Articles by Kim Cooper
The Madison County Conference Center in Ridgeland, Mississippi is Approved
The Madison County Conference Center coming to Ridgeland, Mississippi. Mississippi's First Dolce by Wyndham Coming to Prado Vista at Ridgeland, Mississippi This project gives our city and county something we have needed for many years.
Food for Thought: Searching for the Christmas Star
In my column, I try to highlight important areas of agriculture and how they affect our daily lives. Author of the article: Kim Cooper • Special to Postmedia Network Published Dec 20, 2025 • Last updated 14 minutes ago • 2 minute read The Christmas Star was seen by Kim Cooper and his friends near Erieau back in 1972. (Getty Images) Article content In my column, I try to highlight important areas of agriculture and how they affect our daily lives.
I quit my dream job as an airline pilot when I surprisingly became pregnant with twins. I now rely on my retirement savings.
A surprise pregnancy with twins at 43 ended my career as an airline pilot. Staying home with my kids was right for my family, but now I'm struggling to make ends meet. I'm tapping into retirement early until I start a new career. At 43, I was at the height of my professional career, living my dream life as a Southwest Airlines pilot. I traveled back and forth across the country multiple times every month and used my free passes on frequent vacations with my 8-year-old son.
Meet centenarian Jean Bruce Poole, who shaped Olvera Street… and a birthday sale on Raymond Chandler’s Noir Los Angeles
TOP: This post originally appeared on Esotouric’s newsletter channel. If you like this kind of content, you can sign up for free or become a supporting subscriber. Often in this newsletter or in conversation we’ll refer to someone as our preservation pal, in recognition of a working friendship built on a shared passion for looking out for Southern California’s cultural resources.
Re-post: Archeological Explorations in Downtown’s Mayan Theatre
The exotic architecture is spectacular, but it’s some pencil stub scribblings on a plain cement wall that really blew our mind Update July 14, 2025: We are bringing this 2020 subscriber edition of our L.A. cultural history and preservation newsletter out from behind the paywall on the occasion of the extremely sad announcement that the Chao family will be closing the Mayan Theatre nightclub on September 13. This post originally appeared on Esotouric’s newsletter channel.
I reluctantly quit my pilot job to teach our kids at home. It was so boring until I started educating them through travel. Original
Travel I hadn't planned to quit my job to teach our kids at home, and I was so bored of it until we started traveling. Kim Cooper This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? . I quit my job as a pilot to homeschool my kids, two things I never thought I'd do. The monotony of being a stay-at-home mom bored me to tears. So, we started taking educational trips.
Food for Thought: More agriculture terms explained Original
This week, we will finish looking at various terms and phrases related to the agriculture sector. Author of the article: Kim Cooper • Special to Postmedia Network Published Oct 16, 2024 • 2 minute read A pair of tom turkeys puff up and strut in front of a hen hoping to convince her that they would make egg-cellent mates on the front lawn of a home in London, Ont. on Sunday March 28, 2021.
Food for thought: Chatham-Kent a top producer of asparagus in Ontario Original
Food for Thought: Chatham-Kent a top Ontario asparagus producer Author of the article: Kim Cooper • Special to Postmedia Network Published Apr 17, 2024 • Last updated 5 minutes ago • 2 minute read Chatham-Kent is the No. 2 producer of asparagus in Ontario, which is one of the first harvested field crops of the year. (File photo) Article content Asparagus will soon be here, one of our first harvested field crops.
Save Sunshine, the Last Palm on old Bunker Hill
Have you ever noticed Sunshine? That’s the name Downtown denizen Annette Zilinskas gave to a lonely, neglected Queen Palm that for many years had stood proudly above 2nd and Hill Streets on the dirt patch, the last piece of unflattened Bunker Hill topography, on a parcel marked for redevelopment for the Colburn School’s expansion.
Responding to Steve Hodel’s claim that Esotouric cares about money, not truth, in the case of Black Dahlia murder victim Beth Short
Last Saturday—as we have about four times a year since Esotouric debuted in 2007—we booked a coach class bus on which to guide a large group on a tour about the unsolved 1947 murder of Beth Short, a case that shares the victim’s real life nickname, The Black Dahlia. The culmination of the tour is a moment of silence at the place where her body was discovered.
