Last summer, a kid with an acoustic guitar would perch on a Venice Boardwalk bench, 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 — like listening to The Wave but with real waves as accompaniment. No one seemed to mind.
But thanks to City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and Councilman Bill Rosendahl, he’ll face ticketing or 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.
In Venice’s latest love-hate spat with the homeless, Rosendahl and Trutanich have managed to turn hundreds of boardwalk residents and night owls into criminals by slapping an overnight curfew on Ocean Front Walk, a public thoroughfare open without restriction for 105 years. Until now, that is. From this week forward the boardwalk shall be closed between midnight and 5am. Step away from Ocean Front Walk.
The curfew was announced as a fait accompli without due process, the only Los Angeles curfew imposed against anyone other than juveniles or gang members without being justified by an extreme emergency — the 1992 Los Angeles riots for instance.
There's no looting here, no firebombing. Other parts of L.A. are far more crime-ridden, and the low levels of post-midnight infractions cannot justify this closure. Moreover, the curfew impacts everyone living along more than two miles of boardwalk between Navy Court at Santa Monica’s city limit and Washington Boulevard on the border of Marina del Rey.
Renters and property owners who linger outdoors, stroll down their main drag after midnight to exercise or enjoy the night ocean air are now subject to a warning, 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 — free from traffic and the commercial hustle of Abbot Kinney Boulevard.
The perception that the boardwalk is overrun by the homeless is simply wrong. While a few dozen lay wrapped in blankets along the two-mile stretch, the pre-dawn boardwalk is also a venue for a variety of Angelenos with lives just as valid as those with keys to million-dollar bungalows. Strike up a conversation with guys hanging out after midnight and you'll tap into a spoken word experience worthy of Jack Kerouac, filled with LAPD officers' names and stories of how some mess with those deemed suspiciously different from couples snuggled-up indoors watching Cinemax. This too is Venice Beach culture, burning bright late at night, shut down without explanation.
Behind the scenes, the curfew is being pushed by Venice’s anti-homeless movement, folks who live far from the beach, unaffected by the curfew, cheering on police against fellow Venetians whom they consider to be the wrong sort for their spiffy, Manhattan Beach tastes. Fresh from their victory in banning the vehicular homeless, they've now set their sights on the boardwalk though this time anyone living in the neighborhood can be a victim of collateral damage.
Stroll home from a Windward, Venice or Washington Boulevard pub after the witching hour and cops will be watching, armed with unwritten rules executable at their whim — legal excuses to stop, detain, question and demand identification of anyone on the boardwalk after 12. It's cultural profiling at its finest. According to Pacific Division's Lt. Paula Kreeft, LAPD officers will employ broad discretionary authority, allowing boardwalk residents to walk between their cars and front doors. Beyond those narrow limits residents also have the right to remain silent.
Cop suck-up blog Venice 311 posted a no-nonsense ultimatum: “Don’t be on Ocean Front Walk from midnight to 5 a.m. for any reason regardless of how inconvenienced you feel.”
Rosendahl and Trutanich have pulled off the move with smoke and mirrors as Venetians learned at a Neighborhood Council meeting Monday night. Neither attended the meeting or sent representatives capable of answering crucial questions from those most impacted. Why were boardwalk residents not consulted in a decision made at City Hall without transparency or due process? The cops were clueless, as was Rosendahl staffer Arturo Piña who tried to muddy the curfew’s genesis.
While Kreeft described the boardwalk closure as a fresh interpretation of a 1989 ordinance, 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 in characterizing the curfew as an unwritten intention from 86 years ago, Piña tried to distance Trutanich, and Rosendahl (who’s up for re-election in March). Pin it on some unspecified dead guys who may or may not have passed some unspecified rule back in the day. Nice.
Boardwalk denizens claim this is the first in a series of battles designed to Disney-fy SoCal's biggest tourist attraction and boost 90291 home values in a stinky real estate market. Proof, they say, is the fallout about to rain down on other dayparts, locals and tourists. If park rules now apply to the boardwalk, no one will be allowed to walk dogs, carry a parrot on their shoulder, or sling a snake around their neck any time of day or night. Smoking on the boardwalk will be prohibited, as it is on the sand.
Can we no longer bike along Ocean Front Walk or the bike path late at night? Piña and LAPD had no idea. Will cops will force night riders onto the streets, off this far-safer thoroughfare away from cars and trucks? Check back in a month. The new rules are apparently being improvised in real time, like ordinances before them in the long-running game of City Hall vs. Venice. Politician lays down a boardwalk law, courts deem it unconstitutional, law is struck down, rinse and repeat — though tickets, arrests, harassment and law suits fly freely.
If the curfew is really about homelessness, it's no solution. The new rules will flush anyone sleeping on the boardwalk into adjacent residential streets, swelling the ranks of those who huddle nightly right around the corner, within a few from the boardwalk, with a wink-and-nod from the LAPD. Rosendahl's highly-touted plans to house and provide wrap-around services to the homeless has turned out to have been nothing more than a PR stunt 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 and 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 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 and stay there.
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