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VENICE, CALIFORNIA - USA
Venice, California, is a district of the city of Los Angeles, California. It
is best known for its canals and beaches, but it also has a somewhat
bohemian residential area as well as a colorful boardwalk.
Venice's unique and somewhat exotic urban landscape has been depicted in
many films, as well as TV shows and commercials where it can be seen
virtually every day. In Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, for instance, Venice
quite persuasively took on the appearance of a Mexican border town. Venice
is also well known for Muscle Beach, where people come to lift weights and
promenade.
Venice Beach and the boardwalk (properly
Ocean Front Walk), with its street musicians, colorful drifters, and
outspoken personalities, as well as restaurants and night clubs, is a great
magnet for tourists, even from other parts of Los Angeles.
The Venice of America was founded by Abbot Kinney in 1905 . Its area code is
310, its zip code is 90291, and it was annexed to Los Angeles in 1925.
The Oakwood Avenue area of Venice, which lies inland away from the tourist
areas, was notorious for a high crime rate fueled by the activities of local
drug dealers. It is now undergoing rapid gentrification.
Like much of Los Angeles, Venice is also well-known for its severe traffic
congestion; it lies 2 miles away from the nearest freeway, and its unusually
dense network of narrow streets was not planned for the demands of modern
traffic.
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