Forget celebrity homes. This Hollywood bus tour haunts the city instead

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

There are few things a Los Angeles local is less likely to do than take a Hollywood sightseeing tour on a big, garish bus.Only rush-hour traffic and $20 tacos inspire the same level of dread.Yet nearly everyone aboard the open-air bus for a Tuesday night production of “California Gothic: A Bus Tour” was an L.A.

resident.The show, which is produced by the aggressively hip New Theater Hollywood, recently wrapped its third “season” after debuting in February and returning for an April encore.

Set on a moving bus, the 1.5-hour-long experience is part esoteric Tinseltown history lesson, part immersive theater.The narrative conjures meaning from the Los Angeles cityscape by fusing a hodgepodge of textbook theories about the sprawling metropolis onto the gritty reality of daily life.“We originally organized this thinking there would be more people coming who aren’t from here,” said Oliver Misraje, the show’s writer and primary tour guide, as the bus pulled away from the curb at Santa Monica and Wilcox.

“But this just goes to show how much people love the city and are from here, contrary to popular belief.”In lieu of celebrity-hungry tourists, “California Gothic” has been packing its bus twice a night with rowdy young scenesters and in-the-know locals eager to absorb its heady mix of California history, public intellectualism and performance artistry.While the show wrapped its latest run in mid-June, it will reopen its automated doors during the last week of October for a special “ghost tour” edition co-written by Misraje and New York it girl Ruby McCollister.My tour was far less steeped in irony than I feared.As the bus wound its way through the streets of Hollywood, starting at the New Theater’s doorstep before eventually circling the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Misraje led the audience through his take on the death of the “California dream” and the ro...