Long Beach

Long Beach the armpit of the country, can’t park on your own street without getting a ticket or towed. 4am-​8am street sweeping once a week with zero extra places to park. Mayor himself admitted it was unreasonable but nothing changes. 13 million dollars a year in parking tickets. I wouldn’t recommend moving into long beach on my worst enemy.

Long beach is the best city in the world. The food are beyond expectations and the people are friendly depends on your area. You can literally walk down the street and be more open to help than you are in los angeles. The difference is the atmosphere of this city. The beach are okay but nonetheless great.

I wrote a song called «LBC” — if you can’t find it by searching «LBC» and «Wait What», here are the lyrics:
If you like the look of jellyfish but you are wary of ‘em,
Pay thirty bucks to see them at the Aquari-​of-​um
of the Pacific in LBC.
If you like your modern art to eat beans and say «Hola!»
Get your refined culo downtown to MoLaa.
Mexican art in LBC.
LBC. Once known as «Iowa By the Sea», but that name’s lame.
Bob Foster is our city’s honorable mayor,
Which means our city’s in Foster care.
LBC. You don’t say «X» in «Ximeno». LBC. Snoop says Hi.
With so much drama in the LBC
It’s kinda hard being Wait W H A T. (wait what)
If you wanna go home and try to stick it in
That fat chick that you met at Acapulco Inn:
Lots of bars on Second Street in LBC.
Ripples is the gayest gay bar in town.
All of their bar stools are upside down
So they can fit more in LBC.
LBC. My grandpa liked… (LBC) …heavy petting at the Pike.
Wait What is the band. We’re no Sublime
But at least our lead singer is still alive.
LBC. Built on oil. (LBC) We drink your milkshake.
With so much drama in the LBC
It’s kinda hard being Wait W H A T. (wait what)
The crazy cat ladies that feed cats at the Bluffs
are misunderstood– they just need a little luff.
The cats do too in LBC.
If you think dark people are rather scary,
Don’t drive north of 4^th on Cherry.
It’s not well-​lit in LBC.
LBC. Can I take the podium… LBC. …to address all the Cambodians.
The prices at Legends got much higher
Since the owner started that accidental fire.
LBC. Jesse James… (LBC) … don’t be ashamed.
With so much drama in the LBC
It’s kinda hard being Wait W H A T. (wait what)
LBC. Jet Blue! (LBC) But Jet didn’t swallow.
The volleyball captain at CSULB–
She has a nice set. She’s 34C.
LBC. 44 percent white. (LBC) 56 percent other.
With so much drama in the LBC
It’s kinda hard being Wait W H A T.
(wait what)
A few things about Long Beach, where I’ve lived since 1992.
Long Beach…
…is the most genuine city in Southern California, not as materialistic, homogenized, and generally conservative as Orange County, and not as image-​conscious, dirty, and congested as Los Angeles. That’s why it’s hard to leave. (And also my car was towed again).
…has the most diligent, hardest working, ambitious parking ticket writers working two days a week just in your area.
… has ghosts, and most of them are dicks. Some may be Native American as we built CSULB over the sacred site Puvungna. We’re basically Poltergeist 3.
… has 462,257 people and 401 parking spots
… is the most ethnically diverse large city in the country, and the largest Cambodian population in the country, the significance being DONUTS! (Though I love Gladstone Donuts, my favorite name is «Many Donuts»).
… has such a high turnover of vacated apartment receiving so much fresh paint every year that our windows are hard to open and our cabinets are hard to close.
… used to be the surf capital of the state until the breakwater was formed. Now we have no waves and almost nobody enters the longest beach in the state. But we do have an awesome bike path running from 2^nd Street to Shoreline Village, a dog beach, and free summer movies and cool events at the pier. Basically the water is a very pretty white noise machine full of poisoned fish and giant ships.
… has lots of different neighborhoods. You can be driving by big expensive houses, turn the corner as be in Judgement Day 2, turn the corner to find someone to cut your hair, turn again and find someone to cut your face.
… has a street called Junipero. The debate over its pronunciation was settled in my eyes by the dude who writes «Ask a Mexican»… it is undetermined. But we all agree that Ximeno has a silent Q.
… has the world’s largest mural, the nation’s skinniest house, and is the most bike-​friendly urban city in the country. Bike friendly AND dyke friendly! Nice.
… is the birthplace of Mr. Belvedere, Nicolas Cage, Bo Derek, Cameron Diaz, Snoop Dogg, Warren G, Sublime, Billie Jean King, the chick Phil Spector killed, and me!
… has horrible air thanks to the soot-​producing bunker fuel from ships parked in our two large ports, the diesel pollution from the unloaders, trains and trucks, and the sulfur dioxide from the refineries blowing our way. But what a SUNSET!

