user account in advance, and visit this webpage at that time if you would like to sign up. Attendees should plan to be upstairs in the bar at least ten minutes before their scheduled tour begins. Every guest must register individually (no plus ones).

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FULL NO MORE SIGNUPS – SAVE THE DATE–Cellar Tour of the King Eddy Saloon 7:15pm

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The time has nearly come when we must say goodbye to our dear King Eddy Saloon, the last Skid Row bar. But eight days before last call on December 16th, LAVA presents a rare opportunity to tour the historic basement speakeasy, where a select group of fortunate explorers can see the remnants of Prohibition-era decor. Join us to soak up the considerable atmosphere of this place that is memorably featured in John Fante’s great downtown novel Ask The Dust.

THE RULES: Space is extremely limited and promptness required for these small, free group tours, which are hosted by third generation proprietor Dustin Croick and Esotouric’s Richard Schave. Please visit the landing page to see a list of all available tour times. Registration for each tour slot will open at 10am on Thursday, and we expect reservations to go quickly. Please sign up for a user account in advance, and visit this webpage at that time if you would like to sign up. Attendees should plan to be upstairs in the bar at least ten minutes before their scheduled tour begins. Every guest must register individually (no plus ones).

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FULL NO MORE SIGNUPS -SAVE THE DATE–Cellar Tour of the King Eddy Saloon 7pm

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The time has nearly come when we must say goodbye to our dear King Eddy Saloon, the last Skid Row bar. But eight days before last call on December 16th, LAVA presents a rare opportunity to tour the historic basement speakeasy, where a select group of fortunate explorers can see the remnants of Prohibition-era decor. Join us to soak up the considerable atmosphere of this place that is memorably featured in John Fante’s great downtown novel Ask The Dust.

THE RULES: Space is extremely limited and promptness required for these small, free group tours, which are hosted by third generation proprietor Dustin Croick and Esotouric’s Richard Schave. Please visit the landing page to see a list of all available tour times. Registration for each tour slot will open at 10am on Thursday, and we expect reservations to go quickly. Please sign up for a user account in advance, and visit this webpage at that time if you would like to sign up. Attendees should plan to be upstairs in the bar at least ten minutes before their scheduled tour begins. Every guest must register individually (no plus ones).

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Halloween Celebration at The King Eddy Saloon

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Join the regulars and bar manager Bill at the historic King Eddy Saloon, the last Skid Row bar, for an all day (and night) Halloween celebration, featuring special discounts (50 cents off pints of beer and a dollar off pitchers) and seasonal drinks (“Trick or Treat” and “California Cocaine”) for the occasion. Don a costume and bring a friend or two for an experience you won’t get anywhere else in Los Angeles.

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Fake Lava event #2

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This is the body of the event, it tells you what the event is about.  Later on there will be fields for start time, end time and location, so keep it to what the event is.

 

This is the body of the event, it tells you what the event is about.  Later on there will be fields for start time, end time and location, so keep it to what the event is.

 

This is the body of the event, it tells you what the event is about.  Later on there will be fields for start time, end time and location, so keep it to what the event is.

 

This is the body of the event, it tells you what the event is about.  Later on there will be fields for start time, end time and location, so keep it to what the event is.

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Fake Lava event

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This is the body of the event, it tells you what the event is about.  Later on there will be fields for start time, end time and location, so keep it to what the event is.

 

This is the body of the event, it tells you what the event is about.  Later on there will be fields for start time, end time and location, so keep it to what the event is.

 

This is the body of the event, it tells you what the event is about.  Later on there will be fields for start time, end time and location, so keep it to what the event is.

 

This is the body of the event, it tells you what the event is about.  Later on there will be fields for start time, end time and location, so keep it to what the event is.

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The LAVA Salon — Jim Tully: A Hobo in Hollywood

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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.

Arson Murders and Fire Death Investigation
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Arson Murders and Fire Death Investigation

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To purchase a ticket for this special event, click here. If you’d like to be contacted when another crime lab tour and lecture are scheduled, subscribe to LAVA’s occasional Crime Lab Newsletter.

