A Goodbye Kiss To Venice, California
Blog post description.
10/15/20265 min read
After living in and painting Venice for 40 years, I’ll soon be leaving my longtime home. I will dearly miss neighbors, friends, a few old haunts, and the gifted musicians and artists I’ve been blessed to collaborate with over the years. Mostly, I will miss Venice of yesteryear. My beloved community has changed dramatically in four decades. There’s a point beyond which all the progress money can buy destroy the very soul of a city.
When I first moved to the Venice Canals in the 70s, the hood had a menacing edge. Folks were terrified to venture too far west of Lincoln. To appear respectable, local shop owners used Marina Del Rey zip codes to lure unsuspecting customers, who perhaps rightly feared overexposure to freaks and counter culture. To many locals, that edgy, undiscovered, deviant, depraved and dangerous twisted place was paradise. We knew the warm heart and gentle soul obscured underneath the gruff, intimidating exterior.
As a local artist for 4 decades, I’m often challenged to differentiate real from imagined Venice. Some of my art depicts “Retro Venice,” a quirky and eclectic community of renegades who party in brightly painted cottages along colorfully landscaped canals. It’s a joyful world of fun-loving souls, who drink, gab and shoot pool in local dive bars, warmly welcome strangers, offer a buck to homeless who’ve fallen from grace, off the wagon, off their meds after losing Uncle Sam’s battles in Nam or Iraq, or failed to keep a murderous pace set by Madison Avenue’s Joneses. “Utopia” means “No Place.” Maybe Retro Venice never existed beyond the imaginary borders of a blank white canvas.
As dazzling new hotspots pop up where old haunts used to be, I feel a wild urge to turn back time like George Bailey incredulous at the crass horrors of Potterville. Yeah, change is inevitable. This isn’t my town anymore. The City of Angels wasn’t built on sentiment. L.A. never shared a love affair with history. It is heartbreaking the nonchalance with which iconic landmarks come crashing down. It’s no surprise local preservationists were unable to save Ray Bradbury’s old digs. A Craftsman bungalow where the longtime Venice denizen began clacking out The Martian Chronicles was razed and supplanted by a New York based art gallery that went belly up in 3 years. At least history wasn’t wie out for a vape lounge or tat parlor, unless there’s one there now.
As a teenager in the 60s, I often hitchhiked to Venice Beach from Culver City. Nothing surprising ever went down in my drowsy hometown suburb east of Lincoln Blvd, I was irresistibly drawn to the squalid carnival atmosphere of the Venice Boardwalk, where pot smoking vendors hawked dayglo chatchkes and Tye dye jazzmatazz to slack jawed tourists while the scraggly foul-mouthed Swami X delivered Zen-tinged riffs in a gruff Bronx staccato, spewing rapid fire F-Bombs at hecklers like a twisted Don Rickles.
In the 70s, after graduating from LMU with a Lit degree, I embarked on the obligatory European trip and quest for self. I tuned in, turned on, dropped out, read the requisite subversive literature, and honed my native skills at questioning authority. When my wanderlust and money ran out, I flew home from April in Paris to June Gloom in L.A. I found a cheap studio on Strongs Drive, an alley tucked snugly between Venice and Washington Blvds, a short stroll from the historic canals and Venice Boardwalk.
Inspired by Monet and Van Gogh, I sketched ramshackle cottages, scraggly gardens, crumbling sidewalks, cowlicked palms, and iconic bridges. In my studio, I listened to a neighbor play accordion on her patio. To a steady flow of jaunty gypsy melodies, jazz standards and the sentimental familiarity of Beatle medleys, I worked to capture the humble subject matter in acrylic on canvas. Looking back, I truly lived the Bohemian dream. Venice of yesteryear rolled out an organic hemp welcome mat for misfits.
I rendezvoused with Muses after midnight, mulling the immensities to the rhythm of a foghorn and waves slapping the concrete pilings of Venice Pier. I strolled mist shrouded film noir streets at ungodly hours to hunker down with Herman Hesse at The Meatless Mess Hall and scribble snippets of poetry at wobbly tables shared by kindred spirits at the now defunct cafe, once open 24 hours, now dead and gone forever like other local haunts: The Comeback Inn, Lafayette Cafe, Blue Moon Saloon, Crabshell, Roosterfish, Hal’s, Omelet Parlor, Abbott’s Habit, Fox Venice Theatre, and Brandywine Cafe.
Whilst I reminisce about good ole days of yore, Venice wasn’t all grand and glorious. A fetid stench wafted off mossy green canals on sweltering Summer days. I stumbled on a few dead bodies in dark alleyways. A rowdy biker gang, The Heathens, ruled the local dive bars. Hinano’s served kickass burgers, cheap beer and bloodshed. The Sunset Saloon. featured live music 7 nights a week. My musical tribe risked our lives for rock and roll. Knives flashed, fists flew, hurtled beer bottles whizzed past my ear as I belted out Roadhouse Blues and Sympathy for the Devil. One dark day in the 80s the music died. The Sunset closed down. It reopened a year later all gussied up and soulless. Suddenly the Marina Del Rey, disco, Reagnomics and the 80s sprang to horrible life.
One stunning spring morning I stepped outside my studio to take a break and looked up the street just as a huge beautiful century old eucalyptus toppled down. Chainsaws and bulldozers were mauling a 100 some year old Craftsman home and garden. It was day one of a few long loud years of progress and improvements on my street. Half the block, most of my neighbors were evicted, evacuated, demolished. Each day for months a Mercedes with tinted windows rolled up. A man in sunglasses and a suit stepped out. Call him Mr. X. He stood intently watching his row of shiny new 3 story investment boxes rise as decades of history collapsed in a heap of dust and rubble. I knew my days in Venice were numbered. Cue up the Doors: “This is the end, beautiful friend.”
But enough lamentations over the best changes money can buy. I’m no fan of modern Venice, but as local legend Jim Morrison once sang: “If they say I never loved you, you know they are a liar.” I spent the best 40 years of my life here. I could not have asked for a better place to express myself as an artist or be lovingly embraced for my work. My art has been featured in the Free Venice Beachhead, and Journal of The Venice HIstorical Society. Two of my images were chosen by the Venice Family Clinic to raise funds through the VAC’s holiday gift card program. I helped create a mural on behalf of homeless in downtown L.A. with acclaimed muralist Judith F. Baca at The Social and Public Arts Resource Center (SPARC). In 2005, I helped organize a Venice Centennial Celebration in the Venice Canals, featuring art, and music by The Canaligators. I was invited to perform an original song at the first anti war protest in Venice against the present conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. I was asked to assist brilliant essayist and dissident Gore Vidal up and down stairs to the stage to speak at a Marci Winograd rally. The late Mr. Vidal’s rhetorical power and resonant voice, belied his physical frailty.
In the Fall, I’m leaving Venice. Meanwhile, I will cherish my last Summer in here. As I’ve done for 40 years, I will continue to paint and sell paintings and prints. You may view my work at: frankstrasserfineart.com,
A Goodbye Kiss to Venice, California
© 2025 Frank Strasser. Spirit of Venice artwork and fine art prints.