Esotouric offers Raymond Chandler tour Jan. 9

Esotouric's "Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles: In A Lonely Place" bus tour

WHEN: Sunday, January 9, 2011, 12-4pm

WHERE: Tour departs from Clifton's Cafeteria, 648 S. Broadway, Los Angeles,CA 90014

WEEKEND NOIR PACKAGE: Enjoy two days of noir-era Los Angeles bus tourism with the Saturday, January 8 THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA tour, and save $30 with a weekend pass, details at the link below -http://esotouric.com/january2011noirweekend

COST: $58/person, or just $45 with a noir weekend pass

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

In January Esotouric, the eclectic bus adventure company whose tours reveal L.A.'s secret history, offers a bus tour 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 the city's hustlers, heavies and suckers. The tour reveals 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.

Esotouric's first tour weekend of 2011 is also the debut of a new series of weekend packages, thematically-linked Saturday/Sunday bus excursions with a $30 discount off the regular ticket prices. Weekend packages include the January 8/9 Noir-themed weekend (The Real Black Dahlia / Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles), the February 5/6 Architecture-themed weekend (Reyner Banham Loves L.A.: The New Chinatowns / Reyner Banham Loves L.A.: South Los Angeles) and the March 12/13 True Crime-themed weekend (East Side Babylon /Blood & Dumplings).

And just to show that Chandler scholarship continues to evolve 50 years after his death, the 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 TOUR: RAYMOND CHANDLER'S LOS ANGELES: IN A LONELY PLACE delves deep into 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.

Get on the bus for a revealing time travel journey into the literary historyof Los Angeles, and discover the places and people who inspired Raymond Chandler's timeless novels, screenplays and stories.

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

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour and special event schedule
Sun Dec 26- LAVA's free Sunday Salon (info at www.lavatransforms.org)
Sat Jan 8 - The Real Black Dahlia (weekend package available)
Sun Jan 9 - Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles (weekend package available)
Sat Jan 15 - Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's L.A.
Sat Jan 22 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's So. Cal. NightmareSat Feb 5 - Reyner Banham Loves LA: The New Chinatowns (weekend package available)
Sun Feb 6 - Reyner Banham Loves LA: South LA (weekend package available)
Sat Feb 19 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Route 66
Sat Feb 26 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The Lowdown on Downtown-The Secret History of Los Angeles
Sat March 5 - Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice crime bus tour
Sat March 12 - Eastside Babylon crime bus tour (weekend package available)
Sun March 13 - Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour (weekend package available)
Sat March 19 - Pasadena Confidential crime bus tour

Esotouric's Kim Cooper and Richard Schave are proud members of LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association.
http://www.lavatransforms.org