Stories and walks, starting in Los Angeles
Hear what used to be here.
Stories of what used to be here, told by a sidewalk historian.
Listen at home, compare old photos with the street today, or walk it with the free app.
Yesteryard · Venice Beach · Episode 1
The Man Who Started It All
Venice Beach’s founder story, and what’s left of his town.
Where to start
23 minListen at homeThe Venice Beach episode: 23 minutes, with old photos shown as you listen. Free.Listen →- In Venice Beach today?Fourteen stops from the Abbot Kinney mural to the canals. Press play and walk.Start the walk →
- Visiting Los Angeles?Season 1: five walks from downtown to the sea, plus places, walks and routes across the city.See Los Angeles →Venice Beach
Downtown LA
Culver City
Santa MonicaYesteryard · Los Angeles · Season 1
LA: From downtown to the sea in five walks
- Get the appKeep your phone in your pocket. It taps you on the shoulder at places worth noticing.What the app does →
Saturday, November 1
4:12
YesteryardnowWindward Circle: the lost lagoon
This traffic circle was Kinney's lagoon. The 6-ft aluminium torso in the middle is Robert Graham's 'Venice Torso', installed in 2007.
Yesteryard9 min agoAbbot Kinney mural
Rip Cronk's four-storey Abbot Kinney. Tobacco money built this town: Kinney got the marshy half of the land (by a coin toss, says legend) and opened Venice on 4 July 1905.
- Want it in your city?Yesteryard was built on the road. Tell us where it should go next.Request a city →
Porto
CollioureYesteryard · Where it began
Built on the road
Imagined, designed and built, in an early version, while traveling in Europe.
Know a local story?Historians, archives, neighbors, local groups: help us tell the next one.Get in touch →
Who Made This?
Mark Koester, a sidewalk historian on the Venice Canals, Los Angeles, researches, writes and narrates each episode, with photos from the archives and neighbors who walk it first.
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