The walls come down around Hobo Alley

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY
For an irregular set of summer Saturdays, Acres of Books stalwart Steve Becker and an untameable gang of supporters—some of whom are cracking wise so enthusiastically behind this interview that he has to move to a more sedate location—have curated the happily informal Hobo Alley events [...]

Wow! So here it is: noted science fiction author Ray Bradbury has an open letter on the Opinion page of today’s Press-Telegram, imploring us to keep our library open.
“I recently learned of the pending forced closure of the Long Beach Main Library from public access to balance the city budget. This is heartbreak and an [...]

Penny the Cat has been the perfect final detail to the Acres of Books experience for years, the ultimate ”well, of course” moment that has come the first time you discovered her—sprawled here or there, sleeping or watching you, with suspicion or bored out of her mind—as you wandered the aisles of Long Beach’s irreplaceable second-hand book [...]

This Week: Purchase and Destroy

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM
Tues | JULY 22 Who ya gonna run to?
Wed | JULY 23 George W. Bush drops the stuffy professorial façade that’s characterized the final months of his presidency and explains the sub-prime mortgage crisis to an audience at a private Republican fundraiser: “Wall Street got drunk,” he [...]

Guess who had the best weekend ever? Why it’s our running-unopposed-in-November Congresswoman Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach)! Yay!
As the Daily Breeze’s Gene Maddaus reported Saturday, if you missed it, Richardson finally officially got her house in Sacramento back. (Meaning … house-warming gifts, or no?)
Quick refresher: this is the house in Sacramento which the congresswoman purchased during [...]

This Week: Skipper: She-Wolf of the SS
Tues | JULY 15 An audit by LA Controller Laura Chick reveals that Los Angeles is so poorly prepared for large-scale disaster response that it may already have been destroyed, which, officials added, could have contributed to a record low-voter turnout. “I do not want the public to be [...]

Acres of Books patron Robert Easton says goodbye to heaven, nirvana, Valhalla, whatever

PHOTO by JEFF GOULD
Robert Easton is the sort of person you’d never meet anywhere but Acres of Books: actor, writer, dialect expert and voice coach to the stars (known as “the Henry Higgins of Hollywood”) and a 50-years Acres patron who knew Bertrand [...]

This Week: Feral Tenure

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM

Tues | JULY 8 Mental revenge.
Wed | JULY 9 Jesse Jackson mumbles something about cutting Barack Obama’s nuts off into an open Fox News microphone, resulting in a minor scandal and an automatic offer of an auxiliary anchor position on the Fox affiliate of his choice. Jackson later [...]

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM
Mark your calendars in black ink: Acres of Books–Long Beach’s oldest, most thoroughly-, intriguingly-stocked store of used literature–will begin a discount sale of its stock this Thursday.
And how long will the sale go? “‘Til we run out of stuff to sell,” says Jackie Smith, who owns the store with her husband [...]

Another year, another city budget–this one made perhaps more interesting by what they’re now calling a projected $16.9 structural deficit in the 2009 Fiscal Year.
Otherwise, this afternoon’s Long Beach City Council budget workshop in Council Chambers veered from dry (four words: “Successful Refuse Nexus Study”) to, in Vice Mayor Bonnie Lowenthal’s words, “draconian”