After the canals of Naples another set shouldn’t come as a surprise. In Venice Beach, however, most of the seven-mile system of waterways created by wealthy philanthropist Abbot Kinney were filled in to make roads or to accommodate drilling equipment when oil deposits were discovered here during the late 1920s.

Instead of the replica Italian town that Kinney envisaged, people flock to present-day Venice Beach for its crazed beachside boardwalk. Along the half-mile walkway, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, tap-dancers and fortune-tellers are all likely inhabitants, plying their trade as wildly-dressed roller-skaters and skateboarders whizz by. And at Muscle Beach, an open-air gym beside the boardwalk, muscle-bound physiques are tweaked ever closer to total perfection. Some find it all a slightly disturbing, tacky scene.