Sausages (and sunburns) in Venice Beach

I made it over to Venice Beach this past Monday as part of my long holiday weekend. A perk with having Monday off and Tuesday being Independence Day. So I finally had more time to explore the western part of Los Angeles’ beaches.

Venice Beach is a stone’s throw away from Santa Monica. From where I was driving, the buildings almost immediately became a bit more hippy-beachy as opposed to upscale and ritzy in Santa Monica. If I had to compare it to a San Diego neighborhood, the immediate thought is Mission Beach. Parking off street is sparse and without paying $7 for a space, the maximum time I could park was two hours. Those two hours was enough to get a slight sunburn on my shoulders and nose. My companion fared much worse.

I wanted to get a definitive photo of Venice Beach without having to take a photo that had the words ‘Venice. The gym on the beach where supposedly Arnold Swarnegger was discovered was empty. And there were no girlies in fluorscent string bikinis rollerblading on the boardwalk. In my mind, I was imaging David Lee Roth’s ‘California Girls’ video while in reality, I found a lot of tourists and high school kids on skateboards. Blah!

I did have lunch on Venice at Jody Maroni’s Sausage Kingdom. There were a variety of sausages – what else would you expect from a place that had ‘sausage kingdom’ in the title? So many choices, it took me a while to decide on what to order. The people behind the counter were friendly and offered me samples to help my narrow down my decision.

It took me a while, but I eventually settled on the Chicken Andoule. It was spicy but not enough to make my lips burn.

I wasn’t too keen about the sauteed onions and peppers topping the sausage but opted for them anyway. But I could not get enough of the onion bun. Soft, but not overly squishy that it fell apart. The sausage itself was full of flavor that I should have just eaten it alone sans condiments. Admittedly, as good as the sausage was, I think I have reached my quota of hot dogs/sausages for the month.