PHOTO by RUSS ROCA

BEST MISSING LINK: 2ND CITY COUNCIL GALLERY Some shows play off the actual 2nd City Council Gallery space better than others, but at its best this place is hard to equal—for its link to antiquity and to old Long Beach. You’ll remember: This place used to be Wille’s Tin Shop. It was your one-stop shop for all things tin—tin flashing for your furnace, etc., etc. This means something, somehow. 435 Alamitos Ave., Long Beach 90802. 562.901.0997; 2ndcitycouncil.org

BEST NERDS: ALIVE THEATRE Whether you’re in line outside the Good Foot or on the patio at Smooth’s, chances are members of the Alive Theatre—helmed by perpetual smiler Jeremy Aluma—will be by your side, shamelessly pestering you with fliers and/or spontaneous monologuing (and/or improvised roboting). But the Alive gang actually produces good theater, so next time, instead of passing on that third flier—the first two landed in the trash, don’t lie—take it and pin it to your fridge. And then go. At the very least, when you see them again (in line at the supermarket, beside you at the movies, in the waiting room at the hospital—really, they’re everywhere), you’ll get a pass. alivetheatre.org

BEST EMPTY NEST: (THE FORMER) AMERICAN HOTEL There’s something rich and strange about a vacant old building (by old, we mean more than 50 years old), and it’s chiefly the architecture—though a few stacks of Herman Miller chairs and a piano or two for décor can never hurt. (We’re just saying.) With this in mind, any list of our favorite empty nests must start with the former American Hotel at 221 E. Broadway (formerly next door to Cheap Vintage), a tiny jewel box of an abandoned hotel. Once home to the Psychic Temple of the Holy Kiss—a turn-of-the-last-century religious group—its huge arched windows gaze across Broadway at the beautifully restored Insurance Exchange Building, as if to say, “When is it our turn?” (One of them is emblazoned with a graffiti mural, which makes the place so much cooler.)

BEST RETRO ON THE ROW: ART THEATRE We’ve said it before, but it’s still worth noting what developer Jan Van Dijs achieved when he purchased this art deco art house from its 35-year owner Howard Linn. Van Dijs saved a historic piece of architecture; he saved Long Beach’s only single-screen movie theater, as well as its only place to see art films; and he successfully reopened one of the few historic businesses in Long Beach in a historic location. 2025 E. Fourth St., Long Beach 90814. 562.438.5435; arttheatrelongbeach.com

BEST ARTIST WHO GETS IT: SANDOW BIRK Maybe someone else paints Long Beach more accurately—but we doubt it. Artist Sandow Birk, a Long Beach resident, gets our strange combination of great building stock; under-utilized beachfront stifled by an overbearing breakwater; a large ethnic population; a genuine inner city; and great food, almost like no one else. And so it’s thanks to him that we get paintings of the Pacific Ocean, but also of drive-by shootings on velvet. You really need both. sandowbirk.com

(STILL THE) BEST USE OF CONCRETE: BURTON W. CHACE CIVIC CENTER Oh, sure, complain all you want, but one day—when some enterprising young go-getter/ne’er-do-well has turned our Burton W. Chace Civic Center into a gravel quarry with a side of city hall—we’ll look back on its grim use of concrete for everything except doors and windows, and we’ll laugh. Because regardless of your feelings about our threatening city hall and the accompanying Book-stapo design of Main Library, this will always be Long Beach’s one single-minded ode to Brutalism—the postwar English architectural style that leant heavily on pure materials (maybe because the English didn’t have ’em). Unless, in the not-too-distant future, our city officials manage to get us a new city hall by selling the Civic Center carcass. They still haven’t ruled out this possibility. 333 W. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach 90802

BEST GALLERY HYPENATE: DDR PROJECTS Toy store/art galleries just didn’t exist 10 years ago—much like the vinyl action-figure market for adults which sparked them. The result, however, is galleries like DDR Projects, which balances toys like bear bricks and Mars-1 Observers with exhibits that have featured Matt Wignall’s photos of Malawi, Damion Silver’s mixed-media collages—even a delightfully random Sandow Birk book signing. It’s not quite as street as Alpha Cult, a few minutes away, but that’s okay. It feels older, which is perfectly fine. We’re all getting older. 1532 E. Broadway, Long Beach 90802. 562.590.9030; ddrprojects.com

