Downtown
Articles about downtown Los Angeles.
There’s something so LA about Film Noir. In a similar way to how the novels of Charles Dickens recreate the world of Victorian London, Film Noir perfectly captures the aesthetic and atmosphere of 1940’s and 50’s Los Angeles. The different aspects of the city: its sunny beaches, neat clean suburbs and downtown concrete jungle, make a perfect setting for these…
With this month marking the date of the Lunar New Year (as celebrated in China and much of Asia) we wanted to take a look at the birth of Chinese-American culture in Los Angeles and, specifically, the history of LA’s Chinatown. Although San Francisco’s Chinatown is more famous, Los Angeles has been home to a…
In honor of Black History Month (this month) and Women’s History Month (in March) we’re celebrating the life and achievements of Bridget ‘Biddy’ Mason. An African American woman who was born into slavery in the old South, Biddy was brought to Los Angeles in the 1850’s (much against her will), only to become a free…
The Black Dahlia is one of the most famous unsolved murder cases in criminal history and a subject for numerous documentaries, books, TV episodes and movies. Law enforcement agencies, criminal experts, on-camera presenters and amateur sleuths have all attempted to solve the case, all without success. Rather like the Jack the Ripper murders in London…
One of the things we believe in at the Real Los Angeles Tours is talking about the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of history. It’s really the only way of looking at our past, if we ignore the nasty and ugly episodes then we are almost certainly dooming ourselves to continue making the…
People from the Spanish-speaking countries of Central and South America have had an enormous impact on Los Angeles. Which isn’t at all surprising when you consider nearly fifty per cent of the population of Los Angeles today has a Hispanic background and that, therefore Los Angeles Latinos form the largest ethnic share of the population.…
Historic Preservation in Los Angeles is a much more important thing here than many people realize. Is it important enough, though? That’s another question. It’s such a relevant concern here because so much of the city’s ethos is about reinvention. LA has often been a city that erases, or tries to erase, its past, as…
When we visit the Broadway Theater District on our tours, visitors from outside Los Angeles can get confused. There’s a Broadway with lots of theaters in LA too? Isn’t that New York? Their confusion only increases when we tell them that actually ours has the largest number of historic theaters in the entire U.S. It…
When the TCL Chinese Theatre opened in 1927 it was known as Sid Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and some older Angelenos still call it such. Directly opposite, across the Walk of Fame, is the El Capitan Theatre, now owned by Disney, but when it opened in 1926 it was a Broadway style theatre that was part-owned…
One of DTLA’s many gems is Angels Flight, a funicular railway that connects Grand Central Market and the Historic Core to the Bunker Hill Financial District. In 2013 it was closed due to safety issues and it felt disappointing explaining to guests on our tours that the neglected, graffiti-covered, trolley cars were two of the most beautiful remaining artifacts of Victorian Los Angeles. Unused, rundown and…