Esotouric to offer Route 66 bus tour

Offbeat San Gabriel Valley Route 66 bus tour follows in the steps of critic Reyner Banham

WHAT: Esotouric presents Route 66, a bus tour in the "Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles" architecture and urbanism series

WHEN: Saturday May 17, 11am-4pm

COST: $55, or save $30 on four tours with a Season Pass

DISCOUNT TICKETS: 2-for-1 seats offered for people who send an email supporting the LA Public Library from threatened budget cuts through http://www.savelapl.org

WHERE: Tours departs from Philippe the Original, opposite Union Station

"Reyner Banham was as smart and sassy as any critic in the postwar period. What made him distinctive was his passion for the edgiest expressions of his technological age, not only in avant-garde architecture but in anything designed - Cadillacs and transistor radios, custom hot-rods and painted surfboards, gadgets and gizmos." ­Hal Foster

No city has so fascinated scholars of urban and cultural studies than L.A., and British writer Reyner Banham was the first to love the city's ugliness as well as her beauty. In the early 1970s he abandoned his academic preconceptions to revel in L.A.'s freeways, foothills, beaches and suburbs, discovering extraordinary spaces in neighborhoods overlooked for being too remote, too industrial, or simply occupying invisible "flyover country" beneath the great freeways.

Banham saw that behind the urban sprawlwas a pattern which could not be understood through old modes ofarchitectural criticism, but which required new ways of seeing and of thinking.

Nearly twenty years after his death, one of Banham's students, Esotouric's Richard Schave, hosts a series of eclectic bus tours taking urban explorers deep into the uncharted Southland.

On the ROUTE 66 tour, passengers head East along the old Mother Road, to explore how Southern California has changed since Banham mapped it and reveal the secret wonders that survive. ROUTE 66 explores California's original mass transit corridor and the building of its dream, from climate to citrus industry, TB hospitals toc andyflake car culture.

Highlights in the May 2008 edition (the tour features different stops each time it's offered) include a tour of E. Wald Ward Farm (the oldest surviving commercial citrus facilty in LA, where passengers can buy preserves to take home), a visit to an Irwindale gravel pit and processing plant to explore the convoluted Rube Goldberg machinerythat produces stone for L.A.'s freeways, a stroll through the halls of Robert Stacy Judd's 1924 masterpiece The Aztec Motel (and yes, it's haunted), a visit to the astonishing Egypto-manic Covina Bowl bowling alley (once the 24-hour hub of community entertainment and still a popular destination), and a tour of the exquisite bungalows of old Monrovia.

The Reyner Banham Loves LA series of Esotouric bus adventures provides fresh ways of seeing the Southland and mingling with fascinating fellow travelers, and are a must for urban explorers, architecture buffs, San Gabriel Valley residents and anyone who enjoys turning over rocks to reveal the secrets beneath.

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour schedule (new tours starred):
Sat May 10 - Blood & Dumplings San Gabriel Valley crime bus tour
Sat May 17- Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Route 66
Sat May 31 ­ Esotouric & City Lights Books present Haunts of A Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowki's LA (Book Expo edition)
*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 (composer of "Windy")
Tues July 1 ­ American Library Association Edition: Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
*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, please visit http://www.esotouric.com
For more on Reyner Banham, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reyner_Banham
And the BBC documentary "Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles" http://reyner.notlong.com