On Friday Sam and I drove to Venice for the Abbot Kinney Boulevard First Fridays “event.”  Our plan was to walk around and find a cool place to eat dinner.  Unfortunately there were many more food trucks than restaurants.  In the photo below you can see the line for the Grilled Cheese truck (the orange truck) going around the corner and down the other street.

We kept walking.  There were food trucks everywhere.  We came upon AnnaBruce, the “smallest shop in LA.”  That “shop” you see on the right is really just a little shack.  You can almost see the back wall in the photo.

We passed by Brasa, which sells outdoor (I hope) “ventless flame.”

We walked all the way down to the corner of Abbot Kinney and Venice and saw Lemonade.  Lemonade has a great selection of ten or so homemade lemonades, but their real specialty is their “sides” and braises (soup with meat).  Below you can see the great selection of unique (and delicious) sides.  My favorite was probably the side that mixes nectarines, cheese, rice and other things.  There was also a crazy fried (?) watermelon salad thing.  You can see that one in the shot below in the third slot from the left.

There were eight braises to choose from including chicken chili, beef stroganoff, jamaican jerk chicken, BBQ brisket, Miso Beef and three others I can’t remember.  We had the miso and the stroganoff and both were great.

Walking back up the east side of Abbot-Kinney we came to the Very Venice art gallery, including the erotic art gallery in the back.  The doorway to the erotic gallery was framed with unfurled condoms stretched off a fake fruit wreath.  We could see the abstract penis paintings from the doorway, so we opted to skip that part.

Next, we came to the Juicy Leaf, a succulent and dead tree store.  I have a thing for dead trees, moss, driftwood, etc. so this store was great.  I’m hoping to introduce the artist from Branch of Life to the owner of the store, as their succulent selection was small and would greatly benefit from Kit’s designs.

In addition to driftwood they also had coral.

Throughout the store they had these cool trees that were dead and preserved somehow.  Most of them had gray leaves, but some (in pictures later on) had green(ish) leaves.

It was hard to photograph anything because the store was narrow and there were always First Friday attendees coming and going.

Below is one of the dead trees with green leaves (and red bark).

They had some hanging “air” plants.  The interesting thing about these is they all sort of looked like organisms trying to escape.

shot from the doorway:

Further up the street we saw this large painting. Many people were watching it being made…I have no idea why…

Further up the street we came across the Ron English show.

There were a few driveways converted into arts and crafts (mostly jewelry and clothing) markets.

I took a picture from far across the street of these two stilt walkers.

Sam wanted me to take a picture of this dress.

Below is a blurry view of the narrow sidewalks.  It felt a little claustrophobic at times because of the fashionable low-hanging exteriors of several businesses coupled with the throngs of people and food trucks bracketing us in on the other side.

Most of the actual stores on the boulevard were closed.  One can only assume that a store, like the one below, that sells delicate items would not want tons of hipsters bumping into things.