Venice, California, is a district in west Los Angeles. It is best known for its canals and beaches, but it also has a somewhat bohemian residential area as well as a colorful boardwalk.
Venice was founded by Abbot Kinney in 1905, and it was annexed to Los Angeles in 1925. (There have been several movements to secede from Los Angeles since then, including currently.) In 1929 most of the canals were filled in to allow for automobile traffic. In the 1930's oil drilling supplanted amusement. Hundreds of wells covered the area and drilling waste clogged the remaining waterways. It was a short-lived boom, but the wells were still producing oil into the 1970's.
Venice is remarkable for a number of innovations. Movie aviator and Venice airport owner, B.H. DeLay, implemented the first lighted airport in the United States on DeLay Field (previously known as Ince Field). He also initiated the first aerial police in the nation, after a marine rescue attempt was thwarted. DeLay also performed many of the world's first aerial stunts for motion pictures in Venice.
Venice and neighboring Santa Monica were host for a decade to an amusement and pleasure-pier called Pacific Ocean Park, or POP by locals. The facility experienced declining attendance in the mid-60's what with increasing competition from other newer parks in Southern California such as Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Busch Gardens, and Marineland, and it was torn down to make way for a large residential building complex. Another aging tear-down in the 1960's was the Aragon Ballroom that had been the longtime home of The Lawrence Welk Show. The district around POP is known as Dogtown, and was home to pioneering skateboarders, as profiled in the documentary film, Dogtown and Z-Boys.
Producer Roger Corman owned a production facility, the Concorde/New Horizons Studio, on Main Street for many years, in which a large number of his films were shot. This facility was torn down to build lofts.
Venice Beach is understood to include the beach, the promenade that runs parallel to the beach ("Ocean Front Walk" or just "the boardwalk"), Muscle Beach, the tennis courts, the numerous beach volleyball courts, the bike trail and the businesses and residences that have their addresses on Ocean Front Walk. It is a great magnet for tourists, even from other parts of Los Angeles.
The Venice Fishing Pier is a 1,310 foot long, concrete structure first opened in 1964 at the end of Washington Street. It was closed in 1983 due to El Niņo storm damage and reopened in the mid-1990's.
Venice is today a vibrant area of Southern California and it continues a tradition of progressive social change involving prominent Westsiders. The Venice Family Clinic is the largest free clinic in the country.
Venice has always been known as a home for the creative and the artistic. Prominent residents of Venice include actresses Julia Roberts and Angelica Huston, actor Nicolas Cage and musician John Lydon (who owns a sizeable amount of rental property in Venice). Actor Robert Downey Jr. kept an apartment on the boardwalk during the 1990's. Architect Frank Gehry is a longtime resident who has bought a huge vacant lot on Harding Street in Venice where he plans to break ground on and build his new personal residence in August 2005. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is the majority owner of a popular restaurant in Venice, Schatzi's on Main, and owns other real estate in the area. Comedian and actor Bill Cosby has also owned commercial property on Main Street for years, and has his production company there. Restauranteur Wolfgang Puck has owned and operated noted eateries in the area since the 1990s. Other notables include actors Viggo Mortensen and Rutger Hauer.