This little article appeared in the local paper Sunday about my neighbourhood. It pretty much sums up why I love living here.
"Just north of touristy Belmont Shores, the Heights has opened its arms to trendy new stores, but it maintains the homey feel of a real community."
I love the history of the Heights who split off to form their own "booze" town in a "dry" Long Beach for only 13 months. Nice.
Cheers all!
Remember the chicken my brother and I found on Christmas Day? Well on Easter someone found another chicken on the same street.
Is someone releasing holiday chickens for people to find? Does someone buy one for the holiday and just dump it in the street? Are these chickens escaping from somewhere? Is this the same chicken trying to find its way home for the holiday? Quite a mystery.
Cheers all!
The changing of leaves is a rather foreign experience living by the beach in SoCal. Most of the trees around here are palm trees which attract the screeching green parrots. Most other trees are evergreen. There is one tree in my neighbourhood which did change from green to a beautiful yellow/orange/red and every morning I think about photographing it. This morning there was a squirrel scurrying around in the leaves and it was just too perfect of a Fall moment not to capture. Unfortunately all I had was my camera phone.
To someone reading this in, say, Vermont, this might look like an unremarkable scene. I see pictures of the Autumn trees in Vermont and it makes my heart ache. This image just gives me a little of that here.
In other new V.I.P just came out on DVD. I don't know what it is about that show; it is campy, cheesy, filled with one-dimensional characters... but I love it. I now have 972 minutes of pure Valerie Irons goodness and I can't wait to start watching. Tower Records is going out of business and selling everything at a discount. I keep dropping by to pick up a few things and might end up getting all my holiday shopping done this month. It saddens me a bit that they are closing; though I prefer to shop at local records stores or online, something about the closing of Tower signifies a larger trend... Maybe this will be a great thing for the local record shops, that in changing times they have an advantage over the larger corporations, or maybe they [or what's left of them] are next to go. Hmm...
Cheers all!
On my walk the other morning there was the most amazing rainbow that stretched entirely over the city. I didn't have my camera with me, but I tried to catch it with my phone.
Here is the other half of the rainbow; not quite as as clear, but still incredible [When I called to tell T about the rainbow, she said I would never be able to capture it on my phone].
The light was also wonderful that morning; the colours of the city, the grass, the trees, the flowers was electric. I was only able to capture my shadow stretching along the sidewalk.
Cheers all!
Don't get me wrong, I live in a really nice neighbourhood. Long Beach has a bad rap for being a rough place, and in some areas it is pretty rough. But the thing about LB is that one street will be "bad" and the next one over will be considered "nice". For instance, I live on the edge of Belmont Shore, one of the nicest areas of LB, but at least once a month, usually more there is a police raid, fight or car accident that prompts me to call the police. I have the LB police number saved on my mobile. Today I was reading when I hear the "ghetto bird" circling about, and after 20 or so minutes finally get up to see what all the commotion is about.
An apartment 2 buildings down was raided by police [my neighbours say it was raided 2 weeks ago as well]. That meant my street was entirely blocked off [enclosing my poor little car in the blockade] and there were 11-12 police cars down my street. Some officers in riot-esque gear and other just hanging around. That one picture shows an officer holding some sort of shotgun pointed at the building, but no shots were fired [notice the Jr. high school kids hanging out watching- they were my informants].
Witnessing numerous police raids and incidents, I can say that they are nothing like TV. Most of the officers are just hanging around feeling useless and a bit bored. A few main guys are involved doing their thing. Lots of waiting, paperwork and traffic directing. Neighbours go out and watch for 30 minutes or so, and go back inside checking to see when the cops all leave.
Man! They have been here for 2 hours already and I need to leave to go to the store. How frustrating.
Cheers all!
Oh has it been a week already? I have no idea what I have done in the past week besides work. It has too hot to do much else.
This is the new bird feeder I put out in front of my apartment [and those are my apartment windows behind it]. Soviet loves to watch the birds in the tree, but the rarely come directly in front of the window. So I bought him this bird feeder which has changed his world. Eskimo is too "grown up" to watch the birds and prefers to lay around the apartment in his trademark "superman" pose.
An old coworker called me the other day and is doing a website on how trash-y the beach is here. I love Long Beach the city, but hate Long Beach the beach. Years ago [I could look up the actual date but am too lazy right now] they built a huge breaker maybe 1-2 miles out from the shore, to make loading/ unloading the port easier by cutting out waves. So basically the water 1-2 miles out from the beach is a big stinky pool of stale water. And, to make things even better, boats dump their waste right into the water on the beach side of the breaker causing it to wash right up on shore. Though it is totally illegal, I think cruise ships even dump here too. So imagine a nearly wave-less beach of dark brown water [not exaggerating] washing up to a trash filled beach. The area has become so disgusting that once a lifeguard warned me not to go into a bathroom because I could get hepatitis. Eww. 
