The City of Downey has purchased The Avenue, Downey’s smallest, most vacant movie house–a single-screen theater on Downey Avenue in the heart of the downtown.
That’s according to Samantha Gonzaga in this morning’s Press-Telegram–part of which was once prepared in a small office next door.
The city’s cost: $1.2 million for the 850-seat theater which is housed [...]

We city dwellers are in an interesting spot right now: as food prices seem to steadily climb and certain foodstuffs like rice are in short supply around the world, virtually all we can do is watch.
Sure, now it’s almost summer again we’re transplanting the seedling tomatoes we purchased at Armstrong–and maybe even some corn–but can, [...]

Last night, a person or persons unknown slashed more than 100 tires on vehicles in San Pedro, hitting parked cars “near 21st Street between Gaffey Street and Pacific Avenue; Ninth Street and Patton Avenue; Sebastian and Channel streets; and Battery Street and Cabrillo Avenue” according to the Daily Breeze’s Donna Littlejohn.
That’s a huge loss for [...]

It’s interesting to watch Long Beach’s superdelegates decide who they’ll support for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In today’s Press-Telegram, John Canalis writes about the decision of the last superdelegate, Ed Espinoza, 35–with whom he went to high school–and what that means for Long Beach.
Espinoza, he writes, “works as a political analyst, public relations professional and CNN [...]

The city’s 1923 Spanish Colonial Revival bandshell in Bixby Park reopened this weekend–despite not being a shell at all, but rather a building with an open stage.
And the Los Angeles Times, which last took note of Long Beach when all those manhole covers went missing a couple of weeks ago, sent its “L.A. Then and [...]

You can kill the Assemblyman’s rail yards bill, but his heart will go on … talking air quality

It was 10 a.m. Tuesday morning and eighteen hours earlier, Assembly Bill 2332–fledgling 55th District Assemblyman Warren Furutani’s (D-Long Beach) try at banning construction of new or expanded railyards within a quarter-mile of schools–had rather quietly burned to [...]

Electioneering always looks like more fun in the movies–and it’s never looked better than in this 1940 sequence from Paramount Pictures’ Preston Sturges-directed “The Great McGinty.”
Preston Sturges? He’s the guy who brought you “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek,” and of course “Sullivan’s Travels”–this last, the tale of a noted comedy director who has to be [...]

Utility giant Southern California Edison’s popularity contest in Lakewood is apparently far from over. The electric company started alienating its (sorry) power base last month when its workers quietly installed a 13-ton, 93-foot power pole at Centralia Street and Palo Verde Avenue, outside the home of Shelby and William Ranson.
“I think if SCE would have [...]

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You probably don’t want to play this at work, lessen you work in a really bad design studio, but here’s some vintage footage [...]

There will be other important demolitions in Long Beach.
But yesterday’s dismantling of the crime-ridden Avalon Motel came with a free Southern lunch, served after Vice Mayor Bonnie Lowenthal clambered into the cab of a towering Caterpillar front-loader for a de-construction worker’s perspective, as the city struck down the blighted building.