Birth of Venice:
old-time magazine
artifacts
Actors, Filmmakers and Writers in Venice live or lived
Actors, Filmmakers and Writers in
Venice
hung out
Program of the 1978 Venice Festival at the Fox Venice Theater
Tale of the Fox
(from Free Venice Beachhead)
1981 Resistance Celebration Schedule
1981 Resistance Celebration Articles
To See Venice Is To Live - opening day slogan
Institutions, Organizations, Foundations
Venice Centennial 2005
Theo von Hoffman and daughter Kristina hold banner on Windward Avenue where parade ended.
Arthur Reese was the original decorator of old Venice when Abbot Kinney ran it. These Reese-inspired heads were made for the Centennial Parade by Venice High students as a tribute to the imaginative designer. The parade started at Westminster School. Todd von Hoffman sent in these pictures, with credit for the success of the project going to Sonya Reese Davis (granddaughter of Arthur Reese); the amazing giant puppet artist Michelle Berne of Celebration Arts; and art teacher Joanne Carrabio.
Trippy Chicken and Emil Zapata
The 75 Year Mark
July 1980
Venice is having its 75th anniversary,
promoted as a three-day party with parades, beauty contests, music, dancing
and of course fireworks.
40,000 tourists showed up for the official opening day of Venice on July
4, 1905. Abbot Kinney imported twenty-four gondoliers and a seventy-piece
band from Italy. On the Grand Canal you could rent a canoe for a quarter.
O.P. treated Venice like a stepchild, and they quarreled over questions
of liquor licenses, building permits and public services. Abbot Kinney
did all he could to dis-incorporate but couldn't quite manage it, so he
got his own people into the Ocean Park Board of Trustees and eventually
controlled it that way instead. He set up his own police and fire departments
so Venice wouldn't suffer from neglect at the hands of uncaring O.P. bureaucrats.
excerpted from Call Someplace Paradise
Left: Angela Loyd, of the musical group Samba de Oro (aka Chix With Stix). The heads were built by Joanne Carrabio's Venice High art students. Emil Zapata is Todd von Hoffman, who says "We both became instant volunteers to wear the heads when my high school students couldn't make it. We had a ball."
Huell Howser
Here's the group along Abbot Kinney
Left: The large Black papier mache figure is a rendering of Arthur Reese himself - created by Michelle Berne. The other figures are performers from her company, Celebration Arts.