Save the Parrot Tree at Santa Ana Main Library (destroyed 12/11/24)
Something worrying has been happening in the City of Santa Ana: bureaucrats, rushing to spend a $9.3 Million critical maintenance and infrastructure grant from the California State Library “Building Forward” program before the March 31, 2026 completion deadline and Federal Revive Santa Ana funds that must be used by the end of that year, plan to chop down one of Southern California’s most remarkable trees for a hardscape patio remodel.
Haunts & Havens of Charles Bukowski self-guided tour
Discover Charles Bukowski’s Los Angeles, as revealed through the filter of Esotouric’s acclaimed tour of the writer’s lost and surviving city. If you can’t make it for a group tour, this self-guided tour in booklet form is the next best thing, designed to take you along with the young Bukowski as he sought the voice within him that was great, and to orient you in the places where the mature Bukowski enjoyed the fruits of his hard work and good fortune.
City of Los Angeles: Don’t Demolish the Lincoln Heights Jail!
This week, Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez introduced a motion acknowledging that the proposed redevelopment of the Lincoln Heights Jail into a “maker’s district” is not actually happening. Her idea for the massive, derelict property on the Los Angeles River is to recognize it as a stigmatized site and explore demolition options. We think preservation and adaptive reuse is a far better choice, greener, and more respectful of those who came before us.
Bungalow Court Housing in Los Angeles Mapped
Bungalow courts are a distinctive, desirable and unfortunately endangered early 20th century form of workforce housing. These modest double (or sometimes single) rows of small cottages with shared community green space are usually under rent control, and are much loved by their tenants. It’s not even April and 2023 is officially an annus horribilis.
Help Save the Mabel Normand Studio Bungalow at Sunset Junction
Some weeks, it seems like every time we check our email or DMs, there’s a new preservation crisis brewing, and some desperate, caring, exasperated Angeleno who feels compelled to tell us what’s threatened in their corner of the city, and ask if there’s any hope at all. There is, but it can be hard to find. The notorious Sunset Pacific Motel was captured by Ed Ruscha’s time machine.
Illegal Airbnb listing of a rent controlled unit in Charles Bukowski’s East Hollywood bungalow court exposes Pillow & Coffee, a short term rental empire destroying Los Angeles
This investigation is published on the 29th anniversary of Charles Bukowski’s death. In 2007, while writing our tour of Bukowski’s Los Angeles, we spotted a Craigslist ad that listed the writer’s longtime home in the 1920s bungalow court at 5124 De Longpre Avenue, East Hollywood as a teardown.
Scoop: What the heck is happening at Skid Row Housing Trust?
Original post February 10, 2023 (scroll down for updates): On Tuesday, while we were trying to get away from L.A.’s problems by spending my birthday exploring inland empire landmarks, the Los Angeles Times broke the story of the collapse of Skid Row Housing Trust, among the largest providers of permanent supportive housing in Downtown Los Angeles, and their desperate search for someone to take over their 29 buildings. The Real Deal and CBS News picked the story up.
Esotouric’s sentencing letter to Judge John F. Walter for Shen Zhen New World I LLC / Wei Huang
January 17, 2022 To the Honorable John F. Walter United States Courthouse 350 W. 1st Street Los Angeles, CA 90012 Courtroom 7A c/o Courtroom Deputy Clerk Shannon Reilly shannon_reilly@cacd.uscourts.gov [update: by email reply, Deputy Clerk Shannon Reilly informs us “If you want your letter to be considered for submission to the Court, you would need to send it to the Assistant United States Attorney on the case. Then if they deem it proper, they would submit it to the Court.
Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd… that you can explore in 3-D while listening to Lana Del Rey’s song about Jergins Tunnel?
Welcome to auspicious #13 in a series of 3-D explorable tours of off-the-beaten-path Southern California spaces, created by Craig Sauer using cutting-edge Matterport technology. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that we love tunnels, especially ones that are difficult to access.
Seeking Answers about the Rancho Los Amigos / Los Angeles County Poor Farm Potter’s Field Cemetery
In October 2022, we made a video expressing our concerns about the old Potter’s Field Cemetery at 11269 Garfield Avenue in Downey, and the unanswered question of what happened to many thousands of cremated remains of Rancho Los Amigos residents that were buried there in the 1930s. We’ve created this dedicated blog post to share updates as we continue to seek information about the historic burials and to advocate for a permanent memorial to the people who were interred here.
Save Eagle Rock’s Route 66 Standard Service Station
About a month ago, the new owners of the Clairville Plumbing & Heating compound, which sold for $2.1 Million on 5/25/2022, applied for a demolition permit for the rare all-metal Standard service station on the west side of the lot. Because 1659 W. Colorado is on Eagle Rock’s main drag, the posted notice immediately attracted attention—ratcheting up to alarm as windows and doors were removed.
