long beach
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National Poetry Month: “Walk”
Around the corner past the mailbox and the severed palms I would walk to school. Past the Mexican market and the panaderia the old Bank of America with its Art Deco marble panels riddled with bullet holes. Past the yellow brick Masonic Lodge and the three long blocks of Dooley’s Hardware – the “Largest Hardware…
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El Nino
Its Southern California and there is a raging river by my home – rain a miracle in the worst of times so much of it that the bleached-white teeth of the weathermen shimmer when the “Stormwatch ‘97” graphics flash on the TV screen. No one could’ve anticipated the deluge, running rapid down the channels of…
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Sketching A Civic Center
I love architecture. The envisioning, design, and construction of buildings fascinates and excites me. I am a student of the form though I have no official education in it. I remember that my love affair started as a child looking at the buildings in my hometown of Long Beach, California…especially the French-Gothic wonder that is…
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Armistice Day
The sky is a wonderful blue and the air is just the right touch of cool for November. Southern California days in the lateness of the year are a pleasure – which makes this parade exhilarating instead of tiring. Armistice Day, 1924! We came back from France changed, my old self, dead. I hardly remember…
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LB Civic Center: A New City Hall
The current Long Beach city hall is a fourteen story tower of rough concrete and steel, faced in Darth Vader-black glass overlooking a decrepit and frankly hideous civic center plaza. A marvel of 1970s design and engineering, its structural flaws threaten to topple it in event of a major earthquake. In my dream redesign of…
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LB Civic Center: A New Main Library
The current main library in downtown Long Beach is a dark concrete cave set into the vibrant urban fabric of the city. At one time it was considered a modern marvel and it’s brutalist aesthetic was the height of 20th century design. As part of my dream plan redevelopment of the current civic center I…
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1930’s Long Beach, Colorized
I love visualizing cities as they existed during the many decades of their lives. The city of Long Beach has changed dramatically in the years since these original photos were taken. I ‘borrowed’ them from the Los Angeles Public Library’s digital archive. The photos show a semi-aerial view close to Lincoln Park and the second…
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Acres of Memories
When I was younger I used to frequent a bookstore in Long Beach, California. It was called Acres of Books. This place was like Disneyland for book lovers! I believe it had over one million books in it’s inventories, with literally miles of shelving made of orange crates and all sorts of stacked odds and…
The Numinous Cosmos 