Hundreds of tents that lined Venice Beach are gone, but residents say job is far from done

LOS ANGELES — From his home across the street from a homeless shelter in Venice, Shawn Stern sometimes turns on his video camera to document a disturbance that has grabbed his attention.

On Nov. 6, he recorded a gray-haired woman walking down Main Street, screaming and gesturing at passing cars.

Ten days later, another woman sat on the sidewalk, surrounded by three outreach workers, screaming at them that she did not want their help. Later, she too was walking down the middle of the street.

His most poignant video, made on the night of Nov. 30, caught a woman, naked from the waist down and with just one shoe on, mumbling incoherently.

“It’s like this on a regular basis down here,” the 61-year-old punk rock musician and festival promoter said in a text accompanying the videos. “It’s extremely sad. These women are in need of help & they aren’t getting any. They often end up victims of violent assault & rape.”

For tourists, it may appear that the Ocean Front Walk of old has returned — quirky shops, beachfront restaurants, sculpted bodies, funky music and assorted sketchy characters.

Long gone are the tents strung