Gentle reader,

Today is a terrible day in Los Angeles history, the 61st anniversary of the morning when Elizabeth Short, soon to be infamous as the Black Dahlia, was discovered dead and cut in two in a vacant lot in Leimert Park. Each January 15, our friend and Dahlia-ologist Larry Harnisch likes to prune his roses and think of Beth. Richard already pruned our roses this morning, and as they come back to lovely life we will remember this little lost girl. She would have been 83 years old, had she lived.

On Sunday, the Esotouric bus rolled south from Vroman's Bookstore with a full bus of charming people for the debut of Richard's new manifestation of our flagship tour THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA. We were seen off by the delightful Queen Mickie, taking a break from her Doodah Parade preparations to christen the bus with champagne... bubblebath! Then we headed downtown, to explore the psychology and deep mysteries of Beth Short's last hours, visiting the places she frequented, examining the characters who touched her, in life and in death and coming to some understanding of who this strange girl was and what brought her to Los Angeles and her early death.

See photos from this tour here:
http://blackdahliavromans1-13-08.notlong.com/

And see Queen Mickie in the Doodah Parade next Sunday:
http://www.pasadenadoodahparade.info/

This Saturday, 1/19, we offer my personal favorite of our true crime tours, BLOOD AND DUMPLINGS, a criminal and gastronomical excursion into the deeply bizarre criminal and cultural history of the San Gabriel Valley. Meet lions and nazis and hypodermic-jabbing lesbians, religious zealots obsessed with pyramid power, a lesser-known Manson Family victim, James Ellroy's iconic murdered mother Geneva, Phil Spector and his hillside castle, deadly trailer parks and actual sea monsters, who will keep you company as you gobble down a dumpling feast from 101 Noodle Express, one of Jonathan Gold's top LA restaurants. Join us do, and reserve your spot today by emailing me or buying online at http://www.esotouric.com/bnd-1-19-08

As always, we offer 15% off for KCRW members, and a $30 discount when you purchase a 4-tour Season Pass, which can be applied retroactively for folks who have ridden a recent tour. Email for more info or visit the website to reserve your spot on the unpredictable floating LA think tank that is the Esotouric bus.  

yrs,
Kim

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour schedule (new tours starred):
Sat Jan 19- Blood & Dumplings San Gabriel Valley Crime Bus Tour
San Jan 26- Weird West Adams Crime Bus Tour
Sat Feb 2- Where the Action Was Hollywood Rock and Roll Tour
*Sat Feb 16- Wild Wild West Side Crime Bus Tour
*Sat Feb 23- Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The Many Downtowns
*Sat Mar 1- Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Route 66 (on Banham's birthday weekend)
*Sat Mar 8- Raymond Chandler's Bay City (West Los Angeles Chandler tour)
Sun Mar 9- Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles (on the anniversary of his death)
Sat Mar 15- Vroman's Bookstore presents Pasadena Confidential

September 14, 1927

The ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel is being readied for the annual Southern California Dahlia Society exhibition, which is last year drew 7000 people. There's just something about the Biltmore that attracts Dahlias, and Dahlia lovers.

In Nice, France, San Francisco girl Isadora Duncan -- that free spirit danseuse whose corsetless physique and offbeat theories of health, movement and social mores made her at once the darling and the shame of thousands  -- perished in a grisly accident when her long scarf became entangled in the wheel of an open automobile. Duncan was pulled into the road, and died instantly of a broken neck. She was 50.

The fateful scarf was a gift of Mary Desti, Duncan's dear friend and the mother of director Preston Sturges, who would go on to invent many a fascinating, madcap female in his motion pictures.

In Medford, Mass., Elizabeth Short, who will be remembered as the Dahlia of the Biltmore long after the flower show is forgotten, is three.

Tim Coyne of The Hollywood Podcast rode along on The Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour and prepared a cool little piece for BBC 5's Pods and Blogs program (or programme, if you will) explaining Beth Short and our fascination with 1947 LA and the odd characters in her orbit to a nation that doesn't know the case.

Here's a link to the MP3 of Tim's interview with Nathan and me. 

Last month, we previewed four of Esotouric's bus adventures for members of the press. Photographer Summer Scotland was aboard, and snapped some striking shots of the city and our hosts as we oozed across town to our rendezvous with Tai Kim's Bacon-Caramel gelato. Imagine you were there, or thrill to recall that you were, right here. Thanks, Summer!  

by Jacob Adelman for the Associated Press (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Above: Kelly Kuvo, the Blonde Dahlia  

LOS ANGELES -- A dismembered wannabe starlet. A girl buried under her family's home. A rattlesnake used as a weapon.

The scenes of those crimes are stops on a series of Southern California bus tours that eschew the usual stars' homes and theme parks to offer passengers a peak at the region's dark side.

