Here's the full clips of all the footage from our Instagram Stories that were shot and posted live as the skaters re-claimed the Venice Skate Park on Sunday & Monday. Led by Peck and the crew from Venice Skateboarding Stuff, skaters and non-skaters from all over the city came down, grab shovels, brooms, and buckets and got to work digging out the skate park that the city buried during the Covid-19 lockdown.

For the story on the clean up of the skate park, CLICK HERE

Venice Skate Park's Sergeant-At-Arms Peck and Venice Skateboarding Stuff got everyone together to clean out the skate park.

As seen on our Instagram Stories, the clean up started late Sunday afternoon, Peck rounding up shovels, brooms, and buckets, and the crew started removing most of the sand from the mini-bowl.


Sunday afternoon, mini-bowl almost cleared out and was skate-able.

Venice Skateboarding Stuff put the word out that skate park clean up will continue at 8am on Monday.

Clean up resumed early Monday with a few people, then it grew throughout the morning to a large number of people coming down to help out. More shovels and buckets were brought over. All ages pitched in, even the non-skaters jumped in and started shoveling out sand.


Peck in the completely buried snake run Monday morning.




There were all ages helping out.

No interruptions from Police or The Department Of Parks & Recreation. But a source said that Parks & Rec are just going to tell the workers to fill the skate park back up with sand again.


This kid was shoveling sand on Sunday and Monday morning, took a break from that to get some air over the hip.

@somasugiyama with sandals frontside airing a penny board.





By Sunday afternoon, the last bucket of sand was removed from the snake run. The mini-bowl was cleared of sand, and they were working on getting the last of the sand out of the pool. By late afternoon, everyone was skating the park again. But as seen in the photos, the city let the skate park get thrashed, there is graffiti everywhere, it has never been this badly tagged up before.


Venice Skateboarding Stuff , Peck, and all who helped get the skate park.

We'll have to wait till Tuesday morning when the Parks & Rec head honcho shows up to find out the fate of the park.

The city workers gave a heads up, that the park will just be refilled with sand. But Peck said, "We are prepare for that, we're ready for that, we prepared for that. But hey, let it be a battle. We gonna fight for what we believe in and our rights, cuz this skate park is our life and we're gonna fight for it."

Check out more photos of the clean up and skating in this gallery:

Venice Skatepark - May 2020 Photo Galley

News of another death at Venice Beach on Sunday:

“Another death on the boardwalk today. LAPD won't provide any information yet, but locals say it was an elderly homeless man that just showed up today. He was walking around by the paddle tennis courts and sat down on the bench and passed away."

Info and photo from Matt Fisher

On Saturday, a LAPD horse ran off from it's rider. The police chased the horse from the boardwalk down the bike path then on to the sand before they were able to get control of him.

“I would say it's like 70% less than what this weekend would bring normally,” said Los Angeles Police Sgt. Theresa Skinner, who oversees the department’s Venice Beach detail.

Josie Huang reports "The Asian and European tourists aren’t here but locals are still coming to Venice Beach — many not wearing masks."






For more of our coverage of the Coronavirus lockdown, closures, and how our local surf community and businesses are doing, CLICK HERE

Once again, these city "officials" are sending out mixed messages about what is going on. This time these nitwits are releasing mixed statements regarding the beach parking lots.

This afternoon, the crime approving mayor made this announcement: "We are reopening the city beach parking lots at Cabrillo and Venice Beach as well as the beach bike paths — this is in addition to the County opening paths and lots at partial capacity at Dockweiler State Beach, Will Rogers State Beach, Zuma Beach, and Surfrider Beach."

One Hour later, LA Beaches & Harbors makes this announcement: "PLEASE NOTE: We will NOT be opening the County-operated beach parking lots at Venice Beach. The lots at Washington Blvd, Venice Blvd and Rose Ave will remain CLOSED for Memorial Day weekend."

Since, Beaches And Harbors apparently has the priority (the keys) on these lots, it's what they say that goes, and they are not opening the Venice lots.

And anyone who has actually been to the beaches already knows the bike paths have been open for a long time now.


For more of our coverage of the Coronavirus lockdown, closures, and how our local surf community and businesses are doing, CLICK HERE

Here's some of the surf photos from Wednesday at Venice Breakwater.

This set of surf photos was shot by Six12 Media and brought to you by Etnies.


There are a lot of shots from this session, about 250 photos. This is just a handful of them that we picked out to post here. If you were out there, you probably got some surfing shots, probably multiple photos, they all will be in the complete photo galleries for this day, check them out, the links to the complete galleries are down below.




















