Is this the Todd Rundgren Nazz or the Alice Cooper Nazz on these bills??
The Alice Cooper Nazz. They changed their name to avoid confusion.
And when you say the pier (the Santa Monica pier, right?) was fenced off... I'm assuming that must have been after El Niño washed half of it away.
No, the old Venice pier at the end of Washington. I think it's concrete now, but I remember it being rotting wood, falling into the ocean. Maybe I'm confusing it with Santa Monica and it's always been concrete. But you could easily get around the fence that was supposed to be closing it off. The Santa Monica pier wasn't in much better shape at the time. The only thing on it was the carousel, and that was all boarded up. But yeah, it was half gone, so it must have been post El Niño. But it wasn't closed off.
I was new to the area - new to the state - and like you, I could never understand how they let such prime spots rot like that. It was good for me, because I could afford to live there, but it was kind of a shithole. Later I moved to East Venice, on Olive, but it just wasn't the same. Too close to the Marina people. Not you MDR, those
other Marina people...you know who I'm talking about. ;)
It's hard to understand how the area went into such a decline in the '60s. During that time you could rent an apartment, literally steps from the beach, for about the same price as an apartment in Watts.
I had an apartment on Westminster, about 100 feet from the boardwalk and the rent was $400, split between three of us. So those prices were low for a long time. Fante lived in the building across the street, briefly, back in the mid 30's according to Cooper's bio.
Dogtown was a great movie. Another one to see is
Rising Son, about Christian Hosoi. I was living down in Venice when they were pioneering that street skating shit. You can see how crappy Venice Beach was in the footage of them skating up the sides of the tagged up, boarded up pavilion.
But I can't even go to Venice anymore. There's nothing left there of the old vibe. That's probably good, but it just feels like another wealthy suburb to me now. You might as well be in Burbank.