Moonjuice; Photo. More Ascender’s Photos.

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Feel of rain in the face
moonjuice/
partial to poets
the lady’s tears

Tony Scibella

Tony Scibella was a member of a Beat Generation colony in Venice, California—nestled on beach front just south of Santa Monica—that flourished briefly in the late 50s before it was publicized into ruination.

Scibella begins from the blue-collar Italian childhood that he spent so much time trying to break away from. In recognizable Beat Prosody that comprises fractured grammar, ragged margins and angular rhythms, he swings back and forth from young urban impressions and memories of wartime propaganda…

Scibella has somehow managed to capture the immediacy of life in Venice, not just his life, but street life in general, all in his nonstop hipster patter. It’s infectious, powerful testimony. We can use as much of that as we can get.

Life’s a Beach; Photo. Pacific Ocean Park (POP) as seen from Venice Beach. More Ascender’s Photos

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To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.

Isaac Newton

We spent this Christmas on Venice Beach, known for its canals, beaches and circus-like Ocean Front Walk, which features performers, fortune-tellers and vendors; home to early Beat poets and artists in Los Angeles.  There was an explosion of poetry and art. Major participants included Stuart Perkoff, John Thomas, Frank T. Rios, Tony Scibella, Lawrence Lipton, John Haag, Saul White, Robert Farrington and Philomene Long.

Prominent residents of Venice include singer Brandon Boyd, actresses Julia Roberts, Kate Beckinsale, Valeria Andrews, Lana Clarkson and Anjelica Huston, actors Tom Conway (brother of actor George Sanders), lived here in the 1960s, Nicolas Cage, Chaney Kley, Tim Meadows, Robert Hegyes, Mark Valley, Michael T. Weiss, Fairuza Balk,Taylor Negron, artist Martha Alf, and musicians Perry Farrell, Evidence of Dilated Peoples, Saint John of Saint John and the Revelations, Joshua Kadison, John Lydon (who owns a sizeable amount of rental property in Venice), Ozzy from Survivor, architect Lawrence Scarpa, John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tommy Mars of the Frank Zappa band, Fiona Apple and Mike Muir and most of his Suicidal Tendencies bandmates. Photographer Lauren Greenfield has lived in Venice since 1972.

Actor Robert Downey Jr. kept an apartment on the boardwalk during the 1990s. Harding Avenue is also where the Lennon Sisters of Lawrence Welk fame grew up. Jim Morrison lived in Venice for two years where he met Ray Manzarek to form the nucleus of The Doors. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s acting career began after becoming a regular bodybuilder at Venice’s famous Gold’s Gym, whose present facility claims to be “The Mecca of Bodybuilding.” Restaurateur Wolfgang Puck has owned and operated noted eateries in the area since the 1990s. Other notables include actors Viggo Mortensen, Rutger Hauer, Bryan Callen, and Elijah Wood, and film directors Vadim Perelman, Henry Jaglom and Paul Mazursky. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Host Ty Pennington both resides and owns his own Home Decor store in Venice. For many years, pro wrestlers Hulk Hogan and Sting were announced as residing in Venice Beach as well. Standup comedians, such as Nick Swardson, Eddie Ifft, Paul Provenza, George Carlin and Zach Galifinakis and street performers have proliferated in Venice, Wavy Gravy and Swami X being two of the more recent hippie busker alumni. Political contributions have been sent from homes in Venice from the actor Dennis Hopper and Simpsons creator Matt Groening. South Park co-creator Matt Stone lives in Venice as well.^[11] Harry Perry, the famous street entertainer, is one of the boardwalk’s key performers. Photographer Helen K. Garber maintains a studio on Ocean Front Walk. Graffiti/Street Artist and painter Jean-Michel Basquiat lived in Venice in the 80’s. Immature, an R&B group from the 1990s, used to perform on the boardwalk prior to becoming famous. Other notable residents included comedian George Carlin.

My two beautiful daughters on Christmas Day 2009.

These are just a few photos from the trip; expect to see more in the coming weeks.

Newport Lighthouse by Albert Bierstadt; 13 1/4 x 15 1/2 in; Oil on board.

A day all blue and white, and we
Came out of woods to sand
And snow-capped waves. The sea
Rose with us as we walked, the land
Built dunes, a lighthouse, and a sky of gulls.

Here where I built my life ten years ago,
The day breaks gray and cold;
And brown surf, muddying the shore,
Deposits fish-heads, sewage, rusted tin.
Children and men break bottles on the stones.
Beyond the lighthouse, black against the sky,
Two gulls are circling where the woods begin.

Land’s End by Weldon Kees

Albert Bierstadt was a German-American painter best known for his large landscapes of the American West. In obtaining the subject matter for these works, Bierstadt joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion.

Though his paintings sold for princely sums, Bierstadt was not held in particularly high esteem by critics of his day. His use of uncommonly large canvases was thought to be an egotistical indulgence, as his paintings would invariably dwarf those of his contemporaries when they were displayed together. The romanticism evident in his choices of subject and in his use of light was felt to be excessive by contemporary critics. His paintings emphasized atmospheric elements like fog, clouds and mist to accentuate and complement the feel of his work. Bierstadt sometimes changed details of the landscape to inspire awe. The colors he used are also not always true. He painted what he believed was the way things should be: water is ultramarine, vegetation is lush and green, etc. The shift from foreground to background was very dramatic and there was almost no middle distance.

Lighthouses are used to mark dangerous coastlines, hazardous shoals and reefs, and safe entries to harbors and can also assist in aerial navigation. Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and replacement by modern electronic navigational aids.

Seagulls near Santa Cruz

Pigeon Point, near Santa Cruz

Fog around Pacifica in November. We had heard the tides were high this year so went to see if we could catch some.

You’ve probably heard that residents of a seaside apartment building in Pacifica were evacuated when a cliff began crumbling into the ocean Thursday?

Looking at me, looking at you, looking at the ocean tides…

The tenants of a 12-unit building at the top of a bluff at 330 Esplanade Ave. were ordered to evacuate after a large chunk of earth fell from the cliff into the ocean. The mandatory evacuation was issued due to fears the building might collapse if conditions worsened.

Looking at you, looking at you, looking at the ocean tides.

The cliff is comprised of compacted sand and soft sandstone, and there has been significant erosion over the past two years. The building owner applied for permission to build a rock barrier last year, but there was an issue with property lines that delayed the permitting. Engineered Soil Repairs, estimated that the cliff had receded as much as 15 feet in recent days because of unusually high tides.

The California Coastal Commission is responsible for the permitting, and the agency could not be reached Friday due a state-mandated furlough. (Sigh.)

A contractor began building a rock barrier at the bottom of the Pacifica bluff Friday evening to keep high tides from further eroding the cliff. A crane dumped 4- to 6-ton boulders at the bottom of the cliff. Unusually high tides washed away about 15 feet of the bottom of the cliff in the last few days.

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