Want to see the best tattoos around? Step outside your front door
I’ve been shooting tattoos since I picked up a camera. But when I moved to Long Beach eight years ago, I discovered that as much as I loved Los Angeles for all its diversity, I could find all of that—and more—right here.
This city has [...]

We salute our first-ever tattoo contest winners!
For The District’s first-ever large body work tattoo contest, we invited Outer Limits owner Kari Barba and Ink-N-Iron festival producer Trace Edwards to click through reader-submitted photos on our Flickr pool and—heh, heh—pick a winner. Their unanimous choice was Mike Gonzales, whose lotus flower sleeves and Hindu-inspired body work [...]

Tonia Reyes Uranga is campaigning door-to-door for the 54th Assembly District with passion in her heart and potted plants in her hands, but will it be enough to beat Bonnie Lowenthal and end the 16-election winning streak of Long Beach’s First Family of politics?

PHOTO by SUSAN SABO
Huge swaths of unrolled butcher paper hang from the [...]

What ever became of Juanito and Maria?

The cover of our first Memorial Day issue was unusual for us: no band photos, no jokes, just Bob Aul’s un-ironic portrait of a man in uniform, standing in front of an American flag. Inside was his story: 19-year-old Private Ernesto Guerra of Long Beach, killed in Baghdad almost [...]

Rachel Powers hangs out with Iraq War vets at the local VA Hospital, just in time to remember the 4,071 Americans who won’t be around to celebrate this Memorial Day
On March 20, 2003, the first American soldier left a boot print on Iraqi soil in the battle to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Monday will be the [...]

From page-boy to testosterone injections: One person’s journey fom female to male

Jim Howley was a girl who wanted to be a boy by the time she was four. It was 1979, in a town with the absolutely literary-perfect name of Plain City, Ohio. At preschool, she hung out with the boys. There—and we can imagine [...]

Nine to five is never a drag when you’re Jewels

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY
Renowned Long Beach drag queen Jewels (real name a closely guarded secret!) has been performing—as Marilyn, as Dolly, as Tammy Faye and Courtney Love and Mariah, too—since she was 18 years old. Seven years ago, she became part of the Long Beach scene [...]

Is the Long Beach Gay Pride Parade only worth it if you’re gay?
Despite minoring in women’s studies at Cal State Long Beach and ranting feministically in the Daily Forty-Niner, it was only a few weeks ago that I had my first drink at Que Sera. Surprised? Apparently, you’re supposed to be. But although my feminism [...]

That’s the conception—but of course, the city has always had a vibrant gay nightlife scene

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA
We’re standing in the Crest, outwardly a nondescript little cinderblock of a bear bar on an industrial stretch of Cherry Avenue near Long Beach’s border with Paramount. Inside, there’s a fireplace, and out back a waterfall.
What’s a [...]

A woman stole my wallet and all I got was a lousy detective

The woman who stole my wallet six months ago thinks I’m a psycho victim. The police detective who was assigned to investigate the crime told me so; it was pretty much the only thing about the whole unfortunate incident that I didn’t find [...]