An upcoming audit will shape the Long Beach Museum of Art’s future, and possibly shed some light on two long-lost paintings by the Russian master

JAWLENSKY: GONE MISSING?
Buried in the city’s 2006 audit of the Long Beach Museum of Art, there’s this sentence, a brief one —and boring (“Discussion with Foundation staff and review of documentation [...]

Chris Gaffney, 1950-2008

ILLUSTRATION by JOE MCGARRY
Every time I interviewed Chris Gaffney he was in a hotel room in Denver, though it couldn’t have always been the same one, and every time he heard from me—bad, fast questions about Van Halen and the Standells—he had a joke and a story and some quick laugh and an [...]

City officials weigh the look and future of a Bixby Knolls shopping center

THE PROPOSED BUILDING
Many people in Long Beach blame the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) for knocking down one stylish, historic building after another. But for a few minutes during an April 21 RDA board meeting, it seemed like the agency was in the historic preservation [...]

A city hall insider leaves two high profile gigs and lots of questions

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY
Chris Pook was yukking it up pretty good in the foyer of city council chambers on April 15. Inside, city auditor Laura Doud had just told the council that Pook had stiffed the city for $37,000 while operating the Long [...]

District investigation of Long Beach Animal Shelter leads to a resignation, a suspension and City Hall’s promise of a massive clean-up

PHOTO by JEFF GOULD
Melanie “Scary Spice” Brown came to the Long Beach Animal Shelter last week to tape an episode of a lighthearted TV contest called The Singing Office—at about the same time City Manager [...]

Homeland Cultural Arts Center has seen it all: Martial arts classes, African drummers, breakdance memorials. And you don’t stop

PHOTO by ZACK PIANKO
It’s open all day, but Homeland Cultural Arts Center doesn’t start popping—or drumming or acting or breaking—until the streetlights come on. Then the scene shifts from soccer in MacArthur Park outside to whatever’s happening [...]

A CSULB prof just wants to know1

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY
A few weeks ago, a fight broke out on the campus of Cal State Long Beach. Unlike most schoolyard brawls, nobody ran to watch.
It began with a March 19 manifesto from Jewish Studies Program professors. Its target: a colleague in the university’s psychology department. “Over the [...]

Catching Long Beach’s latest late-night bus

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority changed course last month, saving a bus that runs through the heart of Long Beach when most of us are asleep.
But who rides the No. 60 line between midnight and 4 a.m.—hours when most buses are as empty as office [...]

Built (Not) to Spill
What would happen to Long Beach’s 40-year-old oil islands if something should happen to the Long Beach Breakwater, allowing a storm to strike the garish little landmarks with open-ocean force?
“That’s a good question,” says Bill McFarland, human resources manager and 26-year employee of THUMS Long Beach Company (the islands’ operator in contract [...]

While people decide the fate of Long Beach’s hidden wilderness, a coyote keeps hunting the wetlands

PHOTO by JENNY STOCKDALE
Not far away, a coyote with a coat as dense and red-brown as the marshland brush was sprinting silently across a wide tidal flat toward unsuspecting seabirds, his footprints dissolving into the water-logged sand the instant he [...]