In As the Block Turns, Curbed LA talks to folks in changing neighborhoods to see how they feel about what's happening around them. This first installment looks at "the coolest block in America," Venice's Abbot Kinney Boulevard, a street that has, perhaps, changed more than any other in Los Angeles over the past two decades.
Abbot Kinney Boulevard begins suddenly. West of Lincoln, Venice Boulevard is lined with houses and apartments and houses, then a public storage facility and an autobody shop, and then the Vice Media offices, Verve (an "immersive art experience"), and finally Lemonade, a branch of the casual dining chain that specializes in lemonades. Then comes Abbot Kinney, and unless you make a right (the street does extend south of Venice, to Washington, but when people speak of "Abbot Kinney," it is the strip north of Venice they refer to), you quickly find yourself back in a pedestrian residential zone, a tony one, with tastefully remodeled bungalows set back from the street behind hedges and dark-stained wooden fences.