Honestly. Where do you really begin when reviewing Long Beach?
The one place that you hate to love and… love to hate. Similar to Los Angeles, you can seriously travel down ONE road solely and take an unofficial tour of the ratchet and impoverished… to the movers and shakers and overall money makers of the city.
I was informed quite some time ago that the city as a whole appears to have been created for those that couldn’t make it in LA. It’s like settling for second best. The emphasis these days is seemingly on DTLB (Downtown Long Beach). It’s gorgeous and theres an absolute array of dining from Pine Street throughout The Pike and Shoreline Area.
The abundance of restaurants and overall variety is enough to conjure crowding yet parking tends to become the overall conundrum. For areas such as Pine, street parking is designated as being 24 Minute Parking for locations such as the area’s affront Starbucks, Sprint and even as far down as the semi-​newly relocated Hamburger Mary’s.
Let’s be real: 24 Minute Parking? C’mone now… Whose bright idea was that???
That’s an absolute abomination, if not an absurdity within itself. Should you elect to park there, one quarter will buy you 15 minutes and well, I’m certain you can do the math from there. Be certain to eyeball your car. One sneeze or bathroom break resulting in a slight delay to your adding quarters to your meter can result in a quick reality check that you’re «no longer in Kansas».
Branching on outward, the Wal Mart of DTLB is just a jump, skip and hop away and sitting directly on the public transit line (the Blue line to be precise) which travels directly from Compton, attracts some pretty «interesting» characters. This area sits just off of Long Beach Blvd and having performed a small bit of research, I’ve noticed that the Wal Mart there has altered their store hours, …opening at 6am for «Early Birds» looking to do their shopping in a transient free zone.
Traveling there ^ after dawn is a definite struggle as LB Parking Enforcement go on shift and are definitely in need of a hobby and the crowd as a whole, seem to take on a different appeal for lack of better terms (see my review of Wal Mart within Downtown Long Beach). There’s a Fresh and Easy grocers there and not too far away there’s another Starbucks as well.
The town altogether, appears to take on an overall disposition of providing residence to both the «haves» as well as the «have nots. The sole problem however, is that they all reside within the same communities! You can stand at a simple stoplight and literally notice a guy with a mo hawk toting a skateboard helping an elderly couple cross the street all the while seeing an oblivious tattooed blonde text. From what I’ve gathered, the haves reside south of 7^th Street and closer to the beach itself. The closer you travel to «Ocean» the more wealth you’re assumed to possess. Fourth and Broadway are the «happening» locations, both encompassing an abundance of dive bars, restaurants and fun ways to pass time.
Traveling north on Orange, Cherry or Redondo Streets will take you into the «exclusive» area of Signal Hill. Feel free to Unilocal that location specifically yet traveling down Ocean headed eastward one will note that neighborhoods are separated into smaller subdivisions (i.e.: Alamitos Beach, Bluff Park into the trendy and touristy Belmont Shores which occupies most of 2^nd Street and finally onto Naples and beautiful Alamitos Bay.
The beaches themselves are often less densely populated than more upscale locations such as Newport, Huntington or even so much as Redondo, Hermosa, Manhattan, Venice and Santa Monica Beach’s and in lieu of such the rents are drastically less expensive. In addition, it has been proven that storm drain runoff gradually wafts itself into the Long Beach basin providing a much overdue explanation for its subpar beaches. Due to the breakwater placed amid the ocean several years ago, there is absolutely no surf however there’s quite a nice bike/​jogging path that travels the duration of the beach.
Retrospectively, most visitors to the city are deterred by the aforementioned and venture elsewhere to satisfy their desires.
Hopefully this review was enough to sum things up for those reading just a bit. This town is…(sighs) good for «what it’s good for». My recommendation is those looking to travel here visit the bank in advance and pack a roll of quarters.
This place is a bit too far in location (it, .like San Pedro located just across the Vincent Thomas Bridge,… is a good 20 – 25 minutes south of both Downtown LA — from the 710 and 110 freeways as well as West LA when traveling south on the 405 yet around the corner from Orange County when traveling on the 22, south on the 605… or north on the 405 freway) from other better suited attractions.
Final Note: LB Parking Enforcement is all too «ticket happy» as opposed to «trigger happy» to provide guests w/​a freshly printed «welcome document». Take heed

