Esotouric to offer John Fante tour

"Fante was my God" ­ Charles Bukowski

Skylight Books Hosts Bus Tour Celebrating Downtown LA Novelist John Fante

WHAT: Esotouric's John Fante's Dreams from Bunker Hill bus tour

WHEN: Saturday August 23, 11 am-2:30 pm, followed by book signing and reception

COST: $58, which includes post-tour reception (or get a four-tour season pass for the Summer Sale price of $180 through July 31; price is $207 after August 1)

WHERE: Departs from Skylight Books, 1818 N Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA, tour covers downtown locations

EXTRAS: Tour guests include Fante's daughter Vickie Fante Cohen and his biographer Stephen Cooper, signing his books at Skylight after the tour

SAVE: See the UCLA Film Archives restoration of Kent McKenzie's Bunker Hill classic "The Exiles" (screenings start 8/15) and save your ticket stub to save 15% on this tour

On August 23, Esotouric, L.A.'s most eclectic bus adventure company, presents its occasional downtown literary tour celebrating the life and work of the great, under appreciated L.A. novelist John Fante in the tour's only 2008 appearance.

John Fante was cult hero Charles Bukowski's favorite writer, his "Ask the Dust" was the film Robert Towne wanted to make after "Chinatown" (it finally was made in 2006 starring Colin Farrell, Salma Hayek, and Donald Sutherland) and he is honored with an annual festival in Italy but in 21st Century Los Angeles, his name often gets a shrug. That's too bad, because Fante might be the funniest, most heartwarming, honest and appealing writer to ever take this city as his subject. This tour is a chance to discover a great writer and the lost downtown he celebrated, through the words of tour guide and local historian Richard Schave, Fante's daughter (and bratty teenage heroine of his late short stories) Vickie Fante Cohen and his biographer Stephen Cooper.

Downtown Los Angeles is a neighborhood on the rise, with trendy loft developments, huge crowds attending the monthly Art Walk, and some of the hottest bars and restaurants in the city. But the New Downtown exists on the footprint of a fascinating old neighborhood whose stories are in danger of being lost. Many of Esotouric's tours are devoted to revealing this lost downtown, from the crimes of Hotel Horrors to the burlesque and freak show delights of Main Street Vice, the secret post war woman's history of The Real Black Dahlia to the architectural anthropology of The Many Downtowns.

On JOHN FANTE'S DREAMS OF BUNKER HILL, host Richard Schave follows in the footsteps of Fante and his anti-hero Arturo Bandini, from the lost Bunker Hill Victorian rooming houses where Fante starved and dreamed of fame, the main library where he roamed the stacks (and later, where Bukowski discovered "Ask the Dust"), the Skid Row bars where b-girls pocketed his royalty payments, the Grand Central Market where kindly Japanese farmers gave the poor writer free oranges, to the retirement home Angelus Plaza to see Kay Martin's stunning paintings of Bunker Hill's mansions just before the city condemned them

Finally the tour visits the Berendo Street apartment in Koreatown where "Ask the Dust" was penned, and which neighbors believe is haunted by Fante's spirit. Last time this tour was offered, the abandoned Berendo Street structure had been condemned after an alcoholic transient died inside; this time the tour finds this literary landmark happily in the midst of renovation.

Get on the bus to bask in the spirit of the weird old L.A. that's not there anymore, where a poor Italian-American Colorado kid could sell a novel, become a screenwriter, and inspire a new generation of writers just by telling the raw and funny truth.

To learn more about Esotouric's forthcoming tour of John Fante's Bunker Hill, visit http://www.esotouric.com/fante

For info on the UCLA screenings of "The Exiles," see
http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/calendar/calendardetails.aspx?details_type=2&id=293

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour schedule (special events starred, all others maybe ridden by Season Pass holders):
Sat Aug.2 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Route 66
*Sat Aug 9- Vroman's Bookstore ­ Haunts of A Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowki's LA
Thurs Aug 14 - The Hippodrome (Downtown LA Art Walk Shuttle, free)
Sat Aug 16 - The Real Black Dahlia
Sat Aug 23 ­ Skylight Books - John Fante's Dreams from Bunker Hill
*Sat Aug 30 - Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits' LA
Sun Sept 7 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: South LA
Thurs Sept 11 - The Hippodrome (Downtown LA Art Walk Shuttle, free)
Sat Sept 13 - Blood & Dumplings ($5 dumpling fee for Season Pass holders)
Sat Sept 20 ­ Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The Many Downtowns
*Sat Oct 4 ­ Bodhi Tree ­ Visionary Hollywood
Thurs Oct 9 - The Hippodrome (Downtown LA Art Walk Shuttle, free)
*Sat Oct 11- Vroman's Bookstore - Raymond Chandler's LA
Sat Oct 18- Raymond Chandler's Bay City
Sat Oct 25 ­ Halloween Horrors with Crimebo the Clown