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How Long Beach forced me to leave L.A. snobbery behind

I grew up in the smoggy shadow of Hollywood, which I always felt gave me a bit of unearned cachet.

When the world watched the Oscar afterparties unfold on TV, I just glanced up at the searchlights sweeping the sky in front of L.A.’s most overpriced restaurants and the news choppers circling above the phalanx of limos snaking down Sunset Boulevard. Movie and book backdrops that seemed so exotic to outsiders — “Shampoo,” “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” “Play It as it Lays,” “Double Indemnity,” “Less Than Zero,” “The Big Sleep” — felt like familiar tours through the old neighborhood.

When I got my first job as a reporter in The Times’ suburban Orange County office, my colleagues offered excited suggestions of things to do in my uber-hip West Hollywood neighborhood. The breakfast place where Quentin Tarantino held court. The industrial Thai eatery inhabited by Johnny Depp. The rooftop pool bar used as an “Entourage” backdrop.

I was too embarrassed to admit my Friday evening plans typically centered on Chinese takeout and a date with Hugh and Barbara on “20/20.”

But it didn’t matter. I felt a bit cooler just because I lived in close proximity to cool people.

Then I moved to the Long Beach area.

Mine was a typical Gen X Southern California migration story: Cheaper housing, shorter commute, “discovering” a place before the hipsters arrived, and in my case, being closer to work friends trying to make it on a journalist’s salary.

At first, I leaned into the Tinseltown snobbery with my L.A. friends. I’ve never seen so many Buicks and Oldsmobiles in my life. Will I ever watch another Wong Kar-wai movie again?

Learning to love Long Beach

But few of them ever ventured down the 710 Freeway to visit. And it did not take long for me to find my place here in ways I never could in West Hollywood. I fell in love with the scrappy charm of a city without airs that was never really ready for its close-up.

The wave-free beach where each view of the ocean must include a cargo ship or an oil well. The rows of vintage bungalows with the chimneys curiously cut off (thanks to the 1933 earthquake). The pickled egg as the city’s favored delicacy and a rickety ocean liner as its top landmark. How one of the most culturally diverse communities anywhere still can’t shake its boring Midwestern roots (Times columnist Jim Murray joked that the city was formed “by a slow leak in Des Moines”). The way there were always people dressed down as much as me

Long Beach is the seventh-largest city in California, and its port some years is the biggest in the country. Yet to the outside world, it never could escape second-banana status compared with the glamorous metropolis to the north. Every few years, there was the article declaring Long Beach the next big thing (“A Gleaming New Long Beach Sheds Its Cornfed Iowa Image.” “Once Moribund Long Beach Is Booming.”). But it never lasts. Long Beach remains Long Beach.

During one of its boom periods in the late 1990s, writer Alan Rifkin got the L.A.-L.B. dynamic just right: “L.A. gets the superiority, Long Beach the deaf ear.” Or put another way, he wrote, Los Angeles feels like a place where “anything can happen,” while Long Beach is a place where it probably won’t happen.

Olympics and ‘Long Beach erasure’

Max Cota and Charlie May reset their lines as the Marjorie C nears its dock in the Port of Long Beach.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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And this brings me to the roars of anger that echoed through the city and beyond Sunday afternoon during the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

France handed off the Games to Los Angeles, which will host in 2028. Cut to the beach, where Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Billie Eilish performed a mini concert. The spot was widely misidentified as being in Venice … 28 miles and about a million vibes away from the actual location … Long Beach.

Residents were not going to let this slight stand. So they took to social media, correcting the record, sending love to the city and letting loose some long-simmering grievances.

“This is Long Beach erasure,” one loyalist fumed.

An aerial view of the Port of Long Beach at dusk.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

I watched clips of the concert on my phone and felt my own civic pride. I grew up in one of the most filmed places on the planet. But this felt different. This is my chosen home. That beach is where I took my first beach ride after buying my electric bike early in the pandemic and feeling for the first time like things were going to be OK. It was not far from where I perfected my spare rib recipe during a beach barbecue for a friend’s birthday, beginning my love of grilling.

It’s where I stepped out of L.A.’s shadow and became my own person.

And it’s where I had this epiphany: There is much more to life than watching Johnny Depp sample overpriced Pad Thai or eating pancakes a few booths away from Quentin Tarantino.

The week’s biggest stories

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

The state Legislature has been busy

Arrests were made in connection to Matthew Perry’s overdose death

Monday’s earthquake was a reminder of California’s vulnerabilities

There’s interesting new polling on Californian voters

More big stories

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Column One

Column One is The Times’ home for narrative and longform journalism. Here’s a great piece from this week:

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Fast, wet and furious: How the North American monsoon floods the California desert. The North American monsoon plays an important role in the climate of the Four Corners states, bringing crucial moisture to areas that would otherwise be dry.

More great reads

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For your weekend

Wendy (Shelley Duvall) watches television in the Overlook Lobby in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.”

(Lee Unkrich/Warner Bros. Pictures)

Going out

Staying in

How well did you follow the news this week? Take our quiz.

(Times staff and wire photos)

At the recently wrapped Paris Olympics, the U.S. tied with which other country for the most gold medals at 40 each? Plus nine other questions from our weekly news quiz.

Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team

Shelby Grad, deputy managing editor
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

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