Long Beach?

I lived in Long Beach for four years, from 2010-14.

You can get to Irvine or El Segundo in an hour-I did both commutes.

The gay community is super incestuous and small. They all know and have fucked each other.

The most important amenity in a house or apartment is parking-street parking is terrible.

Belmont Shore is full of straight people. Belmont Heights is adorable as is Bluff Heights, but again, parking is key-don’t even consider it if you don’t have a parking space or garage. Alamitos Beach is the main gay neighborhood but has the worst parking in the city-also, when the Grand Prix and Pride you’ll need to be out of town or take off work to avoid the closed streets.

When looking at a place you want to look below 4th st and East of Cherry Avenue if you can.

Avoid North Long Beach, it’s rough. Avoid Bixby Knolls, it’s boring and you’ll have to drive to anything of interest .

I liked it and I’d live there again.

Thanks R1 - is it safe? How's the beach? Restaurant scene?

If you stay around Alamitos Beach, is it a good time?

The “beach,” as it is, is not much. There is a breakwater so it doesn’t get waves. You wouldn’t want to sunbathe there but it’s a great place to ride a bike or walk a dog.

There are some decent restaurants in Downtown Long Beach, and some good bars. The gay bars are ok . I didn’t really care for Alamitos Beach-it’s very crowded and no parking, but I did like Belmont Heights.

Another fun Area is the 4th street corridor -its an area of fun restaurants and coffee shops and the Art Theatre.

I like the laidback vibe of Long Beach.

My Dad’s shop was in El Segundo.

Memories.

LB is lots of older gays and many lesbos. It's fairly working class but has some nice areas. Lots of sexy young Latinos.

HEY! I live in Long Beach! Let me be the first to welcome you.

Stick to Belmont Shore, or Belmont Heights (Where I'm located). Alamitos Beach is where most of the gay bars are located. If you move there be ready for awful parking situation and the occasional homeless/crackhead. Same with Downtown and the East Village.

Naples and Bixby Knolls are more conservative enclaves. North Long Beach is Snoop Dog-land.

I'll tell you this - I grew up in SoCal, and have lived in LB for 17 years now. I've had some really shitty commutes to Burbank, and Santa Monica. I still refuse to move because I love it here.

Thanks R7! I'm splitting my time between LA and Palm Springs, where my partner and my mom live (not together).

Most likely I'll be going to PS every weekend. The drive on the 10 from WeHo just fills me with dread. I thought LB would be better situated for job searching south of airport and OC.

I'm older - going to be 50 this year - so the bar scene isn't super important, but I do want gay life. Anything more to add would be great. I feel like I'm going to have to drive out from PS next week to check it out.

Right now, I need to learn where my living options truly are - and LB was suggested to me and it really looks like it would be a decent fit. I don't need to be a BH and WeHo snob - not my thing.

R8/OP - I should have said I will be splitting my time between LA and PS. I've got a place in San Diego now, but I need to be in a place with more job opportunities.

The drive from Long Beach to Palm Springs isn’t much better, OP.

To sound like someone from the SNL Skit “The Californians”-take the 22 to the 57 to the 60 to the 10. Avoid the 91, it is literally congested 24/7.

Irvine in UNDER an hour? No. It takes at least an hour, more like 1.25-1.5 hours to the area around the airport (the "close" part of Irvine). The 405 is horrendous. That said, I have lived in LB since the early 90s and don't plan on leaving. I've lived in Downtown for almost 20 years and before that Ocean Blvd in Alamitos Beach (just about 1-1.5 miles down the road). It has changed a lot over the years. Much more expensive now, some areas "gentrified" in the downtown area that previously I wouldn't walk around in the middle of the day that now seem very safe. Tons of construction downtown. Alamitos Beach is already very built out and doesn't change much. Like others have said, if you even think about Alamitos Beach your life will be absolute hell on earth if your place doesn't come with parking. The "gay life" aspect of LB seems to have dwindled...but part of that is just related to the fact that the gay community is no longer as segregated from the rest of the world as it was in the 90s. I like the diversity and it's home.

