Venice Beach, California

As I mentioned yesterday, my girlfriend and I decided to stay at a Venice Beach Hostel. Today I wanted to do a post about Venice Beach itself and what it’s all about.

The beach is pretty popular and is located just south of Santa Monica. It’s about 30 minutes from Los Angeles on a good driving day (do they really exists?).

Anyways, here is a breakdown of some of the things Venice Beach had to offer:

The Beach

The actual beach in Venice is really nice. It’s really big in terms of sand, as opposed to smaller beaches like Waikiki in Hawaii. There was some construction going on near our hostel so a lot of it was blocked off by construction signs.

There were a lot of people walking around the beach, even a few people doing yogo (and some sort of karate). As far as people in the water, I only saw a handful of crazy people. The weather was pretty cool, especially with the wind. The water was by no means warm so I didn’t even bother to get wet.

The surf looked pretty flat the whole time we were there so I am not sure if people surf here. I did see a few guys carrying shortboards so I would assume that it is possible on some days.

Here is a picture of the beach:

The Boardwalk

One of the big attractions at Venice Beach is the boardwalk. It’s a strip of shops, restaurants, and crazy people that runs along the beach. There were literally hundreds of shops selling all sorts of things, mostly sunglasses and other touristy crap. I didn’t buy anything since it didn’t seem worth it but if you are in to souvenirs then this is the place for you.

There were also a lot of food stands and a few restaurants that seemed to be happening. My girlfriend and I ended up going to a restaurant and grabbing some pizza and beer. It wasn’t cheap though and a pitcher of Blue Moon was over 22 bucks. Ouch!

The good news is that the people watching opportunities more than made up for the price of the beer. The things I saw over the course of an hour made my mind fall apart. We’re still convinced we saw a homeless man kiss a 13 year old boy on the lips. Very, very weird…

How many people were on the boardwalk? Look at this picture for a clue:

The Graffiti Walls

One thing I really enjoyed about Venice Beach was the graffiti walls. They have a few cement walls set up where people can legally paint as long as they have a permit. I thought it was a really cool idea that more cities should implement.

Here is a picture of one of the walls:

The coolest part about the walls is how often they change. We walked by later on in the day and the paintings were completely different than they were before.

The Nighlife

For the most part, the nightlife in Venice didn’t exist. Once the sun went down it seems like everyone disappeared into thin air. The vendors all closed around 5 or 6 pm, as well as the food stands. Heck, even the outside bar across the street was closed after 6.

The first night we were there we ended up taking a cab to Santa Monica. We found an awesome bar called Barney’s that kicked ass. The second night, we wanted to save some money and not take a cab. So we decided to stay in Venice and see what we could find.

Since there are very few places to go, we ended up just crossing the street from our hostel and going to a cocktail lounge. It was an older style bar that reminded me of some of the bars I used to go to in Wisconsin. It was really dark inside and had a somewhat creepy vibe going on.

The worst part of all was the drink prices. A tiny rum and coke (well drink) ran us 7 bucks a pop. I then switched to beer and was even more surprised. A tallboy of Pabst Blue Ribbon ran me 7 bucks as well.

The best part about the bar was the old Atari table they had. We played 5 bucks worth of Donkey Kong while I sucked back my PBR. Talk about a hell of a night!

An Interesting Experience

The easiest way to sum of Venice Beach is to say it was an interesting experience. I saw some really cool paintings, a few human statues, and a whole lot of weirdness going on. It reminded me of Hawaii in a lot of ways except it was much more “unique.”

I would recommend checking this place out for a day or two, especially if you find yourself in Los Angeles looking for something to do. I would NOT recommend staying here more than two days as you will quickly become bored. There isn’t much happening once the sun goes down.

Posted on: March 12th, 2009

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