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DISCOVER VENICE BEACH
Venice is a district in western Los Angeles, California. It is known for its canals, beaches and circus-like Ocean Front Walk, which features performers, fortune-tellers and vendors.
Throughout the summer months, the boardwalk is actively entertaining, and this tradition continues on weekends in the winter. It is an important tourist attraction in Southern California, and has retained its popularity in part because it is an attractive location for walking and bicycling.
Venice Beach was home to early Beat poets and artists in Los Angeles.
Venice of America was founded by tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney in 1905 as a beach resort town, 14 miles west of Los Angeles. He and his partner Francis Ryan had bought two miles (3 km) of oceanfront property south of Santa Monica in 1891. They built a resort town called Ocean Park on the north end of the property, which was soon annexed to Santa Monica.
After Ryan died, Kinney and his new partners continued building south of Navy Street in the unincorporated territory. After the partnership dissolved in 1904, Kinney built on the marshy land on the south end of the property. His intent was to create a seaside resort like its namesake in Italy.
Venice is today one of the most vibrant and eclectic areas of Southern California and it continues a tradition of progressive social change involving prominent Westsiders. The Venice Family Clinic is the largest free clinic in the country.
Many of Venice's houses have their principal entries from pedestrian-only streets, and have house numbers on these footpaths. (Automobile access is by alleys in the rear). However, like much of Los Angeles, Venice is also well-known for traffic congestion. It lies 2 miles away from the nearest freeway, and its unusually dense network of narrow streets was not planned for the demands of modern traffic.
 VENICE BEACH
Venice Beach is understood to include the beach, the promenade that runs parallel to the beach (Ocean Front Walk or just the boardwalk), Muscle Beach, the handball courts, the paddle tennis courts, Skate Dancing plaza, the numerous beach volleyball courts, the bike trail and the businesses and residences that have their addresses on Ocean Front Walk.
Along the southern portion of the beach, at the end of Washington Boulevard, is the Venice Fishing Pier. A 1,310-foot (400 m) concrete structure, it first opened in 1964, but was closed in 1983 due to El Nino storm damage, only reopening in the mid-1990s. On December 21, 2005, the pier again suffered damage when waves from an unusually big northern swell caused the part of the pier upon which the restrooms were located to fall into the ocean.
The pier remained closed until May 25, 2006, when it was reopened after an engineering study concluded the pier was structurally sound.
The Venice Breakwater is an acclaimed local surf spot in Venice, located north of the Venice Pier and Lifeguard Headquarters, and south of the Santa Monica Pier. This spot is sheltered on the north by an artificial barrier, the breakwater, consisting of an extending sand bar, piping, and large rocks at its end.
DOWNTOWN VENICE
The areas along Abbot Kinney and Grand Boulevards and Main Street form the traditional downtown of Venice. During the 1920s and 1930s, the area's nightlife was quite active, with thousands of Angelenos arriving every night by streetcar.
Before he burst onto the national scene, Benny Goodman had a brief residence as a bandleader in Venice.
Nightlife boomed again in the late 1960s as the area became a center of hippie culture.
Since the late 1990s, downtown Venice has been especially popular, with many bars, nightclubs, art galleries, and edgy apparel shops occupying both its older brick and Art Deco storefronts and hyper-modern glass facades.
NOTABLE RESIDENTS
Venice has always been known as a hangout for the creative and the artistic. In the 1950s and 60s, Venice became a center for the Beat generation. There was an explosion of poetry and art. Major participants included Stuart Perkoff, John Thomas, Frank T. Rios, Tony Scibella, Lawrence Lipton, John Haag, Saul White, Robert Farrington and Philomene Long.
Prominent residents of Venice include actresses Julia Roberts, Kate Beckinsale, Lana Clarkson and Anjelica Huston, actors Nicolas Cage, Tim Meadows, Robert Hegyes, Michael T. Weiss, and musicians Perry Farrell, Joshua Kadison, John Lydon (who owns a sizeable amount of rental property in Venice), John Frusciante, Fiona Apple and Mike Muir and most of his Suicidal Tendencies bandmates.
Filmmaker Tao Ruspoli and his wife, actress Olivia Wilde live in Venice. Architect Frank Gehry is a longtime resident who has bought a huge vacant lot on Harding Avenue in Venice where he plans to build his new personal residence.
Actor Robert Downey Jr. kept an apartment on the boardwalk during the 1990s. Harding Avenue is also where the Lennon Sisters of Lawrence Welk fame grew up. Jim Morrison lived in Venice for two years where he met Ray Manzarek to form the nucleus of The Doors.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting career began after becoming a regular bodybuilder at Venice's famous Gold's Gym, whose present facility claims to be "The Mecca of Bodybuilding."
Restaurateur Wolfgang Puck has owned and operated noted eateries in the area since the 1990s. Other notables include actors Viggo Mortensen, Rutger Hauer, Bryan Callen, and Elijah Wood, and film directors Henry Jaglom and Paul Mazursky. For many years, pro wrestlers Hulk Hogan and Sting were announced as residing in Venice Beach as well. Standup comedians and street performers have proliferated in Venice, Wavy Gravy and Swami X being two of the more recent hippie busker alumni.
Political contributions have been sent from homes in Venice from the actor Dennis Hopper and Simpsons creator Matt Groening. South Park creator Matt Stone lives in Venice as well. Harry Perry, the famous street entertainer, is one of the boardwalk's key performers. Photographer Helen K. Garber maintains a studio on Ocean Front Walk. Graffiti/Street Artist and painter Jean-Michel Basquiat lived in Venice in the 80's. Immature, an R&B group from the 1990's, used to perform on the boardwalk prior to becoming famous.
Venice is today a vibrant area of Southern California and it continues a tradition of progressive social change involving prominent Westsiders. The Venice Family Clinic is the largest free clinic in the country.
LOS ANGELES COUNTY LIFEGUARDS
Venice Beach is the headquarters of the Los Angeles County Lifeguard Division of the Fire Department. It is located at 2300 Ocean Front Walk. It is the nation's largest ocean lifeguard organizations with over 100 full-time and 600 part-time or seasonal lifeguards. The headquarter building used to be the City of Los Angeles Lifeguard Headquarters until they were merged into the County System in 1975. The department is commonly referred to by Angelenos as Baywatch Lifeguards.
The Los Angeles County Lifeguards safeguard 31 miles (50 km) of beach and 70 miles (110 km) of coastline, from San Pedro in the south, to Malibu in the north. Lifeguards also provide Paramedic and rescue boat services to Catalina Island, with operations out of Avalon and the Isthmus.
Lifeguard Division employs 120 full-time and 600 seasonal lifeguards, operating out of three Sectional Headquarters, located in Hermosa, Santa Monica, and Zuma beach. Each of these headquarters staffs a 24-hour EMT-D response unit, and are part of the 911 system. In addition to providing for beach safety, Los Angeles County Lifeguards have specialized training for Baywatch rescue boat operations, underwater rescue and recovery, swiftwater rescue, cliff rescue, marine mammal rescue and marine firefighting.
From Wikipedia
 LOS ANGELES TOURS, TRAVEL & ACTIVITIES
LOS ANGELES HOTELS & ACCOMMODATION
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