THIS ARCHITECT WAS A POEM: A Venice Architect, a Venice Food Collective,
and a Venice Family Home
By Peggy Lee
Kennedy
Rick Davidson was an architect
and a poet. He first came to live in Venice in 1961 and lived most of his years
here in his San Juan Avenue home – then Venice Headquarters for Activism
– until he died of breast cancer in 1999. (He said that his breast cancer
proved he was a feminist.)
Rick was instrumental in the founding of
the Free Venice Movement, the Peace and Freedom Party, and the Free Venice
Beachhead. He also ran, as the Venice candidate, against Pat Russell for Los
Angeles City Council in 1969.
More
than all that, he was a family friend. Rick, Marvena (my mom), and Bob Wells
were sometimes called the Venice “Gang of Three.” And it was
probably best not to get in their collective way – ideologically, of
course.
I was going through a box of
Rick’s stuff from the Beachhead and found a formal complaint letter he had
written regarding police activity in Oakwood. It was a carbon copy from a
typewriter, typos and all. Reading the letter made me feel proud to have known
Rick, because he followed his politics into the streets. I mean, good for you if
you believe in civil and human rights, but Rick really did something about it.
I knew Rick was an architect, except I
didn’t know any of his Venice work. So I decided to do a story about Rick
Davidson, the Venice Activist Architect. Little did I know what a piece of
living Venice history I would be led
to.
After getting a few leads on some
Venice additions that Rick had worked on, I called the one for a house on
Cabrillo. Not the dome house, the one next door owned by Cheri and Manny Katz. I
had no idea the age or the history of the house before I was inside and saw the
pictures. I only called because I understood that the Katz house was used for a
Venice Food Co-op and that an architectural addition, which was done by Rick
Davidson, involved a food pantry space for the food collective. In the Katz
living room hangs a picture of the dome house and the Katz house sitting
side-by-side, with no other houses near, on a Venice canal back in 1904. The
dome house is two-stories and somewhat elaborate for those times. The Katz home
was originally a one-story, one bedroom home - a typical unpretentious older
Venice house.
As I said, the original
house was a single story. If you look at the house from the street, it does not
look like it has been altered. In fact, it is amazing how the architecture was
done so no one would notice the alteration. The addition included a new kitchen,
a pantry, a laundry room downstairs, and a master bedroom upstairs.
The original house extends as far as
the dining room. By the way, the living room has a wonderful inner wall
fireplace and hard wood floors. The added kitchen is quite well lit and appears
very functional. It has bright blue tile, built-in appliances, a side door to
the yard, and a cat dish sitting on the counter. The laundry and the pantry
rooms are in the very back of the first floor part of the addition. The pantry
is well packed, even though the food collective has not been there since the
early eighties.
Probably the most
spectacular part of the addition is the upstairs master bedroom. To the left of
the kitchen is the stairway up - with a laundry chute built into a bookcase at
the top of the stairs. The chute has kid locks, but Manny said a cat went down
it one time. Luckily, it landed on a pile of dirty clothes.
The first thing you see turning right
from the top of the stairs is a walk-in closet. The bedroom has a beam ceiling
and stained glass windows made by a local Venice artist on each side. One of
these catches the sunrise. From this added upstairs master bedroom you can cross
over to a small door into the attic or crawl space on the original part of the
house. This is nice, because this attic space became more accessible after the
addition. The bathroom, except for maybe the pantry or the walk-in closet or the
stained glass windows, is my favorite part of the addition. It has a whirlpool
bath with a Venice view - a true slice of Venice
luxury.
But this house is not the kind
of place where people just sat in a hot tub sipping herb tea. Things have
happened in this Venice house. Remember, the pantry was part of the addition
because a Venice food collective was operated out of this house.
Manny bought the house on Cabrillo in
1970 (back when a high school teacher could buy a house in Venice) and operated
the Venice Family Food Co-op out the house from 1973 to approximately 1985. The
Food Co-op was really operated like a buying collective. There was an order form
for each household member. It had things on it like dried fruit, oils, bread,
cheese, flour, pasta, nuts, beans, juices, and other misc items such as
nutritional yeast. Everything was
pre-paid.
Once every month, on Friday,
the Collective Warehouse would deliver direct to the Cabrillo street house. On
the following Monday, collective members would meet there to sort the items and
to fill the orders. First, the collective members that showed up would get to
sort each product (like peanut butter) by the needed quantities. Then each
family’s order was filled and stacked against the living room wall until
it was picked up.
There were 100
collective member families on the list and somewhere between 15-20 would show up
to sort the quantities and fill the orders each month. In general, Manny said
that there were no leeches on the process. If someone wanted to pay more so they
did not have to do any work on the collective, Manny would just tell them to
come Monday and try it out. It usually worked and they stayed and became active
members.
It is hard to say why
collectives die in a story that’s just about a Venice architect and a
Venice family home.
One reason could be that
the Venice people who might be interested in community collectivism need to work
so very hard to pay the bills these days that they are exhausted. Manny thought
Henry Ford had one thing right: you should pay your employees enough to buy your
product. Its mostly the well off who seem to be able to afford Venice these
days.
I think another reason is that
so many of us have lost touch with how important community is – we let
ourselves be brainwashed with messages that say consuming is what will make us
truly happy. Nonetheless, it was wonderful to get to see the Katz home and meet
people that do understand charity and
community.
Even though Rick Davidson
and the Venice Family Food Co-op are not around anymore, the Katz family house
on Cabrillo remains a living monument to their memory.
Posted: Mon - March 1, 2004 at 05:36 PM