I guess I’m starting to turn local after three years, because, when a friend from another part of the country came to visit, I really wanted to show off my part of town.  Since the visit was only for about 36 hours, and we both needed to spend some of that time working, I gave the quick highlights tour of my West Side neighborhoods.

This included plenty of walking around the Marina del Rey boat channel, Venice Beach, Palisades Park in Santa Monica, The Third Street Promenade, and one of my favorite streets, Adelaide Drive, with spectacular views of Santa Monica Canyon, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the Pacific Ocean. On Thursday night, we showed up pretty late at Natalee Thai on Venice Blvd., and had a really good meal.
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With scores of Angelenos heading to Austin for the annual SXSW music, film, and interactive conference & festival, this is the perfect opportunity to explore the grubby underbelly of Los Angeles.

Tomorrow, Esotouric, the same unconventional tour company responsible for “The Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus” and the “Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits’ LA” tour, will be leading an excursion through Los Angeles as Bukowski lived it in, “Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski’s Los Angeles.”

Charles Bukowski 1920-1994

A dirty realist, Bukowski’s writing was heavily influenced by his hometown of Los Angeles and now you too can get a first hand glimpse of the gritty world he inhabited.

It’s not too late to sign up for tomorrow’s Bukowski tour, as they take reservations up to the morning of the tour. So stock up on scotch and cigarettes and Read the rest of this entry →