Play in the Rain

An Amphicar would be really convenient in the rain.

A heavy rainstorm comes to Long Beach once or twice a year, so this is a limited opportunity. When the rain strikes, it's apparent that almost everybody in the city is clueless on how to conduct themselves.

City planners did a terrible job building the city and have failed to adapt. The streets and gutters don't allow water to flow, causing floods and puddles all over. Doesn't this make for conditions that are usually not fun when you're walking and driving? Yes.

Sometimes, you need to embrace these things and not worry about getting soaked. Stand on the corner of Redondo Avenue and Broadway Avenue under an umbrella or overhang and watch people have their days ruined by the rain. You will see pedestrians trying to cross the street carelessly and step in the puddle, or try to leap the puddle and fail.

Suck my wake.

Watching cars drive in the rain is awesome. Most people get so tentative because they aren't used to it that they drive 15 MPH. Some people don't notice the flooding and they fishtail and hydroplane and lose control. There are spots all over Long Beach with huge puddle buildups, and there were great clips on the news last year of people kayaking on flooded streets. If you have access to a kayak, go out and have fun.

Instead of staying cooped up inside because of rain, go outside and watch it ruin peoples' days. It's just water. And summer will be here in like three months, anyways.

Weird Hipster Events



Hipsters dressed up in their finest cut-off jean shorts and v-neck shirts for this formal event.

Have you been to a hipster event? Usually, they're held in musky museums, populated with mustachioed, fixed-gear riding, half-on/half-off beanie-wearing hipsters. Finding out about these events is tricky unless you've been to one before. They pass out so many flyers that you're aware of upcoming events for months.

These events are usually promoted as showcases with a combination of wine, snacks, music, and artists selling their work. The music comes from spoken-word poets, bands, and DJs. Weirder locations equal hipper parties.



Warning: Hipsters at one o'clock.


A recent event was "MixMas" on Dec. 11, held at Lyon Art Supply downtown. Walking into an empty store makes you think it's not the right place. You venture to the back, which has artists and food stands with tamales and Korean tacos. There's an open garage with several tables scattered to display art and sell wine, and a door leading into the "music" area.

The music area used a storage room as the stage with a projector screen up and to the side, showing an animated movie. The music had electronic music spun by the awesome DJ Ston3wall. He was followed by a weird spoken-word dude trying to align with the movie, who was so awful that even some hipsters left the room.

While you may not fit in if you don't have dreadlocks, the hipsters won't care that you don't pay for anything because they don't buy anything, and they're high. Enter at your own peril and don't go too often or you might become a hipster.


Set List for the strange music room.



DJ Ston3wall mixes his set of electronic music..











Long Beach Museum of Art... Wait... Long Beach has a museum?

 

Cecilia Miguez' "All About Time" mixes bronze, clocks, and wood to create the best threeway since Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser, and a camera. 



  The Long Beach Museum of Art is free on Fridays and Thursday evenings, but it’s only $7 otherwise. Even for the tightfisted, there’s no reason not to check it out and get some culture.

Located at 2300 Ocean Blvd., the museum has an upstairs and a café with views of the ocean. The setting is important, but art is the focus.

"Into The Woods" captures Stoney Lamar's inclusion of wood to create art.

Currently, the museum’s exhibitions are “A Light in the Shadow,” a collection of works created by female artists, “The Lipton Collection,” filled with wood art that was collected by Dr. Irving Lipton, and “Branching Out,” where sculptures mostly consist of wood.

On an analytical note, what qualities distinguish great pieces from trash? One large canvas above the stairs is covered almost in yellow with a diagonal line and a half of an oval in black. It is utterly atrocious. It gets people to discuss how bad it is. It might make you think that it has some deep meaning that you don't understand.

It doesn't. Claire Lamb asked, "What makes art a piece of shit?"

However, the museum features impressive sculptures. “All About Time," by Cecilia Miguez features bronze and clocks and Deborah Kupinsky's "Midnight Ride" shows attention to detail and a captivating imagination.

The museum is not crowded and the staff doesn't stalk you, so you own the place. Culture, fantastic artwork, space, time, garbage, and freedom can all be experienced with a quick visit to the Long Beach Museum of Art, for cheap, or free.

The Long Beach Museum of Art is fun and doesn't cost too much money when it's free.

Fingerprints Record Store

A trip to Fingerprints in Belmont Shore has a few different things to offer. Sitting in front of the store is a rack of used CDs and DVDs at a cheap price. There are several rows of atrocious music, cheaply priced at $0.99. The DVD selection isn't much better, and most are priced at $3.99. However, if you're able to find a good one in the stack, you get an unbelievable bargain.



