Barbara Berner A Place I Call Home, 12 2003 Free Venice Beachhead, issue 270, 1970's
"I moved to Venice in the early 70's, I was 27. Back then the lines between Ocean Park and Venice seemed blurry. Now they are, as we know, clearly defined.
"My friend Tina took me to POP when I was 15. We had cut school. I had never heard of POP till then. A pervert exposed himself to us on the walkway into the park. I thought we deserved it cause we had cut school.
"I vaguely remember the boardwalk. Very different than now. From what I remember, there was a row of blue wooden one-story buildings on the beach side. There were hardly any buildings on the East Side of the walk. It is a good thing I didn't hang out in Venice in the late fifties; I would have been chasing the Dragon for sure.
"I went to Olivia's Restaurant on the SW corner of Ocean Park and Main in my 20's with my first husband for soul food. We were middle class, smokin' dope, doing psychedelics and thought it was a great hole in the wall place. I did not connect to Venice then either, still too asleep to connect with anything much.
"It took me a few more years to find my way back to my home for the past 31 years now. Luckily I woke up, got feminized, political, left my middle class existence, husband, took my 2-yr. old daughter and moved into a commune on 3rd St. between Ashland and Rose. This was a radical/political commune filled with college students, another single mother and child.
"I loved that commune, the people, the vegetable garden, making bread in a huge metal bread maker, dinners around the long wooden table and the parties. I loved that I was involved in radical change, my own life, group change and philosophy. Life seemed serious business but with good times mixed in.
"I worked at the Midnight Special Bookstore on W. Washington, was involved with collective day care, started one of the first consciousness raising groups held at our commune that grew and grew till we opened a women's center on South Venice Blvd. We ordered food with the co-op then picked it up in the middle of the street on W. Washington Blvd. in the morning. That was how sleepy Venice was back then. We almost have gridlock now.
"There were other political collectives around, all had names. Ours was the 3rd Street house. One was the Fraser house and the Thornton house. There was Mayday in Culver City that included a non-sexist pre-school. All of our tires were slashed one morning at all of the communes. This was a big intrigue; we were getting ready for the revolution.
"It did not come as we had expected. Our house was sold. We felt the owner a traitor, selling out to the establishment. One couple moved to Bellingham, Washington, one couple to Berkeley and I moved in with another single mother in Culver City for a while, then to Santa Monica to go to school.
"While in school, a lover brought me to the Fruit Tramps on the Boardwalk, a small organic market where you could work for your food, I had gotten into herbs and began ordering them for the store and making herbal potions.
"The climate seemed different; everyone was into the 'flow', fasting for days on end, taking high colonics, giving away all their possessions, meditating at the water's edge. I swear it is possible to ask and receive whatever your heart desires at the water's edge, between Dudley and Paloma still to this day!
"There was a woman from Tennessee who had a free store on Main where you could drop off clothes and pick up new ones. She wanted to preach and finally moved back to Tennessee.
"One Life had opened a small restaurant, organic, with no prices on the menu where you would pay what you thought the food was worth and it was fabulous. So were the people who ran the store. There was Blackies on Main for Blues, the Comeback Inn on W. Washington for jazz and the Circle Bar for whatever. Beyond Baroque was right next to the Comeback Inn back then.
"Walking the boardwalk was the main attraction, up and down, several times a day. Not much of a working crowd, much of the nine to five around. Artists, musicians, lots of philosophers, poets, kids and seniors. The world was on the boardwalk.
'Somewhere in the late 70's it changed. I had gone away for six weeks in the summer and when I came back, MONEY had appeared. The Reagan/Bush era had hit Venice. Nice shops on Main, buildings going up on the boardwalk, talk of stopping the artisans from selling without a license and on and on. Overnight Venice was changing once again.
"Money is still here, so are the artisans, in fact even more. That is the wonderful thing about Venice, its ability to change. Always, on the forefront, the current vision is ever present; the freedom to be whoever and create whatever is your desire."