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This is Charles Bukowski’s Los Angeles

About This Webinar

Join Esotouric, L.A.'s most eclectic sightseeing tour company, for an immersive virtual tour of the historic places that shaped Charles Bukowski, as a man and as a writer of fiction, poetry and memoir.

Your hosts Kim Cooper and Richard Schave gave their first Charles Bukowski tour in 2007, and immediately became entangled in a contentious campaign to landmark the writer’s former East Hollywood home. The campaign to preserve 5124 De Longpre Avenue was ultimately successful—but not before the property owners gained international headlines with the spurious claim that Bukowski was a Nazi. That’s why from the start, Esotouric’s tour has included stories about historic preservation of the low income neighborhoods where Bukowski lived, worked and grew as an artist.

In this webinar, you’ll explore Charles Bukowski’s life in Los Angeles, with intimate visits to places that shaped him as a person and an artist, as he struggled to rise above his own demons, addictions and dysfunctional relationships and find the voice within himself that was great.

We’ll track him to the West Adams district, to the modest Spanish style house where he was tormented by his abusive father, and to the raunchy Downtown Los Angeles entertainment zone where he found an escape with boyhood friends in the burlesque houses, penny arcades and at Clifton’s Cafeteria.

We’ll visit the beautiful Central Library, where the largely self-taught Bukowski looked for a literary role model and found him in John Fante’s "Ask the Dust" featuring Fante’s alter-ego Arturo Bandini, a model for Bukowski’s Henry Chinaski persona.

We find him in General Hospital, a deathly ill 30-something alcoholic, scared straight by the realization that if his bleeding ulcer kills him, he will never have written a decent line of poetry. Then he’s working for the U.S. Postal Service, failing miserably at the civil servant game, learning to play the ponies, building a fan base with his confessional column "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," gathering material for his great first novel “Post Office” and working up the courage to quit.

We’ll hang out along the sleazy commercial corridors of Hollywood and Western, where Bukowski haunted the dive bars and socialized with sex workers. We’ll mourn his first great love Jane at her unmarked San Fernando Valley grave. And we’ll visit the quiet reading room at the Huntington Library, where scholars can consult Bukowski’s personal archives and piece together new stories from what he left behind.

This webinar is an illustrated lecture packed with original research, photographs and archival material that will bring Charles Bukowski’s story to life on your digital device. And you'll find the look of an Esotouric webinar is a little different than your standard dry Zoom session, with lively interactive graphics courtesy of the mmhmm app.

After the presentation, Kim and Richard will answer your questions about their experiences exploring Charles Bukowski’s city, so get ready to be a part of the show.

Can't join in when the webinar is happening? You'll have access to the full replay for one week.

So, tune in and discover the incredible history of Los Angeles, with the couple whose passion for the city is infectious. Can't join in when the webinar is happening? You'll have access to the full replay for one week.

FYI: Immediately upon registering, you will receive a separate, automated email containing the link to join the webinar.

The webinar is reliable on all devices, Mac, PC, iOS and Android.

About Esotouric: As undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz, Kim Cooper and Richard Schave inexplicably hated one other on sight. (Perhaps less inexplicably, their academic advisor believed they were soul mates). A chance meeting 18 years later proved much more agreeable. Richard wooed Kim with high level library database access, with which she launched the 1947project true crime blog, highlighting a crime a day from the year of The Black Dahlia and Bugsy Siegel slayings. The popular blog’s readers demanded a tour, and then another. The tour was magical, a hothouse inspiring new ways for the by-then-newlyweds to tell the story of Los Angeles. Esotouric was born in 2007 with a calendar packed with true crime, literary, architecture and rock and roll tours. Ever since, it has provided a platform for promoting historic preservation issues (like the Save the 76 Ball campaign and the landmarking of Charles Bukowski’s bungalow), building a community of urban explorers (including dozens of free talks and tours under the umbrella of LAVA) and digging ever deeper into the secret heart of the city they love.

Rights and permissions: By attending an Esotouric webinar, you acknowledge that the entirety of the presentation is copyrighted, and no portion of the video or text may be reproduced in any fashion.

Who can view: Everyone
Webinar Price: $10.00
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