Vince's
Venice
Part 1, Venice Daze, Vince Beck(vincisonline@yahoo.com.au)
In 1959, I
moved to Venice Beach, Los Angeles. The L.A. papers were
full of stories about “beatniks” and the wild life they
were leading in the Venice community called “the slum by
the sea”. ‘They’, the “unwashed, the pimps, queers,
whores, Artists, poets, and musicians, don’t forget the
dope fiends”. These are the people my mother warned me
about, I liked it.
I was long,
tall and thin as a rail, twenty four years old, a few
years out of the Marines. I had read Aldous Huxley’s
“Doors of Perception”. I think that had something to do
with my coming to Venice. I was ready to open doors,
doors I didn’t even know existed. In Jack Kerouac’s “On
the Road”, I found a kindred soul. America’s nine to
five work ethic was not the only option.
For first
time in my life I was seeing how inhibited I was. The
freedom of leaving my inhibitions behind, and just
letting go. Wow! It was exhilarating, like entering a
new world. “ART is LOVE is GOD” L.A. artist Wally Berman
wrote on the wall in the Venice West Café. I could dig
that.
My hangouts
were the Venice West Café, Angelo’s Pizza, the
Carrousel, The 40 Thieves, and then there was the Gas
House. When it was built at the turn of the century the
place was a casino. The Gas House became a place were
artists, writers, and musicians could work, play, or
just hang-out. Financed by civil-liberties lawyer Al
Matthews, Eric Nord (known in the press as “Big Daddy”,
was loosely in charge, the "official greeter". It became
a coffee house for a while. He was a big guy 6ft 7, Nord
talked about a multi-racial alternative society. At that
time these were new ideas to me. I introduced myself to
Eric, I had brought along a collage that I made, the
subject of the work was “Police Brutality in
Venice”…Eric put my collage in one of the windows, there
it stayed, when they finally destroyed the place in
1962, my artwork was buried with the building.
My favorite
haunt was the VW the Venice West Café at 7 Dudley Ave.,
open from 7pm till 7am for Coffee, Chess, and
Conversation. First opened in 1956 by Stuart Perkoff,
one of the original Venice poets. When I arrived on the
scene John Kenevan had taken over, I can’t say much
about Kenevan, an ex-Army Officer; he served in Korea
and he didn’t seem particularly interested in art or
poetry. By 1962 he was getting ready to close the café
down, I talked him into letting me have a go at running
the place. For about six months I was the chief cook and
bottle washer.
I served 20 different coffees, starting out with our
standard percolator coffee I think there was only one 2
cup espresso maker. But I had a lot of recipes for
different tastes of coffee.
I would go out early in the morning, before going to
bed, and scrounge food where ever I could, day old bread
etc. Each day I made up a good but cheap meal, a stew,
or spaghetti...what ever. I sold a meal for a dollar,
people who had no money like Claire Horner ate for free…
Claire was a funny guy his poetry was an expression of
his sense of humor, which was weird, “better to have
failed your Wasserman (a V.D. test), than never to have
loved at all.” He cracked me up. He made “Feely Pieces”
out of glazed clay, hung them on string and sold them to
tourists.
I loved the time I spent in that place. I put in a radio
that was permanently set to a Long Beach station that
played jazz 24 hours a day, everyday, Miles, Monk,
Horace Silver, JAZZZ!
Poets and writers of all sorts were free to get up and
share their latest inspirations with us. This was how I
first came across Bill Margolis, and many others, the
“Beat” Poets; James Ryan Morris, known as Jimmy, Stuart
Perkoff, Frankie Rios, Tony Scibbela, Maurice Lacy.
You can’t have poetry without a Muse, enter; Shanna,
(I’d seen her around but didn’t get to know her till the
end of my time in Venice.) the dancing Goddess of Venice
Beach, a poet's muse, beside being the ‘artistic
director’ for the Gas House, Shanna could be found
dancing in the Carousel, a small place that seemed big,
it was painted black inside and had no lights except a
candle on top of the cash register, and the lights of
the juke box. There were two lesbians behind the bar, a
roaring “gay” club, funny it was such a fun place to be.
I never had a hassle in the Carousel.
There was an LA ordinance against dancing (touching), so
the dancers formed a line (it was here that synchronized
line-dancing began) and they danced without touching it
was something to see and Shanna was in the middle of it
all.
Shanna makes pictures, pictures that include her poems.
I lost track of her for years, when I got my first
computer, I found her living in Hawaii and making
pictures that include her mystical poems. She and her
work can be found on My Space, and Face-book.
At this point I had tried smoking dope a few times,
without any mind blowing effects. One day I was in the
Venice West getting ready to open and this woman showed
up. Daisy was her name, she invited me to come for a
smoke. We got in the car with a couple of dudes I didn’t
know. We drove down to the oil derricks, parked and lit
up.
Man, I got stoned!
She took me back to the VW. Next thing I knew we were
all over each other. We must have had at least six
orgasms. After a while she left. I started eating—you’ve
heard of the “munchies”, I had them big time. I ate
everything in the place then went to the shop to get
more, I couldn’t stop eating. I don’t think I ever got
quit that high again…
It was about a half mile walk from the VW to the Gas
House. Ocean Front Walk is featured in countless movies.
If you didn’t want to be seen you went down an alley
called Speedway, a block in from the beach.
Speaking of movies, They made a movie in Venice with
Sharon Tate, “Don’t Make Waves”. Sharon played the part
of a free spirited beach nymph, the character they were
portraying seemed an awful lot like Shanna...
