Day 2...Venice

Venice Beach, CA, is like no other place I've been. It's where artists, street performers, tourists, and bodybuilders all come to form one giant community freakshow. The beach is beautiful, the people are hilarious, and the shops range from glass stores to high-end sunglasses retailers. It's a little hard to pin down the exact vibe of Venice, but weird is the word that comes up the most often in my mind.

This:

is one of the street perfomers. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video of him doing his act, but he rolls that silver ball fluidly all over his body. It's weird.

There's lots of aspiring rappers that stand in the middle of the walkway with burned CDRs of their albums and headphones for you to listen to the album before you buy it. It gets really obnoxious.

One of the funnier interactions I had on the walkway was from a skinny, shirtless 20something dude who came up to the four of us and asked for "a hug from someone beautiful." Anna and Alice declined, to which he responded, "oh, no, not you guys, him." I respectfully declined. I had a feeling he was a pickpocket. As we were walking away, I heard him ask a girl if he could have her boyfriend.

After seeing everything we thought we should see, including the patch of palm trees with graffiti painted half-way up the trunks, we moseyed back towards where we parked and Alice stopped to stock up incense.

As Alice was making her incense mix, a man dressed in all white, including a white wrap which I imagine held his locks in place, and rollerblades appeared out of nowhere. Strapped to him was a beat-up looking guitar and a mini-amp. He turned on the amp and began playing a us a solo worthy of the best 60s psych-rock record you own. He seemed like a self-taught virtuoso who was content to just roll around Venice playing for the passersby. It was a pretty cool moment.

We decided to get coffee on our way back to Thousand Oaks, and stopped at this excellent little shop on Main Street in Santa Monica. If you're ever there, go to Amelia's Cafe. They're really friendly people with really good muffins.

It took an hour to get back to Thousand Oaks because the 101, 10, and 405 were all severely choked with traffic, but we made it.

Now we're chillin.