How Long Beach earned the nickname ‘Iowa By the Sea’

By Tim Grobaty / 10 months ago

I received a phone call from a history student at Cal State Long Beach who was thinking of doing a paper on why Long Beach’s nickname was “Iowa By the Sea” and wondered if the Long Beach-Iowa connection was actually once a big thing.

It was. For decades, from the late 1920s and on into the post-war years you couldn’t swing a cat in this town without leaving a patch of fur on a Hawkeye.

Most of my relatives motored to this coast from Iowa from the 1930s and on into the 1960s. My mom was from Iowa, my great-grandmother, grandmother and grandfather all came from Iowa. On into the 1980s I still had numerous cousins, and great-aunts and uncles living there.

So connected with Iowa was Long Beach, even in the 1980s, that in 1982, when the University of Iowa appeared in its first Rose Bowl, the Long Beach newspaper I was working for sent me and a photographer to Iowa to cover the Rose Bowl. We watched the Hawkeyes go down in defeat with despondent farmers on an inevitable sunny day in Pasadena while sheltered in the Midwest from a brutal Iowa winter that closed off the road to town.

R12 - well, to be honest, many call San Diego "Iowa by the sea" or some other midwest reference.

And the USS Iowa is now a museum/tourist attraction right next door in San Pedro (adjacent to where cruise ships dock.)

[quote]My Dad’s shop was in El Segundo.

El Segundo-Where the Sewers Meet the Sea!

OP back again. So - Belmont Shores looks nice. Is it convenient?

I don't have to be directly by gay bars. But what's the scene around Belmont Shores? Good shopping, bars and restaurants?

It seems like a laid back place, but only 2-3 miles from anywhere else I'd want to be.

R16 Belmont Shore has a lot of restaurants and bars (with a general clientele) on 2nd street. It's all very walkable. Within a mile or two you have 2nd and PCH, our new outdoor "mall." Also, Rosie's Dog Beach is there as well for your pooch, if you have one.

I would get a job first and then move the area where you'll be working. Sitting in traffic suuuuuuuucks!

I left my wallet in El Segundo.

Long Beach parking sucks!!!!! The gay scene is full if queeny nasty latinos. Its s city full of rejects. Yes - they've all slept w each other nasty uncut stank.

R20 must not get out much. But parking does suck in some areas (Belmont Shore, Alamitos Beach). If you get a place make sure it comes with assigned parking, not street, or you will hate your life. Downtown you can easily find monthly parking for rent so that's more workable if you get a place without parking.

OP here. I went to LB yesterday to check it out. I was really surprised at how clean it was and how much there was to do. Parking was an obvious nightmare.

However, and maybe because it was Sunday, there just didn't seem to be any 'vibe'. There wasn't much energy. I hate to say this, but it seemed rather dull and boring.

Did I go on the wrong day? And I liked Belmont Shores area - but beyond 2nd street, there weren't a ton of shops or restaurants. Just 1 street. Obviously there's a lot over in Seal Beach, but that's not walkable.

That’s the feeling I get every time I’ve been in Long Beach. Just blah. Doesn’t feel like waterfront and otherwise notHung really gives a reason to be there. But there are worse places.

R22 There's a whole different district in Downtown LB (Mostly on Pine St) with more bars, restaurants, and shops. Additionally, Retro Row has the Art Theatre, Lola's etc.

The vibe down here is a typical beach community in the California winter.

Don’t do it, Long Beach gives a pleasant first impression, and then the bitchy queens come out of the woodwork. There’s are really, really bitchy one that tends bar on 3rd St, watching over the jukebox. Meanwhile, chubby gentlemen wait all day in dimly lit rooms for anonymous sex. There are much better places to live. Wait...did you say you like dramatic Latinos? You’ll find them there, arguing with the cops.

R25 This is dead on omg

Seal Beach is a cute little town with a nice walkable downtown that ends in a pier. There's also a huge gated retirement community there (over 9,000 residents in one square mile) if you're into that sort of thing.

Bitch, Club Ripples finally closed. 🤷‍♂️

R28 Thank god. The place was a shit hole with even shittier owners.

more

even more

Of course someone referred to Leisureworld.