Though not as well known, nor as extensive, as Southern California's Venice, the northern California town of Capitola has its own version of La Serenissima, originally called the Venetian Courts (above). Opened in 1925, some two decades after the founding of the beach community down south originally called the "Venice of America," the Venetian Courts bear, in truth, remarkably little resemblance to their supposed model in the northwestern part of the Adriatic--aside from their proximity to water (Soquel Creek, just before it empties into the Pacific Ocean) and their brightly painted facades which, at least for certain sufferers of color blindness, might conceivably evoke Burano (though neither Buranesi nor Venetians would be pleased by such a conflation of their two communities).
In fact, the lack of resemblance between the above place from its supposed inspirations has always, at least for me, been a main source of its charm. There's something to be said for getting something so wrong as to stumble upon a certain idiosyncratic rightness all its own.
No comments:
Post a Comment