The Brief

Mark Rago has lived in Venice for more than 25 years. He kept waiting for someone to make a Monopoly version of the historic beach community, in the well-trodden footsteps of Long Beach, Laguna Beach or Oxnard. Even Irvine, a city at a relatively tender age of 54, has its own homespun version of the game.

So in 2022, Rago took it upon himself to distill the 120 years worth of Venice's history into  Venice-opoly. After spending three years on this passion project, the new game will have its official launch on Saturday, Nov. 8, at Venice Heritage Museum.

 "It was hard to get everything included because there's so much history of Venice," Rago said.

The Venice-opoly board.

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Courtesy Mark Rago

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Founded in 1905, the legendary beach outpost boasts a beginning that could not be more quintessentially Los Angeles — as a stateside resort mannered after its famous European namesake imagined by an East Coast tobacco tycoon.

Its story continues from there, encompassing  "everything from the bodybuilders, then just the whole history of the land itself with The Tongva tribe and the Mexican American culture, not to mention the skateboarding, the surfing,” Rago said.

Though the full scope was impossible to contain, Rago found ingenious ways to nod to Venice's many facets.

Behind each deed card is a short history of the business.

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Courtesy Mark Rago

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Instead of “streets," Venice-opoly uses small businesses to pay tribute to the mom-and-pops that have withstood the test of time. "They've kept the same name and same business model all those years, and they're still around today," Rago said.

Take the Venice Beach House, circa 1911, where luminaries like Charlie Chaplin and Venice founder Abbott Kinney had stayed. It's the oldest — and the most costly — small business on the board. The youngest are businesses that started in the late 1970s — such as the historic gay dive Roosterfish or Hama Sushi.

Behind each deed card is a short history of the property.

Rago also gave the game's Chance and Community Chest cards a Venice makeover — by renaming them Dogtown and Hecho en Venice, the local clothing brand, respectively.

Other touches include replacing the "Go" spot with the Venice skatepark. The famed canals take over for the pricey "Park Place" and Ocean Front Walk is now "Boardwalk."

A Venice-opoly card that nods to both Venice's Tongva history, and the art space, Beyond Baroque.

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Courtesy Mark Rago

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One of the Chance and Community Chest cards reimagined by Venice-opoly.

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Courtesy Mark Rago

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For fans of the beach community, the board game is a treasure hunt of references and traces of Venice's past and present. For Rago, who also self-funded the project, its creation has meant spending countless hours chatting with old-timers and businesses, not to mention looking through thousands of historical photographs.

He said it took many do-overs because the deeper he got and the more he learned, the more expansive and mindful his vision became.

For instance, just when he thought it was a wrap — he had an epiphany.

"I'm like, ‘What am I doing? I should have all Venice photographers in here — there's so many amazing photographers in Venice,’" Rago remembered.

So he scratched that version to begin again.

" I just tried to make it as great as I thought it could be," Rago said. "So far I've heard nothing but love from every corner, so it's been great."

Venice-opoly.

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Courtesy Mark Rago

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Venice-opoly Launch Party

Venice Heritage Museum
228 Main St., Venice
Saturday, Nov. 8, 1 to 4 p.m. RSVP here

Venice-opoly is available for purchase exclusively from Venice Heritage Museum for two weeks after launch. It will then be available at stores in Venice and online.

A key document laying out how Olympics organizers will address human rights issues like civil rights, homelessness and human trafficking in the summer of 2028 has not been made public, despite a Dec. 31, 2025, deadline.

Talk of a boycott, fear about ICE agents, and concern about L.A.'s unhoused population have been swirling around preparations for the Olympic Games for months. But last week, some L.A. City Council members said at a committee meeting that they had not seen the report. Neither have local human rights advocates.

" It's just the lack of transparency," said Stephanie Richard, who leads an anti-trafficking initiative at Loyola Law School. "Why wouldn't the reports have been put out the day that they were provided?"

LA28, the private nonprofit putting on the Games, is responsible for creating a "Human Rights Strategy" in consultation with the city, according to a contract with Los Angeles. It was supposed to be completed by the end of 2025.

Spokespeople for LA28 say it has fulfilled its "obligation to the city" and that the organization is working with L.A. on next steps. When asked by LAist, city officials did not disclose who had seen the human rights document or what those next steps were.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson sets the agenda for the ad-hoc city council committee on the Olympic Games. But his office didn't respond to requests for comment on if he had seen the report. The mayor's office also did not return repeated requests for comment on who at the city has the Human Rights Strategy.

While advocates wait to see the report, some are concerned about what will be in it.

Richard with Loyola Law School said she participated in a call with LA28 to advise on the human rights strategy, but she was disheartened when there was no follow-up conversation.

" It feels like the human rights plans have always been very like big picture and nothing concrete," she said.

Richard also has her eye on the upcoming World Cup, which requires a human rights plan, too. She told LAist she wants to see LA28 and FIFA put money behind these efforts. She compiled her own report with a long list of suggestions ahead of the World Cup and Olympics, including the demand that both organizations negotiate with the federal government to ensure immigration enforcement doesn't conduct raids around sporting venues.

Catherine Sweetser, who directs a human rights litigation clinic at UCLA Law, has been researching the organizing committee's process in putting together its human rights strategy.

Sweetser said LA28 had not called public meetings about its approach to issues like homelessness, and had not to her knowledge engaged people who might be directly affected by the Olympic Games, like people living on the streets of Los Angeles.

"The only way that we're going to get real solutions is to listen to the people who are affected," she said. "And right now I don't see that happening with this human rights process."

LAist has also requested an interview LA28's senior human rights advisor, Julieta Valls Noyes.

A mid-week warming trend kicks off Tuesday, with temperatures expected to reach the low 90s in some valleys.

SoCal beaches will see temperatures from 73 to 79 degrees, with periods of low clouds in the morning. The inland coast and downtown L.A. will see highs of between 82 and 85 degrees.

The valley communities, including the Inland Empire, will see highs of up to 86 degrees, and up to 89 degrees in Coachella Valley. Meanwhile, the Antelope Valley could get up to 75 degrees.

The National Weather Service is also warning of windy conditions over the Santa Clarita Valley, where gusts could reach 35 mph in the afternoon.

The 2028 Olympic soccer final matches will take place at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, but earlier games will be played at stadiums across the U.S.

Those locations were announced Tuesday by the Olympics organizers. Stadiums in San Diego and San Jose in California will host Olympic soccer matches. So will New York City, Columbus, Nashville and St. Louis.

The venues outside of the L.A.-area will host group stage and knock-out matches in the Olympic tournament ahead of the final stage matches in Pasadena. The Games will allow fans from around the country to view Olympic competitions.

The additional stadiums where Olympic soccer matches will take place are:

• Etihad Park in New York City
• ScottsMiracle-Gro Field in Columbus, Ohio
• GEODIS Park in Nashville, Tennessee 
• Energizer Park in St. Louis, Missouri 
• PayPal Park in San Jose
• Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego

LA28 said in a news release that organizers "intentionally designed the tournament to include stadiums from the East Coast to West Coast to minimize travel demands."

Dates and locations for the women's and men's tournaments will be announced before ticket sales start in April.