The Venice Canals provide a new perspective of the beachside community. Walk down Dell Avenue's three canal-lined blocks hence Venice and you'll see arching pedestrian bridges, lovely beach cottages, ducklings, and paddleboarders.
Surfers, like Venice's Z-Boys, dissatisfied with flat waves turned to the pavements and invented skating. That history doesn't include this 2009 skate park, but its gorgeous palm palms and position feet from the sea have made it one of the most famous skating sites.
Artists Cheri Pann and Gonzalo Duran moved into their Venice home, a basic, drab property. The pair spent a decade turning their home-office into a multicolored mosaic of tiles, stone, and clay.
Venice is known for its beach culture, yet Abbot Kinney Boulevard, its most fashionable street, features some of the city's top stores, galleries, restaurants, and bars (Felix and Gjelina).
Venice Boardwalk is great for people watching. The pedestrian promenade and cycling path extend uninterrupted from Santa Monica Beach's southern end. Venice is full with T-shirt kiosks, cannabis stores, dodgy street entertainers.
For almost 50 years, this little store has provided literary refuge from terrible beach food and crowds. They feature local authors up front, so check out their skills before browsing the aisles, where you'll discover hard-to-find indie labels and the usual ones.
L.A.'s rooftop bars have improved, but the coast has few. This gem, located atop the Hotel Erwin, is a rare find: a lovely rooftop bar that accepts reservations, only a block from the beach, great for day drinking and sunset blankets.
In the 1960s, Muscle Beach in Santa Monica closed, and this Venice site took its place. Since then, it has become a voyeuristic gym for sculpted bodybuilders, where interested bystanders may observe from the fence of the modernist.