Spending an early Thanksgiving with Snoop Dogg and Shante Broadus

Gift-giving holidays are nearly a month away, but several hundred Sixth District residents who enjoyed an early Thanksgiving dinner today at Ernest S. McBride Park got an early present: service from multimedia personality Snoop Dogg and his wife Shante Broadus.

PHOTO BY VANTHA EL

The couple and a half-dozen of their extended bodyguard family (seriously, those dudes were taller than the doors into the California Recreation Center) arrived an hour into the first sitting at “Serving With a Thankful Heart,” organized by Sixth District Councilman Dee Andrews’ office and sponsored by Hyatt Hotels, the Hilton Long Beach, and Coldstone Creamery.

“You can tell Snoop Dogg is the one bringing the ice cream,” Andrews joked, thanking him for lining up Coldstone Creamery. “Look at how big he is.”

They suited up–donning Hyatt Regency “Chef’s Table” aprons–then marched into the Cal/Rec gym and served dinner for a good hour. Bodyguard George Murdoch was first in line, ladling out sliced carrots–and no, you can’t refuse a man nicknamed ’Rilla who urges you to “Get some carrots from the bodyguard.” You will have some carrots. And you will eat them.

Snoop was next, a few servers down, dishing out stuffing in sunglasses and a jersey from his own line, Rich & Infamous. Shante was at his side, distributing the turkey. And, as long as they were there, traffic in the other serving line dropped to a bare minimum.

You couldn’t talk to Snoop a minute, without someone interrupting with “I have to tell my granddaughters about you today,” or “Can I get a picture?”, but it was all good.

“A pleasure,” as Snoop, the artist formerly known as Calvin Broadus, put it.

“I mean I always always had my foot in Long Beach,” he said when asked about his visit–and a visit in August to talk strategy with the Sixth District council office and to check out some sports books at Main Library.

“That’s why we didn’t want a lot of media here,” he said. “It’s not about attention, it’s about the people. That’s all we care about is the community and Long Beach.”

The folks at Long Beach TV were actually pretty noticeable, doing a stand-up with Dee Andrews, and I think I spotted a photographer from the Signal Tribune–but mainly there were the folks who live in this neighborhood. Snoop knew them well.

Cal/Rec at McBride Park faces west, looking at Long Beach Polytechnic High School across Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, and the rapper-actor-personality was quick with memories of growing up here and there and graduating Class of ’89 from Poly High.

“I just remember all my friends and having a good time. Like this park right here, Cal/Rec, we used to come up here and play flag football, basketball,” said Snoop, who is 36. “Long Beach is a real tight, a tight city to where everybody knows everybody.

“They know your mama, your family, somebody, so all our memories is just of being down with everybody. It’s not fake. It’s real. It feels good to be home.”

His wife agreed. “It’s nice to be back,” Shante Broadus said. “I see friends that I went to school with, and my son is going to school with their kids now. It’s just recycling!”

They have an apartment here, but home for the Broadus family today–as you know, if you’ve seen episodes of E! Entertainment Television’s Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood–is Diamond Bar. But Snoop said that in the future, he intends to become ever more involved in giving back to Long Beach.

“We just want to help. We want to build. We want to build a lot of things out here in Long Beach because we feel like downtown Long Beach looks very beautiful and we just want to bring some of that to the Sixth District–bring it up into this area over here where a lot of student athletes go on and make it to college and do whatever,” he said.

“We want to give them something to look forward to as well. Long Beach is a beautiful city and it’s becoming beautiful every day. And we just want to make it that way and do as much as we can to help.”

There’s been talk that Snoop Dogg could get involved in Long Beach’s Kroc Center when that gets built–possibly recording a song as a fundraiser, or appearing, and he addressed that.

“I think it would be a little bit of both, you know what I’m saying? You just want to make it fun,” he said.

“You want to make it to where the kids can see the people that they love seeing, and you want to raise money for a great cause.

“We just want to bring a lot of things to Long Beach that have been so far-fetched from us. Because they say I’m a star, so I’m bringing a lot of star things to the city now.”

Uh, like what? Maybe it was the tryptophan, but he didn’t seem to get too specific.

“We plan on doing a lot of exciting things to help the community better itself, so just be on the lookout–just you know stay tuned,” Snoop said.

Like maybe helping out ailing VIP Records up the street at Pacific Coast Highway?

“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, hopefully we’ll come up with some sort of plan or scheme to keep it alive, because that is one of the places where I got my start at making music–as far as making real music–so I definitely want to see it stay around, 20 to 30 years from now.”

And what about the haters–who can’t stand to see someone with a past come back to town and try to do right? Wouldn’t he talk about the haters?

“Naw, I can’t. I just, that’s–it’s all good,” Snoop said. “You gotta look at it like this: any time you doing right somebody gonna say something bad about you. I’m just glad to be doing the right thing. When I was doing the wrong thing they never said nothing about me. So it’s all good.

“Everybody has a past,” he continued–his wife standing next to him in patent leather wedges and a Christian Audigier top. “My past is not as clean as I would like it to be. But it’s all about the future, and I’m look forward to making my life and everybody’s life around me better. So that’s what it’s all about.”

And in a flash, he was gone. No, he wasn’t. You don’t go places that quickly when you’re Snoop–at least, not these kinds of places.

Next there was an awards ceremony (he and Shante received a certificate of appreciation and heartfelt thanks from the councilman–and a huge round of applause).

Then, there was a bit more serving. (Full disclosure: I got a plate, at one of the bodyguards’ request–he said, “Snoop really wants you to get a plate”–and Snoop served me a huge brick of stuffing. “You’ll be as big as me if you eat all that,” he said. I’m waiting.)

Then, around 1:15 p.m., they were done, and it was time for autographs and photos (Snoop periodically videoing the crowd himself)–then autographs and photos outside.

“He’s always doing stuff like this,” said Murdoch, the bodyguard. “No matter where we go, he makes time for everybody.

“He’s as down-to-earth as they get. It’s refreshing to work for him ’cause he lets you be yourself.”

Then, finally, close to 2 p.m., they made it to their cars (including one of those new Vanishing Point Dodge Challengers) and split. But no rush. No burn-outs.

The car door stood open while Snoop waited for one last straggler to get a picture or an autograph, and I loaned the man my pen.

“To come back and get back on a thing like this was just natural to me,” Snoop said at one point. “I do it every day all day.”

And by now it was clear: Snoop does two things every day all day–his daily grind, whether it’s acting, rapping, or serving Thanksgiving dinner–and being Snoop. Seems like he’s Snoop all the time.

Tags: "Serving With a Thankful Heart", "Snoop Dogg's Father Hood", California, California Recreation Center, Calvin Broadus, Coldstone Creamery, E! Entertainment Television, Ernest S. McBride Park, George Murdoch, Hilton Long Beach, Hyatt Hotels, Kroc Center, Long Beach, Rich & Infamous, Shante Broadus, Sixth District Councilman Dee Andrews, snoop dogg, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas