David Clark L.A. On Foot: A Free Afternoon, Camaro Publishing: Los Angeles, 1976, 1927 1926
This was a city of heretics . . . a city of refugees from America; it was purely itself in a banishment partly dreamed and partly real.--Frank Fenton A Place in the Sun p. 26
2 Venice
"Three miles of canals, some decaying Italian architecture, and the name "Venice" are the last remnants of the fantastic dream of a tobacco magnate who wanted to create the Riviera of the American West. For decades Venice has been the traditional haven of Los Angeles nonconformity (nonconformity in our city is no easy feat; it's hard to find any standards to rebel against). Today the area is threatened in its role as a refuge for social exiles by the encroaching affluence of Marina del Rey.
"Starting point: Ocean Front Walk and Rose Ave., Venice.
"NOTE: This tour may be taken either on foot or by bicycle. Ocean Front Walk abounds in bike rental stores which are open on weekends.
"Directions: From downtown L.A. take the Santa Monica Freeway west to Lincoln Blvd., then right (west) on Pico Blvd., and left (south) on Neilson Way. Proceed south on Neilson as it changes into Pacific, then turn right (west) on Rose Ave. and park your car. Walk west to Ocean Front." p. 27
"You are now at the site of the mysterious disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson on May 18, 1926. Sister Aimee is the shining symbol of our city, with all its flamboyance, brashness and Culture of Eccentricity. If Chicago is the Hog Butcher of the Nation, tempting farm boys under the gaslights, then L.A. is its Faith Healer, the City of the Second Chance. Sister Aimee led the way with a brand of religion denounced by traditionalists as "supernatural whoopee." Most Angelenos agreed withHarper's Magazine in 1927 that she provided "the best show in town," and her Angelus Temple in Echo Park, seating five thousand, was a "must" item on the agenda of every tourist.
"Aimee created a charismatic faith to match the new competition of radio and movies. Thompson Eade, a former vaudevillian who told me that he had been miraculously cured of shell shock by Aimee, designed a giant stage on which sermons became panoramas. The stage set might show the destruction of the world in flames and believers crossing over into heaven, or Aimee would chase a band of devils wearing horns and tails (representing her enemies) around the stage with a pitchfork. On one occasion she roared onto the stage on a motorcycle in a traffic cop's uniform, jumped off the cycle and shouted, "Stop in the name of the Lord!" Her message was positive, never dwelling upon divine punishment and retribution. Many Protestant ministers resented her for taking away many of their parishioners, and labelled her services, a "sensuous debauch." When Aimee led a crusade in London, these ministers sent a delegation to warn the British of "her tendency to induce insanity in her audiences." p. 28
"Sister Aimee's controversial career hit its peak when she disappeared from Ocean Park Beach, where you now stand, after leaving her room at the Ocean View Hotel, the large white building at the corner of Rose Ave. and Ocean Front Walk. Los Angeles went wild with panic at the news. Thousands, hoping for her return, kept a continuous prayer vigil at the beach. Her mother announced that she had ascended into heaven, to sit among the angels. but on June 23 she suddenly appeared at the Mexican border, with the story that she had been kidnapped by two miscreants named Jake and Mexicali Rose, and had escaped when they were drunk. The largest crowd ever to greet a public figure in L.A. turned out for her return, including the entire Fire Department (which she had converted) and the Mayor and the City Council.
"Skepticism was soon expressed, however, by reporters who noted that her flight across the desert had left her shoes unscuffed and her skin unburned. (I have interviewed one of first men to see Aimee when she appeared at the border. He stated that she did not seem to have been through a long desert ordeal.) Aimee answered that neither had Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego been touched by the flames of the fiery furnace. The most often-repeated explanation was that she had been in a "love nest" in Carmel with the handsome radio operator of her church, but this was never proven. Recently, Milton Berle, in his autobiography, claimed to have had an affair with her. . . . What is far more certain is that she fed over one and one-half million people during the Depression, providing the only aid mission in L.A. where food, clothing and shelter were given with no questions asked and no red tape. Throughout the '20s and '30s, when Christianity was the third largest industry in Los Angeles after the movie industry and real estate, she gave hope and entertainment to many." p.30
"Ocean Park Pier and Lick Pier formerly stood north of Rose Ave. At various time they held the Casino Gardens of Tommy Dorsey, the Aragon Ballroom, home of Lawrence Welk and champagne schmaltz, and Pacific Ocean Park. During the early 1900s the Pacific Electric streetcar line, then the best urban transit system in the U.S., took only thirty minutes to reach Venice beach from central L.A. (most of the area in-between was empty for the total L.A. population was only 112, 000, approximately that of Santa Monica today. The beach piers were then the carnival center of Los Angeles, filled with freak shows, thrill rides and ballyhoo. During the '30s luxury liners converted into gambling casinos floated off the coast just beyond the three-mile limit. In 1938, Attorney General Earl Warren rode out in a motor boat and shut them down.
