Catching Up

Somehow, Memorial Day -- the moral equivalent of New Year's in Long Beach -- has come and gone without proper acknowledgement from me. The oversight is especially grievous since this year the momentous beginning of beach season arrived with uncharasterically magnificant weather -- a reason to shout out, if ever there was one.  Nonetheless, I managed to let it pass without comment.

So, too, did I miss the opportunity to publicly observe the closing -- and subsequent reopening -- of the Long Beach Cinema, developments so significant that they made the news pages not only of the Long Beach Herald and Long Beach Patch, but also of Newsday. I am too late to share the photos I took of the shuttered theatre, the paint peeling from its facade and the poster cases emptied of coming attractions, or even the ones of workmen on ladders redressing these wounds as they prepared the theatre for its second debut, which has since come and gone. Shame on me.

I also failed to rail about the sudden renovation of the restrooms on National Blvd. beach.Not that the refurbishment is unwelcome or unneeded. To the contrary, we neighborhood residents who have frequented National Blvd. beach and suffered the filthy cement-block restrooms season after season, we taxpayers who have repeatedly requested modernization of the unsanitary facility year after year, are suddenly being treated to a makeover. Why? Because the Quik Silver Pro Surfing Championship is coming to town this Labor Day, and the substandard men's and ladies rooms to which we locals have been subjected since anyone can remember are apparently not sufficient for the out-of-towners who will flood our beach for 10 days in September. Adding injury to insult, the renovations are taking place as I write this, and will keep the facilities closed until at least July 4 weekend.

Leave it to our wise City Council to inconvenience the taxpayers, when the work could easily have been completed in the spring, well before the Memorial Day beach start. Only in LB would upgrades be undertaken for the comfort of visitors, the sheer number of whom are almost certain to trample the very improvements that will have been completed for their benefit, presumably on our tax dollars. Leaving local residents, once again, to make do with substandard accommodations for which we have paid one way or another (in dollars, inconvenience or both). In other words, it's business as usual here in Long Beach.