What do you think about the city of Long Beach? Not Long Beach, New York, or Long Beach, Washington.
I’m talking about the California city just shy of a half million residents — located in LA county approximately between the Los Angeles River on the west side and the San Gabriel River on the east side, the harbor on the south side, and Lakewood and Paramount on the north side of town. And the city of Signal Hill right at its center.
Visitors can get thrown off by quirky parts of the city, like a south facing beach with no waves; islands off the shore with hip ‘60s office buildings that are actually covering up oil wells; another city right in the center that can make driving directions confusing; the traffic circle that can feel endless; the Los Coyotes Diagonal that can easily lead to choosing the wrong street to turn on; and a juxtaposition of building styles and history, many times right next door to each other.
Some people still have old and inaccurate ideas of LB being a rundown, dangerous place you don’t want to go to at night. You might hear a story about somebody who used to work downtown and had to be escorted to their car after dark. Older folk will tell you about the once grand Pike amusement park grounds later on becoming overtaken by rough characters you wouldn’t want your kids to be near.
You might hear a mention of the Queen Mary as well. Everybody mentions the Queen Mary, and sometimes jokingly as if it were the only thing notable about Long Beach.
Then there are those who see LB as an alternative to moving to LA — a cool town with a lot of history, places to go, and a good one for hanging out with friends. Many young people have been moving in to the downtown and other neighborhoods in recent years, and taking jobs at growing employers like Molina Healthcare.
I have mixed feelings about Long Beach becoming an appealing place to live. I love my city for 10 reasons, and i don’t want to see it overwhelmed with traffic and long lines everywhere I want to go.
These attractive attributes are almost like secrets for most people who have little-to-no experience in the city. They might get a puzzled, annoyed look on their face after being invited here for a party, concert, work event, or to look at houses available for sale. Their one stop in LB years ago didn’t impress them; or they went nuts looking for a parking space.
Here’s 10 reasons why it’s been my favorite place to live………….
No. 1—There’s plenty to do — and it ain’t all about the Queen Mary!
Have breakfast at one of the old local favorites like Eggs Etc. on Redondo Ave. or the original Potholder on Broadway. Later that day, what about tap beer and pickled eggs at Joe Jost’s on Anaheim St.?
Go see a classic comedian do social commentary at the Karen Carpenter Center on the Cal State Long Beach campus, or a set of comics doing stand up at Laugh Factory on Pine Ave. Or get tickets to see a great band play at the Long Beach Arena or Terrace Theater.
Plan ahead for special events, like taking a night-time walking tour of Naples in December to see the holiday decorations lighting up the neighborhood houses on a few of the canals. You can start earlier that month watching (or taking a boat ride) in the Naples boat parade.
Tour Bixby Knolls, a popular and thriving part of town with plenty to see and do. Go see mansions on Ocean Blvd, and 1st Street. You’ll be quite impressed. Look for Buddhist monks in orange robes walking from their meditation grounds at the corner of Redondo and Ocean, which used to be a Catholic monastery.
Plenty more to do. You’re going to have fun, and I can guarantee it.
No. 2—It’s got the look and feel of San Francisco, LA, Santa Monica, and Pasadena, but in a smaller, more accessible setting.
You get to see old classic homes — Craftsman bungalow, Spanish style, Victorian, Tudor, ranch style, and modern/contemporary houses and apartment buildings from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Go downtown to see a few of the classic old ones left (including one being restored at Pine and Ocean, where my grandfather had an office in the 1930s). LB also has the classic post-war suburban neighborhoods of the ‘50s and ‘60s with much of it restored and upgraded.
Certainly, some of the history is being paved over by waves of new buildings downtown and other sections of town to house 20-to-30-year olds who want to live in a city other than LA. But the history is still here, and many of us want to see it preserved (a shout out to old friend, architect Mike Bohn, and Long Beach Heritage).
A good chunk of LB’s land (42,160 acres total) is filled with suburban neighborhoods and shopping centers (such as the brand new 2nd & PCH). It’s not all about living the city life. I’ve been living in a 1,450 square-foot house (originally built in 1952) in the Los Altos neighborhood for years.
