Links related to Long Beach, CA

• Books
  • Long Beach Public Library (online catalog) - downtown next to city hall
  • Acres of Books is a large used bookstore located at 240 Long Beach Blvd (between the Post Office and Bank of America , next to the vastly inferior Book Baron). Books on topics such as history, literature, and other subjects which age gracefully are well represented. Unfortunately, coverage of technical subjects and other similar topics are very lacking. Don't go there expecting to find good science or mathematics textbooks. However, keep in mind that I once found a copy of "Introduction to Algorithms" by Rivest et al for twelve dollars so there are exceptions.
• Restaurants
  Pine Avenue
  • Alegria - Spanish. I went there for an enjoyable lunch while apartment hunting. I should go again sometime.
  • L'Opera - fine Italian. A little expensive but not unreasonable. The food and service are both excellent.
  • The Madison - Steakhouse. Expensive although probably worth it for the ambiance. The soup, salad, and dessert were very good but the steak was surprisingly mediocre. Perhaps, I will have better luck next time.
  • more later...
• Local News
  • The Long Beach Press-Telegram
  • The Long Beach Downtown Gazette
  • longbeachlocal.com
• Travel
  • If you will be traveling in the general LA area, there are useful highway system traffic maps available.
  • Downtown long beach provides free local bus service between some destinations such as Pine Avenue, the Aquarium of the Pacific, and the Queen Mary.
  • There is also very good information available online about the Metro system in LA. The metro blue line can be used to travel from downtown Long Beach to the metro green line. From the Aviation station of the green line, one can take a shuttle bus to LAX. I made this trip for both Thanksgiving 2002 and 2003. Everything went smoothly both times for the most part which allowed me to avoid the stress of dealing with 405 traffic and the expense of parking at LAX. However, on my second trip I just barely made the last train home because I was flying a red-eye, which was delayed an hour and a half, so keep in mind the inability of major airlines to be on time when making your travel plans in addition to checking the metro schedule.
• Entertainment / Fun
  • The Pine Street AMC and the new Cinemark At The Pike are the most convenient movie theaters in the downtown area. They are both in easy walking distance from most of downtown. The Cinemark is a much nice theater (having just finished construction) but is slightly more expensive. The AMC is still very nice though. There are also other area theaters available via a short car trip.
  • The Aquarium of the Pacific is one of the more fun local attractions. They have all sorts of neat marine life to look at. I especially like the jellyfish exhibit and the various open tanks where you can touch sea anemone, sea cucumbers, star fish, rays, and other creatures. For some reason, they also have a large aviary which contains a large number of rainbow lorikeets. These birds are great fun as long as you don't mind them landing all over you or biting you occasionally while fighting over the bird feed you can buy for them. They also recently added a shark exhibit which is pretty neat. An aquarium membership is a great deal in most cases unless you are visiting only once a year by yourself.