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Long Beach is a nice city, and I lived there for almost 10 years. It has a lot of picturesque streets, nice restaurants, museums, generally friendly people, and not nearly as much traffic as the more popular "beach cities." It has almost everything you could want from a beach city, except for the actual beach itself. Long Beach has a brick wall out in the ocean, which they call a "breaker", that keeps the ocean calm and motionless. There are no waves at all, and it's because of this the beaches of Long Beach have not become popular. That never bothered me in the past, because I rarely go swimming in the ocean anyway. What I always liked about Long Beach was the price. It was always cheaper to live there than any of the other beach cities. Whereas Santa Monica and Venice Beach were charging over a thousand a month for rent, you could get by with paying maybe seven or eight hundred in Long Beach.
Now...all that has changed.
The rents in Long Beach have skyrocketed. An apartment that I once paid $675 a month for is now $1400. And this seems to be the norm there throughout the entire city. This is a big mistake. This past weekend when I was out there visiting, I drove around many, many streets of Long Beach, and I literally saw hundreds of "FOR RENT" signs. People are leaving in droves. Why? Because it's too damn expensive. Long Beach is trying to become another Santa Monica, even building a new pier and a ferris wheel, and expanding the shops near the Aquarium and Queen Mary. The only problem is that people are not coming. The place is turning into a ghost town. Perhaps if they removed the "breaker", as many residents have suggested, and cleaned up the beach, then people would come. But right now Long Beach doesn't really offer a lot to entice tourists, with the exception being the Queen Mary and the Aquarium.
Once the economy improves, and if rent prices come down in Long Beach, I'd be happy to live there again. It's the lack of tourists and big crowds that attracted me to the city to begin with. But for now, I'm content with Austin, the #1 Best Bargain City to Live In (says Forbes Magazine.)
(Pictures: 1. The Long Beach skyline. 2. One of my old apartment buildings in LB. 3. Sara at El Dorado Park. 4 & 5. Two streets of Long Beach. 6. The "Potholder" Cafe.)
Now...all that has changed.
The rents in Long Beach have skyrocketed. An apartment that I once paid $675 a month for is now $1400. And this seems to be the norm there throughout the entire city. This is a big mistake. This past weekend when I was out there visiting, I drove around many, many streets of Long Beach, and I literally saw hundreds of "FOR RENT" signs. People are leaving in droves. Why? Because it's too damn expensive. Long Beach is trying to become another Santa Monica, even building a new pier and a ferris wheel, and expanding the shops near the Aquarium and Queen Mary. The only problem is that people are not coming. The place is turning into a ghost town. Perhaps if they removed the "breaker", as many residents have suggested, and cleaned up the beach, then people would come. But right now Long Beach doesn't really offer a lot to entice tourists, with the exception being the Queen Mary and the Aquarium.
Once the economy improves, and if rent prices come down in Long Beach, I'd be happy to live there again. It's the lack of tourists and big crowds that attracted me to the city to begin with. But for now, I'm content with Austin, the #1 Best Bargain City to Live In (says Forbes Magazine.)
(Pictures: 1. The Long Beach skyline. 2. One of my old apartment buildings in LB. 3. Sara at El Dorado Park. 4 & 5. Two streets of Long Beach. 6. The "Potholder" Cafe.)
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