Shanna
in the sand
She danced in the sand
Tamboo beat the drum,
weed and cheap wine,
the cops called us bums.
I would drop
a couple of ‘beans’(benzedrine) and head down the beach,
maybe come across a drum circle in the sand, Tamboo, a
big black, gentle, man playing his conga drum, and his
friends would be pounding away on their bongos, Shanna
would be dancing with a big crowd around her, or, she
and Jimmy Morris would be sharing a bottle of
Thunderbird wine.
For awhile I crashed in an abandoned house that was
declared public domain by Charlie Foster, a junkie
artist / poet who hung out with Alexander Trocchi,
author of “Cain’s Book”. Also living there was a young
(18yrs. ) painter named Aaron, who was waiting
impatiently to be discovered. The only radio in the
house played classical music constantly… I craved jazz.
I had to get out of this place!
Another time I had a pad on a roof, a small room with
running water and a toilet. Great views, I shared that
place with Ron Gronhovd who constantly scribbled notes
in little journals, Ron was about twenty, we shared a
pad for a short while, I think he came from Huntington
Beach just down the coast. He had father issues, and he
admired William Burroughs; we would meet up four years
later in New York City. That’s later in the story.
Life in Venice was never boring. The nights of the full
moon seemed to be the most exciting. Police cruisers put
in an almost constant appearance, at five miles per
hour, hassling young chicks, and drunks, anyone with
long hair, doing whatever they wanted to do, all up and
down the beach. Once they knew you, they would try to
intimidate you. I favored the “yes sir” approach,
trouble was after a couple of beers I might get
belligerent.
(I had a drinking problem for some years—in
Venice I drank much less. Still, on occasion I drank too
much). Funny, when I got stoned, I didn’t care to drink.
Today, I can say I haven’t had a “drink” in 21 years.
On another slow night, I was contemplating closing
early, when a young woman named Sue came in, a dark-eyed
beauty with long dark hair cut in “bangs”, and lots of
mascara outlining her eyes, Cleopatra style. I was
interested.
She was alone so I bought her a cup of coffee and
started chatting with her. Next thing I knew the sun was
coming up and we were walking down the beach to Windward
Ave. where there were some cheap hotels. I rented a room
and we got high and balled the day away; for the next
four or five months Sue was my woman.
Of the many women I known in Venice, Sue made a biggest
impression in my life, among other things she turned me
on to some of the most amazing people; Wally Berman,
George Hermes, Ben Talbert.
Wally Berman’s first exhibition was at the Ferus
Gallery, 1957. The Hollywood vice squad arrested the 31
year old artist on charges of displaying lewd and
pornographic material. He was found guilty, Berman went
to the court black board and scrawled: “There is no
justice, only revenge.” You can see Wally Berman on the
cover of “Sgt. Pepper”, next to Tony Curtis. He died in
1976.
Ben Talbert: when I knew Ben, he was doing what every
man secretly aspires to do. He had two women, and there
was never a sign of friction—everybody
loved everybody. Ben had questions about sex and porn,
in his art. He would confront the Critics, and the
Censors. Ben was still painting with a brush but that
was OK, because he was “Far Out!"
George Hermes created the “Clock Tower Monument to the
Unknown." in 1987. It incorporates four huge steel World
War Two surplus ball floats, left over from the Long
Beach Harbor anti-submarine nets. It’s located in
MacArthur Park.
I felt privileged to meet these artists. These guys were
artists for the sake of ‘Art’, Money may rule, but it
could not rule them. Trash, thrown away junk would be
turned into Objects of Art, some times they even used
paint.
Down on the corner from the Venice West café, was
Angelo’s Pizza, a popular place to score most illegal
substances, 10 benzedrine tablets rolled up in foil for
$2.00—an ounce of good Mexican grass
was $15. Anyway, the juke box was pretty good and
everybody was having a good time when in walks LAPD
undercover detective, Gerson, you could hear the pills
and various other contraband being thrown to the floor,
while the juke box played The Four Seasons record,
“Sherry Baby”.
Once, on another slow night, Shanna was in the VW in all
her advanced pregnant beauty. She was playing a game of
chess with some young black dude, when three thug
looking red necks came in and started to hassle people,
they didn’t like the inter-racial chess game and started
to hassle Shanna.
I had water boiling on the stove and a baseball bat
under the counter, but just then a couple of the LAPD’s
finest came in, like out of thin air they appeared,
cuffed the thugs and took them away. That was one time I
was happy to see the ‘heat’... Shanna tells me one of
the guys came back next day and apologized, he didn’t
realize she was pregnant. .
The Los Angeles Police force had a game of cat and mouse
they played with anybody that looked to be unemployed,
or had long hair or a beard. I spent many a night in the
Venice lock-up. If you opened a beer on the beach, that
was enough to get you in the slammer. That’s the way it
was in ’61. I thought the good times would never end…The
LAPD the harassment go on and on, every time I saw a
police car, I’d be rousted, “let’s see your ID, where
are you going? Blah, blah, blah…
Here’s a quote from Shanna; " I remember getting rousted
one time, me and Lil’ Annie they put us in their police
car and took us way to hell and gone the other side of
town and dropped us off, I called a cab that took us to
the Venice police station, in one door and out the
other, the police had to pay the cab fare. Gerson was
his name He was a jerk!.
He didn’t bother me any more after that.....another time
"the one armed bandit" Mary Lou took off with the goods
while the cop used the bathroom...went in one door and
out the other with all the pot they had seized from some
unlucky dealer...turned the whole beach on, she
did...(smile).
Sept. ’62
Vince
Beck, AU
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