This guy distilled 120 years of Venice history into a Monopoly-like game

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.