Two Raymond Chandler Bus Tours Explore Philip Marlowe's Lost Los Angeles
WHAT/WHEN: Esotouric's "Raymond Chandler's Bay City" (Oct 17) and "Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles: In A Lonely Place" (Oct 24) bus tours
WHERE: "Chandler's Bay City" departs Museum of Jurassic Technology (9341Venice Boulevard, Culver City); "Chandler's L.A." tour departs L.A. Athletic Club (7th & Olive Streets, Downtown)
COST: Each tour costs $58/person, snack included
MORE INFO: visit http://www.esotouric.com or call 323-223-2767
Over two Saturdays in October Esotouric, the eclectic bus adventure company whose tours reveal L.A.'s secret history, offers back-to-back bus tours dedicated to the city's greatest detective novelist, Raymond Chandler, from the downtown streets he roamed as a young oil executive to his uniquely poisonous novelist's portrayal of Santa Monica, AKA Bay City. Taken together or individually, the tours reveal the secret historic city that still breathes under our modern streets, and offers unexpected insight into the life and work of a beloved writer and his immortal hero, detective Philip Marlowe.
And just to show that Chandler scholarship continues to evolve 50 years after his death, the October 24 "Chandler's L.A." tour features a startling new theory developed by Esotouric's Richard Schave and Kim Cooper. Get on the bus to discover the idealistic Los Angeles policeman whose one-man crusade against the evils of his own department is among the most convincing cases for a real life prototype of the Philip Marlowe character ever proposed. And you won't hear about him in any of the Chandler biographies, but only on the Esotouric bus.
ABOUT THE TOURS:
RAYMOND CHANDLER'S BAY CITY (10/17, Museum of Jurassic Technology)
was crooktown, run down, shabby town, gambling town. Chandler naturally gravitated to sin and debauch, so sleazy Santa Monica was a frequent stop for Philip Marlowe. This tour has it all, from doctors feel good to second wives with pasts to crooked cops with a loathing for a mouthy PI. Chandler's canonization of sin, wealth and sunshine on L.A.'s West Side fed the abiding myths of the American hard-boiled genre and play into the popular conceptions of the community. Focusing on Chandler's middle period "Farewell My Lovely," "Lady in the Lake" and a few short stories upon which these novels are built, "Bay City Blues" among them-- this four hour bus tour will explore Chandler's take on the Westside, the real life rackets and murders which gave Bay City its wild reputation, and the elements of the old community that have survived layer upon layer of gentrification.
RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES: IN A LONELY PLACE (10/24)
delves deep into alost city that exists in shadowy parallels to contemporary LA. Bungalows. Crime. Hollywood. Blondes. Vets. Smog. Death. This was Raymond Chandler's city, 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 beyond. 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 pigeonholed or give anything less than all he has, which lead them both down the rabbit hole of isolation, depression, and drink.
Get on either bus for a revealing time travel journey into the literary history of Los Angeles, and discover the places and people who inspired Raymond Chandler's timeless novels, screenplays and stories.
Upcoming Esotouric bus tour schedule:
Sat Sept 19 - John Buntin's L.A. Noir (debut)
Thurs Oct 8- The Hippodrome (Downtown Art Walk Shuttle, free)
Sat Oct 10 - Wild Wild West Side
Sat Oct 17 Raymond Chandler's Bay City
Sat Oct 24 Raymond Chandler's L.A.
Sat Oct 31 Maja's Mysteries spiritual L.A. tour (debut)
Sun Nov 1 East Side Babylon crime bus tour (debut)
Sat Nov 7 - Charles Bukowski's LA
Thurs Nov 12 - The Hippodrome (Downtown Art Walk Shuttle, free)
Sat Nov 14 - The Real Black Dahlia
Sat December 5 Pasadena Confidential
Thurs Dec 10 - The Hippodrome (Downtown Art Walk Shuttle, free)
Sat December 12 Blood & Dumplings
For more info on Esotouric, visit http://www.esotouric.com
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