"They're aimed at the history geek sort of people," said Kelly Kuvo, who wears a black veil and other vintage accouterments during the trips she leads for tour company Esotouric.

The company's "crime bus" tours plumb the grisly, blood-soaked pasts of now quiet Southern California neighborhoods and nondescript strip malls.

Similar trips elsewhere take passengers deep into cities' gory pasts, including Washington's "Bad Olde Days" chronicling crime in the nation's capital and "Sinister London" that follows the steps of Jack the Ripper.

"When people die in a place, it does change that place forever," said Esotouric guide and co-founder Kim Cooper. "Just because the people wandering around the neighborhood may not be aware of it, it doesn't mean it's not a good idea for people who are interested in history to revive those memories."

John G. Cawelti, who writes about the seductiveness of violent crime tales in his book "Mystery, Violence, and Popular Culture," said the tours play into people's fears of death and catastrophe.

"We live in an age where the worst kinds of things can happen to anybody," Cawelti said. "Walk down the street and something blows up and all of a sudden you lost your life or lost a leg. The fact that somebody else went through this becomes a surrogate – a magical way of charming away the fear of the possibility."

Esotouric's most popular tour explores 1947 Los Angeles by zeroing in on the murder of Elizabeth Short – a.k.a. "Black Dahlia" – who came to Hollywood in search of fame but wound up the victim of an infamous unsolved murder.

One stop is a ground-floor storefront on a desolate downtown street that now boasts a sign reading, "Club Galaxy – 100 Beautiful Girls."

In 1947, when it was a bistro called "The Crown Grill," it was the last place Short was seen before her dismembered body was discovered miles away in a south Los Angeles neighborhood.

"She was friendly with the bartenders and with some of the waitresses, so people recognized her and remembered her," Cooper said. "The problem of course is that everybody at the Crown Grill immediately became suspects."

Passengers are also introduced to lesser known crimes from the same year, such as the attempted carjacking in Hollywood of an 18-year-old movie theater cashier named Ginevra Knight, who shot her assailant dead.

"It's the criminal history of 1947 L.A. and how women felt going out at night in the hysteria of an unsolved murder," Cooper said.

The "Blood and Dumplings" tour through San Gabriel Valley suburbs, meanwhile, passes the home where a young bride-to-be was buried in 1969 by her uncle after he shot her to death in a jealous rage at the end of their affair.

It also cruises by an intersection where a man named Raymond James bought a rattlesnake he let bite his wife in 1935 so he could cash in on her insurance policy. When she didn't die, he had an accomplice finish the job by drowning her in their fish pond.

Esotouric grew out of a Web log Cooper started in 2005, when she set out to retell a true-crime tale from each day of 1947. She and her collaborators soon started offering tours of those scenes and the sites of other crimes.

A tour that revisits the life and literature of Raymond Chandler, whose fictional characters inhabit the region's underworld, was added to the menu of crime junkets when the company was started earlier this year.

Tour participant Bob Nickum, 59, a school district business manager, said seeing the sites of past crimes made him look at familiar places in a new way.

"It's just very interesting to drive around the area and to see things I may have passed by many times and maybe not known what happened there," said Nickum, who, like most passengers, lives in Southern California.

"It makes things a little more interesting – vivid – to know about something that intense that took place in a calm, peaceful neighborhood," he said.

Nathan Marsak, chess shark Heather and Kelly at the Hotel Barclay

A large (20x30) reproduction of Elizabeth Short’s mug shot has appeared on EBay at a starting price of $250, or $400 under “buy it now” in an auction by mermaidfx. The word “rare” is ridiculously common on EBay, surpassed only by “MIB” and “L@@K.” This is not a rare image, but is widely copied. And folks, the asking price is absurd.

Lmharnisch.com
Lmharnisch.blogspot.com
E-mail: lmharnisch (AT) gmail.com

And so after nearly a week of extraordinary events, last night's cocktail party, screening, gallery tour and crime scene tour spelled the end of the Lost Weekend. We were very fortunate to have photographer Meeno Peluce and his assistant Adam on hand to document the glamorous celebrants and festivities at the Biltmore, Laemmle Grand, Regent Galleries and aboard the Crime Bus.

Many thanks to all who turned out to be a part of these happenings, to remember Elizabeth Short and reflect upon why her story continues to resonate so strongly and so widely.  

Below you will find a smattering of images from Meeno's January 16th gallery, with many more to be seen here. Bye-bye, Dahlia, until next year...

Jan. 16, 2007

Sfxarchive is selling a 4- by 5-inch negative ostensibly from the Black Dahlia case. I don’t recognize any of these individuals, nor have I ever seen the image. It doesn’t show any of the main suspects, nor does it show the main detectives, Harry Hansen and Finis Brown.

