Holy crap, is Venice Beach always like this?

Oh the fights! The population of Venice High when I went there was Hispanic gang bangers that lived in Venice and Blacks from South Central and beyond that were bused in - when busing was a thing.

Us scrawny white kids, mostly poor, stoned surfers were seriously outmatched. So I kept my head down and stayed invisible. It sounds hilarious now but in the rare instances the surfers got into it with the bangers it was a shit show.

The bathrooms were off limits at school and you went in at your peril. Once at a night football game I really had to pee and got my ass kicked in a bathroom. It was 5 to 1. The administration went nuts trying to get me to identify the girls. I may have been poor and not terribly sophisticated but I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.

This is not a Black or Brown or White rant. It just was what happened. We were all young dumb kids.

I visited my youngest who recently moved into a rental house with some friends right near Penmar Park. That is not a park that I would have ever gotten near to - night or day. I had some ptsd just looking at the park. And of course my son looked at me like I was nuts.

/r/AskLosAngeles Thread Parent