Bukowski's home officially a landmark

A Dirty Old Man's Old House Gets Its Plaque

Yesterday the LA City Council gave its blessing to the landmarking of a complex of bungalows that include the one where cult writer Charles Bukowski lived from 1963-1972. Until the current action, the buildings were set to be torn down for condos. Known for his books that looked to the seedy side of L.A. for their inspiration, Bukowski died in 1994 after a long life of struggles, prolific writing, and very hard living. To commemorate the landmarking, the tour company Esotouric will run a special memorial edition of its Haunts Of A Dirty Old Man tour on March 9. The five-hour trip heads to such Bukowski must-dos as his favorite liquor store, the Pink Elephant, the post office where he worked for most of his life, locations he wrote about in Barfly, and other places that were part of his "great passions: writing, screwing, and Los Angeles"...

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Poet Bukowski's home now an LA landmark

The modest bungalow that hard-drinking poet Charles Bukowski once called home has joined the Hollywood sign and City Hall as a protected civic landmark.

The City Council on Tuesday approved the designation of the East Hollywood home and the bungalows that surround it as a cultural-historic monument in a consent vote with no opposition.

"He's one of Los Angeles' most famous writers and characters in general," said Lauren Everett, a fan of the late writer who led the landmarking effort.

The adobe-coloured one-storey house, where Bukowski lived between 1963 and 1972, "is just as much a part of history as the Bradbury Building or the Central Market or any other building that people revere," she said.

But not everyone was thrilled to see the home landmarked. The poet's widow, Linda Lee Bukowski, said she did not think her husband would have appreciated seeing a fuss made over the house he rented.

"He was not the kind of person whose ego needed a large edifice in his memorium," she said.

Bukowski said she was sickened by earlier proposals that the house serve as a residence for writers and artists.

"That would be repulsive to Hank," she said, using the writer's nickname.

"It would be against all his natural human ways to have little writers and poets in bungalows together, little Bukowskis running around."

Bukowski, whose books include "Post Office," "Factotum" and the poetry anthology "Love is a Dog From Hell," died in of leukemia at 73 in 1994...

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