Taste it all at the Wine Country

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Neatly tucked in one of Signal Hill’s sleepiest business districts (National Guard building, post office and quiet bakery adjacent) lies the unassuming Wine Country. The sprawling beverage hall echoes upscale markets and cavernous liquor emporiums in selection and quality-of-stock but does little else to recall [...]

Re-purposing ‘junk’ at the Long Beach Depot for Creative Reuse

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Thousands of hopeful submissions to President Obama’s new electronic wish list sit expectantly at change.gov, waiting to be read and considered in the nation’s future plans. Among them is one sent by 46-year-old Long Beach resident Lisa Hernandez. “Share your vision,” the Web [...]

Revisit roller-skating at Moxi Roller Skates

PHOTO by MICHAEL ZAMPELLI
If City Manager Pat West gets his way, Long Beach will one day be known as the most bike-friendly city in the nation—this after the city has already been recognized as the home of the upcoming Toyota Grand Prix and, to a lesser extent (okay, a significantly [...]

Don’t let 2009 become one big fitness fail. Join the party at South Bay Fit Camp

PHOTO by CAROLYN OZIMOK
Surely there is a special treadmill reserved in hell for personal trainers to sweat upon for eternity. (The incline would of course increase ever so slowly—never to the point of being physically impossible, just stupidly painful.) At [...]

The ecstasy and agony of eBay for the holidays
For 10 years, the bright spot on Black Friday has always been eBay. What started as a place to buy and sell Pez dispensers has—and you know you know this—morphed into a bazaar selling everything from the King of Cambodia’s sports car to a Russian MiG fighter [...]

Rose Park Neighborhood Association holds its first-ever Restoration Trade Fair

PHOTO by SARAH G. VINCI
When you buy a historically significant house—be it bungalow, Spanish style or miscellaneous—your signature on the mortgage (initial here, here and here) just opens the floodgates.
Cast-iron drainpipe rusted out after 70 years? Get busy and run a new one, unless you’d rather [...]

Five thousand one reasons to open your wallet at 5001

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Despite being home to a number of major retailers—like the Body Shop/Banana Republic/Gap trifecta, where, I’m not too proud to admit, I worshiped as a teen—as well as more than a few choice boutiques (Blue Windows, Body O Soul), Second Street can often [...]

Out of the Closet does not smell like grandma’s house

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Thrift stores are essentially condensed department stores—the difference being department stores sell lots of new junk you don’t need, while thrift stores sell lots of used stuff you don’t need. This theory is nearly always accurate, which explains my confusion each time I [...]

A Flower Girl’s Dream doesn’t just tiptoe through the tulips

PHOTO by JEFF GOULD
It’s not uncommon to find Sheri Cervantes running around her store in a wetsuit, sopping wet with sand still dripping from her hair, rattling off plant facts while putting together the most perfect, colorful bouquet of flowers you’ve ever seen.
“This is the only [...]

From pink slip to playful kitsch at Bungalow Marcasso

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Getting laid off blows, but when your severance check covers two years of unemployment with enough scratch left over to open a business (and be your own boss), the pink slip doesn’t sound so terrible. Just ask Mark Sutherland, owner of Bungalow Marcasso.
The 47-year-old [...]