Touring the LBC-Ya
By Chris Ziegler

PHOTO by JENNIE WARREN

Dave Wielenga told me something about Long Beach that I never forgot: Long Beach is a city intent on killing its own soul, though fortunately it can’t ever do it right. Every time I walk through downtown—where dignified old buildings turn into highrise shitboxes—compounds the obvious truth in the statement, and sometimes I get in a mood where I just have to do a little patrol to see what’s left. Old Long Beach was built to last, and what buckled during the ’33 quake—the demarcation between antique and ancient—was built back even stronger. But city cannibalization projects eventually wiped out more than the disaster. A quick call to the Historical Society of Long Beach finds office and archives manager Amy Luke instantly ready to remember the best now lost. “Gee, the Pike?” she says. Or the Pine Avenue Pier or the Rainbow Harbor Pier or the Municipal Auditorium—or the Jergens Trust building, adds executive director Julie Bartolotto, an architecturally and historically important structure replaced by a thriving hole. (“A huge loss,” she says.) When people come visit me in Long Beach, they’re always so happy—they want to ride the Passport and look at Craftsmans and Victorians and a downtown skyline unique along the LA coast, and they’re always so sad when they figure out that the Pike roller coaster is fake. But it could be worse, I tell them—could be a lot worse.

Rancho Los Cerritos and Rancho Los Alamits (c. 1800)
The ancient of ancients—they found stone artifacts at Rancho Los Cerritos three years before the ’33 quake that turned out to be almost contemporary with the pyramids and the golden age of Ur, making these unknown native peoples Long Beach’s first victims of unchecked urban redevelopment. RANCHO LOS CERRITOS | 4600 VIRGINA RD | LONG BEACH 90807 | 562.570.1755 | RANCHOLOSCERRITOS.ORG | RANCHO LOS ALAMITOS | 6400 BIXBY HILL RD | LONG BEACH 90815 | 562.431.3541 | RANCHOLOSALAMITOS.COM

Looff’s Lite-A-Line (1911)
The corner basement that’s now Outer Limits Tattoo and Looff’s are the last confused survivors of the Coniest Island in the West, and though the Looff’s carousel roof is still flopped prostrate in a dirt lot next to the pretend Pike, the original Lite-A-Line machines are still pinging away way up on Long Beach Boulevard. Bingo with pinball mechanics and barfly hours—open til 2 most nights—in a pop-art glassed-in car dealership. 2500 LONG BEACH BLVD | LONG BEACH 90806 | 562.427.5900

The Madison (1924)
Classy dinnertime date restaurant in the former bank building (which also houses the Historical Society upstairs) with the same Smart Set charm as Sir Winston’s on the Queen Mary. They don’t quite have the bartender-scholar-confessors the Gatsby (or Shining) ambience would suggest—I once ordered a Caesar and the girl brought me a salad, the sweetheart—but the ambience is sufficiently suggestive in other ways. The magnificent deco mural says, “Dance with me, darling!’ and the two-story lattice of liquor bottles says, “I’m busy, baby.” I used to put on a tie and go down here to argue about presidents. 110 PINE AVE | LONG BEACH 90802 | 562.628.8866 | THEMADISONRESTAURANT.COM

Acres of Books (1924)
Acres was a country-and-western dancehall before it was a bookstore—there’s still a little cowboyana left, like the big stagecoach mural hanging in the music room, or the howdy-doody-style wallpaper in the turlet—and when founder Bertrand Smith (his whole life and being, reported a later loving obit: “Just books”) moved baby Acres in from its first location on Pacific in 1936, he gave the city a landmark and a monument, which of course developers are drooling to ruin. This is the bookstore I hoped existed when I first figured out what a bookstore was: Acres girl was singing (out loud) behind the counter and Acres cat was curling over my shoes and I found a first edition (1947) of The Harder They Fall. Later I looked at the developer’s magic-marker plan to flatten the place, and thought of Schulberg: “Cheapness is the curse of our times.” 240 LONG BEACH BLVD | LONG BEACH 90802 | 562.437.6980 | ACRESOFBOOKS.COM

PHOTO by JENNIE WARREN

Joe Jost’s (1924)
Joe Jost’s runs close with the current Reno Room for bar seniority in Long Beach, with conclusive decision muddled by Joe’s early transition from its original barber shop to its current bar room—for a short and glorious time, they had schooners and straight razors at instant fingertips’ reach. Now Joe Jost’s would be Joseph Mitchell’s best destination—hard dark benches and the special sandwich and pickled green eggs and checkered tablecloths in the back by the billiard tables, plus beers so generous you could bathe a baby in them. 2803 E ANAHEIM ST | LONG BEACH 90804 | 562.439.5446 | JOEJOSTS.COM

The Long Beach Venus (1925)
The loneliest hunk of rock in town that doesn’t have an oil derrick sticking out the top. The old Fox Theater West was a movie palace that followed the usual route—glam to grindhouse to gutter. The quake couldn’t kill it—reportedly, it was built so well it didn’t sprout a single crack—but the ’80s did and after a final showing of a Hearst newsreel, they knocked old Fox down. But Long Beach loves a good tombstone and the Venus statue that once capped the Fox’s entry archway now sits lonely above a dry fountain in the food court of the Westin Hotel, which went up after they salted the old theater’s grave. If you visit, there is a little plaque explaining who she used to be. 333 E OCEAN BLVD | LONG BEACH 90802 | 562.436.3000

Beach Plaza Hotel (1948)
Most of the original hotels in Long Beach are now lofts or apartments, but the Beach Plaza—originally the Surf Motel—still rents to guests instead of residents. They’re the last of a long line of Ocean Blvd. motels, shadowed by the condos creeping east along the beach. And they didn’t pick up when I called. Still—could be worse. 2010 E OCEAN BLVD | LONG BEACH 90803 | 562.437.0771

Tags: Special Issues, To Do