Venice: a day, a wave, a lesson
In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, roughly the size of Texas, drifts a vast patch of gyres—so dense with liquified microplastics there’s no chance it will ever be cleaned up. I mention this because of what happens at Venice Beach.
Walking up from behind the beachfront, kids (and adult kids) skate along a cracked bitumen path with glimpses of the bluest-blue sea. Powerlines, streetlights, and thin-trunked palm trees frame a beachy 1930s streetscape of whitewashed buildings. Balconies overlook well-kept lanes lined with Teslas. It’s the cleanest part of LA I’ve seen—made for the breeze off the bay and faintly scented with weed.
Topless, impossibly buff guys glide by on boards. It’s as quintessentially Californian as it gets. The temperature is a perfect 28°C (82°F), and once past Ocean Front Walk, the path widens, lined with palms, revealing nothing but white sand and bright blue water.
It’s a cloudless day, and from here I can see the Palos Verdes Peninsula, about 20 miles southwest, separating Los Angeles Harbor from San Pedro Bay. The path, full of strollers and rollerbladers, is punctuated by art-deco follies—concrete steps shaded by faded wooden parasols.
From the path to the water stretches the widest beach I’ve ever seen. The sunbathers look like scattered dots. My mate and I slip off our shoes and hop across the burning sand. If you visit, don’t do what I did next.
The ocean calls, and we answer—racing in, diving through the breakers. Seconds later I’m spat out, coughing, having been completely wiped out by a wave. My sunglasses are gone.
I linger in the shallows, convinced they must be close. Each wave dumps more detritus at my feet—bits of softened plastic, branches, fragments of things that no longer resemble their origin. From the sand, my mate calls out that it’s pointless. He’s right. I could easily stumble on something sharp or toxic. I let it go.
Somewhere out there, my prescription sunglasses have begun their new life in the Pacific gyre. I packed a second pair, but losing them after one day still stings.
As we walk up the beach, a pair of U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters thunder overhead in perfect formation—a striking display of might against the serenity of the coast. When we reach Santa Monica Pier, we find that while I was searching for my eyewear, a real emergency was unfolding.
A jet skier lies strapped into a stretcher, being winched from a rescue boat to an ambulance. The driver watches, cigarette dangling, unmoved. It feels routine. The U.S. Coast Guard reports that personal watercraft account for nearly 20% of boating accidents, often due to inexperience, speed, or intoxication.
The crowd watches as the stretcher disappears into the ambulance. The driver flicks his cigarette into the water and drives off, siren wailing. I’m grateful to have lost only my sunnies.
We head to The Butcher’s Daughter, a busy vegetarian spot nearby. After some confusion ordering, my friend and I squeeze onto a shared table while waiting for our burgers—mine the Butcher’s, his the Impossible. Both delicious.
Beside us, two men are catching up after years apart. One, tanned and relaxed, insists he’d never trade LA for New York. His pasty New York friend just nods, half-joking, half-longing.
“It’s just so relaxed here,” the LA friend says. And it is.
Visit: Butchers’s Daughter
