Author: leh

Venice Beach, Part III

Another random discovery …

And here we meet Victor, from early 1975.  He and his dog lived in an old circa 1952 Pontiac and a decrepit immobile old delivery van on the vacant lot next to the beachfront apartment where I stayed at the time.  Some say that he had a PhD and once had a career as an engineer.  Sometimes Victor was quite lucid, sometimes not at all.  He saw himself as king of the lot and sometimes tried to extract fees from people who parked there. He seemed to survive on that as well as odd jobs (I paid him once to help me out with a fix to something on the Landrover, which is pictured here with Victor and a neighbor.)  We were all quite astonished one day when, according to some neighborhood eyewitnesses, a well-dressed woman appeared in a Mercedes, claiming to be his wife, and took him away with her.   As I recall, he reappeared not long after.

Venice Beach, Forty Years Ago

I didn’t know her at the time, but my later-to-be friend, Ann Nietzke, was living almost next door to me when she wrote her “Windowlight” book about her life in the neighborhood.   The flavor of the place, and her observations and musings, came back to me as I stumbled upon a few more photographs from that time …

Incidentally, if you want to get a taste of the transformation of Venice Beach in recent years, visit the website of the contemporary Cadillac Hotel.

rDay One-Hundred-Ninety-One

By mid-afternoon, bookkeeping tasks can be put aside.  Kevin comes by in his 951, so we go riding and driving in each other’s cars and drop in to see Eric (where the most interesting car in his shop seems to be an old — ’61 I am guessing — Cadillac convertible).  In the meantime, Kim, taking advantage of the empty garage, gets the skylight repair guy over for a look (skylight access is via the garage).   And Charlie meets and greets the skylight repair guy.

rDay One-Hundred-Ninety

After spending most of the day working on financial and administrative matters, I was ready after a late lunch and nap to go walking.  Joined by Kim, after taking care of banking, we strolled about downtown, and ended up at the library (filling Kim’s backpack with new borrowings).  On the way, we looked at the changing colors of autumn, bumped into my old friend/colleague, Tracy, on the street, checked out the status of the new county building construction, filled a request by a young boy to have his picture taken, and saw a little of this and that.

rDay One-Hundred-Eighty-Nine: Postscript, With A Little Help From The Women In My Life

Later on today:  Kim attempts to come to grips with The Beast, we buy some groceries, and Kim graciously pulls over to give me five minutes to document an excellent ’56 Chevy parked down the street.

And even later:  While we exercise the Blue Rascal, Ivi executes a capture of a never-before-seen-in-the-neighborhood BMW Z4 from her shotgun position as I drive.  Dutiful daughter, humoring the old guy.

Santa Monica Cat Show, 1975

In February 1975, I was invited by a cat lover to a competitive judging of … cats.  I was eager to penetrate this alien subculture, but never processed any of the negatives for some reason.  Until now, just running into these long-forgotten documents of an amazing and rather bizarre experience.   One of those situations where people are eager to have you photograph them in their element …

I know that I took many more photos that day, but I won’t track them down now; this should give you some sense of the thing.  

rDay One-Hundred-Eighty-Eight

Some of today’s slightly unusual events included:

  • a rare sighting of a train coming down Island Avenue;
  • an accidental photograph (while grappling a shopping bag) of the friendly Walmart guy;
  • inspecting an old for-sale Passat;
  • spotting a pretty rare (perhaps for good reason) and probably over ten years old supercharged C230 4-banger Merc in traffic;
  • engaging the services of the Busy Bee furnace guy for an entire afternoon of cleaning the furnace ductwork in anticipation of winter

Exciting stuff, no?

Venice, Circa 1975

In my on-again, off-again project to scan and digitize at least some of the >80,000 black & white 35mm negatives from years past in basement storage, I returned to find something that I recalled, triggered by my recent moon and stars image.  It is this photo, taken of a dirty and broken window in my beachfront neighborhood of Venice, that for me then (and perhaps now) evoked a view of the cosmos.
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Venice was a gritty, roughshod place that suited my gritty, grainy, contrasty style of photographing at the time.  I quickly assembled a few more — all previously unpublished — that fell to hand to display below (I suspect that I have hundreds and maybe thousands of Venice images from this era), led off by a street scene near the beach and boardwalk in pre-gentrification, or early stages thereof, times.

Oh, yeah.  Come to think of it, this was where I was living when I met the love of my life — but she moved me out soon thereafter and eventually we found ourselves in Oregon.  And so on and so on.