Enjoy Your Venice Weekend!

Everyone has been focused all week on what's wrong with Venice, so I urge us all to take this weekend to instead really zero in on what's awesome about the real deal Venice. I've already started.

It's unseasonably warm, making for perfect beach days in October (we're not talking about climate change right now, though we should be). It's all blue skies and sunshine. Surf's up (chest high)! The Farmer's Market had an over-abundance of wonderful home-grown fruits and vegetables and flowers and friends. Strangers are smiling and saying "Good Morning!". The Boardwalk is packed with visitors from all over the globe who love being here - as well as those of us who never take the views and fun for granted. There are art shows and house parties happening all weekend. It's Venice High's Homecoming tonight, AND the annual Grease viewing/singalong, also at Venice High (in its acting role as Rydell High!) on Saturday. Things are good - great, even! - if you allow yourself to have that mindset.

So, have at it, Friends! Get the most you can out of your beautiful weekend in Venice! I'll hope to see you out there, and we'll make it even better. Solidarity forever.

The Gjelina Volunteer Program At Venice High - Teaching Our Future Chefs!

What a wonderful and inspiring afternoon I just had, crashing the Gjelina Volunteer Program cooking class at Venice High School. I'm honestly so, so impressed. Chef Travis Lett and Program Director, Angela Hughes, are pals of mine, so I had an inside track to getting to know all about this excellent stuff going on with the kids around our Venice community.

The GVP started a few years ago, with Lett wanting to be more involved in the community that has shared so much with him and his restaurant endeavors. They started out by making pasta with the little kids at Walgrove Elementary, which fascinated the children, Hughes told me. "It blew their minds. The power of food is taken away when it's all packaged and processed. Showing them where their food comes from and how it's made empowers them, because now they get it, and they made something that pleases them." That led to "Jammin' In The Classroom", where they would make jam from scratch, with butter the kids churned up themselves. They next attacked 5th graders with salad, which they deconstructed and showed the kids how to grow and prepare the ingredients. The kids literally devoured it all, both the food and the information. The kids at Westminster Elementary take bakery tours over at Gjusta, and learned to make bread from the wheat that they had grown themselves. Amazing.

The success on both sides was immediate, and Hughes says, changed the kids and the business, with all parties involved realizing the importance of their own health and the health of the community, which can only improve when so much care is taken of each other. As I witnessed yesterday at Venice High.

These teenagers stay after school once a week (for 16 weeks) to partake in the "Chef's Club" class offered by Gjelina's volunteer program, and they learn the whole deal, from planting and harvesting the vegetables and greens outside in the (surprisingly bucolic) Venice Boulevard-adjacent garden, all the way through eating the meal and cleaning it all up.

On this day, they were gathering up snap peas, radishes, gorgeous swiss chard, and salad greens to accompany the whole branzino fish they would be preparing as the entrée up in the classroom. Lett, Hughes, Oscar Lusth, Judy Babis (who comes up with the curriculums), and their employees/volunteers from Gjelina were out there with the kids in the garden, explaining the growth and nuances of the produce (which I also eagerly listened to), and we could have been way out in rural California somewhere, not even noticing the rush hour traffic a stone's throw away.

Public schools have been so shafted by our government over the years, as gone are the Home Ec, Shop, Automotive, Art, Music, and so many other things done away with by short-sighted politicians and budgets. Thank goodness there are those in arts and business in our community that actually do care and will do what they can to give these exceptional youth opportunities they would never otherwise have. Venice High Principal Oryla Wiedoeft has welcomed these groups (also in cahoots with the Boys and Girls Club of Venice) into the school, and embraced what they have to offer, as clearly the students have as well. All I saw were excited, enthusiastic, open faces, eager to learn and create. The atmosphere was abuzz, and I was completely jealous as I watched the kids learn knife techniques, how to blanch the snow peas, filet the whole fish, season the inside ... this was not your basic boil an egg class for high school students ... this is pretty advanced stuff.

As I watched her slicing up a lemon perfectly, a student named Emily told me that her Grandfather had a restaurant when she was growing up and everyone in her family could cook, but now she felt like she had things she could teach them. She added that now she and her Dad cook breakfast for the whole family every Saturday morning ... proving that classes like this not only help the kids, but their families too.

 One young man said when asked how he felt about the Chef's Club, "Oh, I love it! Now I do all the cooking at home, my Mom is so happy." I bet she is, especially when you see these guys whipping up dishes like these, that could easily be served right up at Gjelina itself.

"Kids are smarter than we were at that age," said Lett. "They want to be here for three hours after school. Our resources should benefit their public schools and the communities around them. When the school is uplifted, it benefits everyone. We're all in this together." I had never been inside of Venice High before, just outside for games and the Grease sing-along. It's really old inside, and the kitchen area hadn't been used, and was sorely outdated. Not anymore. Gjelina has connections, obviously, and now the kitchen features a gleaming, giant new refrigerator, and spotless, upgraded working spaces. It's great.

