The 75th anniversary of the Long Beach Earthquake of 1933 — when the town was known as Iowa-By-The-Sea because of its Midwestern transplants — is uniquely personalized in Tim Grobaty’s column in today’s Press-Telegram.
Grobaty reprints letters that those former Iowans wrote to their hometown newspapers back east, explaining to the family and friends they left [...]

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM
Much has been written about the imminent closing of Acres of Books with nary a mention of its neighbor on the corner, Jack’s Liquor & Deli. While the developers are still presumably trying to find a fit for that revered bookstore in their block-wide construction scheme, there is no place in [...]

Three P-T round-up stories get 2008 in the boat and hit it with the oar
Round-up stories in newspapers are usually a double negative: horrific to write–lotsa busy work, little pay-off–and life-shortening to read. Like weather stories.
And so without further ado, here are three round-up stories from recent issues of the Press-Telegram. But good ones–chock fulla [...]

Until this week, my most enduring memory of Dan Fogelberg was how hunky my first girlfriend thought he was. From now on, of course, I’ll have an even-more-enduringer one: how dead he is. Still, there was more to the man — to the musician — than that, and although I’ve been feeling somehow obligated to sort out Fogelberg’s place in wider pop history [...]

Minutemen Project founder not speaking tomorrow
Like us, you might have read Tim Grobaty’s column in today’s Press-Telegram with some interest–particularly the part where he writes about Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist speaking tomorrow at Cal State Long Beach.

It’s Halloween Weekend, which this year has been appropriately foreshadowed by a full moon as orange as a jack-o-lantern. (Nice touch, raging wildfires, but really, you shouldn’t have gone to such bother … no, really: Miss Manners says that tinting the moon orange with the poison smoke of destroyed human and animal habitat so [...]

Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before
It’s interesting how the news sometimes gets out–and out and out and out.
On Sunday, the New York Times published a story on Long Beach’s vintage furnishings district on Fourth Street, otherwise known as Retro Row. Our comrades at Portfolio informed us on Monday–and we informed [...]

I don’t usually do requests, but last night while dining at Smooth’s restaurant I received a special one from a rosy-cheeked woman who works on the 14th floor of a downtown highrise. She requested that The District lay off its occasional criticism of old Press-Telegram columnist Tom Hennessy, or that we at least give an equally bad time to Hennessy’s really-not-all-that-much-younger columnizing colleague Tim Grobaty–because, as she [...]

The City of Long Beach tries cutting back on water

Today’s top Press-Telegram story online? The fires whipped up in Malibu, Canyon Country and Agua Dulce by the Santa Ana winds. The top local story appears to be something by Kelly Puente about the wind. But keep reading; there’s local news downpage.