Scoop: What the hell is happening at the Hotel Cecil?
Things are a little weird at the Hotel Cecil in Downtown Los Angeles these days. No, not serial killer tenants and unexplained death weird, though we’ve covered those narratives for years through our true crime tours, appearance as Skid Row crime historians on that Netflix series about Elisa Lam and in a spin-off webinar.
A plea to honor the last will and testament of William S. Hart and protect his house museum
July 31, 2023: This campaign is dedicated to the memory of Paul Reubens, who loved William S. Hart’s house museum, and advocated for its preservation. In his 1946 will, the silent film actor William S. Hart left his 254-acre Horseshoe Ranch in Newhall, personal possessions and a trust account “for the benefit of the American public of every race and creed,” to be maintained and administered as a free public park by the County of Los Angeles.
Scoop: Relevant Group has gutted the Morrison Hotel… and it’s weird
On 12/22/2024 the Morrison Hotel was red tagged by LADBS. On 12/26/2024 it caught fire, but did not burn down. On 8/25/2026 the Board of Building and Safety Commissioners declared it a nuisance at a hearing which the owners say they were not told about. On 10/7/2026, the owners filed a writ to reverse this decision. You can read the court filing here. The building is at immediate risk of being demolished by the city.
Karen Bass and the Mysteriously Migrating Marvin Gaye Post Office
It’s election season in Los Angeles, and with Eric Garcetti termed out, the fight for the chief executive slot—a race which was Jose Huizar’s to lose and did he ever—has attracted a predictable mix of deep pockets, political lifers and idealistic long shots. As the field has narrowed, the polls show Congresswoman Karen Bass holding steady.
Taix Redevelopment Hearing, Los Angeles Department of City Planning (3/16/2022)
Click play, then follow along with our live commentary on this hearing here. Taix French Restaurant is a beloved Echo Park landmark that has become the poster child for how billionaire developers continue to corrupt Los Angeles City Hall–even while multiple councilmen and civil servants are facing RICO charges or have confessed to taking bribes.
Save Cornelius Johnson’s Olympic Oak (R.I.P.)
Contrary to the story reported by CBS Saturday Morning on February 18, 2023, Cornelius Johnson’s Olympic Oak and family residence was not yet a protected Los Angeles landmark! On May 10, 2023, City Council finally voted to declare it a protected site. It was our hope that a new, preservation minded owner will soon appear to look after this special place. But sadly, it soon became clear that the tree has died after several years of neglect and the city’s failure to protect it.
The Leland Hotel, Empty No More
There’s something wonderful happening on “The Nickel,” the portion of Fifth Street that connects the gritty Skid Row neighborhood of Downtown Los Angeles with the business district to the West: the early 20th century residency hotels whose owner Izek Shomof kept them empty—despite covenants requiring them to be maintained as affordable housing—are getting purchased, restored and returned to their proper use! First it was the King Edward (John Parkinson, 1906), then the Baltimore (Arthur...
Monastery of the Angels Advocacy Campaign
February 2026 update: After months of rumors, it’s been announced that Homeboy Industries will convert Monastery of the Angels into residential treatment facility, Home of the Angels. As part of the Friends of the Angels team who stood fast against earlier plans to sell the property to a developer to be demolished, we are very pleased that it will be preserved and put to good work. Hear about what’s in the deed and how we got here in our newsletter post and the video above.
La Fe Shoe Repair, A Downtown L.A. Time Capsule in the Barclay Hotel
In October, we shared the thrilling news that the almost completely empty Barclay Hotel had been sold to the Healthy Housing Foundation and would be immediately returned to use as affordable housing, instead of being converted into a boutique hotel at some unspecified future date.
(Updated) Los Angeles Office of Historic Resources visits the damaged Pig ‘n Whistle after stop work order posted
On October 23, photos first circulated on social media showing workers on top of the awning of the historic Pig ‘n Whistle cafe at 6714 Hollywood Boulevard, covering the beautiful 1920s facade with cheap plastic signage for a Mr. Tempo Cantina and dropping the neon signs on the sidewalk.
Is Thomas James Homes’ Los Feliz redevelopment project diverting the Sacatela Creek and undermining Alexandria Avenue?
