Get On the Bus! Preservation Tour September 7

Regular readers may recall that 11 months ago, I received word that Jeanne d'Arc, who had stood guard outside the French Hospital/Pacific Alliance Medical Center since 1964, had vanished.

The next three days were a panicked blur.

An overlooked statue, with no landmark status (really, no protection of any kind), wordlessly removed from the privately-owned grounds of a defunct hospital in a city that allows so much of its history to be thrown in the garbage. It didn't look good for poor Jeanne.

And what of the French Benevolent Society, owners of the hospital site since 1869, who haven't had a public presence since 1989 and have yet to make any sort of comment on the sale of the property?

Get the story, straight from yours truly, on Esotouric's inaugural Saving Los Angeles Landmarks tour on Saturday, September 7.

Think you've read it all here? If you still need convincing...

Steve Luftman will be discussing Lytton Savings, Alan Hess will be discussing Pereira's Metropolitan Water District, and although artist Sheila Klein is unfortunately not able to appear, the fate of Vermonica will be featured.

These tours sell out, so get your tickets early!

Watch My LAVA Sunday Salon!

If you couldn't make it to my September 2017 LAVA Sunday Salon, it's now available on Youtube. As always, much love to Kim and Richard for letting me ramble and for posting the video...to the sold-out audience for coming to hear me ramble...to my family for patiently listening to me practice...to Nathan "Cranky Preservationist" Marsak for his wit and expertise...and to Jean Bruce Poole for everything she has done to preserve Los Angeles' history.

S'il Vous Plaît: Need Your Help, Readers!

Dear Readers:

I don't like to ask for help quite this often (in all fairness, the disappearance of Jeanne d'Arc DID make me panic). But I have two very important requests.

First: are there any attorneys, or at least a law student or two, in the house? I'm trying to solve a mystery and have a few questions about business-related law. I'll guest-list you for whatever my next event ends up being. Email losfrangeles (at) gmail (dot) com if you can spare a few minutes. (On the subject of events, if anyone is looking for a speaker, I do have some weekend availability throughout the year.)

Second: my next LAVA Sunday Salon, along with all other Sunday Salons, has been postponed until further notice. But, it's for a good reason - the organizers are hard at work on getting Times Mirror Square landmarked. Which means they could really use some extra help saving other threatened historic sites around LA. Send a letter, send an email, sign a petition, make a phone call - please just take a few minutes to do something. (If I hear anything on how you can help protect Times Mirror Square specifically, I'll update this entry.)

Times Mirror Square's location does hold some significance relevant to this blog: the land was previously owned by sheep baron Pierre Larronde (who had a business block there), and the Nadeau Hotel previously stood on the site. Both the Larronde block and Nadeau Hotel were torn down in the 1930s to make way for the Times building. It especially annoys me that pretty much everything Remi Nadeau built has fallen to the wrecking ball. But what's done is done, and it doesn't make the Times building any less important.

Merci beaucoup!

C.C. de V.

Thank You GLAAM!

A very special merci beaucoup to Greater Los Angeles Area Mensa for inviting me to talk about my people for an hour, and to the StaRGazing 2018 attendees who came to my presentation.

While prepping for StaRGazing, I had some inquiries about whether it would be taped. Well...I tried. I really did. The friend who was supposed to tape my presentation had a personal emergency and couldn't come. So I set up my phone to tape the presentation. It cut off the Q&A at the end, and just like last year, my 8-year-old laptop stubbornly refuses to upload the file. (Even the Genius Bar can't help me with this aging bucket of bolts.)

I do have another presentation coming up in May (with the Los Angeles Visionaries Association) - more on that later. In the meantime, I'm looking into live-streaming smaller, "bite size" history lessons on Youtube.

Come Hear Me Speak!

As I've mentioned a few times over the last few months, I'm speaking at StaRGazing 2018, Greater Los Angeles Area Mensa's annual Regional Gathering. I'm scheduled for 3:15-4:30pm on Saturday, February 17. See you in San Pedro! (If you want to come, this Thursday, February 8, is the LAST day for online registration. If you're seeing this a little late, you can register in person at the RG, but you'll need to bring cash or a check.)

Can't make it to the RG? I'll be doing another LAVA Sunday Salon and walking tour in the spring, and will be re-tooling my "Frenchtown 101" talk from last September (we'll be visiting a different part of downtown). Sunday Salons are free and open to the public, but as space is limited (my previous salon sold out), RSVPs are required. Watch this space for more information...

Thank You LAVA Attendees!

LAVA's September Sunday Salon was yesterday. I was absolutely thrilled to give my talk and participate in the walking tour (and with a sold-out audience!).

THANK YOU for coming.

Pictures from the Salon can be seen here, and when the video is available, I will update this with a link.

If you haven't yet heard my special guest appearance on You Can't Eat the Sunshine, you can find the episode here.

I had some questions regarding why certain details were left out of my talk. I gave a longer version of the same talk at a different event in May and the original draft was well over two hours long! I had to cut a LOT of content to get it to one hour, and had to trim it down again (omitting details like Damien Marchesseault's suicide note) to make it a 50-minute talk (and I was aiming for 40).

There is SO much information that if I could include everything, I'd probably still be talking.

That's the beauty of blogging: I can go into as much detail as I want with each entry instead of giving the Cliff's Notes version. (And I promise I'll pitch a book to publishers soon!)

On the subject of books, there were a few questions about one of my resources. Le Guide Francais de Los Angeles et du Sud de la Californie (aka The French in Southern California History and the Southland Today) was published just once, in 1932, in English and in French. It's not easy to find (I spent years looking for a copy), but Central Library has two English-language copies of the book (if I remember correctly, it's in the rare books collection).

I have had multiple requests for a transcript of my talk. If you would like a copy of my notes, you can email me at losfrangeles (at) gmail (dot) com.

However, I must make one request from everyone who requests a copy of my notes.

I have had someone take my blog's content, alter it, and pass it off as their own work (and still manage to make a horrifying number of factual errors...). This person has faced no consequences, and when I complained to the editor, I received no response.

If you wish to share my notes with someone else for any reason, I ask that you link to this blog and credit me.

Time, effort, and money go into this blog. I have limited spare time and spend much of it doing research. I do a lot of driving around (with the exception of the historical photographs, I take my own pictures). I don't make a lot of money, but I've spent a good amount on books (the old, rare ones aren't cheap) and gas.

All I want is to be credited for doing the actual work.

With that out of the way...

Thank you all for coming, and I'm looking forward to returning in the spring (we'll tour a different part of downtown).