As far as I can tell from the description «beaches», this page is about the actual beach in Long Beach, not the city itself. Long Beach itself is fantastic. Gorgeous city, awesome people, great vibe.
Having said that, do NOT go to this beach for any reason except to run or bike on the paved path. It’s tempting, I know, to just head down and lay out for a bit, or maybe do some early morning beach yoga. Resist! I found out the hard way that since there is no beach combing, beach fleas are abundant here. The bites won’t show up for a few days so you might not even realize where they came from. The beach was the only thing I did differently prior to these bites and after some extensive googling, I realize it would have been well worth my time to just drive to Huntington, or even Seal Beach. Thankfully they don’t come home with you, but you don’t want this experience.
Side note: I mentioned the sand, stay out of the water, too. It’s disgusting. If you ever rent a boat by shoreline village and go around inside the breakwall, you’ll see some almost oily looking brown stuff floating on the water. That’s fecal matter. Because the cruise ships have to dump before they dock, and the breakwall makes the natural cleansing of a beach (dirty water waves out, clean water waves in) very difficult. Plus after it rains, all the trash and refuse of LA county drains into, you guessed it, Long Beach!
Stay. Away. From. This. Beach.

Lunch and and shopping Downtown long Beach near Pine. Some really decent restaurants but the hood is very seedy.
Saw a woman get choked on the sidewalk while two local Security Guards just watched. Bystanders had to break it up all the while yelling at the guards to do something and call the police. Completely useless guards. Your on your own.

Vous trouverez Long Beach en allant au sud de L. A C’est une ville assez grande, tellement grande qu’au début je pensais que ça faisait toujours partie de Los Angeles (y a quand même plus de 500 000 habitants. Pour une ville de banlieue c’est énorme!).
Est-​ce que ça vaut le coup de perdre du temps à L.A. pour aller à Long Beach? Non je trouve pas.
Est-​ce que ça vaut le coup de s’y arrêter si vous y passez? Oui, je trouve!
Je me souviens, je m’étais baladé autour de buildings (très américains), de palmiers (très californiens), de fast food (très américains again), mais j’avais trouvé ma balade sympa: je m’étais stoppée dans un bar ou j’avais du prendre un cocktail sans alcool (je n’avais pas ma carte d’identité, et pourtant j’avais 28 ans.). Je m’étais baladée près du Queen Mary!
Sympa pour une petite balade :)

I overall enjoy living downtown. There are quite a few bums, and a lot of ghetto people all over. outside of dt the place definitely gets more ghetto and seemingly more dangerous. Even as a guy I don’t always feel completely comfortable walking around the non-​downtown area at night.
But I can genuinely see the city trying to keep it’s downtown area nice. There’s a lot of city workers constantly cleaning the downtown streets. The marina is a beautiful place to walk with a lot of nearby restaurants and bars and entertainment venues that would make for a fun night out. IMO the marina is by far the nicest and best part of LB.
south/​east some and 2^nd street area by the beach is much much less ghetto. That’s a nice area but I rarely go there as parking is horrible.
If I had more money… and was single… lol, I would prefer Santa Monica or Venice, but those are obviously much much more expensive. For the price there is nothing nearly as good as DT LB imo. I would NOT recommend living outside of the DT area or 2^nd street beach area. Most the rest of LB is just super ghetto gang-​banger.
See the photo I attached which shows the general areas I would recommend living in, in a large green area. The two smaller green circles are ideal (and obviously anything on the beach).

Ok, so Long Beach is not the Prom Queen of So Cal beaches… water isn’t the cleanest or clearest, no tide pools, you have views of the man made oil islands and cargo ships. It IS a nice beach though for the important reasons.
Overall, it is pretty clean and sooooo much less crowded than all the other popular beaches. You can find free parking. It’s my go-​to beach. I love Long Beach! It serves it’s purpose :)

I used to live in Long Beach and honestly, Long Beach doesn’t have the same type of beach you would find in nearby surrounding cities (like Seal Beach & Huntington Beach). So I would call the beaches in Long Beach, fake beaches. But they are nice and quite small. Less people frequent these tiny little beaches and still offer plenty of sun and sand, wind and salty sea water.
I like to come here to bring my dogs to the dog beach part of the beach and let them run around and chase the waves and also bark at the waves. They really seemed to enjoy it and doubt they can tell the difference between this beach and the dog beach in Huntington Beach).
Long Beach’s beach is pretty clean and there aren’t a whole lot of bums around (as compared to Venice beach & Santa Monica’s beach).
Plenty of free street parking.
Overall, a nice beach to check out, especially if you want to avoid the crowds.

I’ve been to Long Beach numerous time for numerous reasons. Personally, Long Beach is probably one of my least favorite beaches because the water is pretty dirty and there isn’t as much attractions around when comparing it to Venice and Santa Monica.
The only reason I really go to Long Beach is to dock out for fishing other than that I would probably avoid it.

Less crowded than other beaches. Rented bikes and biked along ocean side path. Enjoyable.

I like to go kayaking out here in Long Beach, then go eat at the restaurants all along Belmont Shore area down on 2^nd Street.