And so are the kids. Every single one of the 35/40 kids being taught by a world-class Chef (gearing up to open Gjelina East in NYC's Bowery, where they will also work with farms and schools) for free in a public school (!) was polite, open, and all ears and smiles as Lett, Lutsh and Babis explained the steps in the recipes, all of them listening with tangible respect. "Everyone is so nice here, they treat us like professionals," added one boy as he kindly prepared a plate of their fish dinner for their guest - Lucky Me.

 It was truly delectable, and so super inspiring to see these kids so pleased with their results, sharing and discussing it with each other as they ate the feast they had prepared themselves from literally the ground up. When kids today are more interested in their phone screens than dirt, this was truly awesome. The only inkling one would have that these were 2016 teens was when one girl was going around seeing which fish platter was "The most Instagrammable". Who could blame her though, with dishes as impressive as these.

Lett and I both had chills as one student after another repeated that the best thing about the class was "It's fun!"

As learning should be. As LIFE should be, especially when you're a kid figuring out who and what you want to be. With experiences like these under their belts ... truly anything is possible.

Many thanks to everyone involved, from the Gjelina Volunteer Program, to Venice High School, to these incredible, thoughtful, talented, wonderful young Gondoliers/Chefs of Venice. They are absolutely rowing, not drifting into a fantastic future.

A Grease Sing-Along At Venice High

Each time a new visitor comes to Venice, we always like to tell them that Grease was filmed at Venice High when we drive by that school. That film was beloved by so many of us (so was Grease 2, maybe even more so ...), so when I read that Venice (aka Rydell!) High was hosting a sing-along screening of the movie on the football field where it was shot last Saturday, we were in.

It was a full carnival atmosphere, with students selling raffle tickets, and the Alumni Association folks were manning the multiple concession stands (with a bbq grill right there on the field!), selling everything from homemade taco specialties to burgers, cotton candy, and popcorn for the viewing. There were pie-eating contests, and that kind of thing, making us kind of nostalgic for all the stuff you got into during school. There was even Gunther the Gondolier was strolling around taking pictures with all the little kids.

Little kids who had never seen Grease before! So that was fun, singing all the goofy Grease songs at the top of our lungs, as the kids looked at us like we were nuts. People were all in a great mood, and no one seemed to mind when our kid posse got distracted and ran in circles and threw balls all over. As kids do.

There were Pink Ladies and T-Bird greasers in the house, and I even spotted a few poodle skirts in the mix. The sun went down, the big screen lit up and we all broke into song together as the gigantic almost-Supermoon rose up above us.

Grease is classic. I saw it so many times back in the day, but I'll echo an Alumni woman I met in the bathroom who said, "This is the best time ever!" as it quickly became my favorite time I've seen it. If you haven't yet been to this landmark film location, be sure to get there for the fun next year.

Thank you to Venice High for hosting such a fun event, and for the reminder that Grease is indeed the word.

A Colorful Weekend In Venice

I don't know how the weather sometimes seems to know it's the weekend and after a week of bright sunshine while cooped up inside working, the weekend came and was all gloom, not August feeling at all. But where the sun did not shine through, and though the melanin levels suffered from no beach time, there was still plenty of color.

Saturday night we were invited to hear the Blue Oyster Cult play in the Marina from some friends' boats pulled up right next to the stage. They had drinks, a grill with tasty whole fish and hot dogs, and quite possibly the most spectacular sunset of the summer so far. The electric colors competed with the rock for everyone's attention, and the sky won until the sun fully set.

It was also a delight to see that there is a gondola available for rides around the Marina, adding to the Venice atmosphere that we appropriated from our sister city in Italy. It was utterly charming, and the passengers were treated to an gorgeous evening of epic proportions. Soon after the sun set, the (badly, badly needed) rain began to fall, and we enjoyed the rest of the night below deck, listening to the rain beat on the rood as we gently rocked and loved every minute of it. Thanks, Commodore Farrell!

Though Sunday rose as another gloomy day (August Foggest), Venice doesn't let that dampen the spirits at all. It was the annual Festival Of The Chariots and the Hare Krishna colors were flying high. Everyone looks forward to this day each year as the parade comes down the Boardwalk and invites all it passes by to join in the dancing, sharing and fun, regardless of religious affiliation. Like it should be.

Stephanie captured a little of the action, so you can kind of feel what it's like as the saffron colored flowers are tossed out to the crowd by the people in saffron colored robes aboard the chariots.

In spite of the grey skies, the weekend was FULL of color, and the kind of days that carry on with the fun, no matter what the weather does. Yeah, we weren't able to do the usual weekend solid beach days, but were instead rewarded with perfect afternoon Bloody Marys by George at The Townhouse, occasional glimpses of blue sky, rain drops on our upturned and grateful faces, and a finale of a delicious meal at the good old Galley.

Weekends are just great in Venice ... no matter what. Hope yours was exceptional too. And extra colorful!