Tales of the Nude Beach and other strange events - 35 Years of Venice and the Free Venice Beachhead


Marcia Stone and Paul Tanck both individually moved to Venice in the summer of 1974. They met in 1978, and have lived together on Rialto Avenue since 1980.

Paul - hi. this is us. and we’re gonna talk about our first days in venice.

Marcia- i know that mine was in september of 1974. and i know that i moved in on a saturday. and the day was so involved with the moving -


Paul - where’d you move from?

Marcia - i moved from malibu. i lived on the beach in malibu. north of topanga. so, it was a moving day and i’d come from this really peaceful place, right on the beach where i saw very few people, y’know, dogs and people sometimes on horseback, but rarely. i moved to carroll canal. i just happened to move in the day before the annual canal festival. and i woke up that morning and it was sunday and i thought "my god -" and now there’s all these people and there’s music and it’s like a love-in. it reminded me of a love-in from the 60s. and i’m thinking this is really great but i don’t think i want to live in a place where they do this every weekend. cuz i didn’t know this wasn’t every weekend. this was my welcome to venice. and i remember being a bit timid about it because i thought, man, i just really prefer the beach. venice was just overwhelming!

Paul - so then what’d you do after that? didja go out and join the crowds?

Marcia - absolutely! it was great.

Paul - so then the next day, what’d ya do?

Marcia - the next day i was still like moving in. i think i took time off from work. i had a job - i worked for this guy who invented the lucygraph, frank ashby. at gateco company.

Paul - we still have an operating one out in the garage.

Marcia - i know.

Paul - so this was the 7th canal festival and the 8th a year later was the death of the canal festivals?

Marcia - i think the year later was the last one, actually. because that one was when mark and caroline were out visiting from san francisco and i remember there was a little rowboat that we rowed around in.

Paul - for the ‘75 one?

Marcia - yes, and the next one was the canal funeral. and i was into playing my harmonica by then. i got it from the blues guy, Paul butterfield. it was his!

Paul - so there you were out on the canals with 2 good friends. that’s very venice.

Marcia - yes. it was very venice.

Paul - do you know how many canal festivals there were all together?

Marcia - i think there were like 6 or 7. i was only at the very end, for the last 3.

Paul - so it started in like 1970 -

Marcia - monique schick would know. monique is the one who is like the keeper of the flame of the canal festivals.

Marcia - so, your first day in venice was what day?

Paul - i moved in on a friday. it was june 21st of 1974. it was the day after the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. i was living in west hollywood. my old girlfriend karin moved out to phoenix to be with her other boyfriend gary, who was playing in the nba at the time. i had gotten a job at doug boyd’s, which was on 3rd street and santa monica which is now the 3rd floor of the gap on the promenade. it’s like the storage room now, which is like weird, y’know. with this job in santa monica, it was very inconvenient to commute from west hollywood, which was ridiculous. and the van i had at the time was very unreliable.

Marcia - that was bill.

Paul - so i guess after work one day, i said "well, i should move to venice. why not? it’s the beginning of summer right now, and i’ll just drive along until i find a place." just like, naive. so i found this place on westminster, just west of pacific avenue. what i loved, it was close to the beach. yeah - it was a half a block from the beach! 40 westminster #5. go down through 2 doors and then you get to my pad in the back on the left. it was great. it had early morning sun. it had southern exposure all day long. it was a great place. so then i packed up. friday night i remember pulling in, unpacked the van. i had all the boxes, i had my bed, i kinda just like did it. and i was like "aaaah." i remember actually thinking, "here i am in venice. aaaah. this is gonna be a cool part of my life." 30 years later, i’m still here.

Marcia - you can’t get away.

Paul - so the next morning i wake up. "aaah, it’s the summer. yesterday was the summer solstice. this is saturday morning. i just moved to the beach. i’m going to the beach." so i put on my shorts and i grab my towel and my flip flops and my sunglasses -

Marcia - which beach did you go to?

Paul - straight down westminster. i mean, what the heck! you live at the beach, you go to your beach. you check it out. i walked down to speedway, and then to ocean front walk. right there on the right was the lafayette cafe. that’s where the lafayette was. so i just kept going. i get down there and it’s like 10, 10:30, whatever time it was. oh my god! it’s the nude beach! i lived exactly up from the nude beach! i’d barely heard about it, but now, there it was. it’s like, this is my beach! it’s the nude beach! so i like went, "ok, i’m here."

