Gentle reader,
Ever since we started looking out for Los Angeles, nearly twenty years ago, people have come to us seeking help with troubled landmarks, blighted buildings, demolition by neglect, unhinged landlords and vanishing heritage.
Through trial and error, obsession with the process, and the belief that charting a path to help people save special places is a kind of magic spell that heals the world, we've celebrated some terrific wins—and learned from fascinating losses.
You can read about our varied preservation advocacy efforts here.
Along the way, we've learned how to navigate Los Angeles' profoundly opaque reporting and compliance systems, developed strategies for getting checked-out council staff to respond, honed public records research into a fine art, encouraged Angelenos to get involved, and watched a community of preservation pals grow into a powerhouse of eyes-on-the-street advocates, civic stewards and community educators.
But many times, when somebody reaches out, we end up giving them general advice before we ever get to the unique problem where we can actually help.
As our reach has grown, so has the volume of requests arriving through email and our various social media channels. At the same time, Los Angeles has become harder to monitor. More places are at risk, public agencies are increasingly unresponsive, and the losses can feel overwhelming.
We worry constantly that something wonderful will fall through the cracks. And recently it did. Even with several community tips, we got to the Schultheis Bungalow Court only after the public hearing that likely sealed its fate.
So we built a form—a single place where anyone concerned about a building, landmark, tree or piece of public art can reach out and share what they've found.
As someone fills out a Looking Out for Los Angeles field report, each section includes links and guidance explaining how to search public records, report problems and understand what comes next. It may look simple, but this little tool represents nearly twenty years of work in the civic trenches.
To quote William Mulholland: “There it is, take it!”
Our aim with this tool is to make it easier for Angelenos to scratch that infernal itch that comes with caring about a place, but not knowing what to do for it. Knowledge is power, and Los Angeles is worth looking out for.
Please use it whenever you need it, and pass the link along to others who care. Let us know if there's information we should add. We're excited to use this tool to empower community members and amplify their efforts to stabilize, preserve and reactivate the places they love, while we can be more organized and hopefully not miss another Schultheis Bungalow Court!.
Building tools like this—and doing the reporting that accompanies them—takes time. If you find them useful, and if you appreciate our posts on the Los Angeles heritage, architecture, landscape and policy stories the mainstream media overlooks, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Our preservation, vacant historic housing and public corruption reporting is about to kick into high gear, and we need your support now more than ever.
This newsletter will always be free because we believe every Angeleno deserves access to this reporting. But we couldn't do this work without our paid subscribers and walking tour guests.
Through Friday, August 7, annual newsletter subscriptions are 50% off. You'll get full access to our pandemic-era paywalled posts while directly supporting the work ahead.
On Friday morning we'll be back in the high-security Department 106 of the Foltz Courthouse as Judge Larry Paul Fidler hears Councilman Curren Price's motion asking the court to dismiss the criminal case with no trial. If the Judge grants the motion, the prosecution ends.
Meanwhile, in civil court, Price's former senior deputy Angie Reyes-English is pressing her wrongful termination and whistleblower lawsuit, and finally got her former boss to sit for a deposition on July 23 after months of legal wrangling.
As his next court date approaches, we're putting the finishing touches on our reporting from Price's week-long preliminary hearing, which featured high drama from both the bench and the gallery, along with remarkable insights into the profound dysfunction and backstabbing inside the CD9 office.
If you’re a CD9 constituent frustrated with council staff: it’s not you, it’s them!
Outside the courthouse, we're working on stories about empty Victorian neighborhoods, endangered mid-century apartment buildings, FBI surveillance of a great Los Angeles writer and fresh evidence that the knives are out for brave civil servants inside City Hall. Stay tuned!
If you're already a paid subscriber, we have a special offer for you, too. Just send us an email before midnight Friday with the date of an upcoming Esotouric walking tour you'd like to attend, and let us know whether you'd like to bring a friend. Your ticket—or tickets—are 50% off, too!
This Saturday’s walk is Film Noir / Real Noir, with special guests Bunker Hill native son Gordon Pattison and neighborhood historian Nathan Marsak. The tour honors Film Noir’s abiding influence through visits to select filming locations and the lost landscape of Victorian Bunker Hill, where real life noir narratives were captured by dogged crime reporters, bringing inspiration to Hollywood screenwriters in their daily newspaper.
Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens.
Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles’ past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city’s soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
• Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Know Your Downtown Los Angeles (9/19) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)
New from Bunker Hill historian Nathan Marsak, a deep dive into the post-redevelopment licensing of the Angels Flight brand, including some extremely revealing disco duds and coked-out revolving restaurant hijinx on top of the BLOC!
In June we shared: Uncanny book people, we need your most powerful spell! Eviction-threatened bookman Todd Pratum’s quest for a new steward went viral and now his esoteric collection is bound for The Wu:uM in East Hollywood.
Incredibly, The Eames House is still zoned as a private residence, just as it was in Charles and Ray’s day. Now the board seeks change of use as a Public Benefit Project, to enshrine the museum and event space use for the future.
For too long, the stewardship of L.A.’s derelict architectural resources has been the province of passionate and increasingly angry citizens, doing it for free. It is long past time for those who have made fortunes in this city to step up and care for the places that matter, as Sony is doing with the Cinerama Dome.
As the world notes the incompetence of Los Angeles leaders through the foul lens of the Lineage warehouse fire aftermath, we’ve got a modest proposal for the prime Civic Center park parcel Karen Bass seeks to gift to AltaMed as a corporate branding space.
In June, we saw a City Council filing and broke news of the Uplifters Foundation’s proposed quarter billion dollar bond to build traditional homes on burned Pacific Palisades lots. Senator Ben Allen said he’s not on their board, then changed his tune (via Stephen Sachs), and locals are squawking.
An anonymous fan of Southern California’s greatest surviving Googie drive-in, Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank, has launched a campaign to shame the owners into maintaining it—and removing clumsy illegal additions.
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