Category: Cities

The Crime Bus Lurches Out of the Fog

Join us, gentle rider, on the Crime Bus! We’re taking a break from our regularly scheduled Crime Bus touring in early 2006 to develop some new and very wild rides, but private tours can still be booked during this time. Typically, public tours run on both days of a weekend about once a month, and prospective passengers can subscribe to our email list– just click the link at right to be kept informed of all the details. Or watch this site for announcements.

Tours include… THE REAL BLACK DAHLIA… PASADENA CONFIDENTIAL… WEIRD WEST ADAMS… NIGHTMARES OF BUNKER HILL… HALLOWEEN HORRORS… with more to come.

Seats now available on The Halloween Horrors Crime Bus Tour

Join us, gentle rider, on the Crime Bus!

NEW TOUR: Saturday 10/21, 1pm-6pm, Hallowe’en Horrors, a five hour guided luxury coach tour to the most grisly, weird, horrific and unintentionally hilarious crime scenes of old Los Angeles. This tour is not recommended for children, and we suggest you BYOBB (bring your own barf bag). More info here.

UPDATE: The October 21 tour has nearly sold out, so we have added a second bus on Sunday October 22, 1pm-6pm. If interested in tickets for Sunday or Saturday , please contact us to reserve, then you may either send a check or pay with Paypal here. Seats are $47/person, which includes Halloween-flavored Scoops gelato. Departure location – a metro station near downtown LA, provided to all passengers close to tour time.

AND YES: Passengers are welcome to wear costumes!   

Book Crimebo For Your Event

Crimebo the Crime Clown is regularly available for party and event bookings within the metro Los Angeles area, and phone greetings anywhere. Out of town trips and other unusual requests can sometimes be accomodated, so please ask. For more info, visit his page at Esotouric.

Interested? Contact us with any questions, or to ask if your desired date and time are available. If you want the personalized touch, please include dates of the honoree’s birthday or anniversary (if different from the event date), so Crimebo can research all the terrible things that happened on that date.

Photos from the August 6 Pasadena Confidential Tour

Yesterday’s Pasadena Confidential Crime Bus Tour was a hoot, as we glided around the Crown City in our air conditioned murder bus with a happy coterie of grisly lookyloos. Here are a few photos snapped along the way…

Below, Crimebo honors the lucky Miss Cathy with a pre-birthday litany of all the horrors that happened on the day she was born.

Crimebo the Crime Clown reads to Cathy

Here, Crimebo and hosts Kim and Nathan take a mid-tour breather at Connal’s on Washington Boulevard, conveniently loated between the sites of a hammer murder and a bathtub suicide. Plus their malts is yummy!

1947project Crime Bus hosts Kim and Nathan with Crimebo the Crime Clown

And another view of that scary clown Crimebo… don’t you want him at your birthday party?!

 

Crimebo the Crime Clown reads from his Big Book of Crime

Pasadena Weekly Puts Crimebo and Pals on its Cover

1947project on the Pasadena Weekly cover

All the world loves a clown… especially a Crime clown! And when the editor of Pasadena Weekly heard about Crimebo, he upgraded Carl Kozlowski’s planned feature on the Pasadena Confidential tour from the arts section to the cover! Sneak a peek, online or in person, and don’t miss Matt Craig’s evocative photos.

1947project in the Pasadena Weekly interior

Our Harbors: Built on the Body of Graecus

August 2, 1907
San Pedro

longwharfThe great wharfs and piers of Los Angeles are by and large but a thing of memory.  Who cannot tilt a head in wonder as one motors up PCH past the State Historic Landmark signage for the Port of Los Angeles Long Wharf, designating it “site of” the longest wooden pier in the world?
pedrowharf
It was dismantled after San Pedro became our official harbor in 1897. 

Ten years later, on this day, while the wharf was under construction, stout men were busy pulling bodies from the briny Pedro deep.

Seems that trainmen ran heavily-loaded cars onto the trackless uncompleted portion, causing 365 feet of trestle work to collapse, crushing Bakko Kovavich and drowning three others—Melia Bolich and Miko Kovavich.  Where Native Americans famously built our skyscrapers, it would appear that Greeks built our piers.

Remember these men when next you enjoy the fruits of our port system.

Landlord Beware

July 11, 1907
San Pedro

When poolhall manager G.M. Woodward’s rented house on 17th Street burned on June 29, landlord Mrs. M. Sweetman was grateful no one was killed. But after discovering the fire was intentionally set by Woodward, who had hopes of claiming $1100 insurance on his furnishings, she is fuming herself. Woodward is in County Jail, unable to make his bail.

Meanwhile, passengers on the North German Lloyd liner Kronprinz Wilhelm arrived in Hoboken with a terrifying tale of their ship having struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on July 8. Authoress Gertrude Atherton and statesman Baron Speck Von Sternberg were among the shaken travellers.