John Arthur Maynard Venice West: The Beat Generation in Southern California, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 1991. 242 pp., 1961,
" . . .in the summer of 1961. . .
"It was a mean-spirited time in which the police, the thugs, the career criminals, and the solid citizens of Venice all seemed to have banded together again a ridiculously peaceful common enemy. Two years before, Venice had been on the fringes of the serious drug world. Now it was known throughout the city as the place to go for an easy score, an easy bust, an easy roll, and, for those so inclined, an easy rape. The gaudy hulk of Pacific Ocean Park, which had been built to challenge Disneyland, now stood rotting on long black pilings over the water; instead of saving the economy of the Ocean Front, it had hastened its dissolution. Tourists, sun-worshippers, and body builders (considered members of a bizarre subculture in 1961) still crowded the beach by day, but the night belonged to the muggers, the drunks, and the psychopaths." p. 147