When people ask why we get so involved in historic preservation advocacy, despite the frustrations of fighting a pro-development City Hall that’s under multiple indictments for land use corruption, we answer that we feel called to do the work, want to be of service, and find it fascinating.
The Case of the Glendale Hyperion Bridge Streetlight Snatchers
We got the tip late Saturday night: a screenshot from a Nextdoor post, shared by a worried Angeleno who knew we’d take the case. Esotouric is nominally a Los Angeles tour company, but like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe (the star of one of our more popular outings), we’re suckers for a noir mystery, and we work cheap. Hyperion Bridge Light Pole Theft, wrote a resident of Atwater Village.
Save and Move The Last Chili Bowl Restaurant in Los Angeles (R.I.P.)
UPDATE APRIL 2024: Preservation pal Damian Sullivan reports that the deconstructed, numbered segments of the Pico Boulevard Chili Bowl, and the unique diamond pane roof sign and armature, have been hauled off to the dump by the property owner. The cleared lot—which was deceptively claimed by pro-development YIMBY lobbying organization Abundant Housing LA during the public landmark hearings to be slated for redevelopment as an apartment building—is being used as car storage.
The Appearance of Impropriety if PLUM Votes to Demolish The Los Angeles Times
(photo by architectural historian Michael R. Corbett, from SAFER’s appeal) In November 2018, the FBI raided the City Hall offices of Councilmember Jose Huizar. He has been charged with 34 counts of racketeering, and faces trial in June 2021. Councilmember Mitch Englander made a deal to avoid trial, and will be sentenced on January 25 on Federal corruption charges. His former deputy John Lee (now Councilmember) has been implicated by name in the crimes to which Englander confessed.
Ghosts of the Cecil
It was with shock and no small amount of horror that we learned that a body, believed to be that of Canadian tourist Elisa Lam, last seen behaving strangely in an elevator security video recorded on February 1, had been discovered today within one of the water tanks on the Cecil Hotel’s roof. A complaint about low water pressure had prompted an employee to look inside.
The Getty’s Gift to Locked Down Los Angeles: 71,139 Ed Ruscha Vintage Streetscape Photos Digitized
As history loving Angelenos enter our sixth trying month of shuttered archives and libraries, the Getty Research Institute just dropped a thrilling bombshell with the release of the Research Collections Viewer, an online access tool to high resolution scans of thousands of texts and images in its reference collection. We clicked the link so fast, it hurt. Were Ed Ruscha’s streetscapes included?
Pasadena’s recently rediscovered Adohr Milk Farms neon sign and bad research about Nat King Cole’s racist neighbors
Above: Nathan Marsak confirms that reports of the disappearance of the Adohr Milk Farms neon are premature [Update, October 2, 2021: Today, the Adohr Milk Farms sign was put back up on the building, following its restoration by Paul Greenstein. You can sneak a peek at the new lighting pattern here, and learn more about the Howlin’ Ray’s adaptive reuse signage project from Paul and sign historian Dydia DeLyser on our on-demand webinar, Los Angeles is the City of Neon Light.
Meet Jess, The Lopsided Monarch Butterfly Whose Wings We Splinted
Like so many of you, the pandemic has shrunk the size of our world. We haven’t gone out much at all since March, only to witness once-in-a-lifetime sign removals, keep the car engine humming on our socially distanced local road trips, and attend to unavoidable errands. We’re blessed to have a small but vibrant garden, which has been Richard’s special project for the past decade. He tends cacti and bromeliads, ferns, plumeria, bamboo and bananas.
Urgent! Sister Corita Kent’s Art Studio Threatened With Demolition
by Kim Cooper | Aug 10, 2020 | The Esotouric Blog | We’ve just learned that the art studio at 5518 Franklin Avenue where the influential graphic artist, educator and social justice advocate Sister Corita Kent (1918-1986) worked between 1960-1968 is threatened with demolition to create more parking for the Lazy Acres organic market, which is taking over the Rite-Aid.
7 Marketing Tools That Will Save You Tons of Time | Ep. #1455
Episode #1455 7 Marketing Tools That Will Save You Tons of Time July 26, 2020 Download Listen in a New Window iTunes Stitcher SoundCloud Leave a Review Clammr It Subscribe via RSS Subscribe on Android In episode #1455, we share the seven best tools for saving you a ton of time! From tools that help you to repurpose your content and automate your workflow to ones that offer graphic design solutions and help you identify decaying content, we have got you covered! Tune in to hear how you can...
The Eagle Tree: Dead or Alive?