BEST LITERARY POWER COUPLE: LISA GLATT AND DAVID HERNANDEZ We were sitting with Lisa Glatt and David Hernandez in their house just a few blocks from Cal State Long Beach, a home of mid-century modern furniture and wood floors illuminated by sunlight like gold coins bouncing off the floor of a vault. Warm but clean and uncluttered. His art—is there anything the guy can’t do?—adorns neutral-colored walls; a designer would know the words for these dun and dollar-bill-green walls. There are no children, just two child-like cats in the home, including one, Diego, a striped feline the shape of a watermelon on legs like drumsticks, an entire picnic in just one toddler-sized animal. And like many pet owners—just an observation; not a criticism—they regale you with tales of cat exploits: Diego fetches, chills with company, owns the house; I see that Diego observes our conversation with a cat’s sage interest. You sense this bond between cat and man and you wonder—you can’t help it, but you don’t have the balls to ask about what seems so obvious: these two absolutely in-love artists married like eight years who stroke one another’s hands with great tenderness and laugh at one another’s jokes and reach profound levels of (let’s call it) discourse in a snap but have no children. And you wonder about that—the absence of offspring—and you recall that their novels are about as dark as dark can be where children are concerned. Reviewers described hers (A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That) by using such words as “razor,” “sharp, “haunting,” “unflinching” and “mothers and daughters.” In his (Suckerpunch), two boys take a gun on the road to settle accounts with their violent, estranged father. Both have novels coming out in early ’09—hers, a collaborative children’s novel with her CSULB colleague, Suzanne Greenberg, in March; his, No More Us For You, comes in January. Both are set in your favorite city—Montreal. No not Montreal, Long Beach. “What about Diego the cat?” I asked Hernandez. “A picture book about Sarah Palin, tentatively titled Doggone It, Say It Ain’t So, Sarah.” David Hernandez reads from Suckerpunch, Cal State Long Beach, Student Union Ballroom A, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach 90840. Thurs, Oct. 23. 7 p.m.

BEST TIME MACHINE: HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF LONG BEACH By the time you arrive at the new home of the Historical Society of Long Beach, you’ve probably already experienced an important history lesson. The trip up to Bixby Knolls—which is to say, not to downtown—not only explores an often-overlooked part of Long Beach but also expands the concept of its history. “There are people who feel the Historical Society should be downtown because that’s where the city was born,” acknowledges Executive Director Julie Bartolotto. “But the growth of Long Beach in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s was an important era, too.” It’s the era when Bixby Knolls bloomed. Because of this, the Historical Society of Long Beach has made its home in a storefront built in 1950 and originally occupied by Harris Furs, whose name is still inscribed in the Terrazzo-tiled entry, beneath the grand geometric sign that juts into the low horizon. “We’re a good fit with the revitalizing transformation on Atlantic,” says Bartolotto, “and the history represented on this street is a good fit with the city’s population. There are many people who can still remember the 1950s. But the people who remember the ’20s are few.” 4260 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach 90807. 562.424.2220; historicalsocietylb.org

BEST IMPROVEMENT: LONG BEACH MUSEUM OF ART Long Beach Museum of Art has the best ocean view in the city—a nice juxtaposition of incoming tankers and calm, green-blue water, which looks clean from Bluff Park, even if sometimes it isn’t. And the art on its walls has perked up considerably under Director Ron Nelson, who took over following the November 2006 ouster of longtime Director Harold B. “Hal” Nelson (no relation). In his nearly two years on deck since, the museum has pulled back from Harold Nelson’s emphasis on craft-related arts. As a result, we’ve seen exhibits about Long Beach; a satisfying show of works by local artists on display as the prelude to last year’s “Art Auction XII”; and a recent display of pinhole photographs of the Port of Long Beach, an unusual combination that worked admirably. What else to say? Keep it up. 2300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach 90803. 562.439.2119; lbma.org