Marcia - so your first morning in venice is at the nude beach? y’know, that’s comparable to mine at the canal festival.

Paul - the first day i remember really quite specially, it was like really cool. plus, just the swimming in the water and the feeling of the ocean with no clothes on. it’s just like so - it’s so nice.

Marcia - it was so perfect back then -

Paul - yeah, and everybody was just like -

Marcia - really cool

Paul - yeah, and the lifeguards, they knew how to take care of the guys that were jerking off under their towels. they just came up and said, "c,mon. haven’t you got anything else better to do? c’mon!" just doing that to the guy would just totally embarrass him so he’d have to stop. i saw that, y’know -

Marcia - i have a really funny story about that, because i have this friend, georgette. blonde nurse, santa cruz gal. she told me that she was at the nude beach with a girlfriend. and there was some guy walking around taking pictures. and he was like wearing shorts and sneakers, like one of those tourist guys. "hi. hello. i’m a tourist." and taking pictures. and they pants’d him. she and her girlfriend just pants’d him, and said "y’know, you’re gonna take pictures of us - you can’t be here unless you’re with it or without it."

Paul - that’s kinda like my thing. one sunday afternoon, it was like 5 or 6 or 7 o’clock. it was the summer time and everybody stayed out at the nude beach until the sun went down. i put on my clothes and was walking back. and these two old ladies were walking up and wearing old, like old ladies from texas clothes. and they go "‘xcuse me." and i go "yeah." "is this the nude beach?" i’m going "yeah. it’s the nude beach." and they said "we wanna get a picture. can you take your clothes off for us?" < laughter ensues > i went, "no." i said "just go on down there if you want to take pictures ladies," knowing it was a very long walk for them and they just wanted to get their cheap thing. but i wasn’t gonna give them < laughter again > even though i did have the overall tan which was great and i loved it.

Marcia - haaa! imagine showing these pictures to their nieces today. uhhh -

Paul - but the nude beach, it got all controversial. had to go before the city counsel. and i think the city counsel might have decided that it was ok to have this little designated area on the city property -

Marcia - i think they did.

Paul - no they didn’t. and the reason was because people were protesting for it. they went in there and they got naked in the city counsel, instead of just playing it cool. so because they got naked, then it’s like "of course we can’t do this! if we allow nudity there, then there’ll be nudity everywhere. it’ll be the naked city" kind of a thing. i think that’s what happened and that’s why it finally got shut down. but i remember the police, the cops were really cool. there were people that were peace and freedom party guys going around, and it was really, really cool.

Marcia - it was a kind of a post-woodstock feeling of we’re all cool, and everything’s great, and we’re all one.

Paul - yeah. plus, i spent my whole summer body surfing nude. and that was great! i remember tommy arakas and his cousin the voice came and we all just went naked. and it was just, phew, such a cool time.

Marcia - but that lasted what? really one summer -

Paul - yeah, just 1974.

Marcia - how did that effect your concept of living in venice?

Paul - shhht, are you kidding me? it was great.

Marcia - how did it make you feel? did you feel like you landed home?

Paul - yes. i felt like i was at home. there are certain spots in america - in the 70s there was a section of richmond virginia called the fan. this was the section that was like the east village, that was like berkeley at the time, which was like venice. there was just like these cool communities. i really felt like i was home. i think that for me the whole idea of the nude beach came at the perfect time in my life. i was 23 going on 24 two months later, after i moved in there, and it was just so lovely. it was like a hippie paradise. at the end of the first day, you remember janet planet?

Marcia - yeah

Paul - that’s where i met her. so i’m laying there and i’m like frying my wienie, and she walks up saying "can i lay down next to you?" and i look at her and go "sure." and she was blonde and surfer-chick-ish. she was already tan all over. so we became an instant item.

Marcia - she was a regular venice local. a person you could trust.

Paul - i loved the nude beach. everybody should be nude. i think that the nude beach is a very important section of the history of the entire 99 years of venice. so therefore, i just want this section to be included in the free venice beachhead paper.

Posted: Mon - December 1, 2003 at 04:20 PM          

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