I do get a kick out of the fact that within a few minutes of driving, I can be downtown; or over in Bixby Knolls seeing how much it’s being restored; or down on 2nd St. in Belmont Shore eating at Supermex or one of the new joints; or hiking up on Signal Hill and getting a good look at the panorama on a clear day. But I’m not stuck in a crowded city with little freedom of mobility, which is the case in many sections of the Southland these days.
No. 3—It’s a convenient center point for the best of SoCal, places that aren’t that far away.
For me, that would include South Bay cities like Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach, parts of LA, Santa Monica, San Pedro, Palos Verdes Peninsula, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, and more.
You get a broad spectrum of places to look for a job. Of course, there’s always the commute.
It’s a springboard for the Southland. You can jump in your car and see just about anything you can think of within two hours — desert, beaches, mountains, hill country, historic neighborhoods, the latest in modern condo complexes, elite neighborhoods, and some of the poorest and toughest ones in the nation.
It’s been great to see some of those rundown areas being improved and quality of life getting better. LB has benefited from that trend in recent years, where you would be amazed to see neighborhoods and public spaces looking quite different than they did a quarter century ago. That includes the downtown and west side of the city. More needs to be done, but it’s amazing to see the improvements.
For cool places to see in the distance and go visit, don’t forget Catalina Island.
No. 4—Being yourself is important for a lot of people living in LB. That could mean having a lot of tattoos and piercings, or clothing that is unique to that person and could offend someone else; or at least raise eyebrows. Or just being a regular human being not trying to impress everyone, wearing no makeup and casual clothes. Why waste your time and money, when you can chill out, be yourself, and have a really good time here?
LB features a true mix of lifestyles, race, ethnicity, religions, sexual orientation, income levels, ages, and philosophies. There’s a real feeling of openness and personal freedom in Long Beach. You’re probably not going to get ridiculed or glared at.
People are pretty much for real in LB. This is not Hollywood, or Newport Beach, or many other glamorous cities nearby. When you go out, you'll see people looking real.
Certainly there are stories here involving the famous, such as Nick Cage living in a house secretly hidden away in town. Or you may have stood in front of Ted Danson at a coffeehouse. Or you may have been driving your car down Ocean Blvd. and smiled at Matt Damon driving his car. You may see a famous musician trying out a new song or two at Alex’s Bar, or other clubs that have opened up in recent years.
But the reality is that it’s not about spotting celebrities or beautiful people here. You will see a few people trying to get rich and famous here. But for most of us living in LB, we do seem to appreciate that it's what you might describe as authentic. We're not trying to impress each other.
No. 5—History. Remember, it ain’t all about the Queen Mary. No, the history is richer and even more interesting. Let’s look at a few of those tales……….
The Pike was THE amusement zone at that time — years before the Santa Monica Pier opened its amusement park. The Pike was founded in 1902 as an amusement park and arcade. It was located along the shoreline of Long Beach just south of Ocean Boulevard next to the downtown; along with other locally owned arcades, food stands, gift shops, rides, and a grand bath house called The Plunge. The dual-track Cyclone Racer opened in 1930 and was ridden by more than 30 million people during its 38-year run.
There are some amazing photographs to view if you’re interested in what it used to look like; and you can visit some of the parkland by going to the Pike Outlets, which has a Ferris wheel that seems to pay tribute to the classic park.
After World War II, it was expanded and renamed Nu-Pike. The amusement park did get seedy in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was shut down in 1979, and became a place you didn’t want to go to in years prior — hookers, winos, drug dealers, and drunk sailors getting into knife fights.
There was also a downtown shopping mall, the Long Beach Plaza, that started in 1982 and had to be closed down in 1999. That section of town was deteriorating, along with other parts of LB. The decay and closing of the Pike, and later the mall, were symbolic of the downturn the city was going through overall — until the late 1980s, when Pine Ave. started being restored and revived.
Did you know that the motion picture industry started in Long Beach before moving over to Hollywood? In 1910, the California Motion Picture Manufacturing Company opened the first production plant, where it began making comedies and promotional films the following year. In 1913, Herbert Horkheimer purchased the studio to found Balboa Studios. From 1918 to 1923, Balboa Studios was the most productive independent studio in the world.