Richard Schave looks on The Eagle Tree, November 2019 It’s always unpleasant to break the news that a significant cultural landmark is in trouble. During a pandemic, it feels cruel. But we can’t sit on this information any longer: Compton’s landmark Eagle Tree is on the ropes. The ancient sycamore was already remarkable in 1859, when Henry Hancock noted it on his survey of Rancho San Pedro, at the border with Rancho San Antonio.
For our 12th (linen) wedding anniversary, we delivered the Bradbury Building basement hoard to the Huntington Library
Twelve years ago this week, Alicia Bay Laurel married us in the garden of the Velaslavasay Panorama with psychic cats, a cool jazz trio, eats by Papa Cristo’s, Ernst Haeckel sheet cakes, Scholium Project wine (thanks, Abe), and all our friends. It’s been a wild, sweet ride so far! Being married to someone who shares your passions is a lot of fun, and our greatest shared passion is uncovering and preserving the history, culture and built environment of Los Angeles.
A Modest Proposal for Saving Rancho Los Amigos and Helping the Homeless of Los Angeles County
A SOLUTION FOR HOMELESSNESS: A NEW LOS ANGELES COUNTY “POOR” FARM By Colleen Adair Fliedner Author of the Rancho Los Amigos Centennial History Book The words “poor farm” generally conjure up images of Oliver Twist and filthy almshouses, where half-starved men, women and children live and work in deplorable conditions. When it came to the Los Angeles County Poor Farm, however, nothing was further from the truth. When it opened in 1888 about two miles from the fledgling community of Downey, the L. A.
Attention, Joan Crawford Lovers: The Mildred Pierce House is For Lease!
We got a tip today from a Glendale resident and Joan Crawford fan who wishes to remain anonymous, and who we’ll call Veda. Veda wanted to be sure we knew that 1143 North Jackson Street, which served as the exterior of Mildred and Bert Pierce’s unhappy marital home in the 1945 film of James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce, and which is a featured location on our Birth of Noir tour, is available for lease.
Richard Schave’s Public Comment to Los Angeles Planning Commission on Times Mirror Square
For context on the below public comment that Richard Schave made on 5/14/20, please see our newsletter post, Listen Live As The L.A. Times Project Appeal Hearing Illuminates City Government’s Corrupt Soul. So, what happened today at the Planning Commission hearing for Times Mirror Square? Fireworks. And not celebratory fireworks, but the kind of explosion that happens when an errant spark falls on the barge and blows the whole enterprise straight to hell.
The Hotel Californian neon is alive, alive!
It was 1995 when arson claimed the derelict Hotel Californian at the corner of 6th and Bonnie Brae in the Westlake District. But before the grand old H-shaped structure was demolished, the city removed its massive twin neon roof signs and placed them behind a chain link fence just east of the Mulholland Fountain on Riverside Drive. The plan, if you can call it that, was to convince the developer who would eventually build on the site to fix them up and put them back.
How to Start a Wildly Successful Podcast from Scratch in 2020 | Ep. #1371
Episode #1371 How to Start a Wildly Successful Podcast from Scratch in 2020 May 03, 2020 Download Listen in a New Window iTunes Stitcher SoundCloud Leave a Review Clammr It Subscribe via RSS Subscribe on Android In episode #1371, we tell you how to start a wildly successful podcast from scratch in 2020! With more people staying home with more time on their hands, now is a better time than any to build a podcasting platform for your business! Tune into this episode to hear how you can use...
7 Traits That Make Amazing Content Marketers | Ep. #919
Episode #919 7 Traits That Make Amazing Content Marketers February 05, 2019 Download Listen in a New Window iTunes Stitcher SoundCloud Leave a Review Clammr It Subscribe via RSS Subscribe on Android In episode #919, we discuss the 7 traits that make amazing content marketers. Tune in to hear what traits you need to be successful. We have committed to throwing a FREE Marketing School Live Event in Los Angeles, once Marketing School reaches 1M downloads in a 30 day period.
The National Emergency Library is here for Los Angeles
Libraries, how we love them—especially when they’ve got plenty of room and don’t cull the weird stuff that nobody has checked out since 1923! Back in the good old days, earlier this month, we were still spending our Tuesdays at the Huntington Library, where we’d split the day between peering through a magnifying lens at unpublished negatives of Grand Central Market, reading snarky editorials on the foibles of the Golden Age Hollywood set in Rob Wagner’s Script magazine, and wandering the holy...
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Kim
Contact Kim, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack