Woman with parasol on Abbott Kinney. 

As the above photo attests, Abbott Kinney in Venice is again a center of style. The ocean cooled, breezy neighborhood is stocked with modern furniture, antiques, lots of Buddhas, and $70 t-shirts. Beautiful young woman with bronzed skin, bearded middle-aged men who live on pot and memories of the 60’s, Freudian therapists, screenwriters, agents, multi-racial couples and single sex marrieds…all make this street their week-end home.

Venice has always been eccentric and dangerous, and usually guilt ridden. Too many liberals here lament the “loss of diversity” accompanied by rising housing prices and fear that “only the rich will remain”.

When the Bush spending and economic plan kicks in, interest rates go up and the rising deficits and war spending finally bring down our fleeting prosperity, Venice neurotics will once again be a happy bunch of folks.