venice

I don't think the google van would fit in most of the streets in Venice, and the van is too big to fit on a gondola:) Venice is beautiful.

They're in Venice Beach, they may just be using the palette and style they know.

I live on the Venice Beach boardwalk and have been increasingly seeing people zip around on these scooters.

You can live off of that for easier access to fun areas (venice/santa monica/wilshire).

You might be interested in the Venice Beach public art walls.

A Venice Beach surfer cashes in with an iphone app.

Plus our office is two blocks from Venice beach.

Yeah, I've been curious about Venice for a while.

I recall a British tourist who died in Venice after thinking it was a good idea to take a swim in the lagoon a few years back.

I don't recall any in the Venice airport.

So, do you as an SF resident see the city as a beautiful museum to be preserved, like Venice or EC2 in London, or is SF really about frontier spirit, which today looks more like Hong Kong than suburbia?

I imagine if you're trying to cross LA, it's hardly walkable and gets a bit grim, but if you live and play in say the Venice and Santa Monica areas, I could see how that would make for a decent home.

Venice and other so called "traditional" cities have failed not because of the rush of tourists, but because they have attempted to freeze their prosperity in time.

The driver mentioned I was lucky that they were "passing through" and they only pick up passengers in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Venice, Santa Monica, etc.

It can be like Venice: 90% hotels and a few condo buildings near the park for billionaires.

Exactly - they'd have to create something just for Venice, by putting their gear onto the right kind of boat.

This approach would be like comparing drunk driving fatalities in Los Angeles vs Venice, Italy.