Two-wheel tour will jolt your senses
A relaxed pace and electric bikes (if you wish) let you discover Santa Monica and Venice up close
SANTA MONICA, CALIF.— A church that attracts Martin Sheen and Brooke Shields on a regular basis. A Frank Gehry house that looks like a lifeguard station. A beach lined with tattoo parlours and pizza joints. And a solar-powered ferris wheel that lights up the Southern California night in a glittering array of blues, reds and greens.
Yeah, if it’s the legendary, typecast Los Angeles scene you’re looking for, you can find it one of the tours run by the folks at Pedal or Not.
Alternately, you can soak in the view of a seemingly endless sweep of beach backed by the purplish, craggy Santa Monica Mountains or admire the serenity of bright yellow and pink homes and diving pelicans on the increasingly clean canals of Venice or admire the regal architecture of beachside estates.
It’s all there on the fabulous, threehour tours of Santa Monica and Venice tours that you can take with Pedal or Not using bikes that can be ridden with human power or juiced with an electric motor.
Barbara Wittels, an Ohio-born woman who once lived in London, Ont., and who’s much more solid midwest than L.A. glam, starts off our tour of this remarkable stretch of ocean-side real estate by taking us past a glorious city park with towering evergreen trees. And deep green grass. We soon pull up in front of Saint Monica Catholic Church.
“I call this our Academy Awardwinning church,” she says with a laugh, explaining how it was featured in the flick Going My Way with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, a movie that won a whopping seven Oscars. “The church is here but in the movie they’ve plopped it down in the middle of New York City.”
Wittels reels off the list of Hollywood bonafides the church boasts today, telling us how it’s where NFL star quarterback Tom Brady married model Gisele Bundchen. And where Mr. and Mrs. Arnold and Maria Shriver Schwarzenegger worshipped in happier times. Other regulars are said to include Martin Sheen, Kelsey Grammer and Brooke Shields.
Down the hill along Santa Monica Beach Wittels shows off the white, colonial style of the Marion Davies Beach House. Or the small section that’s left from what was an absolutely palatial, ocean-front estate in the late 1920’s, with several buildings and a 110-bedroom mansion.
Davies was the mistress of newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, 30 years her senior or so. The story goes that Davies loved fantastic parties and was especially fond of themed parties, which were attended in the 1930s by the likes of Clark Gable and Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and names like Goldwyn and Mayer. “She once decided to have a circus party so she wanted to borrow a carousel from Warner Bros. They had to tear down a wall of the place to get the carousel in. A few months later, she decided she wanted another circus party. Down came the wall once again.” The beach house was abandoned during World War II, a time when many Americans feared a Japanese invasion. It was badly damaged in an earthquake in1994 and most of it was torn down. One wing is left for public functions and tours. The rest has mostly been redeveloped as the Annenberg Community Beach House, which hosts public and private events. The old, regal swimming pool is still there, with its marble edging and fish mosaic, and the public can swim during specific hours in season. From there we rolled past the Santa Monica Pier, a majestic affair that celebrated its 100th anniversary three years ago. There’s a 1920’s wooden carousel used in the film The Sting and a solar-powered ferris wheel that’s wildly lit at night with 160,000 LED lights. Wittels points out the Sea Castle condos, where both Johnny Depp and Jack Nicholson are said to have lived during renovations of their homes. From there, we cycle (and ride, it’s hard not to take advantage of the free horsepower provided by the battery) past an outdoor gymnastics centre on the sand, with rings and bars for pull-ups and swinging. Then it’s down to Venice Beach and past Tagger Park, where graffiti artists have free reign to display their work on a series of structures. Nearby is a cool skating park where older guys in their 50’s zip and zing about without helmets or pads, whizzing quietly and soaring high into the blue sky. You’ll pass Washington Ave., with its buzzing cafes and chic restau- rants, and then get a glimpse of the canals of Venice. There used to be 30 km of canals but it’s now down to about two, Wittels says. They were smelly, ugly affairs in the 1970s but now are clean and bright and flanked by million-dollar-plus homes with all sorts of designs. Small boats are tied up in the water outside sunny yellow homes with Spanish tile roofs, and small fish dart to and fro in the water as they try to avoid dive-bombing pelicans.
We pass legendary Muscle Beach on the way back, where Schwarzenegger used to pump iron prior to his political career. As we ride back toward Santa Monica, Wittels points out two shops of note that front the beach. One advertises medicinal marijuana. The other has large letters that read “Botox on the Beach.”
Only in California.