On foggy nights, climbing up the back stairs to steerage on JetBlue's red-eye to New York or Florida, you feel like Louie and Rick on the tarmac in Casablanca.
So it's dismaying to learn from a report in the Times that "[b]usiness leaders, led by the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and JetBlue, want a modernized airport terminal of up to 133,000 square feet that offers more amenities." <The Los Angeles Times>
This is about money, natch. The business leaders in question argue that the city has failed to take advantage of business opportunities, such as concessions -- there is a restaurant, a fast-food outlet, a gourmet coffee kiosk, and a gift shop, and is thus missing out on tax revenue. They also are trying to make an argument for the project out of the fact that fewer than 1% of the facility's 3 million annual passengers stayed overnight last year, though its hard to see why more flights would make anyone look with greater favor on the prospect of hanging around Long Beach.
According to the Times' Nancy Wride, foes of a proposed expansion of the "cozy" terminal worry it will lead to pressure to lift the city's limit on flights, currently maxed out at 41 (compared to the OC's 130 and LAX's 900), and lead to violations of legal noise limits. It's not hard to sympathize with people who hope their neighborhood won't turn into Inglewood.
Proponents of the project want to increase the capacity of the Art Deco facility by adding an annex of up to 133,000 square feet. According to Wride, the existing building, which provides about 58,000 square feet of passenger area including 23,750 square feet of temporary wooden space that resembles a ferry terminal, is a historic landmark, which means even its color can't be changed without the approval of several commissions. And architectural review boards and landmark commissions almost never say yes to anything.
Facing a city council that seems disinclined to support the full extent of the Chamber/JetBlue proposal, the developers are threatening a referendum, an end run around representative government that will not only cut elected officials out of the process but also eliminate the unpleasantness of an environmental review to determine how much the project will degrade the quality of life in Long Beach and vicinity by adding to the noise, traffic congestion, and dirty air.
Even though it is off the beaten track for most Los Angeles and Orange Country travelers, the airport has boosted JetBlue by providing cheap and easy parking, short lines, painless baggage handling, and quick boarding and deplaning. Will people from Beverly Hills and Irvine continue to make the trek to Long Beach to get the same endless corridors, parking sharking and other niceties already much closer to hand at LAX and John Wayne? Compare your recent two-a-half hour ordeal in Southwest's LAX abattoir with the comfort of being dropped at the door in Long Beach.
If you ask me, Long Beach would be better off leaving the airport more or less as is. Some revenue could be generated by improving the ground floor amenities -- the gift shop and fast food outlets -- and by inviting a world-class restauranteur to turn the beautifully situated, three-tiered eatery on the second level into a regional dining destination. With its excellent view of one of the busiest fields in the country for private aircraft and its almost unlimited parking, the Long Beach Airport restaurant would be hard to beat for a romantic evening out.
If you like the airport in Long Beach the way it is, you should let city officials and JetBlue know. Not only would keeping the airport intact benefit residents and travelers, but JetBlue may find that unintended consequences -- like increased competition: the city will be hard-pressed to keep other airlines out of an expanded airport -- and the loss of frequent fliers like me, who may not see low fares alone as sufficient to justify the long haul to what in New York would be one of the outer boroughs, for no other reason than to save a couple of bucks on a plane ticket -- aren't worth the trouble.
In the 1960s, a local milkman named Pieter Celis, about whom more in a moment, revived a traditional brewing style of the region that ordinarily combined equal portions of raw wheat and malted barley (sometimes with an admixture of oats), spiced it up with dried Curaçao orange peels and ground coriander seeds and -- something else…what? cumin, maybe -- and then fermented the lot with a conventional yeast.
dominates, but the coriander and citrus, often pursued by a mild phenolic aroma, contribute to a complex, elegant, nearly winy disposition. Heady, virtually Bazooka-level sweetness, bestowed by the cereal grass, frequently with plum, apple or banana appoggiaturas, is nicely undercut by the piquant orange and herb colorations – you'll think you're catching intimations of cinnamon, cloves, pepper and nutmeg -- and by a faintly astringent dryness. That trailing nose is bright and highly fruity, with a pleasing hint of muskiness. Behind it all, a muted and nectarious bitterness, reminiscent of the absent hops, is probably contributed by the amaroidal orange peel.
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"PreserveLA.com is a forum and clearinghouse for the latest news, information, and techniques concerning historic preservation and the history of Los Angeles and Southern California." -- from the website. <
Downtown Santa Monica is a jumble of paid wi-fi opportunities, most of them requiring expensive daily or monthly fees.
who in turn found her freedoms disappearing as male workers returned to the factories. These conflicts worked themselves out in dark ways. The Black Dahlia is the most famous victim of 1947's sex wars, but hardly the only one. The 1947project seeks to document this pivotal year in L.A., through period reporting and visits to the scenes as they are today." -- from the website. <
over the 10 Freeway. At about Seventh Street, where the footbridge used to connect SaMoHi with downtown, and about halfway between each of the other vehicular bridges, Caltrans and/or the City of Santa Monica should build new supplementary links for walkers, bikers and skaters. Such overpasses would help to suture divisions unhealed since the road sliced through the town in the 1960s.
Offering evidence that internet access may soon be as ubiquitous and as essential as the pay phone once was, the 278-park system plans to make wifi access available -- for a fee -- to visitors who have wireless-enabled laptops or personal digital assistants, beginning with 85 venues to be outfitted by SBC.
Check out The Distillery LA (aka, Institute for the Pursuit of Absolutes and Nothingness) to see some of the works of Venice-based artists Gary Palmer (whose 
Antonio Villaraigosa was the right choice the last time he and Hahn faced off, and he is the right choice again. This would be true if all we knew of was his commitment to minority rights and his record as a coalition-builder in the assembly. But Villaraigosa is not only one of the few politicians in California who is willing to address issues of class, race and gender, he has also stood by labor, and he is a strong advocate for clean air and clean water, a crucial stand to take at a moment when GOP-controlled state and national governments are undoing environmental laws it took a century to set in place. 
I'd never advocate choosing a candidate on the basis of one issue. But sometimes local matters say something about the bigger picture. The Ballona Wetlands Land Trust asked the candidates if they support the protection of the Ballona Wetlands and oppose the Playa Vista development expansion.
Although the L.A. Convention & Visitors Bureau seems uncharacteristically shy about taking credit, the website guide to the Los Angeles region it has created is very useful, especially for its emphasis on public transporation (did you know, for instance, that with a Metro Day Pass you can experience LA for only $3 a day?). <
Here's a directory of missions, articles on mission architecture, images of California missions, stories about mission life, and information about archaeological projects, including 3-D tours of some missions, a glossary, and related links. <