Balboa Studios was home to silent film stars such as Henry King, Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, Pearl White, Mabel Normand, and Slim (Pickens) Pickett. Charlie Chaplin visited the studios a number of times. Soon after World War I, Hollywood began taking off as the new capital city of the movie business. Long Beach (and Signal Hill) soon became the home of many oil derricks.
Movie star Fatty Arbuckle had a mansion on Ocean Blvd., at 1830 E. Ocean, now the Beach Villa Apartments. Arbuckle lived in a mansion-style house with horse stables at the cliff bottom. He ran his horses nightly along the coastline. He had a tunnel from his property to the ocean under neighboring homes. It measured about seven feet high and four feet wide.
In the summer of 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was on top of the world. Paramount Pictures had paid him an unprecedented $3 million over three years to star in 18 silent films. Three widely publicized trials between November 1921 and April 1922 for the alleged rape and manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe. The first two ended in hung juries, and Arbuckle was found not guilty in the third trial. It would destroy his career and his life, and he was never able to make it back to anywhere near that stardom.
Years later as World War II started, Long Beach became a major Navy base (which is where the breakwaters came from), quite a few oil drills pumped away in Signal Hill and offshore (as mentioned, those aren’t 1960s office buildings out there), and it became a town where retired farmers from Iowa might move.
I’ve been told in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, it was a stopover for those looking for cool places to hang out and have breakfast, protest the Vietnam War on campus at Cal State Long Beach, go see a rock back band at the Long Beach Arena (I know somebody who saw Stevie Wonder open there for the Rolling Stones in the early ‘70s), and party at a really cool old house or apartment building that had been built sometime around 1915.
Like other cities, things started changing in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Pine Avenue in downtown went through a restoration with addition of new clubs, restaurants, and a movie theater (that theater went away and got replaced with a much larger one further south on Pine near the ocean). There would be much more, but it was inspiring to see the downtown starting its revival — something that I saw happening about that time in Las Vegas, Phoenix, LA, and many other cities.
Alright, alright. How did the Queen Mary get here, you may be asking?
Well it started out as RMS Queen Mary, having come from England. The now-retired British ocean liner sailed primarily on the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line. The ship docked in Long Beach in late 1967, where she’s lived ever since.
No. 6—The weather. It’s rare to experience a bad weather day here..
Let’s hear what Weatherspark has to say about it: “In Long Beach, the summers are short, warm, arid, and clear and the winters are long, cool, and partly cloudy. Over the course of the year, the temperature typically varies from 48°F to 82°F and is rarely below 42°F or above 91°F.”
How’s that sound?
No. 7— The get-around. LB has a top-10-in-the-U.S. ranked transit bus system, which includes both long and short rides on the routes. Bike lanes are going in all around the city. The train is good, too, though there are still a few glitches needing to be fixed. Speaking of the train, what used to be called the Blue Line starting in downtown LB and heading to downtown LA is now named the A Line. Want to go downtown and see the art deco Union Station and Olvera St., an age-old Mexican market square?
It’s a good city for getting an Uber or Lyft ride — it’s packed with drivers looking for extra income. I know, I’ve been one of them and have also taken Uber and Lyft rides. When you see how many drivers and cars are available nearby, you’ll be surprised; but you don’t have to wait very long to get picked up and taken to your destination.
Taking walks can be a real pleasure, and that includes in public parks all over town; or down at the beach along the bike path; or up Hill St. in Signal Hill if you need that kind of exercise; or the downtown Art Walk centered on Broadway near Atlantic.
If you drive your own car, you’d better have some good ideas on where you can park — or you’re going to be in a world of hurt. LB has a bad reputation based on finding a parking spot anywhere between Ocean and 7th St. Many a story, and I have a few of my own. For solutions, ask around (including me) if you want to know about a few good free parking lots you can find parking in.
No. 8—The mood is casual, open, and friendly.
Locals tend to be in a better mood in dealing with their fellow human beings than might be the reality in a lot of other cities. That helps a lot when you consider the broad spectrum of diversity, opinions, interests, and how we work and live.
The good mood also helps when the city can get crowded with sections shut down for the annual marathon, or LB Grand Prix, or other events and happenings. You probably won’t have somebody nearly hitting you with their car, then honking and screaming at you as if it were your fault.
