September 3, 2007

I open my eyes, the childrens are looking me.
I stop to write, and I dedicate myself to the organization of the trip.
This time, the camera is fully recharged. And I got a map too.

I was lifted by Scott (my sister’s husband) to Venice Beach, where I walked all the morning.
Here, people is so nice and strange.
Venice Beach is just a place along the end of Los Angeles beach where a rich american in love with Venice, tryed to create something similar with artificial canals and a lot of money.

There, I saw the ocean for the first time in my life, and I drenched my foots into it.
I didn’t cry. That surprised me.
I’m becoming a big kid.

I started from the long hike that coasts the ocean.
After a long The hot and warm weather leaves space for the homeless to rest in the streets allowing strange tales about them to spread.

They share the same destiny, their kind with each other, gambling for food and beer with their oddities.

In this trip, I didn’t stop to look at person’s thoughts, I just gone straight cause I had too few time.
However, I known three.

The first was a photographer, Victor Spencer.

I was very surprised by his works.
He got a really amazing arsenal of photos on his portfolio, but he still not have a website.
I offered myself to create him one, and he kindly gifted me two prints he made from his photos.
I sold myself as a newbye but well promising photographer.
I hope I did well.
I would have talked to Victor for the entire day, but my road was long and we already exchanged our email addresses.

So my walk started again, in the direction of the canals.
On both sides of the road, strange stands with every kind of oddity and useless stuff.
On my right, the ocean, with huge palms, and some courts to play basketball and similar sports.
I also dressed myself with a python and get some photos of me with it for some coins.

A lot of things captured my attentions…
Like the illusory potraits of Octavio Ocampo, a visionary Mexican painter…

or the strange puppets done with recycled metallic crap by this guy:

I also did one of the best photos of that day to a weird person dressed like the building he was resting on.

Again, I showed to myself that my idea of photography is more “keeping eye on beauty” than “beauty things”.

Just after that I known the second person, Sam, a Jamaican boy that bringed me to the canals.

He found me very funny.
I asked him if he was white skinned before starting to walk on that road, cause he was not wearing a shirt and I was burning under that sun. The temperature was 41° Centigrades. The sun was in the middle of the sky.
Hot. But so dry, so I was ok.

While I was walking and talking with Sam I known also some italians guys

that known him in one of the last (and probably more expensive) houses of the beach.
I didn’t liked them, however I pretended to, so I did them some photos, while they was holding the original Venice flag.
Of course I forgot about them just turning the corner.

There, I greeted him cause our roads was going to divide.
My journey bringed me to the center of the city… and I saw there that Venice Beach sucks.
It’s just a huge quarter with some artificial canals, linked by some terrible white painted wood bridges.
Just to have an idea… that is a photo that survived my deleting-rage.

Some houses was cute… however… they remembered me an Ultima Online’s city, were every owner of a small tent is encouraged to create a house how he wants chosing from infinite different ornamentation.
The result, is a chaos with no style, and also no logic, in wich the only common thing is the will of “have some fun”.
That is also, indeed, the spirit I found in most part of the USA, especially in Los Angeles.

A little frustrated about that place, I remembered that I still haven’t had a breakfast, and it was already afternoon.
I started to walk the path back, also buying a hoop of mango from a mexican old women and drinking a lemon-strawberry juice.
It’s amazing to recognize in each building, and everywere I look, a place I already saw in television.

On my way back, I also changed road, passing near the HenHouse recording studio where Andy Tubman recorded his first CD with the band he created a few time ago, the Jane Doe’s.
This is a video about them and the recording studio.
I will make an entire article about him/them cause I think that he is a genious and I really like his style too.
The next time I will be in California I want to go at their concerts.

On the road back, I known the third person, a Hare Krishna monk that was so kind with me.
I showed him so much interest even if I was in a big hurry, so he gifted me some books that I still have to read fearing what I can find inside them. But I will.
I didn’t made photos to him, just for respect of his spirituality.

After I came back to the place I was lifted in the morning, I was carried again from Scott to his father’s house.
I passed the rest of the day with the family.

We did a big barbecue in pure american style, I played a lot with the childrens in the swimming pool.
I like Scott’s family, and I’ll see them with pleasure in the future.