Dogtown Ink

It’s not every neighborhood where you can mount gargoyles and cloven-hoofed figures all over your house without having the local home owners association up in arms.

This strange “gothic” divertissement next to another (the Morrison Hotel) is hardly Notre Dame de Paris, but as boardwalk kitsch goes (okay, it’s 100 feet off the boardwalk across Speedway), it’s a gargoyle giggle.

Westminster Ave
Venice, California

Attention ladies: Re-Ink-R-Nation specializes in women’s tattoos and piercing — from Japanese kanji brush style tattoos to fixing ugly tattoos from your past (hence the shop’s name) to permanent make-up tattoos that look completely natural. At least according to Mamasan, the artist and piercer. Actually, male tattoo artists along the boardwalk regularly send Mamasan clients who need her special skills with female body art.

Mamasan speaks JAPANESE.

Abbot Kinney art gallery…

Asianica to Montana Avenue post-hippy. Buddha yoga gifties and furnishings…

April 19 - May 24, 2008
Daniel Dove
Cherry and Martin
A solo exhibition of Daniel Dove’s large-scale oil paintings dealing with pictorial construction and the manipulated environments of contemporary America.

Readings and literary events take place several nights a week at cultural landmark Beyond Baroque, so make sure to check Beyond Baroque Events Calendar

Not sure that’s the official name, but it’s a catchy come on.

Between the body-building facilities at the Venice Recreation Center (the new Muscle Beach area) and the actual beach lies a sandy yard equipped with balance beam, rings, uneven bars, climbing rope and a range of other gymnastic and recreational apparatuses. It’s for bigger kids and adults. (An enclosed children’s playground can be found 100 yards to the north.)

A more relaxed locale for chin-ups than the nearby body-building facility, the work/play pit is a popular place for speed bag practice (there’s a speed bag station — though you must bring your own bag or possibly rent one from the rec center office).

Marissa’s fine tattoo artistry is much in demand along the boardwalk. Buzzbomb, itself, isn’t much to look at, but Marissa’s ink art is. If you’ve come to the beach for a tattoo, make sure to consider Marissa.

Reopened after severe storm damage a decade ago, the fishing pier’s toilets were blasted off the end by huge waves in December ‘05. Gnarley…though no one was in them at the time. A stroll on the pier can make for a lovely constitutional. View fellow strollers, power walkers, people fishing, surfers, lifeguards, sea gulls, bat rays, dolphins and sea lions (if you’re lucky) and get a different perspective on Venice and Los Angeles.