The pressure that some people feel when in LA, especially if they’re trying to break into film, TV, music, or gaming, isn’t really here in Long Beach. You can relax and be yourself, and you’re not going to be shunned from a social group if you don’t become as talented, youthful, beautiful, and famous as they are (at least as much as they think and say they are).
No. 9—You’ll be pleasantly surprised by who and what you see. Once in a while you’ll see a crew shooting a new scene for a TV show or movie; or an historic building beautifully restored and open to the public; or that an old, decaying building was gutted and a bold new building has taken its place with beautiful gardening part of it.
Take a look at who will be performing soon at the Long Beach Arena, Terrance Theater, Carpenter Performing Arts Center, International City Theatre, or a long list of small clubs and coffeehouses spotlighting some real talent.
Surprises might include colorful local characters, and there are a few. You might see bike riders (and pedestrians) taking some big risks, apparently not looking both ways. I recently saw a man riding his bike on the 405 freeway. It was at night about three lanes in, with a car abruptly swerving out of the lane to not hit the young and crazy rebel.
No. 10—Know about the resources. Here are a few good ones…….
Read the Long Beach Post.
Read Tim Grobaty at the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
Look into Long Beach Animal Care Services on Spring if you have a pet who ran away, or if you need to give away one that’s been wreaking havoc in your home.
Have coffee at The Library or Portfolio Coffeehouse and bring your laptop or tablet, and tap into their WiFi internet access.
Drive up to the park at the top of Signal Hill on a clear day, and view fascinating places far, far away.
Get free parking at the Vons on Broadway and Atlantic. It’s very convenient, including on the 4th of July to see the Queen Mary fireworks show.
Go hiking at the El Dorado Nature Center.
Go on a walking tour with Long Beach Heritage.
See an events calendar (such as Eventbrite, or Visit Long Beach, or Downtown Long Beach Alliance) for interesting and lively ones coming to town. One of them will be Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary May 11-14, 2020, at the Long Beach Convention Center. You’ll get to see the latest and coolest in electrified vehicles and clean fuels like renewable natural gas that fleets are using these days.
So now you know about the secret gems of LB. You’re invited to take a tour, and tell your friends. Just don’t come in busloads, and don’t even think about filling up more than one parking space!
I’m talking about the California city just shy of a half million residents — located in LA county approximately between the Los Angeles River on the west side and the San Gabriel River on the east side, the harbor on the south side, and Lakewood and Paramount on the north side of town. And the city of Signal Hill right at its center.
Visitors can get thrown off by quirky parts of the city, like a south facing beach with no waves; islands off the shore with hip ‘60s office buildings that are actually covering up oil wells; another city right in the center that can make driving directions confusing; the traffic circle that can feel endless; the Los Coyotes Diagonal that can easily lead to choosing the wrong street to turn on; and a juxtaposition of building styles and history, many times right next door to each other.Some people still have old and inaccurate ideas of LB being a rundown, dangerous place you don’t want to go to at night. You might hear a story about somebody who used to work downtown and had to be escorted to their car after dark. Older folk will tell you about the once grand Pike amusement park grounds later on becoming overtaken by rough characters you wouldn’t want your kids to be near.
You might hear a mention of the Queen Mary as well. Everybody mentions the Queen Mary, and sometimes jokingly as if it were the only thing notable about Long Beach.
Then there are those who see LB as an alternative to moving to LA — a cool town with a lot of history, places to go, and a good one for hanging out with friends. Many young people have been moving in to the downtown and other neighborhoods in recent years, and taking jobs at growing employers like Molina Healthcare.
I have mixed feelings about Long Beach becoming an appealing place to live. I love my city for 10 reasons, and i don’t want to see it overwhelmed with traffic and long lines everywhere I want to go.
These attractive attributes are almost like secrets for most people who have little-to-no experience in the city. They might get a puzzled, annoyed look on their face after being invited here for a party, concert, work event, or to look at houses available for sale. Their one stop in LB years ago didn’t impress them; or they went nuts looking for a parking space.
Here’s 10 reasons why it’s been my favorite place to live………….
No. 1—There’s plenty to do — and it ain’t all about the Queen Mary!
Have breakfast at one of the old local favorites like Eggs Etc. on Redondo Ave. or the original Potholder on Broadway. Later that day, what about tap beer and pickled eggs at Joe Jost’s on Anaheim St.?
