Our latest newsletter is a weird one: Calling All Ghosts, or... Our Uncanny Experience on the Leo Politi Bus Tour in Angelino Heights. Traditionally around Thanksgiving, we offer a tour that’s even more elaborate and ambitious than a regular Esotouric adventure. This doubles as Richard’s birthday celebration, and we bring cake.

Here's the Esotouric newsletter with some tough love advice for a preservation non-profit that's running on fumes: If we could choose the next Los Angeles Conservancy president...
esotouric.substack.com/p/laconservancy If you care about Los Angeles landmarks, you’re probably a member of the Los Angeles Conservancy—which claims to be the largest member based historic preservation organization in the US—or have taken part in their walking tours or film screenings in historic Broadway theaters.

New! We can't stand to sit by and watch what's happening to LA's bungalow courts, so we're enlisting YOU to check this map to find courts in your neighborhood. Won't you please help keep these historic RSO homes safe from demolition, Airbnb and arson? esotouric.com/bungalowcourt/ Bungalow courts are a distinctive, desirable & unfortunately endangered early 20th century form of workforce housing. These modest double (or sometimes single) rows of small cottages with shared community green space are usually under rent control, & much loved by their tenants.

The Cultural Heritage Commission holds its hybrid meeting at 10am, in-person at LA City Hall & via Zoom. Two city nominations today (no drama) and owner nomination for Technicolor with a historic Quonset hut they'd like to remove. ens.lacity.org/pln/heritage/p… General public comment is for YOU if there is a threat to an historic building in your community. Please call in and use your minute to alert the CHC who can ask staff to investigate. Ex. 1: in Silver Lake, an RSO bungalow court is being illegally gutted! instagram.com/p/CqVxkaXJGZN/

Public records request score: Former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Raymond Chan, on trial for racketeering, wrote a smarmy LADBS leadership guide... and we've got it! esotouric.substack.com/p/raychan h/t @ericpreven History doesn't repeat, but in Los Angeles sometimes it rhymes something fierce. In the first verse, we've got Chicago émigré Raymond Chandler, the early 20th century DTLA oil man who suppressed his literary ambitions while rising in the business world & taking careful note of

M. Flax was the beating heart of the original Los Angeles Arts District, and the 1925 building is a gorgeous Renaissance Revival landmark that complements its big sister to the east. Now a demo permit is pending--with no project planned. Please help! esotouric.substack.com/p/savemflax If you drive around LA you see a lot of new development & much of is essentially the same project: a dense apt or co-living complex built flush to the sidewalk, taller than anything on the block, usually clad in discordant colored panels and with perpetually vacant retail below.

The city ignores code violations and Angelenos suffer. Despite LAFD's incident report on last night's big fire, 5287 Sunset, with 60 tenants, is NOT a (legal) commercial to residential conversion. We need to talk about LADBS and Housing inspectors who close out valid complaints. Fox 11 picked up last night's East Hollywood fire and like LAFD misidentifies the radio studio as a commercial-to-residential conversion. It's nuts dozens of unpermitted beds can burn and reporters are just, oh, apartment fire. foxla.com/news/25-people…

Los Angeles: it's not too late to save the Griffith Park Pony Rides! The city hopes you aren't paying attention as it caves to a few activists who don't live here or care about our community. Send an email or plan to call on 12/15 and tell them not to evict the ponies on 12/21! Here is our email to RAP.Commissioners@lacity.org, contactCD4@lacity.org @nithyavraman,
jimmy.kim@lacity.org @LACityParks, Subj: Please extend the lease of the Griffith Park Pony Rides
Dear RAP Commissioners, GM Kim and CM Raman, As Los Angeles historians, tour guides and small

We're looking back on all the Los Angeles history, preservation and offbeat lore we blogged in 2021. It's been a wild ride, and we couldn't have done it without you! What does 2022 hold? Count on us to get the scoop and fight for places that matter! When City Hall decided to screw the Los Angeles Conservancy and shut off all public comment on the Chili Bowl landmark hearing (they sued!), we helped fans of the offbeat 1930s diner petition Mike Bonin to help history and not just rich developers. esotouric.com/chilibowl/

There was a big shindig at the Barclay today, celebrating a new direction for the oldest continuously operated hotel in LA. Healthy Housing Foundation thinks SRO #DTLA hotels should be affordable housing, not boutiques. We do, too! esotouric.com/hotelbarclay/ We were giddy to see this new addition to the Barclay's lobby furniture: a chess set, in honor of Raymond Chandler's detective Philip Marlowe, who found a man with an ice pick in his neck, upstairs in room 332, in "The Little Sister." One day we'll sit and play a game.

A strong AP piece, but does this mean the L.A. Times didn't have an obituary in the can for Eve Babitz? latimes.com/obituaries/sto… Eve's artist and historic preservationist mother Mae Babitz did get a proper Los Angeles Times obit latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

by Myrna Oliver mediaschool.indiana.edu/alumni/profile…

A lot has changed in LA media since 2003.