Our first-ever list of Long Beach’s scariest!

In Long Beach, there’s the scary—ghosts on the Queen Mary, Igor’s Alley and the unfettered power of people like Chris Pook—and the really scary—Measure I, the parking lots at any of our Trader Joe’s outposts and, 30 days out of 31, Colorado Lagoon. So, while it wasn’t easy for us to whittle down Long Beach’s scariest into just 13 winners—Rich Archbold, the Navy sailor statue and the guy who blew up his house with fireworks, sorry, you won’t be moving on toward becoming this season’s scariest person—we’re confident in who (and what) we ended up with. Then again, a tortoise tops a list bookended by an ice cream man, so maybe Long Beach really isn’t as scary as we thought. Wait—we forgot about Jim Hankla. Never mind.

1. THINIS II
It’s been more than five months since Thinis II—beloved tortoise, sage and spiritual pet to members of the Morningland Urban Monastery—went missing, slinking, Morningland co-director Gopi Chokru believes, outside monastery gates in search of a lady friend. You may remember the “Missing Russian Tortoise” posters—Morningland posted more than 400 of them inside of four weeks—but the whereabouts of Thinis II remain unknown. This certainly is tragic for his pals back at the monastery, where he spent his days cuddling with Gopi Chokru, meditating and eating cherries, but the consequences of his disappearance are dire for the rest of us. Until we find this slow-moving, peace-loving, four-legged vegetarian prince descended from—well, we’re still not sure—no one is safe. Safe from what, exactly? Eternal turtle damnation. Tread lightly. Avoid suspicious-looking speed bumps. MITIGATING FACTOR: He could be hibernating.

2. CSULB PROFESSOR KEVIN MACDONALD
White guys can’t get a break. Thank God, then, for Long Beach State psychology professor Kevin MacDonald, whose work reads like white-supremacist tracts dressed up in the bling of science. Despite the footnotes, citations, bibliographies and selective quotes, you quickly get what he calls a “major theme” of his writing: “I have developed the argument that Jewish activity collectively, throughout history, is best understood as an elaborate and highly successful group competitive strategy directed against neighboring peoples and host societies,” MacDonald wrote in 2006 on VDARE, a white-nationalist Web site. “The objective has been control of economic resources and political power. One example: overwhelming Jewish support for non-traditional immigration, which has the effect of weakening America’s historic white majority.” Translation: Jews hate Anglo-America and want to destroy it with . . . Mexicans. On March 19, Jewish studies professors issued a statement calling for his censure; they were followed in April by faculty in the school’s history department and, soon after, the university’s Women’s Studies Students Association. But that’s it: memos. Heroic times demand heroic measures, and CSULB President F. King Alexander placed himself between the two warring factions—and did nothing. That may turn out to have been the wisest move in what could have become an absolutely gnarly bitchfest, because what followed was absolute stillness. The issue disappeared. No riots, arrests, sit-ins or teach-ins, a plethora of nothing, a hurricane o’ silence. There’s this explanation: Our society is so post-racial that MacDonald’s writings are almost incomprehensible to students, except as museum artifacts, as removed from everyday experiences as whips, hoods and rusted iron shackles. It’s conceivable, in other words, that no one sees him as a man who is likely to have any effect on contemporary society. He’s scratching bad words into the walls of a toilet stall or tagging an overpass; he’s annoying the way a frat boy can be—look at me, I’m outta control!—but dangerous just to his increasingly drunk date. MITIGATING FACTOR: The only people likely to be really anxious are those whose academic research, biographies or even passing familiarity with history include an intimate and maybe painful recall of, you know, Hitler.

