Venice Beach – June to July 2007

Venice Beach:
The United States is the last country we’ll tour by bike. Arriving in California was like starting the last leg of our trip. We were both excited. Our 8-hour flight from Tahiti wasn’t too painful and I was thrilled when my friend Aaron, whom I hadn’t seen in four years, came to pick us up at the airport so that we wouldn’t have to bike through L.A. traffic. He’s living in Venice Beach now (a neighborhood of L.A.), which is an awesome beach community just south of Santa Monica. Stephane and I both LOVED Venice Beach!

Aaron showed us such a great time while we were there. We stayed three weeks with him and his roommate Chris. Aaron was a great tour guide and they both made us feel so comfortable at their place that we enjoyed our stay immensely. In fact, this was the first place we’d been that we felt we would have liked to live, apart from near our families in Pennsylvania or France.

Aaron’s neighborhood was great. I liked the Mexican-style houses and the flowers that reminded me of Polynesia. I had fun window-shopping at the trendy little shops lining Main St. and Abbot Kinney Blvd. We hit a few bars and barbecued on the beach and went dancing with Aaron and his fun-loving neighbor Minnie. We had bonfires and toasted S’mores at the firepit in front of Aaron’s house with Minnie and Caryn and Warren and their dog Guiness. We went hiking in the nearby mountains with Aaron and then with Scott (can you believe that I know only two people in all of California, and they just happen to live only a few streets from each other!).

One thing I loved about Venice is that there is a lot of outdoor living. Opportunities for outdoor recreation are endless, and people actually take advantage of them. Maybe it’s the year-round perfect weather. On Venice Beach, people jog, bike (or skateboard on a leash behind their dog!), surf, swim (if it’s really hot out), and play beach volleyball. Tattooed bodybuilders build muscle at the workout center on “Muscle Beach,” young men play squash and basketball at the nearby courts, skateboarders practice their jumps at the skateboard park, and 30- and 40-somethings roller-skate to hip-hop music, flexing their muscles, doing handstands, and break-dancing as an appreciative crowd looks on.

The atmosphere along Venice’s boardwalk was carnivalesque. Street musicians and magicians performed, hippies sold art and gadgets on the street, the “Venice Freakshow” entertained tourists, a short black man in a tight Speedo with a snake draped around his neck entertained amused onlookers, and summer vacationers and the homeless mingled in front of pizza shops, tattoo and piercing parlors, and a grove of graffitied trees. This was so unlike the Jersey shore!

The beaches in Venice are wide – so wide that the bike paths cut them in half. Toilets, volleyball nets, and even fire pits are set up on certain parts of the beach (why don’t we have this back East?). Lifeguard stations are set up along the beach at intervals, and Stephane was disappointed to not see any plastic and silicone babes in red running along the beach, like in the TV series “Baywatch.” Instead, there were only tanned and muscled hunks in dark glasses and red swimming trunks.

A drum circle forms on the beach every Sunday of the year. Hundreds of people gather as several dozen drummers form a circle in the late afternoon and continue on into the evening. This was one of my favorite parts about Venice. We danced for hours in the sand, stopping only for a drink of water, as evening slowly descended upon us. Different drummers played to different rhythms, and people gathered to dance in front of their favorite sound. Short Mexicans sported the jersey of their favorite team, taller blacks sported similar jerseys or cornrows or mohawks, and young or aging white hippies dressed in every color of the rainbow. In the center of the circle was a large flag of an Indian tribe stuck in the sand. When moved by the moment, Denny, the aging Indian with a graying ponytail, would pick it up and wave it high in the air. The crowd included the young and not-so-young, but all who joined in were lost in the rhythmic pounding of the percussion until the cops drove onto the beach around 9:30 PM to break up the party.

Aaron drove us north on P.C.H. through Santa Monica, Palisades, and Malibu and up the windy roads of the Malibu Mountains for a view over the Pacific Coast (and this was all still in L.A.!). We walked along the Malibu Beach, where we saw a pod of dolphins jumping in the surf. We drove past the beautiful homes of Beverly Hills and up the very windy Mulholland Drive for a nighttime view of L.A. and the Hollywood Hills. We drove down Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. We walked through the Venice Canals, which was a series of narrow canals lined by beautiful homes (doesn’t anyone want to offer me a home there?). We helped Chris celebrate his 35th birthday at Jim’s house on the beach. A DJ played while guests danced; it was a bit like a party for the rich and famous. A few guys impressed with our bike trip invited us to come use their pool or Jacuzzi anytime we wanted to (hmmm…we never did take advantage of those offers…).

We got a real quick introduction to L.A. culture our first night when we arrived at Minnie’s 31st birthday beach barbecue and she greeted us with the words, ”Hey, you guys have to try some of the vegan carrot cake!” I didn’t even know what vegan carrot cake was! As we were soon to find out, organic, vegetarian, vegan, and yoga were the bywords of Venice Beach and seemingly much of California. Everyone was talking “organic” and “yoga.” Because people not only ate organic, they “talked” organic. People bought organic coffee and organic sugar. What’s organic coffee and organic sugar? What is organic coca-cola?!!! We even saw an “organic dry cleaners” in Venice!!! I have never in my life met so many vegetarians, vegans, and yoga-practitioners.

In any case, our time in Venice Beach was unforgettable. Thanks to Aaron and to Chris for making it so wonderful and so memorable!