Esotouric offers Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice tour Sept. 10

Offbeat bus tour reveals the sexy, strange and sometimes bloody history of
Downtown L.A.

WHAT: Esotouric presents Hotel Horrors and Main Street Vice, a Downtown
double-feature bus and walking tour
WHEN: Saturday, September 10, 12pm-4pm
COST: $58/person
WHERE: Departs from Cafe Metropol at 923 East 3rd Street, LA 90013, tour
covers downtown LA's historic core
INFO: http://www.esotouric.com or call 323-223-2767
TOUR PHOTOS: http://flickr.com/photos/richardschave/sets/72157623986634614

From the founding of the city through the 1940s, Downtown was
the true center of Los Angeles, a lively, densely populated, exciting and
sometimes dangerous place. After many quiet decades, Downtown is making an
incredible return. But while many of the historic buildings remain, their
stories have been lost.

That's why Esotouric, the eclectic bus adventure company whose tours reveal
the secret history of L.A. through crime, culture, literature and
architecture, is offering HOTEL HORRORS AND MAIN STREET VICE, a tour meant
to bring alive the old ghosts and memories that cling to the streets and
structures of the historic core.

The HOTEL HORRORS section of the tour is steeped in true crime and oddities,
featuring some of the wildest, weirdest, goriest and most memorable
happenings in historic hotels like the Alexandria, Hayward, Barclay, King
Edward and Cecil. Join the tour and you'll step inside several of these
legendary locales, and find out where Night Stalker Richard Ramirez slept,
which hotel saw a visit from the Skid Row Slasher, where two traveling
chocolate salesmen laughed so hard they fell backwards out a window to their
deaths. You'll also explore the fiery curse that repeatedly leveled the St.
George Hotel, and hear some light hearted stories to help the blood and gore
go down.

The MAIN STREET VICE section is a social history lesson celebrating the
ribald, racy, raunchy old promenade where the better people simply did not
travel, but kicks were had by all who did. Burlesque babes and dirty picture
parlors, mummified western outlaws and old time tattoo parlors, wax museums
and pawn brokers, "professors" offering sex lectures and magazine peddlers
with nudie Marilyn Monroe calendars under the counter, sophisticated steak
houses and nickel donut dives -- these were the pleasures and the people to
be found along Main during the first half of the 20th century, a street that
every Angeleno knew offered more (yet less) of what could be seen anywhere
else. We'll visit the scenes of some more unforgettable debaucheries and
share stories of crime, smut, passion and commerce.

Climb aboard for a time travel journey back to the downtown that's not there
anymore, and the surprising number of gems that survive.

And if you're looking for offbeat L.A. history but can't wait to ride the
Esotouric bus, there's plenty of good stuff online. In addition to this and
other historic Los Angeles bus tours, Esotouric's team created the
1947project "time travel blog" series of alternate history websites,
including In SRO Land ("lost lore of the historic core" at
www.insroland.org), On Bunker Hill (www.onbunkerhill.org ) and the original
1947project ("a crime a day" from 1947, 1927 and 1907 at www.1947project.com
and www.1947project.blogspot.com).

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour and special event schedule
Sat August 20 - Charles Bukowski's L.A.: Haunts of a Dirty Old Man
Sat August 27 - Reyner Banham Loves L.A.: The Lowdown on Downtown
Sun August 28 - LAVA's free Sunday Salon (info at www.lavatransforms.org)
Sat Sept 10 - Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice crime bus tour
Sat Sept 24 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's Southern California
Nightmare
Sun Sept 25 - LAVA's free Sunday Salon (info at www.lavatransforms.org)
Sat Oct 1- The Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour
Sat Oct 15 - Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
Sun Oct 23 - Blood & Dumplings
Sun Oct 30 - LAVA's free Sunday Salon (info at www.lavatransforms.org)
Sat Nov 5 - Weird West Adams
Sat Nov 12 - Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles

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

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