"Fante was my God" ­ Charles Bukowski

WHAT: Esotouric's John Fante's Bunker Hill with special guest Charles Bukowski
WHEN: Saturday June 16, 1-6pm
COST: $55, which includes Fante-inspired gelatos from Scoops (or ride
both Bukowski/Fante for $90, or get a four-tour season pass for $190)
WHERE: Departs from Lincoln Heights Cypress Gold Line station, tour
covers downtown and Hollywood locations.
Contact: 323-223.2767 / www.esotouric.com

LOS ANGELES- In June Esotouric, the eclectic bus adventure company whose offbeat tours expose L.A.'s secret history, launches a new tour celebrating the life, work, myths and passions of the sage of Bunker Hill, proto-Beat
novelist-screenwriter John Fante ("Ask the Dust," "Wait Until Spring, Bandini," "Walk on the Wild Side"). The tour is a companion piece to the tour Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles, debuting in August, with a gala four-day Bukday festival on what would have been the writer's 87th birthday. Discount tickets are now available for passengers buying seats on Fante on 6/16 and Bukowski on 8/18, $90 instead of $110. The tour explores Fante's conflicted creative and personal life as it played out against the backdrop of downtown and Hollywood, with a focus on the years 1933-43. The downtown section spans Fante's arrival in L.A. as an ambitious Denver youth featured in a newspaper article about the restaurant bus boy who wrote stunning short stories by night on Bunker Hill, gathering material from the bums, whores, madmen, winos, lost souls and poets who were his neighbors. It was these full of life stories, when transformed into the early novels featuring Fante's alter-ego Arturo Bandini, that earned him that tragic ticket across town to the studios, for which he toiled for much of the rest of his life. He didn't write fiction again until diabetes robbed him of his legs and sight. Torn by his self-identification as a first generation Italian-American, wounded by the racism he saw everywhere, subject to fits of rage that hurt everything he loved, slave to the bottle and his art, Fante burned bright but was largely forgotten until Bukowski discovered him at the downtown library and forced his own publisher to reissue Fante's work. In 2006, Fante's "Ask the Dust" was made into a Robert Towne film starring Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek.

Co-hosted by Esotouric co-founder Richard Schave and artist Kelly Kuvo, the tour draws on Fante's novels, letters, short stories, films and the memories of his friends and colleagues to paint a portrait of one the giants of Los Angeles letters, whose work continues to find fans two decades after his death. The tour spans Fante's L.A. from downtown landmarks (The Goodwill where Bandini shopped, King Eddy's where Bandini drank, the exquisitely
painted library Reading Room where Bukowski discovered his idol) to Hollywood (the house on Berendo where "Ask the Dust" was penned, Wilcox Avenue where Fante spent some of his hardest times), and includes several off-bus adventures. All Esotouric Bus Adventures include a unique food component, and for Fante, the treats come from gelato artisan Tai Kim, of East Hollywood's Scoops. Inspired by Fante's Italian roots and personal iconoclasm, Tai will
create a suite of intense flavors to coincide with the tour launch. Passengers will enjoy free servings of two flavors of their choice.

Esotouric's 1947 project.com has quickly built a reputation for the most eclectic and well researched crime history tours in the Southland, with its popular Pasadena Confidential and Real Black Dahlia tours, and feature stories in The Los Angeles Times, Pasadena Weekly (cover story), LA Alternative Press (cover story), BBC News, Pasadena Star-News, KNX News
Radio and a "best of LA" nod from Los Angeles Magazine. With John Fante's Bunker Hill, Esotouric continues its expansion into literary tourism.

Sat May 26 - Pasadena Confidential
Sat June 16- John Fante's Dreams of Bunker Hill
Sat July 21 ­ Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles: In A Lonely Place
Thur Aug 16 ­ Charles Bukowski's Birthday Party event
Fri Aug 17 ­ Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles
(night tour)
Sat Aug 18 - Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's Los Angeles

For more on the 1947 project crime a day blog (current year 1927), see www.1947project.com