Venice Beach, CA’s boardwalk sandwiched between the Venice Pier on Washington Blvd. and Santa Monica pier off of North Venice Blvd. is internationally notorious for its mix of street performers, spontaneous booth vendors, and tourist traps; however it’s also a hotspot for crossover trends when it comes to the street- meeting beach-inspired fashion. Unlike, say the beautiful people who frequent Huntington Beach further south, Venice Beach is a Dogtown, literally, whose core surfers somehow manage in the questionable stretch of ocean that requires two environmental non-profits to continuously monitor, and is flooded with a vibrant graffiti and “don’t call me skurban” skater scene.

Much can be learned about the power of personal hustle on this boardwalk, with people extracting money from a variety of small businesses including dance troupes, fortune tellers, freak shows, tattoo and piercing artists, jewelry designers, painters, sculptors, musicians, and a plethora of various causes ranging from Hari Krishna’s to Free-the-Weed and Why-Don’t-People-Read campaigns. This is where skaters unite who often come by bus from East LA; its home to roller disco and the fastest-changing graffiti wall in the world. Venice Beach boardwalk is filled with the dichotomy of today’s reality with homeless people, drug pushers, and entrepreneurs looking for “spare change for the bus” which European tourists fall prey to. There’s a members-only racquet-ball court right next to a hardcore pick-up street basketball scene. Architecturally questionable and cramped apartment building sit right alongside overly tall, narrow empty “second-homes” with cascading waterfalls, while newly built wood-deck apartments for beach wannabes are built fresh, with no thought to the old tiny beach bungalow dwarfed next door. And then there’s the funny-looking square block treefort officially known as the “ocean-facing lookout pod” built by Frank Gehry. You can see how a band like the Doors could start in a place like this, launched from the simple expression, “Hey man, you wanna jam?” Sunday evening’s drum circle continues to attract over 100 people every weekend.

It’s this mash-up of Los Angeles’ urban detritus tipped towards the ocean and the spirit of DIY that makes the fashion, sport, music, and art scenes of Venice fascinating and continues to attract peace-sign flashing Japanese tourists, heshers from Iowa, and New Jersey indie bands creating their “new video.”

We took a look at our backyard and extracted the following top categories for this week’s fashion and culture review.

Summer Halter Dress
Skirts and tops for the most part, have been replaced by the Summer Halter Dress. Patterns rule for this season, particularly gingham graphics, plaids, bold flowers, Indian-inspired paisleys, and stripes. The patriotic flair with red, white, and blue goes beyond the pre-4th of July anticipation because it’s simply a trendy color combination in general this year. Hawaiian flower sarongs in matching sarong tops are also a colorful twist on wearing traditional bathing suit tops and skirts.

Sport-Inspired

Typical of a real skater, the gal in the headband, tube socks, leopard print scarf, personalized stickered-board, and writing on her left hand about the boy she hates is far more typical of the real skater girls from Venice than what’s unfortunately currently perceived in recent girl Vans ad campaigns. This girl’s cute but not in a surf-y way; she’s dirty, sweaty, likes to wear found jewelry from local thrifts, and has serious attitude.

Among male skaters, it’s a multi-cultural mix of people and fashion but mostly involving some aspect of stove pipe dark denim jeans, now paired with turned-up collar polo shirts in bright colors like orange, or all-over print T-shirts, and in the evenings, instead of hoodies (although they are still popular), thin, knitted V-neck sweaters over a longer T-shirt.

On the Boardwalk
While the 4-wheeled roller skating pit still rocks the disco, it’s really the B-boy and B-girl troupes that are the hot dance inspiration on the boardwalk these days. We caught the latest two-man move called “The Midget.” Other shots show the variety of people who either “work” the boardwalk or cruise the scene. Within the scene cruisers, cereal-box graphics on T-shirts are popular among younger demographics whereas more creative styles include jean jackets with favorite concert T-shirts sewn into the back. Mullets circa U2’s Bono from ’84’s “Unforgettable Fire” era, and Live Aid fashion in general, has surfaced among musicians. Lumberjack red plaid caps (big enough for dreds) and matching lumberjack plaid backpacks are also hot items as part of the whole high school jacket/jersey movement. Sign graphics, storefronts, sculptures and mobiles, drum circle participants, “Design Our Pepsi Can” campaign, and Hari Krishna’s round out the scene.

Graffiti
Rotating artists at these walls means that fresh art goes up about every two hours. People paint, take pictures, then the next person is up covering over paint that in many cases is still wet. Graphics range from bubble letters to angled scripts to intricate stories and motifs indicating that most of the artists who work here know what they’re doing. This is not a place for beginners especially on the weekends. Recent trends in colors include the frequent usage of metallic paints such as gold and silver. Tags still include letters mixed with numbers, but now also include animals, skulls, characters, arrows, and stars.

Architecture
While it may appear as though zoning laws do not exist on the Venice boardwalk, the mix is a result of old buildings being purchased by private owners who often tear down the previous structure and build tall, narrow, elongated cement, stone, or stucco condos or one-family dwellings with large windows. There’s also a new faction moving in that’s going back to wood with strips of wood slates and decks similar to what’s seen on the North Shore of Hawaii. And then there’s the Frank Gehry house.