Halloween

Across the street from our apartment there seems to be a haunted house. Ghastly moaning seems to emit from it when kids and other passersby make their way down the street.

I have been neglecting my Long Beach blog, which is a bummer. I finally got off crutches, and then didn't do much except drink coffee (Greenhouse) or booze (Hayden's) in and around Downtown Long Beach.

I missed the zombie walk, and some of the other cool things going on around town, but I did spot the dragon fruit plants across from Poly High...

Action in the East Village

The missus and I had some friends over to our apartment in the East Village section of Long Beach, and since it was a Friday night, the police serenaded us with a low-flying helicopter for the majority of the evening. From our back balcony we could tell that their spotlight couldn't be too far away, so went to the living room to look out in the direction opposite to the balcony:

I realize these pictures are blurry; you'll just have to bear with me, they're through a screen and I'd had a few drinks. The cops had Lime Ave blocked off, and weren't letting pedestrians through.

The helicopter had its light shining on one particular complex, but in this next shot it looks like they're re-orienting the spotlight, and could be hitting the street somewhere.

It looks kinda like a UFO or something...

Well, official story is in the complex there had been shots fired, and that a woman had been arrested after shots were returned. The tiny article in the paper was written by a nice women named Pamela Hale-Burns, who is the sister of Nathaniel Hale, who is also known as Nate Dogg.

Crazy little Long Beach world.

Also mentioned in the article is a Lisa Massacani, spokeswoman for the LBPD. I plan on trying to get to the bottom of this, and I think starting with those two women, I think that'll be possible.

Three Marines Walk Into a Gay Bar...

It's not a bad joke, it's the start of a sad affair that's playing out in Long Beach. Maybe it wasn't three marines, but it was some, and they went into a bar to do some drinking. So far, so good.

If a gay bar is where some marines want to go have a drink, so be it, sounds fine with me. I've met some marines, and those guys would not like to go to a gay bar, not that  they had any particular problem with gay people, mind you, just with actually going to a  gay bar.

Well, these fellas went stepped into a place on Redondo, the name escapes me, and by witness accounts, they looked uncomfortable. They proceeded to make unflattering comments to the bar tender and some patrons, and just after leaving got into a fight with another patron, sending him to the hospital.

There're many bars along Redondo. Hell, there are many bars right around where I live, but fuck, guys, use your eyes. Apparently too proud to just leave when they didn't comfortable, the stuck it out, eventually getting into a fight.

If you're standing on a corner of Alamitos and Broadway, there are a few choices for watering holes. One side of the street has a neon shamrock surrounding the name Clancy's. Across from it is an establishment lined with rainbow flags called Hamburger Mary's. I imagine we all could guess which bar those marines would choose.

Mary's all the way, man, lookin' for action of some kind...

Corpulent Beach Goers in Long Beach over Labor Day

If you look close enough at my profile picture, or even notice it a little, you can see that I'm a tow-headed fella with blue eyes. With my broken leg, the trip we took to the beach over the Labor Day weekend had a little extra sweat and struggle working.

One thing I noticed from or spot is that the majority of the beach going denizens are of Latino background, which I'm all for. By "majority" I mean vast majority. Like, I don't remember seeing any other whiteys on the stretch of beach that we were chilling. They're probably closer to the pier and the whiter neighborhoods, and farther from the working class people's entrance. I'd also like to say how much better/cooler that was.

But I did notice that the percentage of corpulence was higher than most health-teachers in the public schools and universities would like it to be. It was actually quite shocking. The beach is a place I used to go to with regularity, if it was even just a bike ride, and it was certainly never as crowded as Sunday of the Labor Day Weekend. The crowds were far greater that I'd ever seen (in Long Beach in the shadow of the Villa Riviera), which was pretty cool.

The levels of what can only be guessed at as less than ideal nutritional intake are higher than societal goals would like.

That's a fancy way of saying: there were lotsa' fatties at the beach the other day.

The real question is what to do about it. I've got some ideas, but that's fodder for another post on another blog.

3 of 4 Free Buses No Longer Free

The Long Beach Passport buses, the red lines that ran from the West Side to the East Side, and up to Long Beach State, are being phased out. The only line that's surviving is the C line, heading down Pine Ave and out to the Queen Mary.

The reason for the change is the LBT transitioning from the small, red diesel buses into the longer compressed natural gas editions, those of which are better for the environment. Maybe they cost more money to run, so they need to charge folks a buck and a quarter for the trip?

Lines A and D ran from Belmont Shore to Alamitos Bay Landing to the Traffic Circle via the University is becoming route 121. Line B ran 4th street to Retro Row is becoming route 151.

