The Venice Heritage Museum

by Marty Liboff

The Venice Heritage Museum had its grand opening on the evening of March 9th. The museum and adjoining parking lot were packed with visitors. There were lines going down the block to get into the event and once you got in the parking lot area there was another long line to get into the museum building. It was a great success. The Venice Heritage Museum will host rotating cultural heritage exhibitions and events showcasing their archives and community collections and art. They are also recording oral history.

Venice and next door Ocean Park have an amazing history. Abbot Kinney in 1905 opened his Venice of America with miles and miles of canals and buildings that looked like old Venice Italy. There were several piers by our beach. The beach and piers were in the movies since the early silent films (see my movie list at our Beachhead web site). There was always music here from the big bands like Lawrence Welk to rock with the Doors. The Beatniks and then the Hippies inhabited our town. The founder of our newspaper, John Haag had a Beatnik coffee shop on Dudley Ave. called the Venice West. Artists, actors, writers and poets came to live here. Most were unsuccessful but a few like science fiction writer Ray Bradbury were world famous. Modern skateboarding began at our beach with the Dogtown bunch. The Cheetah Club on the pier at Navy Street had all the great bands of the 60s. So much history…

The Venice rich and famous and the poor and unknown were all at the museum opening Saturday night. Artists, writers, poets, musicians, politicians and everyone who is anything or anyone in Venice was there. We were even greeted and hung out with Charlie Chaplin dressed in hat, cane and his little moustache! There was an antique car show outside and various vendors. They had free drinks and snacks.

Some of our Beachheaders attended including beautiful Suzy Williams, Alice Stek and Greta Cobar along with Gerry Fialka, Jon Wolff and myself. Harry Perry came in turban and his wagon. My pal and Venice historian Jeffrey Stanton was there trying to sell his great history of Venice book. We hung out with Brian Averill from the Venice Neighborhood Council, local activist Lydia Ponce, fabulous Venice artist Dcastro, my fun cousin Joel and many, many others.

I can’t claim to be one of the Venice elite so most of the people there I didn’t know. I usually mostly hang out with the Venice Beach homeless and locals and locos. I was hoping pretty Daisy would show up going topless and talking about saving the planet but alas she didn’t. However one beach pal did show and may have had a free beer too many. During the ceremony the speaker mentioned that our City Council lady, Traci (Trashy) Park was sorry she couldn’t make it. At the mention of our council lady my friend went berserk! He began yelling, “F— Traci Park! F— you!” and took his empty water bottle and a strawberry (part of the free food) and threw it at the stage! I understand Traci was in Paris otherwise she might have gotten a strawberry in her kisser. This of course caused a near riot and fight. After much yelling things settled down and he apologized and blamed it all on the free beers. It was a fun and sometimes exciting event!

The only thing some said that the opening was missing was live music. They had a DJ. There were several Venice musicians there and many others could have been invited to play. I’m sure Suzy Williams, Peter Damian, Greg Cruz and many others would have been delighted to play.

Walls were painted with drawings from Emily Winters and S.E Mendelson, The Colorful History of Venice Beach California Coloring Book.

The museum has a photo history of Venice, postcard collection, posters and other historical items. They also have some videos to watch. There were old posters including ones by our old friend Earl Newman. We talked to one of his sons at the event who still lives nearby. He said that Earl is doing well and is in his 90s living in Oregon.

If you have some time you could spend a couple hours in the museum studying local history. Exhibits will periodically change. They have an archive upstairs and welcome donations of historical items and photos and of course money. In the future they plan on having films and speakers and other events.

The museum is at 228 Main St. behind the Main Street Design Center. Admission is free. Hours are Thursday-Sunday 11 AM- 5 PM. More information at, veniceheritagemuseum.org
-marty-