Wealth, Poverty, Anger Live Together in Venice

In the Oakwood section of Venice, two worlds tensely coexist.

One is characterized by stylish glass-and-wood houses with lush gardens that grace the pages of Architectural Digest and Dwell.

The other is marked by small run-down apartment buildings and neglected bungalows with overgrown yards.

On avenues like Indiana, Brooks and Westminster, celebrities such as Dennis Hopper own homes alongside descendants of working-class African Americans who came from the South in the 1920s to find jobs and immigrant Latino families struggling against grinding poverty.

At one edge of the neighborhood runs Abbot Kinney Boulevard, lined with trendy eateries, upscale shops and galleries. Just blocks to the east, police say, Latino and African American gang members deal drugs to customers in BMWs.

In the early 1990s, this enclave was the scene of some of the worst gang violence in Los Angeles history, with nearly two dozen people killed and scores more wounded in battles between black and Latino gang members.

The violence has declined in the last decade, and Venice's hip factor has risen.

The gentrification that began three decades ago around Venice's famous canals has pushed inland into the Oakwood area, as urban professionals and Hollywood types sought that perfect Craftsman to restore or the ideal lot on which to build a designer home.

Monday's shooting death of Agustin Contreras, 17, at Venice High School has brought residents' simmering fears and resentments over this gentrification spewing to the surface.

The next evening, more than 100 residents attended a community forum that had been called to discuss racial tensions in the neighborhood.

The scene soon deteriorated into invective, with blacks alleging that police officers unfairly target them and that whites fear them. Whites in the audience retorted that it was black people who hated them.

Several African American residents angrily berated the community's well-heeled newcomers for desiring the community's beachfront culture while hunkering down in mammoth houses ringed by high security fences.

"Why do they have these fences?" said Stan Muhammad, director of Venice 2000, a gang intervention group. "Is it because of gang violence? No. Is it because of drugs? No, it's not." It is, he said, because of the fear born of guilt.