Visionary Professor Donald Johnson, in association with LAVA and Esotouric, invites you to participate in a special four-hour event at LA’s regional crime laboratory, on the campus of Cal State LA. Space is very limited and pre-reservation required for this unprecedented opportunity to tour the crime lab, learn from working forensic investigators and educators, and discover the real art and science of crime scene investigation.

“Arson Murders and Fire Death Investigation” is is hosted by Ed Nordskog, an active arson/bomb detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and is a half-day exploration of the scientific investigation of fire-related felony offenses, revealed through methods of evidence analysis, profiling and select case histories. Attendees will also have an opportunity to tour Cal State LA’s state-of the-art teaching and research facilities in the Criminalistics Department of the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center.

This program will explore the extraordinary challenges of dealing with fire death investigations. The destructive effects of fire and fire department suppression operations greatly skew an already complicated death scene. In addition to an in-depth a discussion of the Sandi Nieves case (Santa Clarity resident convicted of asphyxiating her four daughters in their home in 1998, then staging a fire to obscure her crime), the program includes discussion of body dumps and staged suicides involving fire.

Please note that the presentation includes extremely graphic crime scene photos, and is not for the faint of heart. No children will be admitted.

ABOUT ED NORDSKOG: Ed Nordskog is an active arson/bomb detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He has been a detective since 1990, working specifically in the arson and explosives world since 1997. He has conducted over sixteen hundred fire investigations and as of this writing has personally arrested and interviewed over 250 persons who were convicted of fire setting and related crimes. He has testified in court as a recognized expert in this field on over fifty-five occasions. He has been consulted by prosecuting attorneys on death penalty cases involving arson and murder on three occasions. He has been personally involved in over twenty serial arson investigations. The author has a master’s degree in emergency services management and is certified as a fire investigator by the California State Fire Marshal and the California Conference of Arson Investigators. He is a graduate of the National Fire Academy Arson Investigation Course, the ATF Advanced Arson Investigation Course, the Forensic Fire Death Investigation Course, and numerous other arson investigation courses. He is involved in course development and teaches fire scene investigation, major arson case investigation, serial arson investigation, and arson murder/fire death investigation. He is a course developer and instructor for the state of California’s Arson and Explosives Investigation Course. He is an instructor for the state of California’s Homicide Investigator’s Course. In 2004, the author was named Arson Investigator of the Year by the International Association of Arson Investigators and Law Enforcement Officer of the Year by the International Association of Special Investigations Units; both of these awards are for his work as the lead investigator on a massive arson for hire scheme, involving fifty-five burned properties. He has received over eighty-five commendations, awards, and medals throughout his law enforcement career related to successful criminal investigations. He is author of the book ‘Torchered’ Minds: Case Histories of Notorious Serial Arsonists. His website is here.

Of Scrap & Steel: free rooftop screening of rare 1949 color film set on Main Street, Downtown L.A.
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Of Scrap & Steel: free rooftop screening of rare 1949 color film set on Main Street, Downtown L.A.

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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.

ABOUT THIS EVENT:

LAVA – The Los Angeles Visionaries Association is pleased to announce a free roof-top screening of a newly-discovered circa 1949 short color film of Main Street and other downtown Los Angeles locations, the Union Rescue Mission-produced Of Scrap & Steel. The screening is in conjunction with a new series of downtown stories on the In SRO Land time travel blog, featuring material from the Union Rescue Mission Archives. 

ABOUT THE FILM: In mid-1948 the Board of Directors of the Union Rescue Mission approved the expenditure of $5,000 to make the 30-minute film Of Scrap & Steel which portrays the redemption and good works of Arthur Hawkins, an alcoholic executive who ended up on the streets of Los Angeles and whose life was saved when he turned to the URM for help. Porter Hall (Arthur Hawkins) is one of only two actors in a film otherwise populated by real Los Angeles characters. (You may recall Hall’s performance as the pesky guy on the train in Double Indemnity.) 

Of Scrap & Steel  was only shown in screenings organized by the URM or related organizations, and would have been completely lost if Liz Mooradian, URM historian, had not saved a deteriorating 16mm print and had it transferred to video before it was too late. Of Scrap & Steel is just one of the remarkable artifacts discovered in the Union Rescue Mission archives and explored in the In SRO Land blog.

