Starry Night, midday at Venice Beach. Mural by Rip Cronk, 1990. A larger view of this image can be found here.

One of my favorite things to do when in LA is to head to the end of Route 66. That happens to coincide with the end of Interstate Highway 10 as well—people have to decide what the hell to do all of a sudden to keep from driving into the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica. You can go north to Malibu, south to Venice Beach and Marina Del Ray or, with a slight jog, right on to the pier. 

Before heading down to the weird and wondrous Venice Beach boardwalk, I stop at the Santa Monica Pier and spend some time slowly walking the length. It's not a long pier, and taking my time helps me savor the experience. The seagulls are ever present, and they avoid the skewers intended to keep them aloft, though it's not much of an effort for them to find a spot to rest.

The Midway has been updated, and provides some color and noise, but its sounds seems not to carry very far, at least at the end of the pier it's quiet. There's always something going on and plenty to see. Artisans and street performers line the length of the pier, spaced far enough apart from each other to provide themselves a little circle of attention without crowding the next artist. 

I got this shot of a blues guitarist a couple of years ago on a previous trip.

Why someone would choose to have women molested in ink on his back is beyond my comprehension, but he must have thought it important at the time. Maybe what he thought it was supposed to represent doesn't now match the aging morph of the tattoo itself. He might not even look at it now, requiring some vain contortions and a hand-held mirror after all.

The salt smell runs through my sinuses like a virtual neti pot, the faint slow crashing of the surf of the superstructure below provides a calm counterbalance to the strange sights atop.

It's a good thing her habit didn't include cornette wimple wings as it was a bit windy.

I showed this tilt-shift picture to a friend over this past weekend and he said, "You need to learn how to focus your goddamned camera, boy."

Before heading south I drop down to the beach to visit a favorite piece of art. It's something we see less of now, public funded art. It's a piece called Walk on LA—a huge cylinder of concrete connected to a tow bar to be drawn over the sand. Those bakers among you who have done pressed cookies might recognize the function.

An airplane on a runway, a freeway, homes and an incongruously large hand.

Artist Carl Cheng received funding from the city of Santa Monica Arts Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts—constructed in 1988.

Venice Beach is stuck in a time warp. It still embodies the counter culture that began in the hippy heyday of the 60s—and even now you certainly encounter the the smokey tendrils of weed aroma often enough. Characters abound. The east side of the boardwalk is the domain of commercial establishments ranging from lovely to raunchy, classy to kitsch. On the advice of our own beloved OSer Rob St. Amant, I had an al fresco lunch at a lovely little place called Fig Trees Cafe. Service was casual, but quick and efficient with the bonus of a guitar trio playing nearby on the beach side of the boardwalk. The pedestrian walkway is officially known as Ocean Front Walk, but it's usually called the boardwalk by residents and visitors.

Navajo corn cakes with black bean chili, feta, avocado, organic salad with a smokey salsa and tropical iced tea. Miles Davis playing out the speakers—a wonderful lunch. Thanks Rob.

Eponymously ontological

Representative of a bad night, I think.

They had stoned 20-something wastrels standing out in front of the several Medical Marijuana Evaluation Centers handing out coupons for free guaranteed diagnoses.

On the beach side of the boardwalk are the artisans, vendors, character performers and beggars. (There are no boards on the boardwalk, it's concrete.) The strip is divided into small sections, each space marked off and numbered and about eight feet across. The spaces are assigned first come, first served with some set aside for a lottery selection and a few spaces reserved for indigents who cannot pay the modest fees. As on the commercial side, the vendors and performers range wonderfully artistic to banal. 

An elderly vendor on her way to her assigned spot.

There are quite a few musical performers, and a few that really stand out. Matt Dowd plays a Fender Stratocaster with amazing skill in finger and fret work. His music is almost exclusively cover renditions, matching the original and sometimes exceeding the first rendition. 

Displaying a devotion to the brand in a Telecaster t-shirt.

We spent some time talking between his sets, and I spent a lot of time listening. He had one of the more elaborate set ups for his 8 x 8 space. There's no electricity provided for the vendors, so the ones who need power have to bring their own. Matt brings his batteries, amps, mics and gear on a trolly each morning. He plays across from a boardwalk restaurant, and the few times I've visited, he seems to get the same or nearby spot every day.

He sells CDs that are obviously home crafted and I thought it was the right thing to do to get one to show some support for his real talent. But it was obvious that the live performances were much better than the results on the CD as there was no evidence of it being recorded in anything like a sound studio. A kitchen or a living room doesn't enhance a single track recording ported to a CD with ambient background sounds.

The vendor next door to Matt couldn't help herself getting into the groove when he displayed his Hendrix chops.

Some musical vendors don't limit themselves to a booth—we have the traveling variety as well. Harry Perry travels up and down the boardwalk on unusual offset roller blades carrying his gear with him including a portable battery powered amp.

I also ran into an old acquaintance Salty Salt. In an older OS post I talked about getting closer when taking photos of people and featured Salty as the lead image. This was Salty then:

and this is how he looks today—not much has changed.

He's still selling his home-brewed rap CDs and appreciated me sending the images of him for his own promotional use. He's a fun guy to talk to.

There's one performer that I won't support. The self-styled "World's Greatest Wine-O" has been a fixture at Venice Beach for years. His constant refrain "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, help me get drunk" may interest or invoke concern from passing tourists, but it's hard to contribute to such a cause. He berated me, and others, for taking his picture without paying for it, but the truth is that a photographer on public property can pretty much take photos of anything—rights long established in this country even in the age of misinterpreted Homeland Security concerns.

You can see the sublime and ridiculous in Venice Beach, the dissolute step-sibling of Santa Monica—it never disappoints as a way to spend a day. 

There's a link on the side of my Open Salon page, the only link to something that's not about me. It takes you to the blog site of a good friend, someone I've loved and admired for a long time. She goes by the screen name of Malingering on Flickr. She's a psychiatrist in LA and works tirelessly to help the least fortunate in the city, working at a clinic near Skid Row in an attempt to help those without much hope. She's also an amazing street photographer, documenting the sublime and ridiculous in how people choose to present themselves in public. She has a collection of photography that she terms Ridiculousness in LA. I think of her as a modern Diane Arbus-like documentarian, presenting images that are often hard to understand. Her photo stream is controversial—good art often is—and she's received an inordinate amount of hate mail and threats, but she's simply presenting what is. She's worth checking out to see a much broader spectrum of what is unique and unusual about one of my favorite places to visit.

I'll leave you with an image of love and affection.

I've been traveling quite a bit. I'm not done yet with my summer sojourns, though summer has passed. Another journey to Santa Fe to help my friend there and a business trip to Cancun still in the offing. 

It's always nice to get home. Popper missed me, and I missed her too. From the reports, she spent most of her time missing me while sleeping.

all photos © 2010 barry b. doyle · all rights reserved

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