Los Angeles ESotouric Tours of the Odd, Unusual & Darker Side of L.A.


 

Esotouric Crime & Mystery Tour - Leaders

 

Esotouric.com, Tel: (323) 223-2767

LOS ANGELES, CA-- Bus tour explores the historic L.A. NOIR world of mobster Mickey Cohen versus the LAPD

Other cities have histories. Los Angeles has legends. For more than sixty years, writers and directors from Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder to Roman Polanski and James Ellroy have explored L.A.'s origins, its underbelly, and its blondes in fiction and films. Yet this preoccupation with a mythic past has obscured something important -- the true history of noir Los Angeles.

Now John Buntin, the author of "L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of
America's Most Seductive City" (Random House), and Esotouric, L.A.'s most
eclectic bus adventure company, have teamed up to explore the forgotten
haunts, hits, and harems of underworld L.A. and the rivalry between the two
men who shaped it -- one L.A.'s most notorious gangster, the other its most
controversial police chief.

Featherweight boxer Mickey Cohen left the ring for the rackets, first as
mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel's enforcer, then as his protégé and
successor. Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, and Sammy Davis Jr. palled around
with him; TV journalist Mike Wallace wanted his stories; evangelist Billy
Graham sought his soul.

William H. Parker was the proud son of a pioneering law enforcement family
from the fabled frontier town of Deadwood. As a rookie patrolman in the
Roaring Twenties, he discovered that L.A. was ruled by a shadowy
"Combination" of tycoons, politicians and underworld bosses. His life
mission became to topple it -- and to create a police force that would never
answer to elected officials again. In the process, he created the
Dragnet-era LAPD, unwittingly paving the way for the Watts riots and
creating a culture that LAPD police chief Charlie Beck continues to struggle
with even today.

From Clifton's redwood-themed Brookdale Cafeteria downtown, L.A. Noir passengers visit the movie palace where 17-year-old Bill Parker worked as an usher -- and fell into a disastrous love affair -- as well as the site of 9-year-old Mickey Cohen's first holdup. Boarding a luxurious coach class bus, the tour will visit Mickey Cohen's childhood haunts in the old Jewish neighborhood Boyle Heights, as well as the site of one of L.A.'s most notorious attempted assassinations, en route to
significant spots in LAPD and mob history. We'll stop by "the glass house,"
visit one of fashion plate madam Brenda Allen former haunts, visit an eerie
mob body dump site on the edge of Vernon, stop by Cohen's old commission
office, hear a first-hand account of how Mickey operated, tour the Los
Angeles Police Academy and visit the old Lincoln Heights jail, site of the
brutal Christmas 1951 events that inspired the opening of James Ellroy's
"L.A. Confidential."


ABOUT ESOTOURIC: Founded in 2007 by newlyweds Kim Cooper and Richard Schave, the company quickly cornered the market on offbeat true crime history tours and highbrow literary and architectural explorations. From their "The Real Black Dahlia" tour ("an L.A. classic" -- Los Angeles Times) to "Raymond Chandler's L.A.," sold-out personal history tours guest hosted by James Ellroy to alternative neighborhood guides like "Pasadena Confidential," Esotouric's weekly bus adventure has become a must for locals seeking to know their city better, and a lucky find for savvy travelers.

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour and special event schedule
Sat Sept 11 - Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice crime bus tour
Sat Sept 18 - Pasadena Confidential crime bus tour
Sat Sept 25 - The Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour
Sat Oct 9 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's So. Cal Nightmare
Sat Oct 16 - John Buntin's L.A. Noir
Sun Oct 24 - CSULA crime lab tour (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat Nov 6 - Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
Sun Nov 7 - CSULA crime lab tour (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat Nov 13 - Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's L.A.
Sat Dec 4  - Pasadena Confidential with Crimebo the Clown
Sat Dec 11 - Eastside Babylon crime bus tour

Esotouric's Kim Cooper and Richard Schave and tour host John Buntin are
proud members of LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association.
lavatransforms.org

A limited number of journalists on assignment can be accommodated on the bus
and at the Cal State Los Angeles crime lab for "The Science and Art of
Forensic Investigations: Criminalistics from Test Tube to Testimony" on
10/24 or 11/7. For interviews with John Buntin, contact Jessica Reich at
(212) 547-6501. Esotouric founders Kim Cooper and Richard Schave are also
available for interviews, contact Kim at amscray@gmail.com, 323-223-2767.