Esotouric offers anti-Valentine's Day crime bus tour

Take An Anti-Valentine's Day Spree on the Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour

WHAT: Valentine's Day edition of Esotouric's Blood & Dumplings Crime Bus Tour

WHEN: Saturday February 14, 12pm-4pm

WHERE: Tour departs from Philippe the Original, 1001 N. Alameda Street

COST: $63, including valentine's candy and dumplings (vegetarian options available on request)

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

On Saturday, February 14, couples across LA will be billing, cooing, sipping bubbly, exchanging roses, and doing all the polite things expected of them by the Valentine Industrial Complex. Yawn. Why not be two of the lucky oddballs who will be exploring the other side of love on Esotouric's most bizarre true crime and cultural history tour, BLOOD & DUMPLINGS instead?

Because love isn't all red paper hearts and gooey ballads, bent knee proposals and stars in your eyes. Sometimes love reveals itself with a knife in its hand and flesh in its teeth, and on this tour of the Eastern San Gabriel valley, passengers will meet some of the Southland's most memorable victims of romance.

Among them: the young bride who vanished before her wedding day and was discovered rotting under her parent's house, the lesbian roommate who kept her ex-gal pal pliant with frequent jabs of the needle, James Ellroy's ill-fated mother Geneva whose search for male companionship ended violently, the miffed wife who beat her crippled hubby to death with brass knuckles on their front lawn, and the b-movie actress whose late night visit to Phil Spector's spooky castle would prove to be a very bad idea indeed.

But BLOOD & DUMPLINGS isn't all romance gone wrong. Starting from the premise that the secret heart of Southern California's weirdo culture beats strongest in the Eastern San Gabriel Valley, the tour introduces passengers to such fascinating local characters as the Man from Mars Bandit, the hippie leader of the local Nazi party, and indie filmmaking icon Timothy Carey, whose notorious "The World's Greatest Sinner" was shot on location in 1960s El Monte. The tour also includes a stop at the former site of Gay's Lion Farm, an incredible mid-century tourist attraction that symbolized the deep love lion tamers Charles and Muriel Gay shared with each other and their pride of cats.

Heading due East out of downtown, the tour explores several historic communities that reflect the growth and eccentricity that are hallmarks of 20th century L.A. Crime Bus passengers will be explore notorious, strange and fascinating forgotten tales from the past hundred years, each told at the scene of the crime. They'll thrill to the freakish case of the Man from Mars Bandit who stalked area supermarkets for months in 1951 before meeting his match in a police sharpshooter, shock to discover the deadly infighting among El Monte's American Nazi Party members, mourn the Case of the Buried Bride dragged beneath her home on her wedding day by her secret lover, gnash teeth at the weird lion farm (home to every MGM lion) that served lion meat barbecues on special occasions, and view scenes of notorious cases including Phil Spector's spooky hilltop castle and James Ellroy's slain mother Geneva (the true-life inspiration for his Black Dahlia novel).

And since no visit to the San Gabriel Valley is complete without a delicious Chinese meal, the Crime Bus will stop at 101 Noodle Express (one of L.A.Weekly critic Jonathan Gold's picks for 99 L.A. restaurants not to be missed) to pick up a dumpling feast, which will be enjoyed picnic-style at Monster Park, a remarkable sea-themed folk art environment recently saved from demolition. There passengers can enjoy their snack in the mouth of a concrete whale, or under a grinning octopus, then pose for photos with the creatures. All this, plus wild shootouts, dope-dealing druggists, missing Salvador Dali paintings and the original "little girl down a well" 1940s television sensation.

Don't miss the Crime Bus tour that guide Kim Cooper calls "My personal favorite of all our tours, packed with more offbeat history, horror, roadside architecture and fabulous Route 66 vistas than any other."

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

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour schedule
Sat Jan 24 - Weird West Adams
Sun Feb 1 - Reyner Banham Loves LA: South LA architecture tour
Thurs Feb 12 - The Hippodrome & Hazard's Pavilion (Downtown Art Walk Shuttles, free)
Sat Feb 14- Valentine's Day edition of Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour
Sat Feb 21- Raymond Chandler's LA
Sat Feb 28 - Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits' LA
Sat March 7 - The Lowdown on Downtown: The Secret History of LA
Thurs March 12 - The Hippodrome & Hazard's Pavilion (Downtown Art Walk Shuttles, free)
Sat March 14 ­ Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's LA
Sat March 21 ­ Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice
Sat March 28 ­ Pasadena Confidential
Sat April 4 - Wild Wild Westside
Sat April 11 - Raymond Chandler's Bay City
Sat April 18 - The Real Black Dahlia
Sat April 25 - Raymond Chandler's LA