Go see a classic comedian do social commentary at the Karen Carpenter Center on the Cal State Long Beach campus, or a set of comics doing stand up at Laugh Factory on Pine Ave. Or get tickets to see a great band play at the Long Beach Arena or Terrace Theater.
Plan ahead for special events, like taking a night-time walking tour of Naples in December to see the holiday decorations lighting up the neighborhood houses on a few of the canals. You can start earlier that month watching (or taking a boat ride) in the Naples boat parade.
Tour Bixby Knolls, a popular and thriving part of town with plenty to see and do. Go see mansions on Ocean Blvd, and 1st Street. You’ll be quite impressed. Look for Buddhist monks in orange robes walking from their meditation grounds at the corner of Redondo and Ocean, which used to be a Catholic monastery.
Plenty more to do. You’re going to have fun, and I can guarantee it.
No. 2—It’s got the look and feel of San Francisco, LA, Santa Monica, and Pasadena, but in a smaller, more accessible setting.
You get to see old classic homes — Craftsman bungalow, Spanish style, Victorian, Tudor, ranch style, and modern/contemporary houses and apartment buildings from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Go downtown to see a few of the classic old ones left (including one being restored at Pine and Ocean, where my grandfather had an office in the 1930s). LB also has the classic post-war suburban neighborhoods of the ‘50s and ‘60s with much of it restored and upgraded.
Certainly, some of the history is being paved over by waves of new buildings downtown and other sections of town to house 20-to-30-year olds who want to live in a city other than LA. But the history is still here, and many of us want to see it preserved (a shout out to old friend, architect Mike Bohn, and Long Beach Heritage).
A good chunk of LB’s land (42,160 acres total) is filled with suburban neighborhoods and shopping centers (such as the brand new 2nd & PCH). It’s not all about living the city life. I’ve been living in a 1,450 square-foot house (originally built in 1952) in the Los Altos neighborhood for years.
I do get a kick out of the fact that within a few minutes of driving, I can be downtown; or over in Bixby Knolls seeing how much it’s being restored; or down on 2nd St. in Belmont Shore eating at Supermex or one of the new joints; or hiking up on Signal Hill and getting a good look at the panorama on a clear day. But I’m not stuck in a crowded city with little freedom of mobility, which is the case in many sections of the Southland these days.
No. 3—It’s a convenient center point for the best of SoCal, places that aren’t that far away.
For me, that would include South Bay cities like Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach, parts of LA, Santa Monica, San Pedro, Palos Verdes Peninsula, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, and more.
You get a broad spectrum of places to look for a job. Of course, there’s always the commute.
It’s a springboard for the Southland. You can jump in your car and see just about anything you can think of within two hours — desert, beaches, mountains, hill country, historic neighborhoods, the latest in modern condo complexes, elite neighborhoods, and some of the poorest and toughest ones in the nation.
It’s been great to see some of those rundown areas being improved and quality of life getting better. LB has benefited from that trend in recent years, where you would be amazed to see neighborhoods and public spaces looking quite different than they did a quarter century ago. That includes the downtown and west side of the city. More needs to be done, but it’s amazing to see the improvements.
For cool places to see in the distance and go visit, don’t forget Catalina Island.
No. 4—Being yourself is important for a lot of people living in LB. That could mean having a lot of tattoos and piercings, or clothing that is unique to that person and could offend someone else; or at least raise eyebrows. Or just being a regular human being not trying to impress everyone, wearing no makeup and casual clothes. Why waste your time and money, when you can chill out, be yourself, and have a really good time here?
LB features a true mix of lifestyles, race, ethnicity, religions, sexual orientation, income levels, ages, and philosophies. There’s a real feeling of openness and personal freedom in Long Beach. You’re probably not going to get ridiculed or glared at.
People are pretty much for real in LB. This is not Hollywood, or Newport Beach, or many other glamorous cities nearby. When you go out, you'll see people looking real.
Certainly there are stories here involving the famous, such as Nick Cage living in a house secretly hidden away in town. Or you may have stood in front of Ted Danson at a coffeehouse. Or you may have been driving your car down Ocean Blvd. and smiled at Matt Damon driving his car. You may see a famous musician trying out a new song or two at Alex’s Bar, or other clubs that have opened up in recent years.
