We walked down to Venice Beach, that is about 4 kms from the hotel for a look at some of the alternate lifestyles, and boy were there some interesting freaks. The shanty town come market place stretches about a km along a wide boardwalk There are heaps of souvenir and touristy shops and stalls on one side and a hippie art market on the other. It looks like most of the stall holders live on site living on the few dollars they get for their artwork. The majority of their income would would be spent one of the several legalised “for medical use’ weed dealers mixed in with the tourist shops. Some of the artwork is pretty out there and there are plenty of stall holders who have been out in the sun a little too long as they are with the fairies.
We grabbed some lunch from a great brew pub and sat on a table with a couple of the members of punk band Issues. They were with a designer working on their merchandising artwork for the upcoming Warped tour. They seemed nice enough guys, but real hard core punks, well i’m not sure, lemon lime and bitters, for drinks and one had a salad while the other had half a burger and asked for doggy bag for the other half to eat later.