This entertaining and powerful short film is a compelling snapshot of life on Skid Row (Main Street) circa 1949, and a fascinating document of the important work that the URM continues to do with the most needy in the community. Although downtown Los Angeles features in numerous noir films, it is extremely rare to see color images of eastern downtown, and rarer still to see full-color live-action footage of the vibrant street scene that included rescue missions, pawn shops, amusement parlors, bars, restaurants and the ever-patrolling paddy wagon in search of drunkards to haul away to jail or County work crews.

This free rooftop screening is jointly organized by LAVA – The Los Angeles Visionaries Association, the In SRO Land time travel blog and the Union Rescue Mission. Seating will be provided, and attendees are encouraged to dress warmly for the cool night air. 

Gourmet box dinners: “Meals with a purpose” will be available for purchase ($7, cash only), with a choice of sandwich (vegetarian, roast beef or chicken), cookie, fruit, chips and beverage. 100% of proceeds from your meal donation goes to the URM, and the proceeds from each dinner will feed two other people.

This screening is held in conjunction with the Skid Row Walking Tour, a separate free event beginning two hours before the screening. Separate registration for each event is required if you wish to attend both the screening and walking tour.

Nearest Metro station is Little Tokyo.

Limited free parking is available at the URM’s underground parking lot. Just tell the attendant you are there for the film. Please carpool: if each guest arrives with one other person in their car, there should be enough parking for all. Those arriving later will have to leave their keys with the parking attendant. Should the URM lot fill up, there is also off-site, paid parking available at Joe’s parking lot at the SW corner of 2nd & San Pedro (MAP). A free shuttle will run between Joe’s parking lot and the Union Rescue Mission before and after the event. 

Schedule

6pm Doors open (reserved guests check in at the main entrance and are sent up to the roof)

7pm-8pm Box dinners available for purchase, guests can watch the sunset (7:45pm)

8pm

  • Introduction to the URM by Rev. Andy Bales, CEO
  • Historians Nathan Marsak & Richard Schave introduce the film in the context of the neighborhood’s history, and their work on the In SRO Land time travel blog.

8:30pm Film screening

9pm Q & A

9:30pm Event ends

 

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Union Rescue Mission Walking Tour: 121 years on Skid Row

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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.

ABOUT THIS TOUR:

Please join Nathan Marsak & Richard Schave of 1947project and Rev. Andy Bales of the Union Rescue Mission (URM) for a 90-minute walking tour along the historic paths that have delineated Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. This tour derives from the ongoing 1947project In SRO Land blog series that uses the archives of the URM (founded 1891) as a tool for exploring the social and architectural history of the forgotten people and places of Downtown Los Angeles.

The tour begins with a survey of the early history of the outreach by the URM through its gospel wagon and at two now-lost buildings: the original home at 145 N. Main (now City Hall Lawn) and the long-time location at 226 S. Main (now a parking lot next to the former St. Vibiana’s Cathedral).

The main themes will be the evolution of public policy on Skid Row, the transformative work of the URM, and the architectural history of the neighborhood.

The route will include Main Street between 2nd and 3rd Streets (for a then/now comparison of the surviving and demolished locations featured in the 1949 URM-financed short film “Of Scrap & Steel,” which will be screened later in the evening in a free event that requires a separate reservation). At 3rd and San Pedro Streets we will discuss the Azusa Street Revival, a transformative event in the spiritual history of Los Angeles and the West. During the walk back to the current home of the URM, Rev. Andy Bales will talk about issues and challenges facing the neighborhood and the URM today.

The rendezvous point for the tour is the URM’s headquarters at at 6th and San Pedro Streets. A free shuttle bus will take tour attendees to 2nd and Main Streets, where the walking tour begins. Registration is required, and each attendee must register separately, to ensure sufficient seating on the shuttle bus.

Parking is available at the URM’s underground parking lot. Just tell the attendent you are there for the walking tour. If everyone attending arrives with one other person in their car, there should be enough parking for all. Those arriving latter will have to leave their keys with the parking attendent. There is also parking at Joe’s parking lot at the SW corner of 2nd & San Pedro (MAP) if the URM lot fills up.

Nearest Metro station is Little Tokyo.

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