A Nostalgic Visit to the Weird Wonders of Venice

One recent Saturday my wife and I drove out to Venice. Nostalgia took us there. In the late 1940s we had lived for a time in a two-story flat on the Grand Canal. In those postwar days the Venice canals were scummy and afloat with trash. But there was something romantic about them, with their arched Venetian bridges, and the rent was only $45 a month.

We were delighted to find that the canals were still there, a geometrical network southeast of Windward Avenue. I doubt that many of the thousands who go to Venice beach today are even aware that they exist. They were clean. The water was high. Ducks paddled on them.

We found the apartment we had lived in. Many new houses and apartments had been built nearby. The area looked expensive. In our day downtown Venice, if there is such a place, was occupied by the Beatniks. Does anyone remember them? I remember being denied a loan at the local bank. I was hardly more than a Beatnik myself.

We drove down to Windward Avenue and Ocean Front Walk, where we found a parking space for $5. Ocean Front Walk was like a movie set for which the director had hired 5,000 extras to dress up in weird costumes and walk or skate up and down the beach. By weird, I mean indescribable. I suppose any one outfit might be described, if one had imagination enough, but trying to describe the whole scene would be beyond the powers of Tom Wolfe. Where do they buy those clothes?

Someone recently sent me an ad from a department store catalogue advertising a pair of brand new blue jeans with several threadbare patches in them for $28. My wife said that was cheap. Most of the clothes the Venice strollers wore looked as if they might have been bought at one of the many open-air shops along the walk. The one almost indispensable garment was a T-shirt with a cynical or exuberant message. But that doesn’t begin to suggest the creativity.

We had meant to have lunch at the sidewalk cafe and bookstore, but there was a long waiting line. We found a deli inside an arcade of shops in an old relic from the 1920s and got a tuna salad sandwich, a ham sandwich, and two diet Cokes. We walked out to a green bench on the beach and sat down to eat. Someone had bought a tostada but evidently hadn’t liked it. It lay on the bench beside us.

Between us and the walk stood a little pyramid of articles whose purpose we could not guess. Two bowling balls, a trunk, half a dozen bowling pins, half a dozen machetes, a tape deck, two top hats, and assorted evidently unrelated objects. They were untended. I tried to imagine what their purpose might be.

Up and down the beach crowds had gathered to watch one evidently spontaneous performance or another: a reggae concert, a team of acrobats, a magician.

Suddenly two young men appeared at the pile of junk in front of us. They didn’t seem to know what they were doing. They picked up this and that and chattered incessantly. My wife and I had finished our sandwiches and were about to leave.

The men were both in their early 20s. One was blond with metal-rimmed glasses, the other dark, perhaps Latino. Then they went out to the sidewalk and began entreating the strollers to form a crowd. I didn’t think they had a chance. They seemed like frauds. Miraculously, a crowd began to form in a semicircle: a crowd that looked as if it had come from Mars.

Gradually the lads went into their act. They were jugglers. They dragged in three reluctant stooges from the crowd, whom they placed in a line between them. Then they began to throw things back and forth between them, missing their patsies by inches.

They threw bowling pins, machetes, flaming torches, six or more at a time, spinning them between their legs, over their heads, keeping up their patter. They were breathtaking. We found ourselves spellbound, then laughing helplessly. Finally they passed out the hats. We gave them $3. I asked their names. The blond said, “Sean and Robert. Two good Irish names.”

Ah, Los Angeles. Land of the Big Chance. Today, Venice, tomorrow, TV.