Long Beach - Where the Queen Mary Lives

Long Beach, California is a city that used to apologize for it self. Long Beach, once home to one of the largest U.S. Navy bases and Naval shipyards in the world as well as McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft, was also often referred to as “Iowa by the sea”, because so many Iowans had moved to Long Beach and surrounding areas to avoid the harsh midwestern winters.

Long Beach is currently home to over 600,000 residents. Where the downtown district once was crowded with sailors and merchant seamen from around the globe, sophisticated retail and hospitality establishments now flourish and the streets teem with shoppers and diners who seek quality in life.

Today, Long Beach is a city driving as hard and fast into the future as the cars that race it’s streets during the Long Beach/Toyota Grand Prix. People from all around the world immediately recognize the postcard view of the Long Beach shoreline because of the presence of the iconic Queen Mary. It’s 2007 and Long Beach no longer has anything to apologize for.

The city is a Southern California hub. A rapidly expanding port, one of the largest anywhere, brings foreign goods to eager U.S. consumers as it also ships America’s products to a waiting world. Half way, between Los Angeles and Disneyland, Long Beach is a destination for countless conventioners and tourists who treasure its waterside beauty and modern amenities.

A thriving downtown nightlife and entertainment culture gives the city a most cosmopolitan feel. Because of this, hip homebuyers snap up loft-type condominiums soon after they come to market. The city-wide restaurant scene is a complimenting mix of well-respected national chains and fabulous freestanding operations. Small, boutique eateries dot the local landscape and offer the adventurous diner a diverse culinary experience.

The rest of the country may look upon Southern California (or SoCal) as merely being just a homogenous continuation of the Greater Los Angeles Sprawl, but the discerning traveler is fast realizing that Long Beach stands alone as a singular point of interest.

Make Long Beach part of your itinerary when visiting “The Left Coast”. If you already live somewhere in Southern California, make a point of coming to “The Beach” for an evenings entertainment. You’ll soon become one of the many who understand that Long Beach is nobody’s stepchild anymore.

-Gordonn Blue

Technorati Profile