The skies aren’t always sunnier in Long Beach’s Cliff May houses, but it sure seems that way

PHOTO by ROCHELLE KRAMER
It’s hard to say whether life really is better in one of the Ranchos, Long Beach’s area of 950 ranch houses designed by Cliff May, who invented the style. But there are days when it sure [...]

A newer old Long Beach is the subject of this year’s final Smithsonian Week event: “Edge City, Suburban Design: Now and Then,” a lecture and discussion of ’50s and ’60s Long Beach, as framed by architectural historian Alan Hess.
But Hess—chronicler of midcentury architecture in such books as Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture—won’t just be telling [...]

You may have read, in Saturday’s Los Angeles Times–or Sunday’s Press-Telegram, via an Associated Press story–how the current owners of the famous Downey house where ’70s soft-rock duo Richard and Karen Carpenter lived want to tear it down?
Well, uh, they do.

Ditch the particleboard with fine, vintage furniture from OCModern.net

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
If the arrival of the IKEA catalog is cause for celebration at your home, then you also know how problematic all that cute, affordable furniture can be. Never mind the whole assembly thing—when the bulk of your furniture is made from soft, particleboard “wood,” [...]