“Things started happening because there were major crowds. The tourist thing was so much bigger. There were a hundred thousand people on any given weekend. You couldn’t even walk. I mean you’ve seen those pictures of Venice when it was crowded like sardines. It was like head to head, body to body. And from Monday through Friday and sometimes on the weekends, but especially during the week, people even brought their stuff out and had yard sales all out on the boardwalk… . People would put stuff out there and sold it for a dollar fifty. It was sort of like a funky thrift store with lots of neighborhood people. That went on for a couple of years. Three or four years maybe. And then were were a lot of street performers tarting out. It was pretty funky.”
—from Andrew Deener’s Venice: A Contested Bohemia in Los Angeles
