Since i've lived here for over a year and am now raising a child in long beach, I can safely say the LBC is home. Yep, home to sublime, snoop dogg, warren g and now baby Kali. It's the perfect mix of beach town and grit that makes me comfortable. People from the LB are proud. I have never seen hometown pride like this. Everyone from here has an LBC tattoo of some sort. Usually that sh*t is in Old English but I've seen some pretty creative ones too. People walk around with shirts that say I heart Long Beach. I'm talking straight up thugs wearing shirts with a heart on it!! You would never see that anywhere else! And people who leave long beach always want to move back, it's a pretty cool place...Although after day 3 of Kali being home with us we headed to Orange County for her dr's appt (about 45 mins away but right near jose's job) and I secretly wanted to move there. It seemed so void of any potential danger, so clean and perfectly manicured. Not a homeless person or crackhead in sight. Strip malls everywhere and wide streets that you need a car in order to cross. No one is on foot, everyone has an SUV with at least 2.2 kids inside. It's home to the American dream. Could I be happy there? I have 4 museums in walking distance from my home in Long Beach, the entire OC - has zero. I live in the East Village Arts District, the Foo Fighters recently played at my coffee shop, there are street festivals every weekend and people walk, bike or skateboard everywhere. You don't see that kind of activity in the OC, life takes place in the comfort of people's giant homes or in the privacy of their pilates studio. But everything changes when you have a kid. Or so I'm told. Your happiness is supposed to come second. That could mean that we will end up in the sanitized existence that is Orange County. It's kid-friendly, safe, wealthy. Long Beach seems a little how do you say..."urban" in comparison. Perfect example, I was driving down the street one day and all of a sudden, across from me 4 cops are chasing this guy, 2 of them have their guns drawn and this guy drops to his knees with his arms up. Of course I am just sitting in my car staring, like this is TV. I mean this whole scene happened in the middle of the day in downtown long beach, across from the Hilton!! WTF. It didn't phase me then but now I'm like, WHAT IF MY CHILD WAS IN THE CAR? Not that bullets would have been flying, I mean it's 4 cops on 1 poor dude who didn't even have a gun. It was a little uncalled for, I mean come on this is long beach not the OC. But anyway, these are the things I have to consider now, bullets&babies. So stay tuned, the next post could be from suburbia and will be all about how perfect my life is behind the "orange curtain".
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