2nd Street: Times Are They A Changing?

Talk to any old timer in Long Beach and they’ll tell you stories of the 2nd Street they remember:  The tiny Hof’s Hut where they’d bring their girlfriend for a thick malt, the open-air bowling alley, Wink’s Fish and Chips, and the old Egyptian Pharmacy.  All of these places are lost to memory having been replaced with new storefronts, restaurants and, in many instances, bawdy bars.  There’s a debate among residents as to whether 2nd Street is still the family-friendly destination it once was, or on the fast-track to becoming the Jersey Shore of the west.

Q. Is 2nd Street still as enchanting as you remember, or is it starting to resemble Pottersville from the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life?”

Elizabeth Borsting

A. This is one issue I’ve been very vocal about lately, and I feel it’s justified.  In early March I awoke a little after 2am to find someone trying to break into our house.  Turned out it was a twentysomething male from Newport Beach with a .26 blood alcohol level who, after resisting arrest by LBPD, had to be subdued with a taser gun on our front walkway.  My husband and I were cleaning up his blood from our cement walkway at 3am.  As a result my 8-year-old daughter is afraid to go to sleep at night until she checks that all the doors and windows have been locked.  It’s a nightly ritual she does not once, but twice.  Sometime in the early morning she wanders into our room and crawls in bed with us because she’s afraid.  Our 13-year-old son hasn’t been as affected by this incident, and I’m thankful for that.  One of the bar owners along 2nd Street tried to convince me this person may have come from a house party (really?) and there were reports he was at a baseball game (I didn’t know innings lasted until after 2am).  Common sense tells you this person wandered up our street once the bars closed.  Bottom line is that I feel city officials would like to turn 2nd Street into an entertainment district, but this is a neighborhood and most entertainment districts (i.e. San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, LA Live, Old Town Pasadena, and our very own Pine Avenue) are there to serve the convention center audience and are not embedded within a residential neighborhood.  I no longer walk my children past Panama Joe’s (even on a Sunday afternoon) because of the smoking, drinking and flying f-bombs.  I no longer recognize the clientele at Legends as I never see a familiar face anymore.  As for the Acapulco Inn (the old AI) it never posed a problem when it was concealed behind closed doors, but now the drunks spill out onto the sidewalk with the installation of those ugly garage doors (who from the planning commission approved that!?).  I brought my concerns to a recent city council meeting in the hopes that our 3rd District Councilman Gary DeLong would by sympathetic to the residents of Belmont Shore by not granting Panama Joe’s an extension of its entertainment license with dancing.  Mr. DeLong supported the entertainment license (only two councilpersons voted against it) even after he and I spoke following the attempted break in at our house.  He seemed sympathetic and recognized that there was a problem of over-serving alcohol on 2nd Street.  So, I was utterly taken back by his vote and even more astonished by his reasoning.  So, do I feel 2nd Street is as enchanting as I remember?  Hardly.    

Patricia Tsoiasue

A. Now that you mention it…

I don’t live in the center of the Shore, but we often walked over for breakfast, lunch or dinner in a more leisurely (pre-child) lifetime.  It was nice....A pick of restaurants… we had a few favorites… La Scala, BJ’s, the Shorehouse Cafe, Legends.  We don’t really go to Legends any more.  It’s changed….I do hear about the problems with public drunkenness, urinating in public parking lots and wasn’t there someone who entered the wrong house?  I would ask why it would be important for the bars to congregate on 2nd Street?  Wasn’t Pine Avenue supposed to be the Long Beach entertainment district?  If folks are going to ‘come to you’ because you have a great Facebook network (and bull riding), can they come to you in an area where there would be less impact on the surrounding community?  And no, I really don’t want my 4th grader to be conjuring up mental images of bikini-clad bull riders. [Editor's note: a mechanical bull may or may not be installed at Panama Joe's. A YouTube video shows what the poster said was a mechanical bull being unloaded then loaded back up in a truck when the driver saw he was  being videotaped].

Susie Ridgeway

A. Overall, I think Belmont Shore is still a family friendly location for yogurt, dinner, shopping ,etc.  Later on in the evening and especially on the weekends, there are a few locations where the clientele has spread out onto the sidewalk and it looks like they may have had a few too many drinks.  When I walk by these places, I do keep an eye on my children and make sure they are close to me. I think the climate has changed a bit in a few locations where patrons are "hanging out" on the sidewalk or waiting in line and taking up space on the sidewalk.  In those locations, the environment is not as family friendly.