Esotouric offers Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice tours March 2

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, March 2, 12pm-4pm
COST: $58/person
WHERE: Departs from The Daily Dose, 1820 Industrial Street, Los Angeles, CA
90021. Tour covers downtown LA's historic core
INFO: http://www.esotouric.com or call 213-373-1947
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. Esotouric's podcast You
Can't Eat The Sunshine launched in January 2013 and can be found at
http://esotouric.com/canteatsunshine and on iTunes. And 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 atwww.1947project.com
and 1947project.blogspot.com).

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour and special event schedule (free events starred)
Sat Feb 16 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The Lowdown on Downtown
Sat Feb 23 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Boyle Heights & the San
Gabriel Valley
*Sun Feb 24  - Back after a 15 month hiatus - LAVA's free Sunday Salon (info
at lavatransforms.org)
*Sun Feb - The Flâneur & The City: Broadway Tour #2 (info at
lavatransforms.org)
Sat March 2 - Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice
*Sat March 9 - Arroyo Culture Day for Mad March Hares with three free LAVA
tours: Lummis House, Southwest Museum and Judson Glass Studios (info at
lavatransforms.org)
Sat March 16 - Pasadena Confidential crime bus tour (weekend pass available)
Sun March 17 - Eastside Babylon crime bus tour (weekend pass available)
Sat March 23 - Weird West Adams  crime bus tour
Sat April 6 - John Fante's Dreams from Bunker Hill (weekend pass available)
Sun April 7 - Charles Bukowski's LA (weekend pass available)
Sat April 13 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's Southern California
Nightmare
*Sun April 14 - Neff Estate Tour in La Mirada (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat April 20 - SPECIAL EVENT: Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits' LA
Sun April 21 - Crime lab seminar: Insights in Criminal Investigation and the
Secret World of Street Gangs with Nick Guskos (info at lavatransforms.org)
Sat April 27 - The Real Black Dahlia
Sat May 4 - Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour
Sat May 18 -  Raymond Chandler'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