Venice Boardwalk

Your desire to provide "balanced" coverage of the Venice Boardwalk debate has led to a magnification of a tiny but vocal minority, many of whom do not live in our community. Let me give a few examples. Early on we were confronted by an odd character from Santa Monica. This classic news hound copied the Historical Boardwalk refurbishment plan prepared by the leading Venice civic organizations, made a few changes and tried to pass off his version as "the community's plan." This led the public to erroneously think there are two current, legitimate plans in circulation.

Artist William Attaway is applying tiles to his "Grunion Run" mosaic at the restrooms by the new basketball court along the Venice boardwalk. The City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks commissioned Attaway to work on the mosaic and a nearby 20-foot ceramic column Attaway calls "Cultural Currents." Both were officially opened Jan. 11. * "So anyway, I'm cross-culturing my incantations here . . .

Fifteen miles of L.A. roads will be car-free Sunday, as CicLAvia heads to the sea for its sixth and longest event yet. The route will stretch from downtown L.A. to the Venice boardwalk, running through new neighborhoods including C ulver City, West Adams, Harvard Heights, Pico Union, Historic Core and El Pueblo . Previous events have been about 9 miles long, mostly in downtown and Hollywood. Participants are free to walk, run, bike, skateboard and enjoy the city outside of their cars.

For the casual visitor, Venice Beach means street performers, throngs of scantily clad sunbathers, and great bargains on T-shirts and sunglasses. For the people who live there, however, this fantasy world masks an increasingly nervous reality. Tension is everywhere--between the homeowners and the homeless, the merchants and the street people, the haves and the have-nots.

It's late November, and only in last few days has the weather cooperated to give us a taste of fall, and with it, a hankering for hearty cold-weather foods. I'm thinking oxtails braised in red wine (which I made this weekend), a steaming bowl of udon, steel-cut oats - and sausages in all their porky goodness. Just imagining the sizzle of the grill gets me hungry. OK, Jody Maroni was selling sausages on the Venice boardwalk for years. But it took two young guys opening Wurstküche in 2008 to usher in L.A.'s current penchant for all things sausage.

A crackdown on Venice Beach homeless encampments and renegade vendors is pitting longtime residents and merchants against homeless advocates and younger transients. The Los Angeles Police Department enforcement efforts, begun almost two months ago, were spurred by mounting complaints from waterfront residents and business owners who said aggressive, intoxicated transients and violent disputes over vendors' spaces had made the boardwalk an increasingly lawless, frightening place.

The crew of "NCIS: Los Angeles" was in the middle of filming a scene on the Venice boardwalk when a man wearing only his underwear and a cape rode by on his bicycle shouting obscenities. On another occasion, a stranger wielding a plastic light saber showed up on the set and challenged one of the actors to a duel, temporarily halting production. "Those kind of things continually go on in Venice, but we love going down there because it's so colorful and captures the essence of what people think Southern California is — the beaches, the sunshine, the palms and the craziness," said Tony Salome, location manager for the crime drama starring Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J. Venice Beach, a storied cinematic backdrop since the silent film era, continues to play a starring role in Hollywood.

I am writing this letter to ask the people of Venice to have heart and give the City of Los Angeles another chance. The initial Venice Boardwalk workshop (Westside, June 1) was attended by only 100 people and was not a true representation of the community. If the first workshop is an indication, these workshops may be attended by far fewer people than the original Coastal Conservancy workshops. Unfortunately, that would be wasting another $97,000 we are paying for this new set of consultants.

Sitting at a table in her oceanfront apartment, Stephanie Fields takes in a post-sundown Venice Boardwalk, the daytime carnival of street performers and vendors long since departed. A bearded transient swathed in rags floats by ghostlike on in-line skates, pushing a shopping cart full of bags. Puppies, leashes dragging behind them, frolic amid scattered trash as their owners huddle nearby, smoking and talking. Later, a man wearing sunglasses, a beret and a wool poncho struts jauntily by.

Dude! Today is a day of special significance and the appointed hour is 4:20 p.m. What it all means is on the tip of the tongue. Literally. Welcome to April 20, a day that has come to mean a celebration of marijuana and a protest against the fact that its use, sale and possession are crimes. From the narrow streets of New York's Greenwich Village to the open expanse of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, users will congregate to do their thing. Perhaps the most notorious gathering will be at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where last year 10,000 people smoked at the same time.