Meet Betty "Ball of Fire" Rowland on Esotouric's Main Street Vice tour

Meet legendary striptease queen Betty "Ball of Fire" Rowland on Esotouric's Main Street Vice L.A. tour

WHAT: Esotouric presents Hotel Horrors and Main Street Vice, a downtown Los Angeles double feature bus tour, with honored guest Betty Rowland, burlesque's "Ball of Fire"

WHEN: Saturday August 22, 12pm-4pm

COST: $58/person (15% off for KCRW or KPCC members)

WHERE: Departs from Cafe Metropol at 923 East 3rd Street, LA 90013, tour covers downtown LA's historic core

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 double feature of a bus tour meant to bring alive the old ghosts and memories that cling to the streets and structures of the historic core.

And the August 22 edition of the tour is extra special, since several people with deep connections to downtown's incredible history will be riding along and sharing their stories. Among them: Miss BETTY ROWLAND, the legendary red-haired burlesque queen known as "Ball of Fire." Miss Rowland's return to Main Street -- where starting in 1938 she was a headlining star occasionally busted by the vice squad -- is sure to stir up fiery memories.

ABOUT THE TOUR:
The MAIN STREET VICE portion is a social history tour 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 steakhouses 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. On this tour, we'll visit the scenes of some more unforgettable debaucheries and share stories of crime, smut, passion and commerce.

The HOTEL HORRORS portion is a true crime and oddities tour featuring some of the wildest, weirdest, goriest and most memorable happenings in historic hotels like the Alexandria, Hayward, Barclay, King Edward and Cecil. Get on the bus and you'll get inside all of these legendary locales, and find out where Night Stalker Richard Ramirez liked to stay and the hotel that saw a visit from the Skid Row Slasher, plus which hotel was the choice of Columbian drug mules with cocaine in their platform shoes, what lobby hosted a small scale anarchist riot and where two traveling chocolate salesmen laughed so hard they fell backwards out a window to their deaths. You'll also learn the truth about the myth that Beth "The Black Dahlia" Short was last seen alive at the Biltmore and explore the fiery curse that repeatedly leveled the St. George Hotel. Also included are some light hearted stories to help the blood and gore go down.

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

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour schedule
Thurs Aug 13 - The Hippodrome (Downtown Art Walk Shuttle, free)
Sat Aug 15 - Blood & Dumplings
Sat Aug 22 - Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice
Sat Aug 29 - Reyner Banham Loves LA: The Lowdown on Downtown-The Secret History of LA
Thurs Sept 10 - The Hippodrome (Downtown Art Walk Shuttle, free)
Sat Sept 12 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's Southern California Nightmare
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 31 - Save the date for a Halloween surprise tour!
Sun Nov 1 ­ Reyner Banham Loves LA: South LA
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