Venice may be the Skating Capital of...

Venice may be the Skating Capital of the World, but the wheeled performers are also making a cultural dip into Long Beach with an exhibition called “SK8ART.”

“We think this is the first skateboard art show ever,” said Nancy Hayes, director of Original Gallery Designs in Belmont Heights.

The organizer was artist/skateboarder Doug Boyce, whose multicolored, 3-by-6-foot work, “Upside Down,” features three actual boards, including one he used in the Long Beach Marathon.

Others include Eric Somers’ graphic, “Nose Pick” (an expression for a ‘boarding maneuver) and Brian Wood’s acrylic “Nude Bowl” (a rendering of the swimming pool of an abandoned nudist colony used by skateboarders).

Wood’s style, noted Hayes, “somewhat resembles Grandma Moses’,” though their tastes in subject matter differ significantly.

The works, on display through Wednesday, range in price from $2,340 for “Upside Down” to $97.50 for “Nose Pick.”

The One, the Only . . . Presiding over the opening of the Fox Hills Mall Food Fare in Culver City this afternoon will be Chicago Bears tackle William (The Refrigerator) Perry.

It was supposed to be a unique graduation ceremony. But little did Cal State Northridge officials figure that when it came time to begin, hundreds of seniors would be marching on the shoulder of the Hollywood Freeway.

They were supposed to be receiving their degrees at the Hollywood Bowl, which was hosting its first graduation exercise since the UCLA Class of 1950. But traffic’s become a bit more congested since 1950.

With about 17,000 people heading for the Bowl on Friday, the freeways became so packed that the 11 a.m. graduation was delayed more than an hour. Several panicky seniors bade parents and friends goodby and leaped out of their cars in the midst of the congestion.

“We might as well have had graduation on the freeway,” said math major Cece Alemania, 24. “They could have called it the ‘101 Graduation.’ ”

Even school President James W. Cleary, who was supposed to open the ceremony, spent three hours in traffic, school spokeswoman Ann Salisbury said. He arrived only after police opened up a sort of one-car Presidential Diamond Lane for him.

Weeks ago, plans had called for a 7 a.m. start but the time was moved up after students protested the inhumanely early hour. Complaints continued to pour in over projected limited seating at the Bowl (fears that proved unfounded). In fact, a group of students opposed to the site had announced that they would hold a protest outside the Bowl during the ceremony.

But none showed up, a school security officer said. Perhaps they figured no protest was worth battling that much traffic.