3. DEAN SINGLETON AND HARRY SALTZGAVER (TIE)
Press-Telegram owner Dean Singleton began scaring us when we still worked there, doing things like saying he wouldn’t lay off the printers—and then laying off the printers. That was nice of him. But how about his speech two weeks ago to the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, when he threatened to move all the news desk jobs out of the country? Here’s a quote from our buds at the Stress-Telegram (lbguild9400.blogspot.com): “One thing we’re exploring is having one news desk for all of our newspapers in MediaNews . . . maybe even offshore. If you need to offshore it, offshore it,” said Singleton—a man who clearly needs to save money if he’s going to start paying off some of the tremendous debt he’s incurred buying 54 daily papers in 11 states. (Locally, the empire includes the P-T and the Daily Breeze in Torrance.) That’s great—less competition! “In today’s world, whether your desk is down the hall or around the world, from a computer standpoint, it doesn’t matter,” Singleton told USA Today after his remarks. Um, yeah, actually it does—unless you don’t care about quality. But then, Singleton made it clear long ago how he feels about quality. As for Gazette Newspapers Associate Publisher and Executive Editor Harry Saltzgaver—where to start? Scariest thing about him is maybe the high regard he has for . . . Harry Saltzgaver. And the otherly regard he has for Long Beach. Otherly? Every time we read a Gazette newspaper, it feels like Long Beach is still a small town, and this is maybe still 1964—the year the city supposedly downsized pensions for the Municipal Band members. Or 1966—the last year you could drive a car out on Rainbow Pier to admire our coastline. Or 1968—the last year you could take a ride on the Cyclone Racer. Isn’t it time to get real and strike a balance between the haters like us who despise the old-timers for every brick of every Pacific Coast Club/Checkerboard Cafe/Municipal Auditorium they tore down—and the folks in their 20s and 30s who are just coming to Long Beach and falling in love with what’s left? And everyone else who lives outside Belmont Heights or Willmore City Historic District and just wants a fair shake on their property tax? We don’t get any of that when we read a Gazette paper, be it in Belmont Shore or Belmont Heights or Bixby Knolls. But then, maybe we’re not supposed to. MITIGATING FACTOR: We can still relish the thrill of holding pieces of paper with words and pictures printed on them—for the moment.

4. THE GUY WHO STABBED THAT OTHER GUY IN THE FACE
Plenty of creepy crimes have passed through these pages—girl-on-girl cell phone jabbings, carnivorous crows pecking at local heads, putters stuffed into sweatpants—but even the squatter outside your apartment with his shorts around his ankles doesn’t score the scariest spot. That coveted criminal accomplishment goes to an unknown assailant who stabbed his way into spooky superiority at the marina. But the alarming act in question isn’t properly unnerving without context. It started back in August, when a car approached a group of fishing friends and flashed its brights. Not wasting any rage, the fishermen ran after the car and punched the thing as much as they could. The terror carried over two days later, when a man was reportedly stabbed in the face. He declined to file a report. No word as to whether he declined to clot, as well. MITIGATING FACTOR: Getting stabbed in the face is kind of like being struck by lightning—it probably won’t happen again.

5. TOM SHADDEN
Really, Tom Shadden, really? We know you love Long Beach. We love it too, and you seem like a nice guy. But then you and the Aquatic Committee went and spoiled it all by telling Long Beach City Council they should name us the Aquatic Capital of America. And they did, ‘cause naming things is easy. And when we, echoing Eighth District Councilwoman Rae Gabelich, asked you what about Fort Lauderdale and Miami and San Diego, with their rockin’ surf and abandoned-sofa-free coastlines, you said this: “There’s easily five or six communities in America that could name themselves the Aquatic Capital of America. Let them say what they want to say. It gives us more exposure is what it does.” Really? Is exposure what we need? When our beaches are the worst in the state? When our city made it to No. 7 on Heal the Bay’s “Top 10 Beach Bummers”? When the Colorado Lagoon has more fecal matter than Lake Titicaca (which just has a dirty name)? What about cleaning up our water and our coastline, and letting the rest of the world promote us for free—instead of just running around town sloganeering? We asked you about water quality, and you said, “There’s no question that we all feel strongly about water quality in the city. I know that is being worked on.” Is it really? MITIGATING FACTOR: At least it wasn’t La Mirada-by-the-Sea.

