Raymond Chandler feted with Esotouric bus tours

Twin Raymond Chandler-themed Bus Tours Explore Philip Marlowe's Lost L.A.

WHAT/WHEN: Esotouric's "Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles: In A Lonely Place" (March 13) and "Raymond Chandler's Bay City" (March 27) bus tours

WHERE: "Chandler's L.A." tour departs L.A. Athletic Club (7th & Olive Streets, Downtown LA); "Chandler's Bay City" departs Museum of Jurassic Technology (9341 Venice Boulevard, Culver City)

COST: Each tour costs $58/person, snack included

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

Over two Saturdays in March Esotouric, the eclectic bus adventure company whose tours reveal L.A.'s secret history, offers a pair of 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 portrayal of Santa Monica (fictionalized as 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 white knight detective hero Philip Marlowe.

And just to show that Chandler scholarship continues to evolve 50 years after his death, the March 13 "Chandler's L.A." tour features a startling new theory developed by Esotouric's Richard Schave and Kim Cooper. Get on the bus to learn all about 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.

For more original Chandler information uncovered by Esotouric, see the blog post "Raymond Chandler and the Creamery" about the criminal happenings the young writer might have witnessed at his first job in Los Angeles, at the link below.

http://www.esotouric.com/chandlerandthecreamery

ABOUT THE TOURS:

RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES: IN A LONELY PLACE (March 13)
delves deepinto a lost 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.

RAYMOND CHANDLER'S BAY CITY (March 27)
was crook town, run down, shabbytown, 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.

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 and special event schedule
Sat Feb 13 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Route 66
Thurs Feb 18 ­ Free! Tarnished Tinseltown presents "Spider Baby" with director Jack Hill (reserve at www.spiderbabyonline.com)
Sat Feb 20 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The New Chinatowns
Sun Feb 21 - Joan Renner lecture "How the 'Bob' Changed History" (American Cinematheque)
Sat Feb 27 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The Lowdown on Downtown-The Secret History of LA
Sat March 6 - Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice crime bus tour
Sat March 13 - Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
Sat March 20 - Maja's Mysteries: Rapture & Release (debut)
Sat March 27 - Raymond Chandler's Bay City
Sat April 3 ­ Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits' L.A.
Sat April 10 ­ John Buntin's L.A. Noir
Sat April 24 ­ Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's L.A.
Sat May 1 - Pasadena Confidential crime bus tour with Crimebo the Clown
Sat May 8 - Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour
Sat May 15 - The Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour
Sat May 22 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's So. Cal Nightmare

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