THE VENICE STORY

​Venice is the culture. The brands are the stories.

Venice Beach has always been more than a destination. It's a culture built by the people who lived it, created in it, fought for it, played in it, built businesses in it, and carried it forward.

My story begins in Venice in the 1990s.

I grew up watching Venice change from one era to the next. I experienced the streets, the courts, the neighborhoods, the people, the struggles, the creativity, and the energy that made Venice what it was — and what it continues to become.

Now I'm documenting that story while building brands that come from the culture.

Venice Boys™. Venice Bullys. Venice Kush®. Venice Ganja®. Venice Raised™. Venice Billionaires™. Community. Media.

Each one represents a different piece of Venice.

This isn't about trying to recreate the past. It's about remembering where we came from while building what's next.

This is Venice through my eyes — from the mid-'90s to today.

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WHERE IT ALL STARTED

My story in Venice started at the beach, but eventually took me into the Oakwood Park area, known as Ghost Town. It was around 1994, and I was about 13 years old. At that age, I was already running toward the culture. Venice felt different. To me, it felt like there were no rules. I would come to the beach to break the rules, experience life, and be around the people and energy that made Venice what it was. Those years brought plenty of incidents, plenty of fun, and eventually many incarcerations as I grew older. Venice Beach was packed then, just like it is today. I spent a lot of time around the Venice Beach handball courts, Oakwood Park, and Sunset Alley, where locals gathered and where I learned what it meant to be part of the community. The Pavilion, the handball courts, and the basketball courts were some of the places where everybody came together. And if you weren't there, you might find people down by the Breakwater. The beach had its own energy, and there was always something happening around us. LAPD was also putting pressure on me and my partners, and we weren't exactly the ideal citizens. We were young, living by our own rules, and becoming part of a culture that didn't always fit what the outside world expected from us. Cannabis was part of that environment, just like the music, the streets, the courts, and everything else that made Venice feel like Venice. But one thing about Venice stood out to me: it didn't matter if you were Mexican, Black, White or anything else. If you were from Venice, you were from Venice. We looked out for each other. When people came into our community looking to disrespect it or cause problems, locals stood together. We might not have agreed on everything, but there was an understanding that Venice was ours and we protected our own. That was the Venice I knew around 1994 and 1995.Then around 1996, things started changing. CRASH came into Venice, and later the unit became known as CLEAR. The focus on local gangs, law enforcement pressure and eventually the gang injunction changed the relationship between the community and the streets. I watched Venice change in ways I didn't understand at the time. While I spent years incarcerated, I would see Venice on television and remember the place I grew up in. From behind those walls, Venice sometimes felt like a magical place that existed somewhere outside my reach. But I never forgot it.I remembered the beach. The courts.The Pavilion.Oakwood Park.The Breakwater.The people. And I remembered the feeling of being young in Venice before I understood how much the place—and my own life—was going to change. This is where my story begins.