Not Your Ordinary Tour Company

Tamara Drewe

The tour bus in front of one of many stops throughout Downtown (Photo by Derek Hutchison)

By Erik Jay

"We're not your ordinary tour company."

That first sentence on Esotouric's Web site sums it up nicely. If you want to see where the celebrity of the month lives, and maybe the house Elvis rented while making one of his bad 1960s movies, hop on board one of the notoriously silly "homes of the stars" tours.

If learning about L.A.'s mid-century history, the writers and subjects of classic noir films, the crime sagas of the Southland, and inebriate-savant poet Charles Bukowski's favorite hangout is more your speed, you're going to like Esotouric. And you're really going to like Kim Cooper and Richard Schave, the married couple behind Esotouric's "intelligent, unpredictable" tours.

From blog to bus

In the mid-1990s, Cooper became interested in 1940s Los Angeles. Along with a number of real-life murder mysteries, Hollywood was beginning to make edgy, downbeat noir films based on the writings of such L.A. scribes as Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. Cooper started researching '40s L.A. crime for a book, then put it aside until she returned to the research in early 2005. After starting her "1947 Project" blog in 2005, she and Richard did occasional tours until May 2007, when they launched Esotouric.

Over the last few years, Cooper and Schave have tried a number of different tour themes, and have pretty much settled on a regular menu of offerings. The tours now include such crime-themed hits as "Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles" and "The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's Southern California Nightmare," as well as the literary tour for true iconcoclasts, "Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles."

The expanding Esotouric universe

It's not only the real writers and fictional characters from bygone days that inhabit the Esotouric universe. Contemporary authors like L.A.'s prolific James Ellroy are also part of the formula. In fact, Ellroy hosted two busloads of fortunate folks during the 2007 holiday season. "Getting him was a real white-knuckle experience," Cooper admits, "but those hundred lucky souls on those two buses won't forget it anytime soon."

A true movie buff, Cooper can point out all the locations around Bunker Hill and Downtown where movies have been shot. "I really like the ones that show the emotional effect of L.A.'s distinctive architecture on the characters," she says. "The movie Double Indemnity really works on that level, with this clever in-joke where the Lola character waits for boyfriend Nino in front of the Hays Office, the film review board that brought the producers such grief."

Cooper rattles off a list of films – In A Lonely Place, Mulholland Drive, Sunset Boulevard, the original of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Day of the Locust, Swing Shift, The Long Goodbye, Chinatown – that have used the City of the Angels, and particularly its classic core, as a backdrop. The ones that deal with murder, mayhem, and mystery are more likely to be mentioned by an Esotouric guide, of course.

Where the tours don't go

Some things that go unmentioned on Esotouric tours are Charles Manson, the Rodney King "civil unrest," and the 1997 paramilitary bank robbery in North Hollywood (described at Wikipedia as the "longest and bloodiest event in U.S. police history"). "We made a decision early on," Cooper explains, "that the tours would be about forgotten, mysterious, even unsolved crimes, but not sensationalized ones." She realized quickly that, if tour passengers already knew a story – rather, thought they knew it – their memories would conflict with the guide's narrative. Cooper adds that a "lot of so-called 'true crime' books are quite poorly researched" and that guides could easily spend an entire Black Dahlia tour "simply debunking nonsense."

Of course, there's no getting around some connections. For example, the "Blood & Dumplings" tour does mention Steven Parent, one of the Manson Family's Cielo Drive victims, when the tour pauses at his high school – which is where author Ellroy's murdered mother was dumped, making for a terrible "two-fer." The Mansons get a brief mention on the "Where The Action Was" rock-'n'-roll tour, as guides recount how residents of the Tropicana Motel warned author Ed Sanders not to invite any Manson members to his room while researching his book, The Family. But that's about it for Manson, who is hardly a noir character at any rate – he's solidly in the horror genre, and other L.A. tours have him covered.

Culture, literature, and violence

Esotouric made its name with its noir-and-crime bus tours that follow L.A. streets to the numerous shadowy intersections of culture, literature, and violence. A natural addition to their tour list was Charles Bukowski, whom Schave and Cooper describe on their site as a "prolific poet, novelist, and screenwriter whose rough-hewn tales of boozing, wild women, and rotten jobs never obscure the deep vein of sweetness and hope that runs through all his work."

Schave hosts "Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's LA" himself, focusing on the bibulous "Buk" and his great passions: writing, women, drinking, and L.A. The major locations of Bukowski's life and myth – the places he worked, the De Longpre apartment where he gave marriage and fatherhood a shot, his favorite bars and liquor stores like East Hollywood's Pink Elephant – nicely shade and color Schave's description of the people, places, and ideas that formed Buk's unique world view.

For tourists, Esotouric should be at the top of the to-do list. For Southern Californians, it's a great way to boost both geographical and cultural IQ. For true crime, noir, and Bukowski fans, the Esotouric experience is, quite simply, a must.

Log on to Esotouric.com to sign up for tours or contact Cooper and Schave for more information. Cooper and Schave also host the free monthly "LAVA Sunday Salon" at Clifton's Cafeteria, a public cultural happening held from noon-2pm on the last Sunday of every month. Free walking tours sometimes follow the Salon. Find out more about LAVA (the Los Angeles Visionaries Association) at www.lavatransforms.org.

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