These details were passed on to me by the artist Robert Branaman aka Barbital Bob aka Rapid Ronnie.

The Life and Death of Sponto
Venice Beach has long been associated with the birth of 20th century counterculture. Mark Kornfeld was, himself, a fixture of Venice Beach, California for decades. His death from a heart attack late Sunday night marks the end of an era on the famous Venice Beach board walk-the era of Sponto.

Kornfeld dropped his birth name for all intents and purposes when he began to embed himself in the fabric of Venice beach culture in the early 1980s, and no one who really knew him would dream of calling him anything else. The explanation for where the name came from is forever lost in the wild, smoldering sea of Bohemian memories and stories that he leaves in his wake. To say that Sponto was "a character" would be a gross understatement.

Sponto was best known for the art gallery and performance space that he owned on Dudley Avenue, just a few steps away from the Venice Boardwalk at 7 Dudley Avenue. But to the members of the Venice Beach community, Sponto was much more than a local businessman-he was a community organizer, civil rights activist, local historian, art promoter, junk collector, conflict mediator, Venice Beach tour guide, and perpetual party host. Sponto was Venice Beach's answer to Jay Gatsby-if Jay Gatsby had been surrounded by throngs of faithful friends and held his parties in a 400-square foot art-box instead of a Long Island mansion.

Sponto Gallery had formerly been known as the Venice West Café. Opened by Stuart Perkoff in the 1950s, the Venice West Café was a well-documented meeting place of some of the most prominent artists of the Beat Generation, including Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski. Although it's been decades since the original Beats inhabited the place, the Sponto Gallery still holds a palpable, bright, creative energy that permeates the space.
Sponto purchased the gallery in the 1980s and maintained the integrity of the space in a way that few others could. The gallery became part coffeehouse, part performance space, and part community organizing center, all set inside a few hundred square feet of space whose walls were adorned with a constantly rotating display of local artwork. He then further developed the space into "7 Dudley Cinema," and hosted weekly showings of experimental, avant garde, and subversive films related to politics, art, love, sexuality, and counterculture.

Sponto Gallery hosted a popular series of political comedy shows that attracted comedians including Mark Maron and Andy Kindler. The gallery also served as a polling place for Venice Beach community members for several years.

As gentrification creeps into every wondrous seedy corner of Venice with million dollar condos, Starbucks franchises, and pilates centers, Sponto Gallery was a place that firmly, stubbornly, refused to surrender to mass consumerism and mainstream trends-a remnant of what made Venice Beach so famous in the first place. It was an active, relevant, evolving art center in the heart of a community beginning to split between Bohemian purists and

When Sponto passed away, there was no next of kin to call. His family was his Venice Beach family-whom he adopted and who adopted him. The sidewalk in front of Sponto Gallery is now covered with flowers, cards, candles, original artwork, bottles of wine, bundles of bread and cheese, and chalk drawn messages. Two huge posterboards filled with messages to Sponto cover the windows of the gallery-it's doors now locked. A picture of Sponto hangs over the entrance with a wisely written phrase: Mark Kornfeld is dead, but Sponto lives forever.

Sponto was someone that you felt lucky to know. He was one of the first people I met when I moved to Los Angeles. After weeks on the cross-country road trip from Boston, I desperately just wanted to put my feet in the Pacific Ocean and know that my journey was over. He walked me to down to the Pacific Ocean and we stood in the moonlight with the water lapping over our feet.

"I made it," I said. "I really made it."

"You made it," he said. "You're here. L.A. is a crazy place darlin'--there's no where better. You can be anything you want-even sometimes, something you never even knew you wanted to be."

So true Sponto, so true.

How does someone describe Sponto to someone who never met him. As-a character? That hardly seems sufficient. He was a person-infused with the energy of a sprite, the wisdom of The Dude, and the heart of a tried and true free love hippie to the core.

He and Venice Beach belonged to each other. It's always tragic when someone you care about is gone--but when the fabric of a neighborhood changes, you feel an extra level of emptiness and you have to wonder if the place that you loved will ever be the same without the person that you knew in it.

As soon as I heard he was dead, I started kicking myself for not writing down ever story I ever heard him tell me-so that a single one of them wouldn't be lost. His stories chronicled decades Venice Beach drama, parties, art movements, loves and losses, brushes with celebrities, and insights into the changing face of Venice Beach culture.

The future of the Gallery space is uncertain at this time. Those that gathered around the gallery to remember Sponto hope that it will be acquired by someone who can keep up the mission that the Gallery has been dedicated to for decades-true freedom of expression. In the meantime, the drum circle a few yards away on the boardwalk pounds on. Sponto's friends gather names and numbers to contact for memorial services. Someone posts a notice that there will be "A Memorial Glow Dance" on the beach in Sponto's honor after the holidays. It's hard to imagine a more appropriate tribute.

Sponto's memory will certainly continue to energize and unify the Venice Beach community for some time. Those who knew him knew that his spiritual energy will linger at the gallery and mingle with the ghosts of the decades of artists he hosted and showcased. Sponto's legacy is one of true artistic integrity-and it will linger, stubbornly and without compromise, until a new leader or group of leaders steps in to take up his cause. His death means the Bohemians now have a powerful ally watching over them from the other side--and in Venice Beach, contacting the other side isn't so out of the ordinary at all. It's just a change in area code.

Sources:

Venice West by John Arthur Maynard

Venice Beach Says Farewell to Its King January 01, 2009 by Elizabeth Brown

Virtual Venice