For the last 24 years Sponto’s Gallery — located on the Venice walkstreets at 7 Dudley — has preserved a piece of the Venice celebrated by the Beat Generation in the 50′s and 60′s. Located at the site of the old Venice West Cafe, where the likes of Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Jim Morrison were all known to gather, Sponto’s features art, music, poetry and movies and still serves as a gathering point for the local crowd.
I stopped by for free movie night the other night. The small room was filled with a cross-section of Venice beach culture. There were musicians to warm up the crowd and movies started promptly at 8. There were four movies featured, and the director of one movie was on hand for a Q&A session.
Sponto’s is a fun and interesting reminder of Venice past. The question is whether there is room for a place like Sponto’s in Venice present. His lease is up at the end of the year, and negotiations are not going well with the building landlord. Make sure you check out the local scene here before it hits the road…
Sponto’s Gallery
7 Dudley Street
Venice
4 responses so far ↓
1 POEMS, POETS, RHYMES AND POETRY » Blog Archive » The beat goes on at Sponto’s, but for how much longer? // Oct 31, 2008 at 5:12 pm
[...] Original post by Technorati Search for: poetry [...]
2 EmilGH // Oct 31, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Cool.
I didn’t know that place was there. I’ll definitely go check it out.
3 leila // Nov 1, 2008 at 1:58 pm
You can see a schedule for movies here: http://www.81x.com/7dudley/cinema/
4 Rest In Peace, Sponto | Yo! Venice! // Jan 24, 2009 at 11:46 am
[...] Sponto well, but I did have the chance to talk to him last year in connection with the research for this Yo! blog entry about the possible closing of Sponto’s Gallery. He struck me as a warm and generous man, [...]
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