Really, who would be reading this blog to get this kind of info? I've been here for just a little while, and haven't yet had the luck, or need, to ride the Passport buses.

I might be pissed if I had rode the free bus to CSULB and now wouldn't be able to...but, of course, the "free bus" went from one of the wealthiest neighborhood in the city to the commuter university, which doesn't make much sense. It had to be convenient for somebody, right?

West Side Long Beach Coffee Houses

There are plenty of coffee shops on the west-side of downtown Long Beach, but I mostly frequent just the Green House, in the old Hotel Broadlind. Their coffee is pricey, but really good, and the old building helps me with my novel work.

Earlier today, needing to procure a new hardbound notebook, I made a trip to the other side of 3rd Street and Linden, heading to Lyon's Art Supply, on the corner of 4th and Linden. This is great little art supply store; a local place where folks help you find and get anything you need. Their prices are even quite reasonable, so helping out the locals doesn't kick the crotch of your wallet.

Being over there inspired me to head over to Berlin, the coffee shop attached to Fingerprints, one of Long Beach's remaining independent record stores. i was going to peruse the Fingerprints when I'd finished my coffee, but it wasn't yet open.

The coffee was good, but not as good and Green House's, and the ambiance, while not bad per se, is different than at the old Broadlind. I felt a little out of place, but I can live with that. I would need one of the quiet areas in the back to be able to work like I do at Green House.

I'll be trying some of the other spots as soon as I get more mobile...exploring on crutches pretty much sucks.

Bummer Man! Pot Dealer Busted

I guess it turns out cops figured out that Jon Storms, Green Cross co-op runner, was running that business as a front for a larger business on the opposite side of the law from legal. He was making too much money from  his collectives, apparently.

To make between $1 million and $2 million a year profit from weed, you gotta be pushing some fucking weight. The suspect, Storms, was a married father who wasn't living high on the horse like movies have trained people to imagine "drug-dealers".

He was in a modest place, nestled down near the intersection of the 405 and 605.

Another one bites the dust.

Colorado Lagoon Set to Reopen Saturday

I guess they finished dredging the contaminated gunk from Colorado Lagoon, at the end of 4th Street at Park Ave, and it'll be opened back up to the public and ready for swimming again.

Yikes.

I was mistaken where the lagoon was, and had to look it up, because where I thought it was I remember seeing folks swimming there regularly.

That's just how it works out here in our Metro-by-the-Sea...loving it!

I'm Back, Baby!

Not that anyone really cares, but I've been laid up since breaking my femur during a freak bicycle accident, and haven't been occupying my time with this blog.

I can tell from the numbers not too many folks check in on it, but I'm fixing to keep up with the local chatter regularly, and we'll see where it goes.

Also, I'm up for a nomination to be on the DRC, the Downtown Resident Council. If I make it to that spot, I'll be sure to report whatever boring shit they don't want to be confidential. I'm kidding.

But I am genuinely fascinated by local political processes, and as a novelist, I think the experience would be good for me and my neighbors in our district.

Banned From Belmont Shore

So, if you get too rowdy while doing your drinking in the posh and shiny Belmont Shore zone, you can expect to get the boot for a few years. Andrew Zea, 24, found himself in trouble with the law while drunk enough times to get banned from the whole area for three years as part of his probation.

I do like to wet the whistle from time, and I love Long Beach, but I never casually drink or casually get drunk (as is my occasional wont) in the Shore 'hood for a few reasons.

The first is that it reminds me too much of Higuera St in San Luis Obispo, my college town. Having lived in New York City since going to college, I have to say that I prefer a more urban city design, and that's precisely what we get over on the west side of town. Also, it's real, how do I say this, sanitary, just like Higuera St. I don't you can eat off the sidewalk, or anything, just that it feels like it's trying to look hip and clean and fakely manicured. That's my problem, I understand, but I appreciate the grit of the west side of town. It's too easy. There's no thugs.

The second is that, since I live on the west side of town, it's too far to drink at regularly, especially with five bars withing walking distance. I have taken friends and visitors on a beach bike ride, explored the Shore, then stopped for an alcohol refreshment before heading back, but that's about it.

I do, though, have a regular reason to visit Belmont Shore, and that's an establishment on the corner of LaVerne and 2nd: Fromex. I'm an amateur photographer, even more amateur than my wife, but they're the only place I feel safe riding my bike to that sell and develop 120 roll film. The other place, Tuttle's Cameras, treats me better as a person and customer, but riding up Atlantic all the way from the Ocean to Bixby Knolls isn't my cup of tea.

