Thursday, April 24, 2008

Philip Marlowe highlighted on Esotouric bus tour

Follow in the Footsteps of Philip Marlowe thru Raymond Chandler's Downtown and Hollywood

WHAT: "Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles: In A Lonely Place" bus tour

WHEN: Saturday May 3, 1 pm-5 pm, departs from Lincoln Heights/Cypress Metro Station

COST: $55/person (15% off for KCRW members) including Chandler-themed gelato from Scoops

MORE INFO: visit http://www.esotouric.com or call 323-223-2767

TOUR REPEATS: July 1, all day special edition for American LibraryAssociation convention attendees, departs from Anaheim and includes a fixed price luncheon at Musso & Frank. October 11, Vroman's Bookstore edition departing from Pasadena.

In May Esotouric, the eclectic bus adventure company whose tours reveal L.A.'s secret history, presents a tour dedicated to the city's greatest detective novelist, Raymond Chandler, and his personal relationship to the mean streets of Hollywood and Downtown LA, where he lived, worked and set his stories. RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES: IN A LONELY PLACE delves deep into a lost city that exists in shadowy parallels to contemporary LA. Bungalows. Crime. Hollywood. Blondes. Vets. Smog. Death. This was Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles, which resonated from deft and melancholy fits of his writer's bow.

Join Esotouric on an exploration of the city that shaped Chandler's fiction, and that in turn shaped his hard-boiled times, in a four hour tour of downtown, Hollywood and surrounding environs: Musso & Frank, Union Station, the Hotel Van Nuys, Paramount Studio's gates, and much, much more. Through published work, private correspondence, screenplays and film adaptations, the tour traces Chandler' s search for meaning and his anti-hero Philip Marlowe's struggle to not be pigeon-holed or give anything less than all he has, which lead them both down the rabbit hole of isolation, depression, and drink.

As the bus rolls from point to point, your guide Richard Schave draw the lines between Chandler's life and his fiction, offering insight into his peculiar marriage to the much-older Cissy, the enigmatic redhead who appears in many forms in his short stories and novels.

The tour includes a stop at Scoops Gelato in East Hollywood for a complementary sampling of avant garde ice cream master Tai Kim's unexpected flavors, which have in the past included the Chandler-inspired Bacon-Caramel and Nicotine (made with crushed Nicorette gum).

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour schedule (new tours starred):
Sat April 26 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The Many Downtowns ($55)/Main Street Vice (90 minute tour, $30, or ride both 4/26 tours for $70)
Sat May 3 - Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles: In A Lonely Place
Sat May 10 - Blood & Dumplings San Gabriel Valley crime bus tour
Sat May 17- Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Route 66
Sat May 31 ­ Book Expo Edition: Haunts of A Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowki's LA
*Sat June 7- Visionary Hollywood
Sat June 14- Vroman's - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's SoCal Nightmare
Sat June 21 - The Real Black Dahlia
Sat June 28 ­ Amoeba Music - Where the Action Was rock history tour with guest star Ruthann Friedman
Tues July 1 ­ American Library Association Edition: Raymond Chandler's LosAngeles Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The New Chinatowns
*Sat July 12 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The New Chinatowns
Sat July 26 - Pasadena Confidential
Sat Aug 9- Vroman's Bookstore ­ Haunts of A Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowki's LA
Sat Oct 11- Vroman's Bookstore - Raymond Chandler's LA

For more info on Esotouric, visit http://www.esotouric.com

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