Made for Each Other: The Story of a Town and a Newspaper

By Jim Smith
How is it possible for a newspaper to survive these days without massive advertising from big corporations? And while we’re at it, how is it possible for a Venice identity to survive nearly 85 years after it lost its legal standing as a city? There may be a connection.
The Free Venice Beachhead is [...]

Venice Quiz

The Beachhead sent a questionnaire to our loyal readers who are on our email list to tell us who they are and what they liked about Venice. Here are the aggregated results. If you would like to me on the list (2 or 3 messages a month), send an email to Beachhead@freevenice.org.
1. How long have [...]

The Beats in 1959 Venice

By Bill Fleeman
Long hair, beard, looking like Raskolnikov ‘bout to kill his landlady, back in Baltimore I didn’t fit. I read “On the Road” in ‘58, “The Holy Barbarians”early ‘59. Then I read a U.S. highway roadmap. Broke, no car, I bummed money from a friend and a ride out of town to I 94 [...]

Only 6,013 Years Old!

Happy BEarthday. Bishop Ussher of Ireland in the 17th Century declared that the earth was created on October 23, 4,004 B.C.E.

Maureen Cotter Tells Inside Story of Charlie Manson’s Murder Spree in 1969

By Fred Dewey

It is hard to imagine that, once upon a time, quite a few Americans, young and old, tried to free American society from its ruinous trajectory of violence, greed, propaganda, and war. These forgotten radicals were the hippies. While scorn has been leveled against them, some of it deserved, some of this is [...]

Israel Levin Center Needs Help

For 45 years, thousands of senior residents of Venice have been assisted by the Israel Levin Senior Center. Recently, the Center has fallen on hard times and needs the community’s help.
When the Center was founded, many thousands of elderly Jewish people resided on or near Ocean Front Walk. They included concentration camp survivors and retired [...]

Freemasonry in Venice

By Michael Wamback
In 1903, a group of prominent civic and business leaders headed by Abbot Kinney, a Freemason, decided that a Masonic Lodge was needed to serve what was then the community of Ocean Park. They petitioned the Grand Lodge of California for permission to organize and form such a Lodge. By 1905, they had [...]

Students Continue Campaign for Memorial for Japanese Who Were Taken to World War II Camps

A campaign to create what may be the first historical marker at a round-up point where Japanese were taken away to internment camps in 1942 continues to gain support among Venice High School students.
The students have been writing letters to Councilperson Bill Rosendahl and to the Beachhead in support of a permanent marker at the [...]

Cops Target Venice Gambling Dens, 1948

By Michael Linder
The Great Venice Gambling Raids of 1948 hit smack in the middle of the Communist scare — in full swing and zeroing in on comic books, a subversive plot by Commies, corrupting youth with bosomy babes on pulpy pages.
So claimed the paranoid and easily-outraged as Red Menace panic spread, even though a squad [...]

Lucy Parsons – A Life Dedicated to Justice

By Caeli Thibeault
History has a way of forgetting to mention common people when great discoveries or revolutions are discussed. Only the elite tend to be mentioned, but history was forced to remember one woman who would not be ignored, one woman who fought with an intense passion for what she believed in, justice for the [...]