Venice boardwalk ban goes too far. It amounts to a curfew, and it strikes us as overkill.
The curfew is a clear violation of the Coastal Act of 1976. California Coastal Commission stands firm on 24-hour beach access.
AST SUMMER, a kid with an acoustic guitar would perch on a boardwalk bench at North Venice Boulevard, strumming softly in the hours before dawn. He practiced “Blackbird” by The Beatles until he'd nailed the tune, a sweet slice of Venice life in the dead of the night. No one seemed to mind.
But thanks to City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and Councilman Bill Rosendahl, he’ll face arrest if he tries it again. Boardwalk residents digging the late night ocean breeze or having a chat with neighbors outside their homes have also been deemed lawbreakers. So goes freedom of assembly.
Hundreds of boardwalk residents and night owls may be joining the criminal class because of the overnight curfew on Ocean Front Walk, a public thoroughfare open without restriction for 105 years. Until now. From this week forward [January 18] the boardwalk shall be closed between midnight and 5 a.m. Step away from Ocean Front Walk.
New signage announced the curfew as a fait accompli, the only Los Angeles curfew imposed against anyone other than juveniles or gang members without an extreme emergency — the 1992 Los Angeles riots for instance. Anyone who's taken a pre-dawn stroll knows the boardwalk is a venue for all kinds of Angelenos but rioters are not among them. No looting or firebombing here.
But renters and property owners who linger outdoors, power walk or ride their bike down their main drag after midnight are now subject to a ticket or arrest by the Los Angeles Police Department. Same for folks who live nearby and use the boardwalk as streets have always been used — a place to socialize — this one free from traffic and the commercial hustle of Abbot Kinney Boulevard.
Strike up a conversation with folks hanging out after midnight and you'll hear the names of LAPD officers — some more likely than others to mess with those somehow different from couples snuggled-up indoors watching Cinemax. Suddenly, being out late is suspect behavior. That seems odd for Los Angeles, a 24/7 metropolis that's far from being a bedroom community. 
The boardwalk after midnight is a unique flavor of Venice Beach culture, burning bright late at night and shut down without explanation.
What's this curfew all about? Homelessness? Keeping boardwalk actors and musicians from staking out prime performance space? Rosendahl isn't saying why he's kicked up beachfront constituents' anxieties in an election year. Stroll home from a Windward, Venice or Washington Boulevard pub after the witching hour and cops will be watching, armed with unwritten rules — an excuse to stop, detain, question and demand identification of anyone on the boardwalk after 12:00 a.m.
Cop suck-up blog Venice 311 issued a stern ultimatum: “Don’t be on Ocean Front Walk from midnight to 5 a.m. for any reason regardless of how inconvenienced you feel.”
Pacific Division police Lt. Paula Kreeft says LAPD officers broad discretionary authority over who stays and who goes allows boardwalk residents to walk between their cars and front doors. Beyond that, say critics, the LAPD is into so much cultural profiling.
The closure has been enacted with smoke and mirrors as Venetians learned at a Neighborhood Council meeting Monday night [January 26]. Rosendahl and Trutanich did not attend or send representatives capable of answering basic questions. Why were boardwalk residents not consulted? What happened to transparency and due process? The cops were clueless, as was Rosendahl staffer Arturo Piña who tried to muddy the curfew’s genesis.
Kreeft described the boardwalk closure as a fresh interpretation of a 1989 ordinance, but Piña buried the blame in the mists of time. “It’s an unspecified rule dating from Venice becoming part of L.A. in 1924,” he claimed. Venice’s annexation actually happened in November 1925 but Piña pressed on, claiming the ordinance extends "from the city limits of Santa Monica to the city limits of El Segundo" (totally wrong) and distancing his boss by pinning the ordinance on an unspecified rule by some unspecified dead guys from 86 years ago. Nice.
Boardwalk denizens think the curfew is the first in a series of battles designed to Disney-fy SoCal's biggest tourist attraction and boost 90291 home values in a depressed real estate market by stripping the beachfront of eclectics. 
So what about bike riding after curfew? Check back next month. The new rules are being improvised like ordinances before them in the long-running game of City Hall vs. Venice: Politician lays down boardwalk law, courts deem law unconstitutional, law is struck down. Rinse and repeat. Meantime, tickets, arrests, harassment and law suits fly.
EHIND THE SCENES,Venice’s anti-homeless movement is cheering on police against fellow Venetians whom they consider to be the wrong class of people for their spiffy, Manhattan Beach tastes. Fresh from their victory in banning the vehicular homeless, they've set their sights on the boardwalk though most live far inland and are unlikely to be swept up as collateral damage from a ham-handed ordinance.
If the curfew is about sleeping on the boardwalk, it's only succeeding in flushing those sleeping on the boardwalk onto adjacent residential streets, swelling the ranks of those who huddle nightly right around the corner, a few feet away, with a wink-and-nod from the LAPD. Rosendahl's highly-promoted program to house and provide wrap-around services to the homeless has turned out to have been little more than a PR stunt, a Band-Aid from last year's homeless wars.
Meantime, officers admit Ocean Front Walk has always been a cinch to patrol. Squad cars have long cruised the boardwalk in drive-by enforcement so casual that officers rarely need to step from their cars. Roll down the window, ask for ID.
So why not impose an overnight curfew on all of Venice, giving the LAPD even more of the enforcement convenience it craves? When all of Venice’s streets are outlawed after midnight, only outlaws will use them.
Welcome to the world-famous Venice Beach Boardwalk. Now get inside. Stay there.
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