Venice Beach

Los Angeles / Southnern California is a popular tourist destination.  But most visitors see little besides Disneyland and maybe Universal Studios.  It's too bad -- there are so many other worthy sights to see and things to do.

Venice Beach is one of them.  It's just a few miles north of LAX airport and is at the south end of Santa Monica, about a mile from the Santa Monica Pier (another worthy destination).

Venice Beach is famous for its Muscle Beach outdoor body-building gym, where Arnold Schwarzenegger trained in his early body-building days.  Onlookers once gathered to gawk at the heavily muscled (and doped-up) strongmen.

If that's what you expect to see, you'll be disappointed.  On our recent visit, the only participant was a flabby man in his sixties.

However, the anything-goes carnival / freakshow experience lives on.  There are regulars that you can expect to see on any given weekend:

The Venice Beach Gold Robot Man 

Harry Perry - Rollerblading Musical Genius

And some guys just come and go:

Bongo Drummer on Venice Beach Boardwalk

"Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells... Help me get drunk tonight"

Yet another street musician on the Venice Boardwalk

I love the guy with his own little soap opera:

An ambulance comes for one of his characters

A happy ending to his story

The street gymnasts are incredible.

Street gymnast jumps over one kid

But wait... here's ten, including two adults!

He literally flies over all ten of them!

There is plenty more to see and wonder at:

The variety of artwork is amazing

Don't be too shocked though, Venice can be dirty, smelly (incense and pot), lawless and kind of sad:

They don't show this part in the travel ads

Yes, it is legal (kind of)

Making his living as an "artist" ...

... He is very specific about his needs...

Venice is worth seeing -- it is not an experience easily forgotten.