But the reality is that it’s not about spotting celebrities or beautiful people here. You will see a few people trying to get rich and famous here. But for most of us living in LB, we do seem to appreciate that it's what you might describe as authentic. We're not trying to impress each other.
No. 5—History. Remember, it ain’t all about the Queen Mary. No, the history is richer and even more interesting. Let’s look at a few of those tales……….
The Pike was THE amusement zone at that time — years before the Santa Monica Pier opened its amusement park. The Pike was founded in 1902 as an amusement park and arcade. It was located along the shoreline of Long Beach just south of Ocean Boulevard next to the downtown; along with other locally owned arcades, food stands, gift shops, rides, and a grand bath house called The Plunge. The dual-track Cyclone Racer opened in 1930 and was ridden by more than 30 million people during its 38-year run.There are some amazing photographs to view if you’re interested in what it used to look like; and you can visit some of the parkland by going to the Pike Outlets, which has a Ferris wheel that seems to pay tribute to the classic park.
After World War II, it was expanded and renamed Nu-Pike. The amusement park did get seedy in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was shut down in 1979, and became a place you didn’t want to go to in years prior — hookers, winos, drug dealers, and drunk sailors getting into knife fights.
There was also a downtown shopping mall, the Long Beach Plaza, that started in 1982 and had to be closed down in 1999. That section of town was deteriorating, along with other parts of LB. The decay and closing of the Pike, and later the mall, were symbolic of the downturn the city was going through overall — until the late 1980s, when Pine Ave. started being restored and revived.
Did you know that the motion picture industry started in Long Beach before moving over to Hollywood? In 1910, the California Motion Picture Manufacturing Company opened the first production plant, where it began making comedies and promotional films the following year. In 1913, Herbert Horkheimer purchased the studio to found Balboa Studios. From 1918 to 1923, Balboa Studios was the most productive independent studio in the world.
Balboa Studios was home to silent film stars such as Henry King, Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, Pearl White, Mabel Normand, and Slim (Pickens) Pickett. Charlie Chaplin visited the studios a number of times. Soon after World War I, Hollywood began taking off as the new capital city of the movie business. Long Beach (and Signal Hill) soon became the home of many oil derricks.
Movie star Fatty Arbuckle had a mansion on Ocean Blvd., at 1830 E. Ocean, now the Beach Villa Apartments. Arbuckle lived in a mansion-style house with horse stables at the cliff bottom. He ran his horses nightly along the coastline. He had a tunnel from his property to the ocean under neighboring homes. It measured about seven feet high and four feet wide.
In the summer of 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was on top of the world. Paramount Pictures had paid him an unprecedented $3 million over three years to star in 18 silent films. Three widely publicized trials between November 1921 and April 1922 for the alleged rape and manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe. The first two ended in hung juries, and Arbuckle was found not guilty in the third trial. It would destroy his career and his life, and he was never able to make it back to anywhere near that stardom.
Years later as World War II started, Long Beach became a major Navy base (which is where the breakwaters came from), quite a few oil drills pumped away in Signal Hill and offshore (as mentioned, those aren’t 1960s office buildings out there), and it became a town where retired farmers from Iowa might move.
I’ve been told in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, it was a stopover for those looking for cool places to hang out and have breakfast, protest the Vietnam War on campus at Cal State Long Beach, go see a rock back band at the Long Beach Arena (I know somebody who saw Stevie Wonder open there for the Rolling Stones in the early ‘70s), and party at a really cool old house or apartment building that had been built sometime around 1915.
Like other cities, things started changing in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Pine Avenue in downtown went through a restoration with addition of new clubs, restaurants, and a movie theater (that theater went away and got replaced with a much larger one further south on Pine near the ocean). There would be much more, but it was inspiring to see the downtown starting its revival — something that I saw happening about that time in Las Vegas, Phoenix, LA, and many other cities.
Alright, alright. How did the Queen Mary get here, you may be asking?
Well it started out as RMS Queen Mary, having come from England. The now-retired British ocean liner sailed primarily on the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line. The ship docked in Long Beach in late 1967, where she’s lived ever since.
No. 6—The weather. It’s rare to experience a bad weather day here..
