Doug Rapp, Venice Current / SMDP Staff Writer
Evanston, Illinois, and Venice may not seem to have much in common, but they do for veteran TV writer and producer Jeffrey Lieber.
Growing up there, Lieber recalled Evanston as a “super-progressive” place, noting their recent push for reparations.
“When I moved to California, I started looking immediately for something that felt like that [Evanston],” Lieber said. “Venice does to me, in terms of being a complex, economically varied, racially and socially varied kind of place with all the upsides and downsides of that.”
Lieber left the Chicago area for L.A. in 1995, looking to transition from acting and playwriting into film and TV work. Living in Brentwood and Hollywood, he followed a familiar path to the entertainment industry: writing spec scripts, landing then losing agents.
Doug Rapp, Venice Current / SMDP Staff Writer
Los Angeles has nearly 100 museums, but the Venice Heritage Foundation thinks it’s about time Venice gets its own commemorative space.
The Venice Heritage Museum would be the first-ever museum exclusively dedicated to Venice. Proposed as a campus on the grounds of Centennial Park, the museum will include a Pacific Electric Red Car trolley and a replica ticket booth, in addition to an information booth and a “community corner” event venue.
“It’s long overdue,” said Kristina von Hoffmann, VHF board secretary. “Venice is an internationally renowned city that draws millions of tourists each year and has put so many culture movements on the map.”