The City of Downey has purchased The Avenue, Downey’s smallest, most vacant movie house–a single-screen theater on Downey Avenue in the heart of the downtown.
That’s according to Samantha Gonzaga in this morning’s Press-Telegram–part of which was once prepared in a small office next door.
The city’s cost: $1.2 million for the 850-seat theater which is housed [...]

We city dwellers are in an interesting spot right now: as food prices seem to steadily climb and certain foodstuffs like rice are in short supply around the world, virtually all we can do is watch.
Sure, now it’s almost summer again we’re transplanting the seedling tomatoes we purchased at Armstrong–and maybe even some corn–but can, [...]

Last night, a person or persons unknown slashed more than 100 tires on vehicles in San Pedro, hitting parked cars “near 21st Street between Gaffey Street and Pacific Avenue; Ninth Street and Patton Avenue; Sebastian and Channel streets; and Battery Street and Cabrillo Avenue” according to the Daily Breeze’s Donna Littlejohn.
That’s a huge loss for [...]

It’s interesting to watch Long Beach’s superdelegates decide who they’ll support for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In today’s Press-Telegram, John Canalis writes about the decision of the last superdelegate, Ed Espinoza, 35–with whom he went to high school–and what that means for Long Beach.
Espinoza, he writes, “works as a political analyst, public relations professional and CNN [...]

The city’s 1923 Spanish Colonial Revival bandshell in Bixby Park reopened this weekend–despite not being a shell at all, but rather a building with an open stage.
And the Los Angeles Times, which last took note of Long Beach when all those manhole covers went missing a couple of weeks ago, sent its “L.A. Then and [...]

It’s hard to write this–and it shouldn’t be, because Joe Jost’s is the only place I ever drink Pabst Blue Ribbon–but after a price dispute with the distributor, Long Beach’s oldest bar by default has poured its last Pabst.
The new brew, as the Press-Telegram’s Tim Grobaty writes today, is something called Busch–which, like Lucky Lager, [...]

This probably won’t be the last any of us hears of plans to tear down the vacant Roberts department store on Atlantic Avenue and put up a Marshalls store, but at yesterday’s Redevelopment Agency board meeting, the board approved what the Press-Telegram’s Karen Robes calls “third-stage design plans” for the Marshalls.

The LA Times reports today that dockworkers from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (along with thousands of others from the West Coast’s 29 ports) took the day off to protest the Iraq War, a move that effectively shut down all port operations for the day. In related news, Bill O’Reilly says we [...]

The Press-Telegram’s Wendy Thomas Russell brings us a new chapter in the Lobstergate saga this morning–Lobstergate being the continuing story of two Long Beach police officers and a police sergeant who claimed “they were harassed and discriminated against after reporting that some of their colleagues were conducting illegal lobster dives in the Port of Long [...]

A city committee you may never have heard of–the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, comprised of Second District Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal, Fourth District Councilman Patrick O’Donnell and Fifth District Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske–drew the line yesterday at changing the city’s noise ordinance to allow more commercial flights out of Long Beach Airport.
This may remind some of you [...]