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”

A just-released financial audit revealing how Queen Mary operator Joe Prevratil used a shell game-style financial structure to enrich himself by nearly $8 million while driving Long Beach’s city icon into bankruptcy basically backs up and amplifies a story reported by The District Weekly last July.
Howard M. Ehrenberg, the court-appointed trustee for the Queen Mary during bankruptcy—who is currently opposing [...]

Opie Ortiz will always be the guy who tattooed ‘Sublime’ on Brad Nowell’s back. And he’s okay with that

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
The most famous tattoo ever done in this city went on pretty quickly—an hour-and-a-half, tops. “I just drew it up and blew it up and did it,” says Opie Ortiz, co-owner of American Beauty [...]

How ‘Star Trek The Tour’ got stuck in Long Beach over a $200,000 bill

Remember “Star Trek the Tour,” that fantastical Queen Mary exhibit of all things Trekkie–uniforms and phasers and a real live fake Starship Enterprise? The rumor mill had it opening in San Diego last Thursday–but it’s still here, locked up in space jail, [...]

A very good and complete story in today’s Press-Telegram about the pending settlement of a lawsuit against former Queen Mary kingpin Joe Prevratil–except for the part where it didn’t mention that story it completed was broken on The District’s website Monday. That’s two days ago.
Perhaps this seems petty, but it’s longstanding journalistic practice for newspapers that are following up a breaking story to mention the [...]

Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster had his hands full addressing two separate rooms of business folk simultaneously at this afternoon’s packed East Anaheim Street Business Alliance monthly meeting, but he managed to stand in the connecting doorway and work two rooms.
Foster praised his hosts, the newly minted Business Improvement District, but he also offered some [...]

The District has learned that Joseph Prevratil and Howard Bell, former kingpins of the Queen Mary who got rich while sinking Long Beach’s floating icon into bankruptcy, are expected to relinquish their million-dollar condo in Hawaii to settle a lawsuit filed against them in February by the Queen Mary’s bankruptcy trustee Howard Ehrenberg and the [...]

Just in case anybody is just about to bring up the idea of building a football stadium on the land next to the Queen Mary and inviting a National Football team to make its home there – because, really, isn’t somebody always just about to bring that up? — here’s a pre-emptive buzzkill, courtesy of the sports [...]

So says the faux-nerd cast of The Big Bang Theory:

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Last night’s Long Beach City Council meeting probably had more reporters per square inch than any council meeting since the Queen Mary came to town in ‘67 (but feel free to substitute your own significant local event here).
As near as I can tell, Cal State Long Beach’s Daily 49er was actually the first paper to [...]