Esotouric, the offbeat bus adventure company that explores
L.A.'s hidden mysteries, presents a new addition to its
literary tour selections with "Raymond Chandler's Bay City,"
debuting on Saturday March 8.
Chandler's Bay City is crook town, run down, shabby town,
gambling town. Novelist Raymond Chandler gravitated to sin
and debauch, so Santa Monica in the 1930s was a frequent stop
for his anti-hero detective Philip Marlowe. From doctors
feelgood to second wives with pasts to crooked cops with a
loathing for a mouthy PI, this tour has it all. Chandler's
canonization of sin, wealth and sunshine on L.A.'s Westside
fed the abiding myths of the American hard-boiled genre and
play into the popular conception of the region.
Focusing on Chandler's middle period - "Farewell My Lovely,"
"Lady in the Lake" and a few short stories upon which these
novels are built,
"Bay City Blues" among them-- this tour will explore
Chandler's take on the Westside, the real life rackets and
murders which gave Bay City its wild reputation, and the
elements of the old community that have survived layer upon
layer of gentrification.
As the bus rolls from point to point, your guides will draw
the lines between Chandler's life and his fiction, offering
insight into his nomadic life with wife Cissy, the enigmatic
redhead who appears in many forms in his short stories and
novels.
Locations for the tour include: The Casa del Mar Hotel
(jumping off point for the gambling ships), the site of the
former Santa Monica City Hall (4th & Broadway)
immortalized in "Farewell My Lovely," the former site of
Thelma Todd's sidewalk cafe (just West of Sunset on the PCH,
inspiration for the Lindsay Marriot House in "Farewell My
Lovely"), Santa Monica and Brentwood residences for Ray &
Cissy Chandler, and Dutton's Books in homage to Chandler's
passion for the great lost bookstores of Los Angeles.
There are still seats available on this debut excursion into
Raymond Chandler's Bay City. For more info, or to reserve
your spot, please visit http://www.esotouric.com
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