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TheHeretic -> It seems like this always happens (3/28/2010 1:55:10 PM)
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It's been a good number of years since I wandered along Venice Beach, but to watch hippie fights, I might have to go back this summer.
It just seems the way of things.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100328/ap_on_re_us/us_venice_boardwalk
LOS ANGELES – Sand and surf are the least of the attractions making Venice Beach one of Los Angeles' top tourist draws.
On summer weekends, some 150,000 exhibitionists and gawkers flock to the neighborhood to see and be seen in a Bohemian rhapsody of bongo-bangers, dreadlocked artists and acrobatic gymnasts.
In recent months, though, that freewheeling hippie circus has gotten edgy thanks to a stubbornly sour economy heightening competition for the 200 peddler spaces along the 1.5-mile long asphalt strip bordering the beach.
That has longtime storeowners and artists steamed, and residents in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood clamoring for a clamp down on the increased noise and transients.
"It's become a real free-for-all, really aggressive," said Therese Dietlin, who has distributed alternative political literature for nine years on the boardwalk, which is lined with cafes, medical marijuana clinics and souvenir shops.
Recently, she said, a woman selling Buddhas and incense kicked her table across the boardwalk claiming that Dietlin had set up her table in her space. "It never used to be like that," she said.
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