washington boulevard terminus, venice

Southern California has always had an odd attitude about its beach towns. From Laguna to Huntington to Venice, beaches were once thought of as either crude campgrounds or not-so-nice places to live: makeshift shantytowns for dirty hippies + scary Hell's Angels types. Our attitudes since then have of course completely changed, to the point where the phrase "beachfront property" has become a cliché indicating the highest echelon of lifelong real estate aspirations — but the beach, no matter how you dress it up, still has a slapdash foundation rooted in the past. You can see it in the almost complete lack of amenities along the Strand; in PCH's eight lanes of freeway-speed traffic; in Santa Monica's big blacktop binge, with more space dedicated to parking than to her world-famous pier itself; and finally here, at the place where Washington Blvd. (LA's longest east-west artery) unceremoniously meets the ocean as a herringbone lot. Venice maintains its charm despite being saddled with legacy infrastructural oddities (i.e. the bike-hostile Speedway Pacific Avenue), and with narrower streets it starts to less like a truck stop and more like the scruffy, laid-back beach bum we all love. See it narrowed!
High quality prints available