I would say its importance is limited. Note that the seller’s date (January 1949) is contradicted by the calendar in the picture, which says December 1948.

The bottom line: I would not spend any serious money on this image.

Lmharnisch.com

Lmharnisch.blogspot.com

E-mail: lmharnisch (AT) gmail.com

The EBay sale of 1940s mug shots, including one of Elizabeth Short, sold Jan. 12, 2007, for $1,802.77 (more than $78 per picture) to phenomaly. Although EBay now conceals bidders’ identities, we can see that the next highest bid was $1,777.77. Obviously, people are willing to spend serious money for these mug shots.

Please understand, the Elizabeth Short mug shots were printed up in bulk during the investigation and handed out freely. The mug shot was also distributed by the wire services. Translation: There were many copies of this picture. Think carefully before getting into a bidding war over one of them. They turn upon EBay every couple of years.

Lmharnisch.com
Lmharnisch.blogspot.com

Early risers can hear 1947project's Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak talking about the 60th anniversary of the Black Dahlia case on Joe Escalante's show around 7am Friday on Indie 103.1-FM. That's on your radio dial in old Los Angeles, or on the interwebs at http://www.indie1031.fm/

And don't forget, tonight at 9pm, we lead a candlelit vigil in memory of Elizabeth Short. It begins at the Regent Galleries at 446-450 S. Main, where the "Her Name Was Elizabeth" exhibition is opening, continuing on to the Biltmore Hotel. Along the way we'll provide information about the crime and its connection with the downtown L.A. neighborhood, sort of a mini, walking Crime Bus tour as a preview to the Real Black Dahlia tours this weekend and Tuesday. Seats are still available for all three tours, so please click over/
to reserve if interested.

The 60th Anniversary Lost Weekend of the Black Dahlia is nearly upon us, and we have two new events to announce.

On Friday, January 12, from 6-9pm, a woman dressed as the Black Dahlia will glide eerily along Hollywood Boulevard between Argyle and Cherokee, the old stomping grounds of Elizabeth Short. Perhaps she will be found in the Frolic Room or Pig and Whistle, or just cruising the boulevard. This spectral figure carries a basket of flowers, and will give one to anyone who calls her by her true name, Elizabeth. One of these lucky flowers is valid as one free ticket on the Sunday morning January 14 Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour, or for half off one seat on the VIP midnight tour and film premiere on Tuesday January 16.

And on Thursday, January 11 at 9pm, a candlelit vigil will leave Regent Galleries, 446-450 South Main Street downtown, site of the Black Dahlia-inspired art exhibition "Her Name Was Elizabeth." Those wishing to show their respect for Elizabeth Short and other souls lost to violence will walk from Main Street to the Biltmore Hotel, the last place she was seen alive, then continue south for a few blocks along the route that police believe she took before being abducted. The vigil will be led by Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak, hosts of 1947project's Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour, and true facts and myths of the case will be shared along the way. The group
will then return to Regent Galleries for a 10:30pm screening of Ramzi Abed's "Black Dahlia Movie."

The Lost Weekend is six days of art exhibitions, readings, film screenings, live cabaret and Crime Bus tours celebrating the life, myth and legend of Elizabeth Short, The Black Dahlia. For a full schedule, visit http://myspace.com/thelostweekendlosangeles

We have some openings on the Saturday 1/13 Real Black Dahlia tour. To reserve your seat on Saturday, Sunday 1/14 or the Tuesday 1/16 VIP night, please visit http://www.dumplinglab.com/crimebus

Judith Regan, the publisher of Donald H. Wolfe

You may think you're up on your Black Dahlia lore, but you might have missed two recent books that take very different approaches to the case. First, there's the memoir from Jacque Daniel, "The Curse of the Black Dahlia." Daniel was daughter and secretary to police psychiatrist Paul de River, whose involvement in the case was tinged with controversy. See her site for ordering info and her rebuttal of the claims in Donald Wolfe's recent, worthless contribution to the genre.

Then there's "Exquisite Corpse" by Mark Nelson and Sarah Hudson Bayliss, which takes as gospel the Steve Hodel theory of mutilation murder as homage a l'art moderne, and digs into the notion of the posing and abuses of Beth Short's body as a Surrealist art piece. While not quite as loopy as Gareth Penn's "Times 17" (Zodiac Killer as earthworks artist), it does sound rather outré.

Courtesy of David Markland, here are some photos from Sunday's sold out Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour.

Above, hosts Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak pose for a candid snap with gelato master Tai Kim, who created a dozen Black Dahlia-inspired flavors to honor murder victim Elizabeth Short. (The previous day, Brad Pitt came in to sample the Black Dahlia flavors while his lady friend waited in the car.  Brad's picks? Vanilla and Whiskey for him, White Chocolate Cranberry Swirl for her. Miss Short would have been delighted.)