"You will encounter many elderly Jewish residents in this area who lived in Eastern Europe until forced to flee from wars and pogroms. Many were radicals in their youth, including a few Russian revolutionaries exiled to Siberia by the Tsar. One such revolutionary was Pinches Korolsky who later founded Karl's Shoes. . . . Even on the hottest days they wear formal clothing, and their conversations are a combination of English and Yiddish. But L.A. is the city of violent contrasts. Bare-midriffed girls, surfers, and an Indian swami selling both incense and Jesus postcards stroll beside men and women born in nineteenth-century Vienna. A poet ranting about the problems of his sex life draws a crowd, and a blues guitarist sings, "Nobody ever loved me but my mother, and she might have been jivin' too."" pp. 30 and 31
"As you pass Dudley Avenue and the His Way Building, a group of 15-year-old God-Squadders may try to save you from the fires of hell. The Hare Krishna people are a little more up-beat with their message as they dance around, chanting and ringing cymbals. Their standard pitch is, "Wanna buy some incense? I'm trying to get to India."
"Directions: Continue south on Ocean Front Walk to Brooks Ave.
"After passing old people feeding the pigeons and couples walking their dogs by bicycle, turn left at Brooks to see the "mirror Image." On the side of a building about two hundred feet up the street a gigantic painting exactly duplicates the scene behind you. This work was the first effort of the L.A. Fine Arts Squad, done to attract public attention to the talents of a group of starving painters. Their latest work, The Isle of California, located at Santa Monica Blvd. and Butler Avenue in Santa Monica, took over a year to complete. It depicts a sheared-off highway at the California - Arizona border, the aftermath of a cataclysmic earthquake. One little island is all that remains of the state of California.
[Note that even for figurative painters the landscape remains an object of the imagination, malleable, fertile, manipulatable, illusionistic, imposing, assertible, or vice versa ; there is the Venice Beach in the Snow past Windward near the paddle tennis courts which pictures the corner of Brooks Ave. and Ocean Front Walk; and there was a proposal to paint out a Sacramento building from all sides.kr}
"Except for the mural, the neighborhood around Brooks Avenue has definitely seen better days." p. 31
". . .
"Directions to Santa Monica Pier: Take Rose Ave. east to Pacific and drive north. Pacific will change into Neilson Way, and then into Ocean Ave. after Pico Blvd. Continue north to Colorado Ave. and park your car. The pier is at the end of Colorado Ave. Instead of driving, you could walk or bicycle up the beach to the pier.
"Pico Blvd. is named for Pio Pico, the last Mexican Governor of California. In 1920, Donald Douglas began his aircraft business in the backroom of a barber shop on Pico Blvd. By 1942 the aircraft industry employed over one-third of all the factory workers in Los Angeles.
"The outlandish building ahead houses a real old-fashioned merry-go-round. The Wurlitzer calliope here has been playing continuously since 1898. The horses are all hand-carved, and each one is different. You may recognize the merry-go-round building as the hide-out of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the film The Sting." p. 38
"Looking north two miles from the pier, at the mouth of Potrero Canyon, the line of rocks jutting out from the beach is all that remains of the longest and largest wharf in the world. It was built in 1891 by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company in an attempt to turn Santa Monica Bay into "Port Los Angeles." In addition, the Southern Pacific intended to monopolize L.A.'s ocean trade, for the beach was only wide enough for the one railroad line which the S.P. owned. By this time, however, L.A. was aware of and embittered by the high-handed practices of the Southern Pacific and its principal owner, Collis Huntington. The Company had charged L.A. a king's ransom to be connected to their line; the price included five percent of the assessed value of all property in Los Angeles. . . . . When the City Council protested the extremely high freight rates and monopolistic tactics, Southern Pacific partner Charles Crocker (who founded the California-based bank) threatened to "make the grass grow in the streets of your city." Eventually, Los Angeles succeeded in defeating Collis Huntington in Congress and secured the San Pedro Harbor, where different lines would compete . . . " p. 41