I (HEART) LB

I don't want to sound like an American Express commercial here, but I gotta tell ya, I love the city of Long Beach. I made an impromptu visit on Sunday and it was like coming home and not realizing how long you've really been away. I got off the 710 at Shoreline Drive, opened the sunroof and I was loving life. As usual, there were about a half a dozen new assmart stores that had popped up (Famimma!), but it wasn't the things that had changed that stood out to me. It was the things that will always be the same. Everybody's from some place, but not everyone can say they truly have a hometown.

It's Parker's Lighthouse and Joe Jost's. It's the Naples Christmas Boat Parade and the Long Beach Grand Prix. It's Dirtbag Baseball at Blair Field and the home of the 1992 and 1993 Little League World Champions. It's both Snoop D-O-Double-G and still Cameron Diaz, for better or for worse. It's standing in line (WHY?!) at Shannon's Baywhore and the back alley anonymity of Alex's Bar. It's El Dorado Park and The Aquarium of the Pacific. It's 4th of July Fireworks at Vet's Stadium and the running of the grunion! It's the quiet, rustling charm of 2nd Street Belmont Shore and it's never knowing how beautiful an oil island could be. I know Joe will be upset if I don't mention Gaytonia. Long Beach is sophisticated enough to be interesting, but not enough to be full of itself. It has the familiar regularity of small town America and yet it's still a vibrant menagerie of personalities and lifestyles. It's still big enough to get lost in for a while. If cities were rock n' roll stars, Long Beach would be the Bruce Springsteen to L.A.'s David Bowie. It's a fun place to be young and a great place to grow old. It's where my best friends in the world are from and where their parents still live. It's the...ah fuck it.

I was going to do more with this post, but it's late and I just realized that if you're reading this, chances are I'm not telling you anything you don't already know and this might have been a waste of time.