Beachcombing

The baseball season is drawing to a close, meaning my evenings will resort to Netflix’s movies, TV series, concert replays and stand-up comics. My son recently saw comic Jon Lovitz perform in Orange County and we are looking for opportunities to attend similar performances in the future.

Enter Jonathan Pekar, a stand-up comic, film producer and Emmy winning writer and director of over 100 songs and orchestral arrangements. Recently moving to Belmont Shore from Santa Monica, Jonathan was complimentary of our last Beachcomber issue and was interested in submitting occasional stories. Our brunch last Saturday amounted to a private stand-up session that had me laughing much of the time.

Here are some of his observations as a new resident, entitled “Ten Great Things About Long Beach.”

• The People – Personality goes a long way.
• The Beach – Those life enhancing sunsets are easy on the eyes and soul.
• The Restaurants – How does everyone stay so skinny down here with all this variety of great food?
• The Art Galleries – Awe-inspiring and the local artists are very credible.
• The Dog Parks – Happiness unleashed for all involved, dogs rule.
• The Music Scene – Pick a genre, this place has it covered.
• The Bridges – Architecturally magnificent how beauty and math collide both day and night.
• The Bars – I just saw a rerun of Cheers. Take that kind of good vibe and mix it with better clothes.
• The Skate Parks – No wonder the skateboarders around here are so good, this city understands the importance of skate parks and utilizes space for enthusiasts and spectators to have some fun.
• The Fishing – I am probably supposed to keep this under wraps, so forget about this one all-together and thank you Long Beach for being a fantastic place to call home.

Welcome Jonathan. We look forward to your contributions to our future content.

The election is upon us and we are supporting Suzie Price for mayor, plus 3rd District Candidate Kristina Duggan, 5th District Candidate Ian Patton and 9th District Candidate Ginny Gonzales. Also, John Briscoe for Congress and Alex Villanueva for sheriff.

We also encourage you to vote “no” on Long Beach ballot measures LBC, LBU, E and BB, for reasons outlined in the two page one stories of this edition written by Steve Downing and Ian Patton.

Generally, on all the state-wide propositions, I’m voting “nope.”

If you enjoy being over-taxed and lied to, then vote the opposite way. In any case, vote.

My daughter in Rancho Mission Viejo claims that they had 600 kids show up for Halloween treats this year. We had ten.

The smart kids avoid our area due to the distance between front doors. In the time it takes them to visit each house in our neighborhood they can get to 3-4 homes in Belmont Shore.

The advantage of having fewer goblins at your front door is getting more time to watch Monday Night Football while monitoring the front section via Ring security cameras.

• The 5 o’clock hour captured Pete the Peacock, but he couldn’t reach the doorbell button to get food.
• The 6 o’clock hour captured two middle-school girls and four grade schoolers.
• The 7 o’clock hour captured someone dressed as a mailman who left stuff but did not stick around for candy.
• The 8 o’clock hour captured four high school kids with very creative outfits.

The bottom line is that we ended up with candy dish treats to be consumed the entire month of November while some of the kids in my daughter’s neighborhood suffered from high sugar levels on Tuesday. This, apparently, is why their local school district wisely declared Tuesday as a non-school day.

publisher@beachcomber.news