I think if you've had enough run-ins with the police that you get your ass banned from an entire business district, then you have a problem.

Preparations for Gay Pride Weekend

This weekend gets us here in Long Beach the second biggest annual event, the Gay Pride Parade. workers are hard at work getting stages set up near the intersection of Ocean and Shoreline:

I like the behind the scenes views...

It should be a loud and rowdy weekend, what with the sports stuff in downtown LA and the Pride Parade out here...

Nerd-Fest in Long Beach!

I'm just kidding! No I'm not! I'm a nerd as well!

This past weekend saw the Long Beach Comic Convention, a single-A or double-A event when compared to the majors, like the NY Comic Convention, or, the big bad grand-daddy of them all, now known by the simple title, Comic Con, the oldest convention, held in San Diego.

Comic Con has become about more popular culture and less about comics; about video games and movies and toys, while comics still have a place at the table (I'm speculating).

The Long Beach Comic Convention was held out our Convention Center (go figure), and before you even made it inside there were nerdly prizes.

The DeLorean from Back to the Future...

A working chatter-box Kitt Trans-Am...

Magnum's Ferrari...

And the A-Team van...

Inside there were creators who were signing things and stands set up as sellers from all over the Southland tried to unload their back issues at discounted prices.

For some reason there was a plethora of Silver Age comics there. Maybe because of the Avengers film interest in the Silver Age books has begun to surge...I mean, that's the only explanation I cab think of.

The Silver Age in comic books, for those who don't know and/or don't care took place, more or less, from late 1959 on until 1985 or 86, depending on your source. Pockets changed at different times as well, but the bulk would be the sixties and seventies, when he great Marvel titles were coming into their own and actually taking a bite out of the more staid DC market control. The great team-ups really grabbed a hold during this time, and that's why maybe the interest has been rekindled: the success of the Avengers film.

I'm not really interested in the Silver Age myself. In fact, I don't really collect comics like I used to. I was going to say that I don't collect them anymore, which is probably just as accurate as it sounds, but I'll still buy the random thing, or help out the random indie publisher, or one of my favorite artists has something new. Since I don't follow the business anymore, I couldn't tell you if my favorite guys are producing anything new, so, it's just when I enter a store after a few years years that I try to piece together the last few trends through what's there in the store.

It was kinda neat seeing vast arrays like this one, a table full of titles I've mostly heard of, but in guises too new for me to understand.

As in any Nerd-Fest like this one there will be your brave folks who get dressed up as characters. I took this picture only because these two were posing for a different photographer and I had my camera out. It looks like Daredevil (the Ben Affleck version) and Catwoman.

I appreciate those brave folks' dedication to the cause, and their love of whatever character they dress as. There were plenty of Storm Troopers, a few Vaders, a few well designed characters I didn't recognize, one Princess Leia from the Jabba the Hutt scene (a very brave young lass with a little junk in the trunk, but not that you'd have anything bad to say about), and one of the other three barely dressed young ladies was a version of Mila Jovovich from The Fifth Element.

The third young lady who wore the least amount of clothing was stationed at a booth that was selling Roller Derby gear. She had on tiny little satiny bottoms, a tight t-shirt, and skates. It was almost amusing how she was both ogled and given the silent treatment at the same time.

I did make some purchases at the convention, and they'll show up in other blogs I run.

Long Beach is gearing up for our second biggest annual event: the Gay Pride Festival.

Lambic Festival at Beachwood BBQ and Brewing

This past Sunday was Beachwood's Lambic Appreciation Festival. Located on East 3rd Street and the Promenade walk, Beachwood BBQ and Brewing is the second location of Seal Beach's original on Main Street.

Sunday was the lambic day. Lambic is a type of beer that is different than your average beer. Beer basically comes in three kinds, all based on the type of yeast used to ferment the sugars into alcohol. The first is ale, and this gives a wide variety of flavors and styles, from browns, to reds, to pales, to stouts. I'm an ale man, as far as that goes. Lager in the second type of yeast, and this probably accounts for the largest volume of global beer production. Uh, what I mean is, the majority of beer brewed on Earth is lager, by a wide margin.

In America you've got Budweiser and Bud Light, Coors and Coors Light, and Miller and Miller Lite, which account for something like 90 percent of American beer production: all lagers. In China, a country that produces more beer than America, it's all lager, and in the two biggest beer drinking countries in Europe--Germany and the Czech Republic--it's all lager.

Lager is a bottom fermenting yeast, while ale ferments on the top, if you're really interested in how that works.