BEST OVERLOOKED MUSEUM: MAIN LIBRARY Home to the Elaine Miller Special Collections Room, the Main Library holds a wide-ranging collection of art history texts, plus more than a score of works donated by the late Acres of Books founder Bertrand Smith. But, if you ask, you also get access to the Petroleum Collection—home to a researcher’s treasure trove of 20th century oil industry publications, plus historical photos, WPA artifacts and years of scrapbooks from the Ebell Club. There’s enough here for a half-dozen master’s theses, so start writing. 333 W. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach 90802

BEST WORDSMITH: MINDY NETTIFEE If jealousy could diffuse through the semi-permeable membrane of admiration, it would look as our faces look when award-winning Long Beach poet Mindy Nettifee speaks. Something like (cue the furrowed brow), “Damn-I-wish-I-could-think-like-that-so-sharp-it-doesn’t-hurt-anymore.” And then you’re powerless—you have no choice but to raise your wine glass high over your osmosis head and join her pledge of allegiance to graphic truth. Her poems have the grace of cursive letters and the guts of a truck driver. You’ll be a better person to witness them, live or late at night under lamplight. Her latest collection of poems, Sleepyhead Assassins, is available at Retro Row’s {open}. Join her cult—thecultofmindy.com—to learn of upcoming performances and to digest her blogging bits of wisdom. Take a chance on her; she will assuredly douse you with Midwestern pixie dust and coat you in her glossy door hinge voice.

BEST HAPPENING: UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM How else to describe University Art Museum, which, in just six months last year, hosted shows by Long Beach’s own Sandow Birk; the creepily elegant Thomas Woodruff; and spotlighted, again, the works of revolutionary abstract painter Lee Krasner? Also, the museum’s yearly student show, “Insights,” has been excellent and illuminating every time we’ve covered it—and, unlike some other student shows at Cal State Long Beach, it actually stays up long enough to see without skipping work. Good things are happening here. 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach 90840. 562.985.5761; csulb.edu/org/uam

BEST STEP FORWARD: THE VARDEN A little over a year and a half ago, you could have driven past the Dolly Varden Hotel without ever noticing the 80-year-old building or its city landmark signage with the words “A Bath in Every Room.” Today, thanks to a complete overhaul of the property by Laguna Beach’s Urban Hotel Group, you’ll want to stay the night here—even if your apartment is only two miles down Third Street. Owner Larry Black painstakingly deliberated over small details—the shower curtain rods were cause for consideration—and the result is a quaint boutique hotel (Long Beach’s first) that is as cute as it is refreshing. Finally, someone got things right down here: Take an old building and make it new with care and consideration (see the squeaky staircase, preserved during the remodel). Visitors enjoy complimentary wine and cheese at night, and continental breakfast in the morning, plus, Black says, a bed that’s five grades better than the Westin’s Heavenly Bed. Send visiting friends and relatives here, or take a night off and come see for yourself. Downtown has never—ever—felt so right. 335 Pacific Ave., Long Beach 90802. 562.432.8950. thevardenhotel.com

BEST VISION OF OLD LONG BEACH: VILLA RIVIERA This is a tough one, as Long Beach still has other surviving residential buildings downtown from its grand early-20th century period. (The Insurance Exchange building comes to mind, and we’re sure that historian Ken Larkey is good for a half-dozen.) But are any of them the Villa Riviera (built in 1929, from a French chateau/Gothic/Renaissance design by Richard D. King)? No. For years—years—this was one of the tallest buildings in the Southland, at 15 stories. (This also speaks, perhaps, to the Los Angeles basin’s late maturation, compared with its slightly snooty neighbor to the north, San Francisco.) More? What’s not to love about a stand-out structure with gargoyles and a steeply angled copper roof green with age—now in a well-advanced restoration—that was once home to folks like Charlie Chaplin and silent movie star Norma Talmadge? Absolutely nothing. Now a house of condos, this place is a spectacular survivor. 800 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach 90802. villariviera.net

Tags: art theatre, historical society long beach, lbma, sandow birk, university art museum, villa riviera