Geoff is in love with Venice Beach. I think going to Long Beach or Irwindale is just his excuse to go skate the boardwalk on the way back to Norcal. He always tries to get a huge group to go but it never works out. Last time it was us +1. This time it was us +2.
Our first guest this trip was Leann McGlasson, OMGDrift’s photographer from Denver. We were charged with bringing her back to LAX so she could go home. But her flight wasn’t til later in the afternoon, so we made her go to Venice with us.
Our second guest was Nexen model and ThunderDrift starter girl Elysha Lee. Her ride home had to leave early so she asked if we could give her a ride back to Norcal too. That was fine, but she had to go to Venice with us also. The girls rented a tandem bike so Geoff and I wouldn’t be able to ditch them on our boards. Frequent GuestBlasters Joe and Justin were scheduled to come later.
The girls wanted to watch the bodybuilders. Screw that. Geoff wanted to talk to this awesome flatland guy. He was taking up way more room than I’ve ever seen one person be allowed to use at Venice. It’s cool though, he was hella good. His name was Mike and he said he rides an hour or two every day. He got into flatland tricks because of Jesse Puente, a famous flatlander who also rides at Venice.
The casual observer at Venice will notice tons of tourists, a handful of people who appear to be locals, and a bunch of weirdos. What most people don’t realize is that a lot of the locals and weirdos actually know each other, or at least know of each other. Geoff asked Mike, “What is the craziest shit you’ve seen on the Venice Boardwalk?” and he told us he’s seen Amir get in fights.
He went on to explain that Amir was a guy in a Speedo who just goes up and down the boardwalk freaking people out. He’s not as weird as people think but he does rile some people up and get in fights. He doesn’t always win so sometimes he has to use mace. Amir sounded like the kind of guy we had to find and take pictures of, so we set off on our new quest.
We hit the path to the north, but the cement was covered in sand in most places. I wasn’t down with skating in sand so I went to shoot the surfers til Joe and Justin showed up. Justin was going to hit the skate park and I didn’t want to miss that.
Shooting surfing with the 300 was way easier than shooting drifting. Even with a polarizer I was shooting way faster than 1/1000 so I wasn’t even using my monopod. No problem! There was a good mix of beginners and more advanced guys out, but the surf wasn’t very big.
Just like in drifting, shooting crashes is fun. Hahaha. I stayed out there for a half hour or so, but I didn’t see Amir anywhere. I was packing up right as Geoff called me to say Joe and Justin weren’t gonna make it. Bummer. I headed back over toward the skate park anyway.
While I was shooting the surfers, Leann and Elysha went shopping and Geoff ran into Carpet Guy. He was way too dressed to be Amir, but he was still an interesting fellow. Gotta love the can of Steel Reserve!
On the way to the skate park I stopped to talk to this guy painting on the Graffiti Wall. He goes by Studr. That’s his partner Ramos at the other end of the wall. If you don’t know about the wall, check it out. There are actually a few walls, and they’re all legal to paint on. You just have to go get a permit from the office around the corner. Because “real” graffiti usually requires it to be illegal, I wouldn’t have thought major artists would paint on the walls at Venice, but Studr assured me that some pretty big names have come through there.
There are so many layers of paint it’s ridiculous! Pieces usually only last til the next day before someone rolls over them and starts a new one. The paint was scraped off on this section so you can actually see how deep it goes, and that’s not even all the way to the concrete.
Geoff and the girls came by to see what I was doing, then we decided to head south on the path. South was way less sandy so Geoff and I skitched on the bike all the way down to the pier. It was like we combined to form Voltron or something. It was awesome.
Out on the pier we saw this Fire Attack chopper go by. It gave me flashbacks of the RC chopper at Long Beach the day before. I can still hear Larry Chen yelling, “Shoot it down! Shoot it down!” I’ll never forget what we went through that day.
Geoff also spotted Severe-Farmer-Tan-Guy and his pal making their way up the pier. We had run into them earlier while skitching, when one of them asked for directions. Elysha had replied “I don’t know, but if you don’t get our of our way, you’re risking your life.” You tell em, Elysha! We didn’t see Amir out there anywhere.
We had to leave soon so we made our way back toward the rental shop. Geoff decided he wanted to get some dope panning shots of the bike, so that’s what he did. But then Leann decided she wanted to get some dope shots of Geoff getting dope shots. So that’s what she did.
Elysha wanted to make our shots even more dope, but she almost made us crash. Well, maybe they would crash, but all I’d have to do is let go. Hahaha!
We wandered back over to the basketball courts where we spotted George Clinton playing in a casual half-court game. His attitude screamed “I am this game!”
The game at the next court over was SRS BSNS. Full court, yelling, N-words, everything street hoops should be.
These guys were getting HEATED. They spent 1/3 of the time playing and 2/3 of the time fighting about it. Pretty sure none of them were Amir, even though they were down to fight.
Right as it was time to return the bike, we finally spotted a weirdo in a Speedo! We went over to the guy and Geoff asked “Hey, are you Amir?” and the guy replied “Yes, I am a mirror.” Geoff said “No no, Amir” and the guy said “Oh hell no!! I’m definitely NOT that guy! I’m the Snake Guy! That guy’s a weirdo! He’s my buddy though, and I just saw him run by.” We told him about Life Blasters and he was was pretty excited about it. He just wanted to make sure we mentioned that his snakes were Miracle Snakes that bring good luck.
We never did find Amir, but our visit to Venice was fun anyway. Until next time!
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