Tell us about your business or art!   I’m a jazz singer and a songwriter.  Venice has been the subject and inspiration for many pieces. I also cover my friends’ songs about Venice.

I’m gearing up for “The Lit Show” show at Beyond Baroque, our 12th annual celebration of songs by literary lions. It’s July 15 this year. We do a Ray Bradbury piece. He used to live across the street from Beyond Baroque.

I played Carnegie Hall with my group “Stormin’ Norman and Suzy”.  I’ve partnered up with some damn fine musicians, and have sung in sunny Spain, up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and every venue in Venice, California.

Love that Question!   ACLU, Save the Redwoods, Amnesty International, KPFK, and the Free Venice Beachhead!

Finish off the statement “Life is… a chair o’ bowlies.

I love to dress up wild…I look in my closet every day and try to pick something to base my outfit on.. a wig, a flower, a pair of shoes.  It cheers me up to paint my own palette every day…and sometimes it cheers others!

Wake up, see the Bougainvillea outside my window, play tennis with my husband Gerry at Penman Park, Have a breakfast that has arugula, lemon, herbs, etc. from our garden, pop in the shower with a song title in mind and come up with a tuneful matching melody before I get out, jump on my bike and go see Mr. Kay, my boss and vaudeville partner, who reads me the LA Times or The New Yorker, pitch to him my new melody and lyrics, knock out the intro, verse, chorus, bridge and coda.  Then I like to take a walk down a local walk street, enjoy the dogs and their masters passing by, hit the beach in time for the sunset, then get dinner ready, then maybe check out a friend playing in a local establishment ( Like Vinnie Caggiano and his Elegant Strangers at the Sidewalk Cafe on the boardwalk Thursdays), or have a drink with my gal pals, Gretta and CJ Gronner.  Then a bike home and catch a Robert Mitchum film with Gerry.  A rabid venture into the colorful delights of Facebook, and then a hit o’ the hay..

We have two sets of walk streets: the ones near Lincoln and the ones near the beach…you can zig-zag up and down them to your heart’s content all day…not to mention the canals…great walking views, where ducks abound. Got to watch the dogs at the dog park on Westminster.  Pacific Resident Theatre, which is part of the SPARC, Beyond Baroque and PRT triumvirate (where the old City Hall and Police Station used to be on Venice Boulevard) has world-class plays performed round the week.  Radio Venice, Michael Jost’s Sunday institution is a thrill to experience live, his apartment looking over the breakwater of the beach is steeped!

Love the Carne Asada at Casablanca.  Guilty pleasure: Lavender ice-cream at Salt and Straw.

Dancing like a Banshee at the drum circle! Managed somehow to keep my clothes on!

It’s hard to see it change. But Venice has always been changing! Abbot Kinney Blvd. was shuttered mostly when I came to town. Now it thrives, and even tho I can’t afford everything, I can observe all these upbeat young people digging their lives.

Gerald Joseph Fialka, my husband and a Venice community event thrower from way back!   He produces free gatherings of people for films, music, photography, literary and political discussion. He started The PXL THIS Film Festival, one of the oldest film festivals in Los Angeles, and runs the Marshall McLuhan-Finnegans Wake Reading Club which is very VERY intellectual!