6. DANIEL DE BOOM
Is Daniel de Boom Superman? A good case can be made for it. Whenever news breaks in the city—downtown, in Belmont Shore, at House of Hayden—local photographer de Boom is there, like, always, to capture it. How can one man be in so many places—outside Acres of Books, inside the Queen Mary, at House of Hayden—at once? We’ll never know, and we’ll never ask. So long as de Boom (stealmysoul.mycapture.com) fills our inbox with photographic evidence of Long Beach’s goings-on, this man of mystery can fly where he pleases. MITIGATING FACTOR: Wood and concrete don’t make for pretty pictures—might redevelopment be his Kryptonite?

7. LONG BEACH REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY
In 1988, the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency greenlighted the demolition of the historic Jergins Trust building, a stately old high-rise and California landmark. They plowed it under to make way for a hotel. But today, there’s nothing but a chain-link fence around a 20-year-old hole. The Jergins Hole wasn’t the last RDA project—Acres of Books held its final sale two weeks ago and will be bulldozed soon to make way for, well, whatever. Then there was the LB Mall, built over the bones of a bunch of old buildings on Pine and, in time, itself replaced by CityPlace. Current RDA officials acknowledge that building CityPlace—with its Walmart, Nordstrom Rack, etc.—in the heart of a downtown you hope will attract tourists from all over the world is plain weird. RDA hauled away the old Long Beach Pike and replaced it with a sprawling commercial development that (as one critic puts it) “sucked the soul out of Pine Avenue”—the city’s downtown and (ostensibly) the very thing RDA exists to revivify. The new Pike hasn’t delivered what the city promised it would: money. RDA’s deal with Hyatt to build a hotel at the Pike went belly up, and, in a move remarkably predictive of contemporary events, city taxpayers were called upon to bail out the billion-dollar hotel chain. Don’t get us started on the Queen Mary. We could go on. You get the picture: “Redevelopment is taking [Long Beach] down the wrong road,” says Chris Norby, an Orange County supervisor and leading American critic of urban redevelopment projects. “You’re using taxpayer money that is intended for great public purposes, using that money to fund private development, and that development not only doesn’t alleviate blight, it is its cause.” MITIGATING FACTOR: Never have so many well-meaning people worked in a city agency that does so much wrong.

8. JOAN CRISWELL,  LONNIE BRUNDAGE AND NANCY BERNSTEIN
Critics of the Long Beach Community Gardens allege that its board of directors operates as a “Garden Gestapo,” banning members from growing certain types of vegetables—potatoes are on the list—regulating weed growth—members can be kicked out for failing to keep plots weed-free—and forbidding non-members from entering the grounds (they’ll call the park ranger!). At the center of this real-life Waiting for Guffman are Second Vice President Nancy Bernstein, First  Vice President Lonnie Brundage and President Joan Criswell, three ladies who have instituted what even a park ranger called a “Nazi regime.” And we thought it was just a hobby. MITIGATING FACTOR: It’s all fun and legumes until the Depression hits.

9. THE BOLIDES
Seriously. What is with those masks? Are they surgeons? Are they fit to operate? Are they made of science? Does science make a man? Who are these masked men who play songs like “mind ctrl alt del” and “relaxative”? They have names. Here are the names: Dr. Mikro Fiche, Dr. Shrink Wray, Dr. Drummond (he’s the drummer, you see) and Dr. Phillip de Chi Chi’s. Without the masks, you might recognize them—but do you really want to know what’s going on behind those masks? We don’t want them to take them off. God only knows. It’s scary. (And they’re obsessed with robots. Are they going to make us all into robots? Will there be a mind probe?) MITIGATING FACTOR: Sometimes we like to play nurse.

