P-T editorializes the Gene Rotondo ATM-parking saga

Belmont Shore restaurateur Gene Rotondo’s problems with the ATM at his newly-renovated and reopened Legends sports bar have been well-documented in the Press-Telegram.

It’s just interesting, sometimes, to take a step back and consider what it’s all about–and to wonder how much we’d care about all this if, say, Rotondo had opened in the 1900 block of Atlantic Avenue. (And I’m not bashing that area, either; I grew up a few blocks south of there, and I went to Poly High.)

Rotondo, whose restaurant was gutted by a fire, rebuilt it and reopened about a month ago. But as P-T veteran Joe Segura reported, on Dec. 13 the city effectively yanked his ATM because Legends apparently didn’t have two customer parking spaces within 100 feet of the machine.

(City codes have rules for everything from the number of side vents your house should have to [we're guessing] laws requiring ducks to wear long pants.)

But part of the push behind all of this was, as Segura noted, tensions between the Belmont Shore Business Association–led by Rotondo–and the Belmont Shore Residents Association, helmed by Mike Ruehle.

According to Segura’s Dec. 22 article, Ruehle actually “pressed the ATM issue with city code enforcers.”

Late yesterday, the P-T followed Segura’s piece with an editorial pointing out that part of the reason for all of this is the locale–sunny, fun Belmont Shore, home to some of the city’s choicest residential space (if not its largest back yards).

“Seemingly small disagreements are magnified in high-profile Belmont Shore,” the P-T editorialized. “The beach town hiding inside a city is dense with an interdependent mix of residents and business owners whose desires sometimes clash.”

That’s all true. It’s just interesting to consider how much news the city’s media report out of Belmont Shore, and how much we report from the Poly High area, from North Long Beach–and especially from the area west of the Los Angeles River. We help make Belmont Shore high-profile.

I’m sure that over the years, Belmont Shore has gotten way more newspaper ink than some other areas of the city–and, now, it probably gets more bandwidth. Which raises the question: how many stories have we missed elsewhere in the city by focusing on Belmont Shore?

Tags: ATM, belmont shore, Belmont Shore Business Association, Belmont Shore Residents Association, California, Gene Rotondo, Joe Segura, Legends sports bar, Long Beach Polytechnic High School, Mike Ruehle, north long beach, press telegram, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas