Homeless in Paradise: Communicating with the Bohemian Venice Beach Subculture

Book excerpt: Take an eye-opening, thought provoking and captivating journey into the underbelly of this heart wrenching, riveting, lifestyle which takes place on Venice Beach, CA. Read fascinating stories by Professor O'Connell who captures the mood, spirit, and torturing thoughts of ten random homeless people ranging from people with mental illness to the consciousness of one of the most spiritual homeless, a Native American man who is an Astrophysicist with a PhD called "The Chief" who has been a civil rights activist through all of the movements against oppression, which transformed America in the 1960's, homeless twenty-seven years. Live the stories of broken lives with war torn Vietnam Veterans, homeless transsexuals and the chilling cruelty of public ridicule they face to the story of a homeless woman who has appeared on the show COPS, arrested more than 180 times after a horrific tragedy defines her life to which she has never been able to recover. She leads the author into the center of underground homeless.