Hidden Venice Beach: A Walking Tour

words + photos by Don Mankin

Someone once wrote that if you tip the United States on edge, everything that’s loose will slide down to Los Angeles. I would add, if you tipped Los Angeles on edge, it will all slide down to Venice Beach.

The best place to see all those loose odds and ends is the “boardwalk,” which has no boards but lots of asphalt. That is the Venice Beach known far and wide – the low rise mix of vintage buildings and radical modern architecture lining one side of the boardwalk and the vendors, entertainers, and champions of obscure causes with provocative signs -- “meat is murder” and “circumcision is worse” -- lining the other. And then there are the people walking along the boardwalk in outfits they would never wear at home.

Few visitors stray far from the boardwalk. Those who don’t miss the best show of all -- the other attractions that make Venice Beach the largest spontaneous outdoor theme park/playground and one of the most interesting communities in the world. To discover the hidden highlights of Venice Beach, just follow this easy, leisurely walking tour. It should take about three hours or more if you want to shop, linger, and eat, or less than three if you are in a hurry.

THE BEACH

The first stop is the beach, which begins just a few yards west of the boardwalk and extends for over 100 yards to the water’s edge. On the way to the beach, stop and check out the new skateboard park at the foot of Market Street and watch the boarders sail into the air, frozen in mid flight against a dramatic background of broad sandy beach, crashing waves, coastal mountains and big sky.

From here, you can take off your shoes and shuffle on the sand to the water. Most days the beach is almost empty except for a few sunbathers, surfers, or meditators gazing at the sailboats gliding off shore or, at the right time of year, dolphins playing in the breaking waves. Look south and you can usually see the outline of Santa Catalina Island in the distance; look north and you can get a better look at the background that framed the soaring skateboarders -- a beach curving around a vast bay all of the way to Malibu and beyond. Behind that, the Santa Monica Mountains taper down to the ocean. When visitors tell me that they think that Los Angeles is ugly, this is where I bring them to change their mind. I have never failed to do so.

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DRAMA AT THE 99cent store

I went yesterday to pick up a prescription at the CVS pharmacy on Lincoln Boulevard in Venice (California, photo via Flickr by ElFreddyless fortunately, but not so bad), and as I parked saw a police car pull up in front of the 99 cent store. Three young officers, two of them men, got out of the vehicle, triangle-cornered a short, squat, fiftyish Chicano just getting onto his bicycle with a green backpack, and guns drawn, told him to lie down on the ground. Guns drawn. No shit. They first ordered him to put his hands on his head, and as he was slow to do so, obviously shocked and frightened, with an apparent language difficulty, got him to lie down on the ground, in increments—I couldn’t hear what they were saying so all of this played out MOS—but first he was on his knees, then fully face down on the sidewalk, where they put his hands behind his back for him, cuffed him, got him gingerly onto his feet, and walked him to the trunk of their police car, made him lean against it, frisked him, and started going through his back-pack.


As it was outside the 99cent store and I had noted great congregations of homeless outside it the day before, I assumed they had been called for a suspected shoplifting. But guns drawn? Three of them, including the young blonde policewoman, holding their weapons with both hands and aiming it at him as if they were breaking into a meth lab.

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