Venice Beach

Venice Beach is a sand-bottom municipal beach on the Santa Monica Bay coast of Los Angeles County, anchored by the Venice Beach Boardwalk along its central shoreline. The Boardwalk, officially Ocean Front Walk, is a two-mile pedestrian strip running parallel to the beach. The City of Los Angeles describes it as the second-most-visited tourist destination in Southern California, with more than ten million visitors per year. Muscle Beach Venice, an outdoor weight-lifting venue at 1800 Ocean Front Walk, sits along the strip; the namesake migrated south from the original Muscle Beach in Santa Monica in 1959. The Venice Skate Park, a concrete skate plaza built directly on the sand between Windward Avenue and Sunset Avenue, sits on the beach side of the Boardwalk. The beach traces back to Abbot Kinney's Venice of America development of 1905, which included a network of canals and a 1,600-foot amusement pier. The original Abbot Kinney Pier burned in 1920; the rebuilt amusement pier closed in 1946 and was demolished in 1947. The Venice Canals Historic District, three blocks inland between Washington Boulevard and Venice Boulevard, preserves a portion of the 1905 canal network and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. At the south end of the spot, 1.5 miles from the Boardwalk core, the Venice Fishing Pier is a 1,300-foot concrete pier at the foot of Washington Boulevard, built in 1963, condemned in 1986, and restored and reopened in 1997.

The bottom along the named beach is sand throughout, with breaking surf and no rocky structure or kelp within shore-access range. The spot is a surf zone biome.

Swimming and surfing are the dominant in-water activities along the full length of the beach. Skateboarding and rollerblading along the Boardwalk and at the Venice Skate Park are prominent surface uses, and the beach is a well-known skating destination. Hook-and-line fishing from the Venice Fishing Pier at the south end is common. With no rocky structure or kelp at the central beach to hold fish, spearfishing, snorkeling, and scuba from shore are all uncommon.

Paid municipal lots sit along Pacific Avenue and at Venice Boulevard, with hourly rates during the day and a flat weekend rate; the Rose Avenue lot near the Boardwalk core is the most convenient access point. Metered street parking on the blocks adjacent to Ocean Front Walk fills before 9 a.m. on summer weekends. Spearfishing is prohibited within 1,000 feet of the Venice Fishing Pier per California Code of Regulations Title 14 Section 1.88; that exclusion applies only to the area around the pier at the foot of Washington Boulevard and does not affect the rest of the beach. Outside the pier exclusion, fishing and spearfishing are legal under standard California regulations.