Roach Coach night in Venice California.

A typical view of Venice Beach.

Venice, in California, is so named, I suppose, because there are canals there with very nice houses on their banks but Venice is known for much more than than; it is a vibrant, independent city which attracts the hippies of yesteryear and the trendies of today.

It is a place where Starbucks and MacDonald's have yet to conquer although there is a Starbucks on the corner of Washington Boulevard but I think that comes under the city of Marina del Ray.

Movie stars and very rich Americans have houses on the beach front and those houses are not just houses – they are works of art. As you walk passed them you can see inside and see the very sparsely furnished front rooms. Maybe just a box or a sea chest and rope – that kind of thing.

On the first Friday of each month the food trucks, fondly called the roach coaches, descend upon Venice in a street called Abbot Kinney. There are hundreds of food trucks in Los Angeles and restaurants usually complain when they stop in the street near them. I don't think this is the case with the shop keepers, restaurants and gallery owners of Abbot Kinney; Abbot Kinney is the person who founded or developed Venice, by the way.

The food trucks line up in Abbot Kinney.

I went there last Friday and the place was packed; it starts in the evening at about 7:30 or so; I don't know how they decide who is going to go where or whether, indeed, it is organised at all, but as we walked from one end of Abbot Kinney to Venice Boulevard we had the choice of an assemblage of things to eat: there was an Indian truck, numerous Mexican trucks, Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian, Japanese and others too numerous to mention.

We walked passed a barber's shop and inside a guy wearing a trilby hat, adorned with a feather, was standing at a microphone playing the guitar and singing. Nobody was having a haircut but people were sitting in the shop, and outside in the front yard, listening and maybe waiting their turn.

Other shops art galleries and boutiques were open and we could see the work in the galleries from the street; sometimes a one man show, a one woman show and some of the shops and galleries looked to be converted houses.

We went into one shop which sported minerals and smelled like The Body Shop and noticed that some of those minerals, like the ones we have in our apartment, are worth hundreds of dollars.

There was a boutique with trendy clothes but most of all there was all that food.

People tucking in to the wonderful food.

The trouble was we were simply spoiled for choice; I enjoyed what I ate but I could have had a lot of other things; I had a French Dipped Spicy Pork Sandwich and my wife had Dim Sun and Peking Duck in a soft Taco; maybe I'll have next time.

If you're in the area it's the first Friday of every month.

Here's one of the boutiques: