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Venice Beach has long been L.A’s haven for the offbeat and out-of-step, a magnet for throngs of the curious drawn by the precarious balance between natural beauty and human eccentricity.
But recently, that magical Venice has become a caricature of itself. Shamed almost daily in eyewitness videos of trash, mayhem and fire, its milelong ribbon of tents and shanties is now held up as the hallmark of everything broken about Los Angeles.
“The beatings, the murders of senior citizens, the fires, the victimization of housed and unhoused, the black RV terrorizing families in a school zone, the unanswered emails, unreturned phone calls; there is no excuse for your absence and neglect,” one resident wrote as part of what has become a daily barrage of screaming emails directed at city leaders.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva waded into the morass of homelessness in Los Angeles this week by deploying deputies to the Venice boardwalk, a tinderbox in the city's struggle to deal with the mounting crisis.
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