Visit VirtualVenice.info Pat Hartman´s first book, Call Someplace Paradise, was concerned with the public face of Venice, California - the boardwalk and boutique Venice visited by between one and two hundred thousand tourists each weekend. Ghost Town is about the other Venice. There is a book genre described by Russ Rymer as "inspecting America´s racial trauma through the lens of private experience, as it plays out in the daily difficulties of particular persons in one or another microcosmic place." Here the microcosm is Oakwood, a hotbed of diversity and danger called Ghost Town by its own citizens. The particular persons are a white single mother, age 30, and her 11-year-old, half-black daughter, along with a stellar cast of roommates, boyfriends, and neighbors. Ghost Town: A Venice California Life is a psychological adventure story that takes place in a challenging environment where many people would never consider trying to live. Much has been said and written about racial dynamics by people who, however well-informed and well-intentioned, may talk the talk but haven´t walked the walk. Whether by lack of inclination or of opportunity, many experts on race relations have never actually lived in a racially mixed neighborhood, let alone where their own group is a minority. In an environment that forces thought about race issues every single day, it´s a different world. How are attitudes about race formed? Why is it that even the most willing participants of the melting pot sometimes can´t take the heat? These and other questions are precisely as relevant now as they were in the period covered here, 1978-84. Unfortunately the subject of race will probably continue to be relevant into the next millennium and beyond, given that the human race as a whole is still around that long. Despite being burglarized, mugged, vandalized, menaced, caught in the black/chicano crossfire, and visited by men in suits who travel in pairs, the author found existence in Oakwood rewarding and positive an many ways. (Film director Barbet Schroeder, who lived in Oakwood during the same time period, told an interviewer it was "the best year of my life so far.") Like the diary of Samuel Pepys in London, like Alexander King´s memoirs of Greenwich Village, Ghost Town is a record of a fascinating and frightening urban environment through the eyes of an articulate and meticulous observer. Visit VirtualVenice.info

Dr. Carder Stout's memoir about his fall from grace into addiction to crack; finding redemption in the most unlikely of places.

In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place "Pepperland," after the Beatles movie, "Yellow Submarine." Threatening this paradise is'The Blue Meanie, a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself.

LIFE Magazine presents Ghost Towns for LIFE Ghost Towns.

Visit VirtualVenice.info Venice, California gave up its status as a city seventy years ago and still became one of the worlds most stubbornly independent communities. Acknowledged as a unique urban environment, Venice is the seaside playpen where trends are born, a tourist magnet rivaled only by Disneyland, and a microcosm of everything thats good and bad about America. Half the stars of movies and music have lived there at some stage of their careers. Probably more film footage exists of the Venice boardwalk than of any other stretch of real estate. Millions of people have seen innumerable images of Venice on TV and in movies, and visited the boardwalk, and wondered how it would be to live in such a crazy place, and even wished they dared to throw caution to the winds and move to Edge City. Most books about Venice have been pictorial, poetic, or scholarly. Call Someplace Paradise is a kaleidoscopic collection of observations from the viewpoint of an inhabitant over more than half a decade, 1978-84. Unlike the sociologists and bureaucrats who came from afar to scrutinize Venice, I had the advantage of living there. Venice is a place where its worth knowing what went on there in any period, the kind of place that lives in legend, an American Shangri-la. In many peoples minds its the epitome of hip. Interest in Venice will only increase when its Centennial comes up in 2005. Call Someplace Paradise is for anyone who lives there now, or used to, or ever wanted to, or might some day. Its for people from other countries, curious about life in this almost anarchistic milieu; for futurologists, sociologists, urbanologists, economists, aging hippies, and libertarians. It covers Venice shrines, institutions, historical sites and monuments: the Gas House, the pier, the Venice Beachhead, Tony Bills 73 Market Street studio, the canals, A Change of Hobbit, the street where part of A Touch of Evil was filmed, Beyond Illusions bookstore, the place where Jim Morrison made a film, the Fox Venice Theatre, the cultural centers Beyond Baroque and SPARC. Some of the local characters and celebrities in Call Someplace Paradise: Swami X; Susan Moscowitz the Doll Lady of Venice, beatnik painter Robert Farrington, LA Fine Arts Squad muralist John Wehrle, rollerskater/guitarist/Sufi Harry Perry, Alky Bob, Uncle Bill, Jingles, Ananda the drama queen, the guy with a bullet in his spine, Hare Krishnas, landlords who give free enterprise a bad name, Greenie the stalker, Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, silent film star Mary Miles Minter, Ernie the poor little rich boy, the grocery cart bounty hunter, sex surrogate Joan Silverthorn, the Circle Man, the ubiquitous religious graffiti nut, and a ton of other weird folk, substance abusers, professional oddballs, buskers, con artists, deadbeats, grifters and street people. Here are some other things in Call Someplace Paradise: the boardwalk and beach, vendors versus the law, skaters versus the law, the powerful senior citizens lobby, living at the beach whether in buildings or tents, famous rent strikes, murals, Tuum Est addiction recovery center, stolen art work, cafe life, John Lennons Birthday, the Hare Krishna Parade, the Kite Festival, the gentrification juggernaut, Survival Sunday, Francisco and His Cosmic Beam, gruesome hot tub deaths, drum circles, Zendiks, improv groups, body decoration, the heritage of the Beats, the archetypically senseless murder of a convenience store clerk, readings by well-known poets and aspiring nobodies. Venice has been called the Center of the Universe, the Last Resort, the living future of contemporary American history, the living national monument to the achievement of the American dream, and the worlds largest outdoor outpatient clinic. The Sixties started there sooner than most anywhere else, and then di

A travel guide to northern California's 50 deserted mining towns, plus the "ghost prison" of Alcatraz and a couple of Chinese fishing villages in the San Francisco Bay area.

Psychologist to the Hollywood elite Dr. Carder Stout delivers a page-turning memoir about his fall from grace into the gritty underbelly of crack addiction, running drugs for the Shoreline Crips, surviving homelessness, escaping a murder plot, and finding redemption in the most unlikely of places. Dr. Carder Stout’s clientele includes Oscar-, Golden Globe-, Emmy-, Tony- and Grammy-winners, bestselling authors, and billionaires. He may not be able to share their dark secrets, but for the first time, everyone will know his. At the age of thirty-four, Carder would have gladly pawned the silver spoon he was born choking on for a rock of crack. His downfall was as swift as his privilege was vast…or had he been falling all along? Raised in a Georgetown mansion and educated at exclusive institutions, Carder ran with a crowd of movers, shakers, and future Oscar-winners in New York City. But words like “promise” and “potential” are meaningless in the face of serious addiction. Lost years and a stint in rehab later, when Carder was a dirty, broke, soon-to-be-homeless crackhead wandering the streets of Venice, California. His lucky break came thanks to his old Ford Taurus: he lands a job of driving for a philosophical drug czar with whom he finds friendship and self-worth as he helps deliver quality product to LA’s drug enthusiasts, from trust-fund kids, gang affiliates, trophy wives, hip-hop producers, and Russian pimps. But even his loyalty and protection can’t save Carder from the peril of the streets--or the eventual contract on his life. From a youth of affluence to the hit the Shoreline Crips put on his life, Carder delves deep into life on the streets. Lost in Ghost Town is a riveting, raw, and heartfelt look at the power of addiction, the beauty of redemption, and finding truth somewhere in between.