FANTASY BY THE SEA

I lived for many years at Venice Beach on the very western extreme of the city of Los Angeles. I started to dig into Venice's tumultuous history while writing a weekly column for The Argonaut, a newspaper that covered Marina del Rey, Playa del Rey and parts of Venice and Westchester. Beyond Baroque, a literary foundation headquartered in the old Venice City Hall, received an NEA grant to publish the book which told Venice's history using photographs from my collection and that of my friend the artist Tom Sewell accompanied by text that I wrote. The book was quite popular when it came out in 1979, received numerous positive reviews in regional media, and a second edition was published in 1980 by Peace Press, an independent publisher in Culver City.