It also doesn't help that the beach bathrooms have become meeting spots for the region's casual sexers and junkies littering the area with needles and condoms. So my friend is going down and doing beach cleanups, weighing & photographing the trash which he is recording on this site appropriately called garbagebeach.com.
I always try and take pictures that don't show the trash, but take a look at that photo on his website- that is what the beach actually looks like.
Hopefully it will make a difference to how the city and the people treat the beach [read: not like a dump!].
I got the most lovely little package from Gwen of Bugheart. I had asked for the orange yarn on her free monday give-aways and she included this beautiful Noro yarn as well. Thanks!
Cheers all and have a great week!
What started out as an innocent quest to the bookstore yesterday, turned into a lovely & long bike ride around the city. I met T for coffee in the morning, and after riding home I realized that I needed new magazines to read. And by "read" I mean "images to look at" since I have plenty of real reading at home, which has not been read. I rode 3.5 miles to the bookstore and spent a good deal of time in there deciding on which detox diet I must immediately follow, then deciding that I could not make a decision like this without consulting amazon first. I left with two magazines and a new sudoku book. I was headed toward home when I felt the call of the Queen Mary; it was only another mile out, could I? So over the bridge I went on the Queen Mary bike path. When they redesigned the post-downtown area [used to be the "seedy area" by the port in the 1930's think sailors, prostitutes, scary carnival rides and a dance hall, but was demolished many years ago and a new downtown was created a few blocks away on Pine street. Then they decided to recreate the old downtown, but in that SoCal super-stripmall sort of way- think movie theater, Border's books, outdoor food court, 10 large chain restaurants, and a ferris wheel.] they built in lots of public transportation- by road and water [there is the aquabus and the aqualink], with specific 2-lane bike paths to take you anywhere.
So here is the Queen in all her glory. There is a great bar on the boat that has the most perfect sax/keyboard playing lounge act.
This is a great view of LB from the Queen.
Then I headed back across the bay to Shoreline village [now with wireless!] to check out the touristy shops and play a few games of skeeball at the arcade.
That is me in Ye Olde Village Hat Shoppe looking a bit worn myself.
Then I took the beach path back home. I debates whether to continue down to the jetty on the other side, but I was sunburned, sore, and hungry.
I am also now participating in the Vegan-Cook-a-Long and you should too.
Cheers!
It's good to be home. I dropped & broke my camera in Austin after taking only 7 pictures or so, and not of anything weddingy, so I can't really post about the wedding until I get pictures from everyone else. And not to worry about my camera; it mysteriously started working again right after I got home.
This car was parked right in front of my apartment today and it so perfectly captures the spirit of LB. I can't explain why, it just does.
Cheers all!
This morning as I rode home from T's house I took the long way down the beach path and down the pier. It was hot and sunny until right over the beach, where it seems Long Beach is eternally trapped in a cloud. The pier is quite eerie; it is old and un kept, only used by fisherman and fisherwomen. It is really quiet even though crowded, and the only thing you hear are fishing reels, the creaky pier and the waves crashing to shore.
This huge bird was watching over the pier, look for unguarded fish guts. It's beak was probably 2 feet long, and the whole bird was the largest I have ever seen up close. Birds intimidate me anyway, and I rode fast by it trying not to make eye contact.
Usually piers in other cities are the social center of the beach community. In HB the pier is crowded with beach goers, tourists, and other. But LB's is not like that at all. Though I have rode by many times, I think that was my first time all the way down.
A lot of the fishermen set up their poles, and go to sleep in their folding chairs next to the pole.
This has been an incredibly long week. Every time we open a show at the museum it gets so tense. This weekend we had the lender's dinner, Art of Dining ( a super posh event that all rich OC people attend in tux's and ballgowns- I wore dirty converse), and Art & Architecture tours. All in one weekend. The "soft" opening for the Catherine Opie show will be later this month, but I will be in Austin for a wedding. Another wedding.
But today I am just relaxing. Maybe go down to the SPCALA to volunteer a bit and walk some dogs. If you ever feel crappy about your own life, go walk a shelter dog. I don't know what it is, maybe the sadness or the joy the get outside the kennel, but it can cheer you up like nothing else. What feels even better is matching up the dog to a loving companion, giving the dog a home and really creating a family. Cheers all.
