Esotouric to offer Reyner Banham architectural tours

Four February L.A. Architecture Tours follow in the steps of critic Reyner Banham

WHAT: Esotouric presents four tours in the "Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles" architecture and urbanism series

WHEN: South L.A. (2/7), Route 66 (2/13), The New Chinatowns (2/20), The Lowdown on Downtown (2/27)

COST: $58 each, or save $52 with a four-tour discount series ticket ($185)

WHERE: Route 66 departs from Clifton's Cafeteria, other tours from Philippe the Original, all in downtown LA

"Reyner Banham was as smart and sassy as any critic in the postwar period.What made him distinctive was his passion for the edgiest expressions of his technological age, not only in avant-garde architecture but in anything designed - Cadillacs and transistor radios, custom hot-rods and painted surfboards, gadgets and gizmos." ­Hal Foster

No city has so fascinated scholars of urban and cultural studies than L.A., that sprawling, self-referential zone of mystery and glamour. And for all the films, books and flim-flam, there is no American city that's harder to understand. That's where Esotouric, L.A.'s most ambitious tour company, comes in. Esotouric's REYNER BANHAM LOVES L.A. architectural tour series is dedicated to exploring the city's infrastructure, history, the built and natural environment, transportation corridors, drive-ins, attractions and oddities.

This February, get on the bus to explore the real Los Angeles, as no one but Esotouric's Richard Schave can reveal it. Richard's unique expertise on unknown L.A. has seen him as a featured guide on television's "Globe Trekker" (Grand Central Market) and "Cities of the Underworld" (downtown's prohibition-era tunnels) and speaking at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Hammer Museum. And each weekend in February, he'll be exploring a different section of Los Angeles, following in the footsteps of his mentor Reyner Banham.

British writer and architecture professor Reyner Banham was the first to love L.A.'s ugliness as well as her beauty. In the early 1970s he abandoned his academic preconceptions to revel in freeways, foothills, beaches and suburbs, discovering extraordinary spaces that were often overlooked for being too remote, too industrial, or simply occupying invisible "flyover country" beneath the great freeways. Banham saw that behind the urban sprawl was a pattern, almost a language, which could not be understood through old modes of architectural criticism, but which required new ways of seeing and of thinking.

Two decades after his death, Banham's one-time student, Esotouric's Richard Schave, leads a series of provocative bus tours that take urban explorers deep into uncharted downtown L.A., East along old Route 66, to the mysterious flatlands of South L.A. and through the thriving New Chinatowns of the San Gabriel Valley, to explore how Southern California has changed since Banham mapped it and reveal the secret wonders that survive.

ABOUT THE TOURS:

SOUTH L.A. (2/7) is a provocative bus adventure that works its way south through Vernon, Bell Gardens, Santa Fe Springs and Downey, and through the past two centuries, exploring seldom-seen gems. Turning the West Side-centric notion of an L.A. architecture tour on its head, the bus goes into areas not traditionally associated with the important, beautiful or significant, raising issues of preservation, adaptive reuse and the evolution of the city. The locations all speak to the power, mutability and reach of the Southern California Dream. Featured stops include the county's oldest adobe structure The Gage Mansion which is set in the midst of an historic trailer park, tilt-slab concrete architect Irving Gill's exquisite lost masterpiece The Clarke Estate (1919), the abandoned East Los Angeles Train Station (1932), the stunning and recently-restored Johnie's Broiler drive-in (1958/2008), with a restorative snack stop at Downey's beloved Cuban bakery Tropicana.

ROUTE 66 (2/13) explores California's Mother Road and the building of its dream, which manifests at the turn of the 20th century with the selling of aperfect climate, the growth of the citrus industry, TB hospitals, wacky roadside architecture and postwar suburban sprawl. The tour explores Route 66's built environment with an emphasis on historic amusements, tourist attractions, signage and grand domestic architecture. Highlights include tours of the packing house at Sierra Madre's fourth generation E. Wald Ward family farm, the astonishing 1924 Aztec Hotel, the neo-Egyptian 1955 Covina Bowl entertainment center, the eerie and hard-to-find Civil War-era Fairmount Cemetery and a swing around the homes of The Feuding Slauson Sisters of Azusa.

THE NEW CHINATOWNS (2/20) is an illuminating historical and cultural tour celebrating significant people, remarkable places and delicious delicacies. Come discover the San Gabriel Valley's fascinating history, from the land and oil booms of the 1920s, halcyon postwar days as a suburban outpost for lower middle class Angelenos and birthplace of the Hula Hoop, to the "white flight" of the 1970s which created the vacuum that facilitated fresh waves of migration from China and a new type of suburban American "Chinatown." Significant sites include: Paradise Trailer Park (Rosemead), a picture perfect time capsule of gracious, tree-shaded mobile home living in the postwar Southland; The Venice Room (Monterey Park), a groovy grill-your-own-steak bar, still family-run after forty years; Browning Realty (Monterey Park), site of the 1920s oil mania; El Encanto (MontereyPark), exquisite showplace of the failed 1920s luxury housing development intended as the Beverly Hills of the East; Mission Superhardware (San Gabriel), still run by the Fabriano family after seven decades, where Howard Roach built some of the Southland's first television sets; site of the original Laura Scudder potato chip factory (Monterey Park); and pioneering purveyors of high quality Asian herbs, teas and notions Wing Hop Fung, where we will enjoy a wine and tea tasting.

THE LOWDOWN ON DOWNTOWN (2/27), a bus tour with quite a bit of walking, is a guided social history of the mysterious, complex and rapidly evolving center of L.A., a thriving neighborhood that was intentionally depopulated in the1950s and is currently experiencing an extraordinary rebirth. This is a tour about the real Los Angeles, the city even natives don't know. Everyone complains L.A. lacks a center- this tour explains why. The tour offers a sophisticated analysis of the economic and social tools used to rebuild downtown, and the challenges ahead. Learn about the Art Walk, a grassroots social movement which transformed one lost neighborhood (the Historic Core, AKA Skid Row) through the energies of artists and art lovers - get the inside scoop from your host Richard Schave, the non-profit's founding Director. Come explore Downtown's invisible neighborhoods and great historic public spaces which managed to escape the wrecking ball. Featured locations include Angels Flight Railway, Grand Central Market, Mercantile Arcade Building, St.Vincent's Alley and a private studio tour in the Arts District.

Each of these provocative Esotouric bus adventures provide fresh ways of seeing the Southland and an opportunity to mingle with fascinating fellow travelers. They are a must for urban explorers, architecture buffs, curious locals, daring tourists, and anyone who enjoys turning over rocks to reveal the secrets beneath.

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour and special event schedule:
Sat January 9 - The Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour
Sat January 16 - Wild Wild West Side crime bus tour
Sat January 23 ­ Weird West Adams crime bus tour
Sat January 30 - East Side Babylon crime bus tour
Sun Feb 7 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: South LA
Sat Feb 13 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Route 66
Thurs Feb 18 ­ Jeremy Kasten presents "Spider Baby" with director Jack Hill
Sat Feb 20 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The New Chinatowns
Sun Feb 21 - Joan Renner lecture "How the 'Bob' Changed History" (tentative)
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, please visit http://www.esotouric.com

For discount tickets for all four tours, http://www.esotouric.com/banhambundle

For more on Reyner Banham, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reyner_Banham

And the BBC documentary "Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles" http://reyner.notlong.com