Best succinct restaurant: Long Beach Thai Restaurant . . . Best police substation: the one on Los Coyotes Diagonal by the Krispy Kreme donut shop . . . Best improved intersection: the transition from eastbound Sixth Street to northbound Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue to eastbound Seventh Street (Now 99 percent moving-violation-free) . . . Best time and place to get a free round: afternoon, House of Hayden (421 E First St, Long Beach) . . . Best feeling to wake up to: c’mon, don’t make us say it . . . Best unofficial home tour: First Street, driving east from Redondo Avenue through Bluff Park . . . Best rabbits: Long Beach City College . . . Best reason to speed: those digital “Your speed” signs all over town . . . Best auto paints from a guy who knows how to sell auto paints: GE Auto Paints (2403 E Anaheim St, Long Beach) . . . Best Street Name: Charlemagne Avenue . . . Best psychobilly auto parts store: Curtis & Christensen Auto Parts (501 E Anaheim St, Long Beach), where every clerk wears a Meteors T-shirt . . . Best back house: the pinkish Victorian by the Blockbuster Video at Long Beach Boulevard and Tenth Street . . . Best hidden WPA artifact: the mural in the chained-off hallway directly over the front gates (with painted-out windows visible from Atlantic Avenue) at Long Beach Polytechnic High School . . . Best place to practice for the Baja 500: the dips at 11th Street and Euclid Avenue . . . Best place to test your clutch: Shell Hill, on Hill Street just west of Redondo Avenue, where they held the old Model T Hill Climb . . . Best time and place to learn to drive: 10 a.m. Sunday, anywhere around Anaheim Street and Santa Fe Avenue . . . Best time of year: Christmas. Wait, summer. No, Christmas. Uh, let’s go with Christummer. Hurry everyone, only two and half months until Christummer—or eight and half . . . Best place that scares us: the Pit Stop bar, Magnolia Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway . . . Best name: Brigg (Bo is also acceptable) . . . Best liquor store sign: the once-motorized, recently repainted vertical beacon at Pacific Coast Highway and Redondo Avenue . . . Best 1930s film location: the stretch of bungalows on Junipero Avenue between Seventh Street and Tenth Street . . . Creepiest Spanish-style house: the place on San Antonio Drive just west of Long Beach Boulevard, right next to the Jiffy Lube (Long Gone John lived there for years with his giant Cootie and his Sailor Moon doll collection) . . . Best color for a Porsche: red. We’re familiar with the arguments for black and midnight blue. We reject them . . . Best time and place not to lend a helping hand: 3 am, the 7-Eleven at Long Beach Boulevard and Del Amo Boulevard, when some cute Latina girl who came in six hours ago with her boyfriend suddenly reappears and asks for a ride home . . . Best place to find a free 1950s Goodform aluminum swivel chair: north side of 14th Street between Elm and Linden avenues . . . Best place to do a 180: south on Pacific Coast Highway, coming out of the traffic circle in the rain . . . Best vintage liquor store: Ambassador Liquor on Fourth Street . . . Best scene in the original Gone in 60 Seconds: the car chase through Long Beach (duh) when it goes through the old Lincoln Park . . . Best scene in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: the part with the swinging crane boom, because for just a nanosecond, you can see the old Acres of Books on Pacific Avenue . . . Best part of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: the scene where Jonathan Winters destroys the gas station. It’s Black Knight funny . . . Best worst use of dynamite: demolishing the old Omar Hubbard apartment building—only time they ever used dynamite on a building in Long Beach . . . Best place to find hi-fis: Salvation Army on Alamitos Avenue . . . Best time to remember diagonal crosswalks, jello salad and those little electric cars: the annual Iowa reunion picnic . . . Best get out of my way: Traffic Circle. High-O! . . . Best time you had in Signal Hill: five-way tie: the night Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard or Willie Nelson played; the night the White Stripes opened up for the Lords of Altamont; or the night (one of ’em) Wiskey Biscuit played, all at the late Foothill Club on Cherry Avenue…Best Yelper: Megan G.

Tags: best of, Long Beach, porsche, streets, succinct