Venice Boardwalk, also known as Ocean Front Walk, is a 2.5 kilometer esplanade that stretches along the Southern Californian beach of the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Venice Beach district of Los Angeles which is bordered by Marina del Rey on the southeastern portion, by Santa Monica on the north, Culver City on the east, and Mar Vista on the northeast.
The boardwalk?s west side is a bizarre display of human landscape comprising of street performers, musicians, artists, vendors, fortune-tellers, jugglers, bodybuilders and everything in between. The Ocean Front Walk is just one of the exciting attractions that make Venice Beach a popular cultural center. During the Beat generation in the 1950s and 60s, Venice became a melting pot of the artistic and creative individuals.
The Venice of America was created when a tobacco tycoon named Abbot Kinney and his partner Francis Ryan had procured a 3.24 km beachfront property on the southern part of Santa Monica in 1981. The partnership ventured to build a resort town on the northern tip of the estate and named it Ocean Park. After the death of Ryan and the dissolution of Kinney?s new partnership in 1904, Kinney had burrowed a few miles of canals on the marshy southern portion of the property to make way for his proposed residential zone and other entertainment and business infrastructures. The resort was intended to mimic its Italian namesake, using gondolas and railroad as means of excursion.
The population of the town increased from 3,119 in 1910 to more than 10,000, drawing at most 150,000 tourists during weekends. In 1911, the town?s official name was amended from Ocean Park to Venice. From then on, numerous prominent and noteworthy names have taken residence on Venice.
Nowadays, Venice Boardwalk is the most unique attraction that has retained the popular vibrancy of the district and has socially continued to heap in more tourists, including the wealthy folks of the West.
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