10. JIM HANKLA
If you had to finger just one guy for the city’s present troubles, it might be Jim Hankla, its most skillful political machinist of the past half-century. Especially during the 12 years he spent as city manager—ending in 1998—he set in motion the makeover that has produced the Long Beach we have today: the destruction of many of the buildings that gave the city its great character (see “RDA” above) and the construction of the Aquarium of the Pacific, now losing millions each year. Now, as president of the city’s Harbor Commission, he has trouble remembering that he’s not running the city anymore—he directs the port and (ostensibly) reports to the city council. Take, for instance, his recent effort to save the breakwater, the big wall o’ rock that keeps the county’s shit together—literally, all the stuff that sweeps down the Los Angeles River and settles behind the breakwater, nice, snug, tight to the shore that makes our city infamous for its poor water quality. Two summers ago, the city council voted to investigate removing the breakwater, and freeing the poop, but Hankla led the Harbor Commission’s refusal to contribute to an open-ended study. Then last month, he quietly offered to subsidize an already completed study that reaches conclusions to his liking. When District Weekly reporter Dave Wielenga discovered the deal, one city official said it was inconceivable: “In the old Long Beach, that would have been the strategy,” said City Councilman Patrick O’Donnell. “But in the new Long Beach, we don’t operate that way.” Yes, it turns out, we do. Scary! MITIGATING FACTOR: Like a vampire, Hankla withers in the daylight; following Wielenga’s story, he backed off the secret deal. Like a vampire, however, he lives to bite another day.

11. GARY DELONG
Third District Councilman DeLong campaigned for office as a red, white and blue conservative Republican. But in an age of socialized banking and record federal deficits under a Republican administration, what’s a conservative? We just don’t know anymore. And that’s what has us terrified. Consider this: It was DeLong who pushed for a $500,000 city loan to Gene “Legends” Rotondo, a wealthy Second Street businessman. The putative purpose of the loan: Rotondo’s construction of a badly needed Belmont Shore drinkin’-and-chicken-wing emporium. Rotondo got his cash, and DeLong gets his electoral support from the Belmont Shore Business Association over which—surprise!—Rotondo presides. We could go on. So let’s: It was DeLong who led the council’s February vote on nearly $3.5 million in tax breaks and giveaways to the Best Buy chain at Marina Pacifica Mall and a new Residence Inn down by the Queen Mary. Now he’s a leading supporter of Measure I, which would raise property taxes to help pay for city infrastructure that the council has permitted to decay because it hasn’t exercised fiscal discipline. We’ll stop now. But only because we’re scared—red scared. MITIGATING FACTOR: This sort of stuff used to be called “socialism.” And that would be bad. But we looked it up, and it turns out socialism is only when you do this sort of thing for middle-class people.

12. THE  IRAQ WAR
George D. Torres. Lyndon A. Marcus Jr. Anthony J. Davis Jr. Randy D. Collins. Stephen A. Castellano. Ernesto R. Guerra. Roberto L. Martinez Salazar. Astor A. Sunsin-Pineda. David T. Toomalatai. They’re not just names. They belonged to seven people—Long Beach men—whose lives and loves were as big as yours and mine, until they died in service to us. In two cases—Lyndon and Anthony—the parents were so proud of their babies they named them for a father. We miss them, and we never knew them. And we’re sorry we didn’t do more to keep them out of harm’s way. MITIGATING FACTOR: We can’t think of one.

13. THE ICE CREAM MAN
He drives around town—and out of town, across country and back again—in his truck, “Bessie,” handing out free ice cream. And while there may be no such thing as a free lunch, there certainly is no such thing as free ice cream. Really. So why should we trust the Ice Cream Man, aka Matt Allen? Because, simply put, he is goodness brought to life, a man whose aim—to hand out ice cream free of charge—happens not only to be subsidized by willing ice cream companies, but has been championed by fans in places as far away as New York and recently much closer at University by the Sea. Christ, the guy’s even been known to drop by children’s hospitals—we’d be honored if he kidnapped us! MITIGATING FACTOR: A slow death by brain freeze.

Tags: gary delong, ice cream man, jim hankla, Long Beach, press telegram, rda, scariest, the bolides