Growing Up Venice

Venice, California is unlike anywhere else in the world. Historian Donna Lewis Friess, Ph.D., grew up on the ocean front in Venice in the midst of California's 1940's oil boom. Her next door neighbor, a working oil pump-house complete with derrick, was a constant in her life. Determined to bring a lost piece of Los Angeles history to life, and sequestered by the 2020 Worldwide Pandemic and following lock-down, Donna offers this vibrant story of a remarkably idiosyncratic place in America. While honoring the Indigenous People who once lived on its shores, this history begins with her great grandparents' late 1880's arrival in Venice Beach, travels through Abbot Kinney's magical Venice-of-America years, continues across time to its evolution as an artists' Mecca, and concludes with the newer Venice ethos as Silicon Beach.