Have you been to Venice Beach?

San Francisco now has a huge homeless problem.

I go there frequently. For riding a bike from Venice to Will Rodgers to the north, it is great. Walking through Venice beach is fun, but there is a violent feel that just bubbles under the surface. All the homeless have been taken away mostly. The beaches are very nice, and a bit more crowded than the Santa Monica beaches. If you need to use a restroom, wait till your bike ride up to Santa Monica. The bathrooms in Venice Beach are Calcutta-type hellholes of disease and filth.

Overall it is very fun and lively and mostly made up of fat mid-western tourists and the Northern Europeans that you can pick out easily, as they are usually in a family group, blond hair and all well over 6'.

I recommend it for anyone, especially the east coast people for them to observe the stark difference between west and east coast beach vibes.

The weather is usually bad, marine layer most days, wicked cold down on the sand and the water itself like it just came off an iceberg. The waves are excellent.

California beaches are cold and clammy. If you want beautiful sunny warm beaches go to Florida

^^yeah, nothing better than bathwater warm ocean. so refreshing when you're trying to cool off from the oppressive humidity.

I visited only once and regret having done.

I know two artists, one a friend, whose aesthetic tastes I know and appreciate, but why they wax poetic about this fucking dump that each used to call hone is quite beyond me. It's tawdry and has a dirtiness about it that sinks beneath the skin (think carnival midway, but instead of fleeting visions of quick filthy sex with a smelly carnie who just might be a great fuck, one gets uglier, harder looking, more used up looking people, a mood of mistrust and grift sprinkled with false merriment, and ugly people pretending to be chic.

I absolutely hated it, walking around looking at the affectionately recalled architecture, never mind the horrors of the freak show to reach the ocean front. Cold and clammy, indeed -- the feeling rushes back even now.

I kept looking thinking surely I'm in the wrong area, if I just go a little farther in this direction I'll find the nice part. There is no nice part

Venice was fun about 30 years ago

Now it’s just depressing

R2 sounds like it's written by an algorithm.

Re: "cold" weather. Fall (Sept-Oct) is the best weather. Usually warm and sunny from morning. May-July is almost always a weather pattern of marine layer (low clouds) in the morning, "burning off" in mid-afternoon. If you want sun on the beach go at 1:00 or 2:00.

In the 70s there was a lot of crime and boho culture, drugs... but the 80s it was mostly drugs and crime. Since the 90s gentrification has forced it to clean up, thought with mixed results.

R5 The "nice part" is Ocean Park, just over the line in Santa Monica.

[quote] If you want beautiful sunny warm beaches go to Florida

I'd rather not degrade myself by entering that state.

How long ago were you there, R5?

[quote]I visited only once and regret having done.

LOL

Haven't been there in many years

Isn't the water there too polluted for swimming these days?

And aren't there oil rigs or something close by?

The sand is coarse and has an industrial feel. This I do remember.

It's not a "I'm glad to be alive" feel a nice beach can give you.

Muscle...

R5 is also loads of fun at parties.

I lived in Ocean Park, r8, a long time ago, on 4th Street. I used to go to a Mexican restaurant at 4th and Rose, usually to eat, but sometimes just to buy a pack of cigarettes. Cock was available at the intersection of Ocean Park Boulevard and the beach. Weekends, the police were there to make sure no one beat us up (or screamed "queer").

I met someone named James at a cafe that was right on the beach in Venice. I liked him a lot, but he moved back home to where his parents lived because he was getting this disease that was making him waste away. He was the first person I knew to get AIDS. This was in 1978, so we didn't know what to call it.

Venice Beach made an appearance in Xanadu. Ahh, 1980…

It's one of few places I like to visit when I have to be in LA, for work and have some free time, which doesn't say much. It's fun for 2-3 hours on a hot afternoon, maybe once every 20 years. It's tacky, kitschy, and seedy. Great for people watching. I went back for the first time four years ago. Maybe with some of the crazies and homeless gone now, it might feel even less threatening.

But Venice feels much safer than when I used to have to visit my biological father, who lived about 10 blocks inland, for a week every Summer in the 1970's. Enjoyed getting stoned on the beach, then roller skating on the path to Santa Monica and back. It was just a huge circus of sleazy humanity. What I remember most is the thick smog and the creepy film I felt on my skin after going into the ocean. The water is much calmer and warmer than in Northern California, so that was a novelty.

@r4, the sharks would love you, they love eating asses 😏

@r5, I agree, as beautiful as California is their beaches are the most over-rated disappointment for anyone who actually likes to go to the beach

R15 I lived in Ocean Park in the 70s and 80s... on 3rd street. It was a perfect place to live as a young man... diebenkorn, dylan, fonda, baez, oldenburg, divine, manny the drug dealer... the circle, the food bin, gold's gym... and towers, where at night, 100s of men had sex with each other.

Grateful for the memories.

[quote] 100s of men had sex with each other.

So, quantity, not quality.

R21 The two things are not mutually exclusive...

About twenty years ago I had been dating this guy for a few weeks and we decided to spend the day at Venice Beach. I was in pretty good shape back then but he was a fucking wall of solid muscle. Certain parts of Venice had a section of grass in between the boardwalk and the beach sand before you got to the water (no idea if that's still true or not) and so we sat down next to each other on the grass, just people watching and listening to live music. At one point he started getting a little cozy with me, kissing the side of my neck. We ended up fully horizontal on the ground and making out like crazy. I know it was extremely tacky but I had never done that kind of PDA before and decided to just go with it. No one bothered us or gave a shit. Again, probably one of my tackier moments, but I felt kinda good afterwards that I had done something so out of character for me LOL. But that's Venice Beach, or at least it was, where you could raise your freak flag (or in this case rainbow flag) and not be judged.

Did you cum, r23?

No.

I go to Venice every few years when I have guests from out of town. Even ones who have been there before still want to return and I don't understand why. Maybe they need a dose of junky shops, crap food, and people watching – I don't know. It seems to me that Venice is simply a checkbox on a list of "must see" places for visitors. Aside from people who actually live in Venice, I personally do not know anybody who goes there for anything except escorting out of town guests. Excepting, of course, a handful of guys I know who work in Venice.

@r23, GET A ROOM 🙄

We eventually did, R27, and I fucked the living hell out of him.

^ Great, and now we all know

We lived there from 1982 until 2000, training at Golds Venice and receiving many very generou$ gentlemen callers!

The California ocean isn’t cold. It’s fucking freezing. And there are usually Doritos bags floating in the water.

Love Venice Beach. Always wanted to live in the area. Been going there since the late 80s, most recently last year. Always my favorite place in LA.

What do you like about it, R32?

How about muscle beach?

^Just the atmosphere. You can come as you are with no judgment. I love biking, rollerblading on the boardwalk. Venice canals in the area is also a fun area to walk around. Beautiful homes. Roosterfish on Abbot Kinney was the first gay bar I’ve been to and a neighborhood bar. Sadly it’s been gentrified but glad it opened up again after closing down for a few years. Just lots of fond memories spent in the area growing up with family and friends

R34, there are many guys that will be shirtless that are jacked and walk around. Mostly they seem to be tourist bodybuilders. The weightlifting area sometimes has some big guys, but surprisingly not as many as you think. There is a giant Black guy there that does all kinds of stunts and is very agile for his size. He is wildly homophobic though, as I have seen him very early in the morning screaming at a guy complaining about "fags" taking his picture as I rode my bike by. He is there pretty much all the time.

The best-looking guys are the ones just walking around.