The Venice Canals – US Version

This is a continuation of the story Serious Trouble will Bypass You – Parts 1 & 2 (earlier posts).  It was our second day in California and we discovered the beauty of the Venice Canals.  I love water, water that is of the non-threatening variety such as floods and tsunamis.  On one side of us we had the vast ocean with its soothing roar and to another side the quiet calmness of canals winding their wet streets through an artist’s palette of architecture.  So, this in essence is part 3, the calm before the serious trouble.  The serious trouble part will come when we reach the letter “Z.”  Fitting that it should be letter “Z.”

The canals are the Venice Beach Canals in California.  Patterned after the Venice, Italy canals they originally spanned 16 miles and were conceived of and engineered by Abbot Kinney in 1904.  By 1929 a large portion of the canals were filled in to make roads for the rapidly increasing automobiles, which Kinney, or the horse and buggy era, did not quite compute into his plans.

During the sixties the canals were a place for partying and were a home for beatniks, artists, hippies, and even Jim Morrison of the Doors.  Real estate started skyrocketing.  By the seventies the artists and Bohemians moved out to make way for affluent homeowners.  The serenity of the canals was like entering a different space in time.  I’m thankful we had that experience.

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