ARE RULES TAKING THE FUNKINESS OUT OF QUIRKY VENICE?

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

Diane Butler has staked out a place outside the lines.

She has squeezed her easel between two city-sanctioned spots for artists, performers and other ``free-speech'' practitioners. It's barely big enough for her latest work - a large canvas on which Butler has painted a scene of the exact stretch of Venice Beach on which we are standing Sunday in the early spring sunshine.

A homemade sign under her painting explains the self-imposed cramming to nonlocals: ``I am painting outside the lines. I am not part of the lottery.''

If Butler participated and won the new city lottery for space on the west side of Venice Beach's world-famous Ocean Front Walk, she would have much roomier digs in which to paint, commune with the tourists and earn a living.

But that would mean she has to play by the city's rules: register, pay $25, get an official lottery I.D., compete for one of the 154 coveted spots every two weeks, and then live under a long list of ``shalls'' and ``shan'ts'' dreamed up by bureaucrats.

Butler and her husband - another artist/musician/beach philosopher - and a small number of the funky regulars along the boardwalk are protesting the permit and lottery process on the grounds that it's unconstitutional and just about as ``un-Venice'' as you can get.

``I love Venice, and I love that Venice is free,'' Butler said. ``It's a place where drifters come to town and put out a hat and play the guitar and make a little money - and it's very little money.

``If you take the freedom away, Venice will be like any other place.''

Venice Beach is world-famous because it is unlike any other place. Since its beginning more than a century ago as a replica of Venice, Italy - with canals and the development of a Coney Island-like oceanfront - the neighborhood naturally developed into a showcase of the offbeat.

No wonder that the counterculture thrived here, that freaky people and artists and surf bums and musicians and sidewalk preachers found refuge and, even, celebrity of a sort.

Now, people from all over the world come to Venice to experience its uniquely chaotic mix of musicians, vendors, druggies, preachers, weirdos and dancers, and maybe get a tattoo or a piercing while they're at it.

Take that away and what do you have? Manhattan Beach, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and any number of places on the California coast that look the same.

``We have no intention of making it into Santa Monica,'' Sandy Kievman told me.

As chief field deputy for Cindy Miscikowski, the city councilwoman for the district, Kievman has heard the theories that the city wants to get rid of the Venice riff-raff and redevelop the waterfront into a posh playground.

Kievman assures that's not the case. The lottery is intended to keep the funkiness but lose the stands selling rubber duckies and the territorialism that had developed over the years.

``Gradually, it's become more and more commercial,'' Kievman said of the west side of the walk that has been designated as a free speech zone and not vendor row.

``People have been there selling dogs. It's insane. It's like a swap meet. It's disorderly.

``People have been getting down there to hold spaces at 3 and 4 in the morning, getting into fights over spaces. Women have complained about being harassed and hit or abused, verbally abused. The police have spent an inordinate amount of time just over spaces.''

The planning for the new process began more than a year ago, and the ordinance setting up the lottery was adopted in October. The lotteries began in March.

The sad truth is that governments have a way of ordering things right out of existence. And there's evidence that the new rules might be killing the very thing that makes Venice Venice.

``There's too many empty spaces,'' said jewelry maker Genevieve Turgeon, indicating the empty spots all around her. On a warm weekend afternoon, all the spots should have been taken by the morning.

``Normally, there's not even any space at all in between people.''

In her two years selling and making her necklaces on the boardwalk, this is the emptiest she's ever seen it.

No one can say why for sure. But since anyone can register and participate in the lottery - including you or me - there's a widespread suspicion that store owners and other business people are getting spaces with the express purpose of keeping them empty.

Vicki Israel, the Department of Recreation and Parks supervisor who oversees Venice Beach, promises that the process will be improved as problems are discovered, like the empty space situation.

``We are being very cognizant of that and trying to be really sensitive to all First Amendment and free speech issues,'' Israel said.

All the tweaking of the rules won't convince some that the lottery isn't a death knell for Venice Beach's character.

``I think it will be the end,'' said Therese Dietlin, who sets up her left-leaning booth on Sundays to pass out literature and educate people on the war in Iraq, President George W. Bush and other politicians.

``Who wants to come here if it's just as plastic as everyplace else?''

She's got a point. Parking is a lot easier in Santa Monica.

Mariel Garza, [phone]

mariel.garza(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Winston King draws a pastel portrait of Enga Wiest, a tourist from Germany, on the boardwalk of Venice Beach. King has been doing portraits on the boardwalk for the past quarter century.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer