Editor’s note: This is part of our “My LA” series — a look at how changing demographics are shifting culture in LA’s historic neighborhoods and communities — told by the people from those communities.
Last year, while I was between apartments, I lay by the pool at my mother’s apartment complex in Venice. As my brown skin soaked up the LA summer sun, I placed a baseball cap over my face. Although my eyes were closed, my ears were open.
I listened intently to the conversations around me. Their voices felt different from the ones I’d grown up hearing in my neighborhood. Instead of surfer-bro timbres or Chicano accents, I heard the voices of transplants. As I peeked out from beneath my cap, I noticed striking similarities among the groups surrounding the pool at the Oakwood apartment complex. Sorry — it’s not called that anymore. It’s the Pearl now.
Not that anyone there would remember that the apartment complex shared a name with the historic Black neighborhood of Venice Beach. The Oakwood neighborhood runs along the coast between Rose Avenue, Lincoln Boulevard, California Avenue, Abbot Kinney, and Main Street.
Twenty years earlier, my family would sneak into this same pool, about two blocks from the house where I grew up in. Along with other neighborhood families, we’d wait by the garage door for someone to come out so we could slip in. We’d buy Gatorade, Pringles and other pool snacks from the small convenience store inside the complex. The Oakwood pool is filled with memories of the old Venice I once knew.
But at that moment, I was surrounded by a new version of Venice: overwhelmingly white faces, many hailing from Orange County, Connecticut or somewhere else that didn’t embody the heart and soul that gave Venice its identity. Their clothes, tans and demeanors blended into conformity. The Venice I grew up in rejected conformity. In the early 2000s, it was home to artists, surfers and skateboarders. My neighborhood was full of weirdos — and I mean that as the highest compliment. Now, those quirky neighbors appear to have been replaced or outnumbered by tech workers and young professionals.
Jones McDowell, a lifelong Angeleno and my younger sister, agreed, describing old Venice as “peace, love, bare feet.” In her view, the hippie ethos of earlier years has been replaced by “millennial bros.”
Sitting by the Oakwood-now-the-Pearl pool, I admitted something I didn’t want to face: The Venice Beach I grew up in no longer exists.
Worse, I feared the Venice that raised me would be forgotten.
‘Ghetto by the sea’
Some 30 years ago, Venice’s Black population represented 18.6% of the population. Today, it’s only 6.5%, while its white population grew over that same period from 60.4% to 71.9%, according to city data.
The tech workers who followed Snapchat’s arrival in Venice likely don’t remember that the apartments behind the Ross on Lincoln Boulevard were once low-income housing. It was during that era that some tried to brand the neighborhood “Silicon Beach.” Transplants seeking the latest enclave may not know Venice was once redlined, and may not notice the few historic Baptist churches that remain.
Greta Parker, a recent college graduate and Venice local, pointed to the Oakwood neighborhood as an indicator of change. “In the ’50s and ’60s, people in other parts of LA would refer to Oakwood as the ‘ghetto by the sea,’” Parker said. Today, she added, many newcomers are unaware of the neighborhood’s Black history and working-class roots.
Beyond a history at risk of erasure, I sensed grief among locals for a place that may be irrevocably changed. Ella O’Neill, a Venice native now living in Chicago and a close childhood friend, pointed to Abbot Kinney as the clearest marker of change. Once home to independent shops, the strip now feels overtaken by chains. She described Abbot’s Pizza as “a hallmark of my childhood.” After a change in ownership, she noticed a difference in the taste. In a sense, she had to mourn a place she’d visited for nearly 30 years.
Despite the change, my sister Jones said she would never leave Venice. When I asked why, her answer was simple: “Because it’s where I grew up. It holds the memories of my childhood.”
The four of us — Jones, Ella, Greta and I — all grew up in similar corners of Venice. Three of us attended Coeur d’Alene Elementary School in Venice. And only two of us remain in West LA.
While Jones chose to stay and Ella chose to leave, both expressed deep affection for the neighborhood — something I share. Ella put it best: “Venice is a beautiful place, and I’m proud to be from there. But when I say I’m from Venice, I’m talking about a different Venice.”
‘Vibe shift’
Beyond the “vibe shift,” the data reflects change, too. Venice has grown more conservative since 2016, when I graduated high school, through the 2024 presidential election. Between 2016 and 2020, votes for Trump increased by up to 11% in pockets of Venice. Mind you, that increase happened in a year that Trump lost. Between 2020 and 2024, that increase happened again,with some areas seeing an additional 12% increase in Republican votes.
As a young person trying to return to Venice, I have to wonder whether this demographic shift has affected affordability. The artists and beach kids I grew up with seem to have gone elsewhere — forced out and priced out.
Greta expressed a similar sentiment: “You can’t be a starving artist in Venice anymore.” That leaves a lingering question: Where did everyone go?
When I returned to LA after college and spending a few years living outside the area, I struggled to afford a place on my own and ended up renting a converted garage for $700 a month — a story that feels all too common. For people in their 20s, it can feel nearly impossible to return to the neighborhoods they grew up in. Greta said she wants to move out of her parents’ home but knows she won’t find anything affordable nearby.
“I was paying an absurd amount of rent to share a room during college,” she said, describing her time in Santa Cruz. “I was paying $1,400 to not even have my own room. I feel like under $2,000 is good for LA.”
But is rent in that range attainable? It wasn’t for me.
As I tried to get on my feet, I realized — much like I had at the pool — that I wouldn’t be able to live sustainably in Venice.
As a Black person who loved growing up steps from the sand, I’m saddened that my home has become so unrecognizable that I may never return. I’ve found a silver lining in Northeast LA, where I now live among artists again.
But even here, I hear echoes of change. A neighbor recently described a new bar in Lincoln Heights as feeling “10 years ahead of the neighborhood.” I’m not sure he intended the implication, but to me it sounded like a countdown — another place on the brink of transformation, another community at risk of being priced out.
Is your neighborhood changing? We want to hear your story. Whether you’ve lived on your block for forty years or four, we want to know: What does “home” mean to you right now?
Share a brief memory or a thought on how your neighborhood is changing with us at pitches@thelalocal.org. We’ll feature some of our favorite responses in our newsletter, and if your story sparks something deeper, we may reach out to commission a full-length piece (yes, we pay our writers!)