You can find almost 200 more photos from this session, all full size and in high-resolution, in these 2 photo galleries:

Venice Breakwater - Wednesday 5-20-2020 Photo Gallery #1
Venice Breakwater - Wednesday 5-20-2020 Photo Gallery #2
Venice Breakwater - Wednesday 5-20-2020 Photo Gallery #3


If you were out there, we probably got some cool surfing shots of you, go check them out!

Wanna see photos from previous days at this and other local surf spots?
Click Surf Spot Galleries and look for the spot and then the date.

Surfing bioluminescent waves at Venice Beach during May 2020. Filmed By Cameron Chacker

At 2:19AM, LA County Lifeguards responded to the Venice Pier to a report of a body along the shoreline that matches the description of Sunday’s missing swimmer, former WWE star Shad Gaspard. Crews on-scene extricated the body from the water and transfer to LA County Medical Examiner-Coroner.

Graffiti Legend "RISK" talks to Jayme "Vision" Burtis, Jim "Red Dog" Muir, Josh "Bagel" Klassman, Nick "Tame" Bradley and DJ Dash talk about the early days of Venice Beach graffiti, skate and surf culture. From the roots of WCA to Dogtown Skateboards it's all here. Risk's @riskrock weekly Instagram Live "Happy Hour" feed.

Latest Update was 5:00 PM 5-18-2020.
As of now, this is an on-going story. Newest updates are added as they come in, scroll down for all the updates as they are posted in chronological order.




Around 3:40pm, LA County Lifeguards responded to a call, a large group of swimmers got pulled out by the strong rip current. Lifeguards made contact with a number of the swimmers, but one did submerge. They are searching for an adult male.

LA CO Fire Dept reports were that they evaluated a 10 year old boy after lifeguards rescued him from the water and are currently searching for his father who remained missing as of 5:30 p.m



Around 3:40 p.m, scanners picked up reports of "lifeguards responding to a reported missing swimmer in Venice Beach. Section 3, Area 23, LR200. Dive 1 also on scene."

Live footage of the search was posted to our Instagram Story as it was happening.


"Lifeguards are conducting Line Searches throughout the surf zone. Dive 1 is Conducting subsurface searches with support from Baywatch Del Rey. LA County Fire Air Ops Copter 12 is conducting an aerial search. Location is Ketch Tower in Venice Beach."

Statement from LA Fire Dept: (LA County Lifeguards) requested LAFD medical support in their search for two reported missing swimmers. One 10yo male was located, evaluated and did not require transport to the hospital. LA County Lifeguard is leading the continuing search for the 2nd swimmer, reported to be the adult father of the 1st patient. LAFD is on medical standby only. All further questions are referred to LA County Lifeguards ; FS 63; Batt 4; West Bureau; Council District 11; E63 RA63; CH4; Margaret Stewart

The Coast Guard stated they "are currently searching for missing 39-year-old man off the coast of Venice Beach."

SECT3 reports the search for the missing person continues from the air, surface, and underwater. Water is 15-30’ deep with a north facing lateral current at 4 mph. Swells still 5-6’

"There was a large rescue of 6+ people shortly before. I watched the whole thing, but still don’t understand exactly what happened. It happened so quickly." commented witness Rhiannon Dourado.

*Update* As of 7:30PM subsurface searches have been suspended for the evening.
Lifeguards will continue periodic land based patrols throughout the area. Dive and Sonar search operations will resume at 7:00AM tomorrow.




UPDATE 5-18-2020, 10:30 AM
Lifeguards resumed Sub-surface Dive operations at 7:00AM

#VeniceIC *Update* @LACoLifeguards and @SEBLASD
resumed Sub-surface Dive operations at 0700. @LACoLifeguards Marine Technical Search Team is working with Baywatch Del Rey to conduct side scanning sonar of the area. pic.twitter.com/MQfg3NFjQU

— LACoFD Lifeguards (@LACoLifeguards) May 18, 2020

The missing swimmer is said to be Former WWE star Shad Gaspard, who is 39 years old. Gaspard was swimming with his 10-year-old son who was rescued and unharmed.



Gaspard's wife posted this to her Instagram story:




UPDATE 5-18-2020, 1:30 PM
Reports came in that at approximately 12:30PM, the search has been stopped.

"We had one of our lifeguards go out to make a double rescue of a father and a son. The father unfortunately got pushed down by a wave as they were getting pulled out of the current. The lifeguard rescued and grabbed the boy, the son, and tried to grab the father as well. He ended up getting pushed down by a wave and we couldn't find him and we immediately started with our rescue boats, called in additional lifeguards to search that location of his dad." - Kenichi Haskett, Los Angeles County Fire Dept Lifeguard Division.


UPDATE 5-18-2020, 5:00 PM
“Every effort will be made to locate this gentleman, he is somebody's family member, and we all have family, so we will not rest until we feel that every effort has been made to locate him,” said Deputy Trina Schrader of the Los Angeles Sheriff Department Monday.