Venice Beach Boardwalk

Developer Abbot Kinney opened Venice of America on July 4, 1905, as a seaside resort modeled on Venice, Italy, and dug several miles of canals to drain the marshland where he built it. Most of the canals were filled in after the city of Los Angeles annexed Venice in 1926, though the Venice Canal Historic District still preserves a remaining section south of the boardwalk.

The outdoor gym known as Muscle Beach, along with basketball courts that helped shape West Coast streetball, grew up along the sand in the decades after Kinney's death, and a dedicated skate park opened at the south end of the boardwalk in 2009. Street performers, artists, and vendors have long lined the roughly 4-kilometer Ocean Front Walk, and legally sanctioned mural walls near the boardwalk let artists paint work that changes over time.

Because the boardwalk is essentially a free outdoor gallery of performance and street art, it works as a low-cost activity for a family, and much of what there is to see, from muscle beach workouts to skateboarding, needs no explanation in any language.