I don't recognize any of these bands. I recognize that one...Wait, they're not very good.



Overall, the setup of Fingerprints is kind of strange. The racks aren't labeled that great and they are all over the place to fit inside the limited size of the store. Many of the new CDs and DVDs are overpriced.

Hey, maybe I'll buy that one. Nevermind.

To its benefit, Fingerprints has a much better selection compared to local electronic retailers. In addition to that, the store has a large collection of new and used vinyl and some collectible items. The store has been a local staple for 18 years, hosting some pretty awesome in-store concerts and promoting independent artists.

Next month, Fingerprints will move its location to downtown Long Beach, which will allow greater storage and inventory. Hopefully, the store will try to keep its quirky independent vibe. Sure, it doesn't match the variety and fun of Amoeba, but it also saves you from driving 45 minutes or more.

Visiting the Aquarium of the Pacific

Fish exhibit at the aquarium.



A trip to the Aquarium of the Pacific isn't cheap, but there are ways around it. They give two free tickets to employees of non-profit organizations, which, if you're reading this, probably isn't you. You probably don't work, period. Maybe you have a friend who does and they will bring you.

There are other ways to get into the aquarium if you don't want to pony up $24. During the summer, they charge the price of kids' admission after 6 p.m. They have free offers throughout the year, or you can cunningly sneak in by the area where they keep the lorikeets. This part of the aquarium is kind of creepy, the birds are loud and you are in an enclosed outdoor area. I blame Alfred Hitchcock for this fear.

There are some really awesome animals exhibited by the aquarium. The most captivatingly cool creatures are jellyfish, stingrays, otters, and sharks. There is an outdoor area where you are allowed to reach in the water and pet stingrays and sharks. It might be a little intimidating but they are small, and when you look to either side, you'll see an 80-year-old woman or a 6-year-old kid reaching in, and you realize it's no big deal.

Overall, the aquarium is a pretty fun experience. If you can score discounted tickets, it's definitely worth it. A downside is the amount of people, but if you ingest some interesting substances beforehand, maybe you won't care. Plus, the animals will look cooler.

A stingray swims at the aquarium.



Jellyfish exhibit at the aquarium.



Have Friends and Family Visit

Whenever friends and family visit, people tend to get excited. There's a lot of distance between somebody that you haven't seen in a while and it's nice to spend some quality time. This makes it worthwhile to take days off from work or switch your schedule around to accomodate visits.

"I switched to the night shift tomorrow, my sister's in town and I haven't seen her in a while," said Joey Collins. "Plus, I'll probably get a free lunch out of it."

This maximizes the amount of fun you can have when family visits. When parents visit, they usually stop by at Ralphs or Vons to buy a bunch of groceries and take you out to dinner at a place more expensive than you would usually visit. In return, you let them have your bed and sleep on the couch for a few days. Deal with it, the ends justify the means.

When a relative passes through your town, they'll take you out for lunch. And when a friend comes by to party and crashes on your couch, they usually try to keep your place clean and stock your refrigerator with beer. Your house or apartment may smell funky after this, and you might be wrecked after the excessive partying, but it's cheap fun.

The next time a friend or relative says they are coming through town, invite them to stay over. You can at least get a free meal out of it.

My dad has style.

Riding the Bus is... Interesting?

Picture from LBTransit.com

Have you ever relied on public transportation? It's pretty efficient for how many people need to use it to get to work, school, or wherever they need to be. Long Beach Transit covers a lot of ground, from downtown to Belmont Shore, and beyond.

Each ride is $1.25, only 20 cents more than the cost of freedom. A day pass will cost you $4.00, and you can ride all over Long Beach. The Passport busses are free to ride the downtown area. For students with a CSULB ID card, vagrants who have stumbled across one, or deadbeats who dropped out of school eight years ago but kept their card, the bus fare is scratched during the school year.



Look at these excited bus riders.



If you have some time to kill, need an idea for a story, or just want some human interaction, hop on the bus and go for a ride. Be careful of the human interaction, though. There are a lot of weird people on the bus, so it helps to have a set of headphones with you, even if you don't have a music player. This way, you look preoccupied and cut off from the rest of society.

Some of the strange things witnessed on busses include a man with four garbage bags looking like The Fisher King, a narcoleptic man with bleached hair falling asleep on people until they move, and old men striking up conversations with women who have cuts on their wrists. Weird.