Let’s hear what Weatherspark has to say about it: “In Long Beach, the summers are short, warm, arid, and clear and the winters are long, cool, and partly cloudy. Over the course of the year, the temperature typically varies from 48°F to 82°F and is rarely below 42°F or above 91°F.”
How’s that sound?
No. 7— The get-around. LB has a top-10-in-the-U.S. ranked transit bus system, which includes both long and short rides on the routes. Bike lanes are going in all around the city. The train is good, too, though there are still a few glitches needing to be fixed. Speaking of the train, what used to be called the Blue Line starting in downtown LB and heading to downtown LA is now named the A Line. Want to go downtown and see the art deco Union Station and Olvera St., an age-old Mexican market square?
It’s a good city for getting an Uber or Lyft ride — it’s packed with drivers looking for extra income. I know, I’ve been one of them and have also taken Uber and Lyft rides. When you see how many drivers and cars are available nearby, you’ll be surprised; but you don’t have to wait very long to get picked up and taken to your destination.
Taking walks can be a real pleasure, and that includes in public parks all over town; or down at the beach along the bike path; or up Hill St. in Signal Hill if you need that kind of exercise; or the downtown Art Walk centered on Broadway near Atlantic.
If you drive your own car, you’d better have some good ideas on where you can park — or you’re going to be in a world of hurt. LB has a bad reputation based on finding a parking spot anywhere between Ocean and 7th St. Many a story, and I have a few of my own. For solutions, ask around (including me) if you want to know about a few good free parking lots you can find parking in.
No. 8—The mood is casual, open, and friendly.
Locals tend to be in a better mood in dealing with their fellow human beings than might be the reality in a lot of other cities. That helps a lot when you consider the broad spectrum of diversity, opinions, interests, and how we work and live.
The good mood also helps when the city can get crowded with sections shut down for the annual marathon, or LB Grand Prix, or other events and happenings. You probably won’t have somebody nearly hitting you with their car, then honking and screaming at you as if it were your fault.
The pressure that some people feel when in LA, especially if they’re trying to break into film, TV, music, or gaming, isn’t really here in Long Beach. You can relax and be yourself, and you’re not going to be shunned from a social group if you don’t become as talented, youthful, beautiful, and famous as they are (at least as much as they think and say they are).
No. 9—You’ll be pleasantly surprised by who and what you see. Once in a while you’ll see a crew shooting a new scene for a TV show or movie; or an historic building beautifully restored and open to the public; or that an old, decaying building was gutted and a bold new building has taken its place with beautiful gardening part of it.
Take a look at who will be performing soon at the Long Beach Arena, Terrance Theater, Carpenter Performing Arts Center, International City Theatre, or a long list of small clubs and coffeehouses spotlighting some real talent.
Surprises might include colorful local characters, and there are a few. You might see bike riders (and pedestrians) taking some big risks, apparently not looking both ways. I recently saw a man riding his bike on the 405 freeway. It was at night about three lanes in, with a car abruptly swerving out of the lane to not hit the young and crazy rebel.
No. 10—Know about the resources. Here are a few good ones…….
Read the Long Beach Post.
Read Tim Grobaty at the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
Look into Long Beach Animal Care Services on Spring if you have a pet who ran away, or if you need to give away one that’s been wreaking havoc in your home.
Have coffee at The Library or Portfolio Coffeehouse and bring your laptop or tablet, and tap into their WiFi internet access.
Drive up to the park at the top of Signal Hill on a clear day, and view fascinating places far, far away.
Get free parking at the Vons on Broadway and Atlantic. It’s very convenient, including on the 4th of July to see the Queen Mary fireworks show.
Go hiking at the El Dorado Nature Center.
Go on a walking tour with Long Beach Heritage.
See an events calendar (such as Eventbrite, or Visit Long Beach, or Downtown Long Beach Alliance) for interesting and lively ones coming to town. One of them will be Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary May 11-14, 2020, at the Long Beach Convention Center. You’ll get to see the latest and coolest in electrified vehicles and clean fuels like renewable natural gas that fleets are using these days.
So now you know about the secret gems of LB. You’re invited to take a tour, and tell your friends. Just don’t come in busloads, and don’t even think about filling up more than one parking space!
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