AKI SUSHI’S HOME DELIVERY The reasons I am obsessed with Aki Sushi/Bai-Plu are infinite. Since it’s both a sushi joint and a Thai restaurant, I find myself voting for Aki in the Where to Eat? straw polls roughly five nights a week—and if I could, and my friends wouldn’t kill me, I’d gorge on edamame, [...]

Starling Diner’s Joan Samson keeps the city alive

PHOTO by SUSAN SABO
Even in between service, Starling Diner hums with energy. There’s music echoing across the dining room and laughter pouring out from behind the counter—it feels alive. And for owner Joan Samson, that’s exactly how she wants it.
Samson, after all, doesn’t view restaurants as just places [...]

Local food writer Russ Parsons knows how to pick ‘em

PHOTO by MATT FUKUSHIMA
Like many of us who ride to and from our day jobs on the Passport, I usually have my nose stuck in a book. But it wasn’t until I picked up Wrigley resident Russ Parsons’ How to Pick a Peach: The Search for [...]

FOR THE RECORD: BAGATELLE RECORDS This is the spot of all spots, but how many of you chasing the same Kim Fowley LPs I am don’t already know this? Bagatelle takes a little work—that’s the charm—but I fully believe any record ever made by humans ever will pass through the hands of Steves big and [...]

Bill Ross’ perfect prescription

PHOTO by JENNIE WARREN
Bill Ross totes his own portable transmaniacon—dream machine, oil pan, Ride LPs—to the Prospector (and occasional alternate environs) to present the psychedelic rock shows that earned him the name Billgazer.
Fingerprints “I’ve been going there since the early ’90s, when it was a lot smaller. I’m always ordering stuff there—any [...]

Ikey Owens gets a good steak

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY
Ikey Owens plays keyboards most famously in Mars Volta but also alongside everyone from Dub All Stars to Mastodon to locals like Crystal Antlers and Coaxial and his own bands Look Daggers and Free Moral Agents, and he splits his office hours between Portfolio and the Prospector [...]

THICK HEADS: BEER & POLITICS Dedicated to the philosophy that it’s okay to be drunk with power—as long as you both have designated drivers (and as long as Power will shut up about his kid—God! Little bastard can’t run for president for 33 more years). This monthly event brings supposedly remote Long Beach politicos (state [...]

LaVerne Duncan proves development doesn’t have to be a bad thing

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA
It took awhile for LaVerne Duncan to get to Long Beach—she was born in the Virgin Islands and did 18 years in New York—but the city hasn’t been the same since she arrived in 1988. The dedication, resourcefulness and ceaseless good humor [...]

Eighth District Councilwoman Rae Gabelich takes the hard road

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA
Eighth District Councilwoman Rae Gabelich became the best listener on the Long Beach City Council by remembering how it felt not to be heard when she was a community activist. Actually, that’s how she came to represent the Eighth District representative, period. “I got [...]

THE PLAY: BLUFF PARK Big open plots of grass and a view of Catalina, the Queen Mary, the widening Pacific and its gorgeous sunsets make this one of our favorite places to take the kids and big bag of balls: soccer, foot, cheap Spongebob models from Target. Head to the Bluffs with the kids and [...]