Lambic, on the other hand, is brewed with wild yeast and is occasionally referred to as spontaneously fermenting. Lambics use fruits as well as grains to provide sugars to be fermented, and as a things to drink, taste like sour fruity beer. Sometimes they're less carbonated and mostly flat.

The style of brewing goes way back, when monks would leave large vats of the wort in the rafters of their monasteries and yeasts travelling along the winds would find them, make a home, eat a ton of sugar, and eventually make some fine beers. The process takes a long time still, and is decidedly old school.

The taste for sour beers and lambics is waning in Belgium, the main provider of these types of beer. It seems to be the market of beer connoisseurs in America is keeping this tradition alive.

That's a fact I learned at the Lambic Appreciation day during a talk from one of the speakers.

Now, I am a fan of beer. I love beer. I've brewed my own in my cabinet before. In my younger years I did keg stands and case races, all the while trying to appreciate the finer things about beer. I do enjoy a good lambic, but see, that's what you do, you enjoy it. Lambic isn't the kind of thing you drink to get your swerve on, and it was kinda nice being in an extremely crowded bar with everybody drinking and there not being any drunken asshats bumping you and spilling on you.

Which was unusual and nice.

Olympic Qualifier at Walter Pyramid

The US men's volleyball team has a chance to make the Olympics next week when the NORCECA tournament starts today in Long Beach, and then again on Monday with the international teams.

Today is the red/blue scrimmage between the bulging American squad at the Walter Pyramid.

The two pools have a much improved stable of teams: Pool A: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Canada, Dominican Republic; Pool B: Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica, US.

Only a few years ago this could have been called the US-Cuba tournament, since they were the dominating powerhouses, but times change. The gold medal that us Yanks won in Beijing, a scratch and clawed for victory over a great Brazilian team, may prove actually elusive this time around.

Brazil is improved, Hungary and Serbia are quite good, and Russia has some of the most powerful hitters out there. Their teams may sometimes hitting the ball hard is what it means to play well, but be careful if they get on a tear.

And it all starts Monday at the Pyramid. Tickets are $8 I believe.

Lincoln Park

The former home of our own Occupy scene, Lincoln Park is usually the site of the homeless gatherings as well as the unlicensed compassionate providers.

Lincoln, see here with his back turned on us, is sporting the latest in shoulder pigeons.

The park can be fun and volatile, and one of the still occasionally gritty places left down here.

The Bluffs

I'm thinking of getting some sights out of the way.

I like the bluffs. I've seen larger bluffs and played on larger bluffs and climbed up and slid down and enjoyed a great day.

These aren't those bluffs.

These seem to be really only regulated, probably due to erosion. But bluffs are cool, and these urban bluffs might be the most citified ones in the Southland.

Viewable along the bike trail on the beach, if you head south from the Queen Mary area entrance of the trail, there will be this formation in the bluffs before you get these signs:

The mural painted on the unused base of a building is vibrant and beautiful. I'd love to climb up it, but most days I casually ride by there are folks stationed there, and I usually have stuff to do in Belmont.

Go figure...

New Courthouse Coming Along

The new courthouse is coming along between 3rd and Broadway down near the 710.

I live close enough to the site to be able to have been watching it go up for the past few months...

Here's a close up as I think about something...

Here's a picture from months ago...I like the spider like arms of the great diggers.

When I was younger, I would have been prone to considering hopping a fence at night and check out the site, but now? I'm too old to be hurting myself hopping fences and getting arrested for such shenanigans.

That's what I try to convince myself of everyday, anyway...

Signal Hill

Oh boy, of all the things, might as well start with a discussion of the spot where the background picture was taken.

I take as many visitors as we get (not too many) up to Signal Hill for nice views of our city. Here are a few fine folks that don't live in Long Beach but who have, obviously, enjoyed a view from the Hill:

Such an easy place to take people.

Also, an easy place to check out the pyramid:

So, this is how I'm really starting this blog, with pictures that only mean something to me, those folks in them, and the people who know them/us. But I do know a thing or two about Long Beach...well, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I do want to talk about things that may matter a little to those of us who live in the International City.

Introduction

Wishing everyone a Happy 420 on this hazy Friday morning!

I wanted to start adding things that the missus Blonde Giant and I were doing in our local 'hood of Long Beach to our Invasion site, but that seemed a little weird. We could, I suppose, invade Park Pantry or the Second Saturday festival in the East Village area.

I felt that a Long Beach, and widening it to a more rounded "Things to do in LA on a local by local basis", specific site could offer its own rewards.

So that's the impetus for this site; more things to do and see and eat in Long Beach, and eventually to a wider arena of activity.