Wannabe hotel
The feeling you get entering this hotel is more like a youth hostel than a $400 a night hotel. 
Front desk staff were helpful and did their job, though ever so cool and laxed in their corner desk. I guess you should be carrying a surf board under your arm to feel part of the gang. 
Rooms (twin-bed, partial ocean view) where ok sized, but with a bizarre solution for the bathroom. You were to include all in the hotel room when going to the toilet, an open on the sides glass slide door.
The balcony had partial ocean view as promised, but also the slumish view of the back alleys, not making it actually very tempting to spend time out there.
The restaurant was small, but not that difficult to get a table. It turned out there were a reason for this. The staff seemed to be lacking basic training, so if you finally were lucky enough to place an order, you could wait ages to get it. The funny part was that there were not many guest and quite a lot of staff, that actually were running at times, meanwhile our food was getting cold ready to be picked up by the waiter. There also seemed to be no communication between waiters.
Finally, location: To me Venice beach was very much a "in da hood" place, with a lot of mentally deranged people and pushers. There were actually an assault one morning, a raving mad woman screaming and attacking people. 
Conclusion: extremely overpriced.
Note to self: make better research next time.