Beloved Press-Telegram columnist Tim Grobaty recently published Long Beach Chronicles: From Pioneers to the 1933 Earthquake. He’ll be hosting the weekly Pub Quiz at Gallagher’s Pub & Grill on Wednesday, May 23rd and, on the 24th, he’ll be doing a reading and signing at Gatsby Books. He’ll also be at the Long Beach Historical Society on Friday, June 1st, as part of Bixby Knolls’ First Fridays.
If I had to be honest, I’d probably admit that I was just a bit jealous of Tim. Not because of his sweet gig writing a column for the Press-Telegram, but because he consistently knows what’s interesting, fun, exciting, and good. He’s got his fingers on the cultural pulse of the city. Also, his columns often start in one place, and end somewhere entirely different, which makes them fun to read. When I grow up, I want to be just like Tim Grobaty.
Like his columns, the book doesn’t delve too deeply into any one subject but, instead, brings the texture and vibrancy of the city to life. The prose flows easily, and is clearly written with both humor, and genuine love of the subject. One can almost feel Tim smiling as he writes. His enthusiasm is infectious.
Tim did some of his research in the Press-Telegram library, also known as The Morgue. I asked him what first drew him there.
“I was a copy boy for the PT in 1976,” Tim said. “Editors and reporters would demand ancient facts and I’d have to go to the morgue to find the answers. I became pretty good at finding weird things in the old clippings.
“The librarians who ran the place rarely updated the file folder names. You had to think like someone a few generations older. If someone wanted something about Deadheads coming to Long Beach to see the band, I’d find stories in the ‘Beatniks’ folder.
“Almost any time you look in an old file of clippings,” said Tim, “you’ll find lots of strange and/or interesting stories. I collected a lot of these and sprinkled them through the book as ‘Old News Is New News.'”
I asked Tim why he chose this specific time span.
“I couldn’t really go the whole distance,” he said, “or the book would be too big. The earthquake, being pretty much the biggest event in Long Beach history, seemed like a good breaking off point. I’ll be doing another book on the Boomer years — 1952 or so, when the building boom was going on on the East side, through 2000. I don’t think I’ll do one on the intervening years.”
Most people today have little or no understanding of the scope of the 33 quake. Many of the buildings he features in the book were completely destroyed by it. I asked him how he placed it into a context people today can understand.
“It was thought to have been about a 6.4 quake,” Tim answered, “which doesn’t sound huge now. But it destroyed or severely crippled 230 school buildings and drove thousands from their homes. To say nothing of the 120 people who lost their lives. People lived outdoors for weeks, in their yards or in the park. It would probably take a 7.8 quake to do that sort of damage today.”
I asked Tim if there were any lessons, from the history he discovered, for residents or municipal leaders today.
“I was struck,” he said, “by how often and enthusiastically Long Beach citizens supported bonds to improve the city, its schools and its projects. Bonds for new schools, parks, piers, services. People were willing to pitch in and pay for things. Now no one wants to pay for anything and they use government ‘waste’ as an excuse. Measure J made me sick.”
I asked him what changed to create that shift.
“Human nature, I guess,” Tim mused. “Or maybe a sense of community. At certain levels, Long Beach has a real sense of community, but not across the board. I can’t think of a single issue or event that the whole city gets behind. That could be a function of size and diversity, or the fact that there’s so many things to be involved with.
“In the early days of the town, everybody went to everything. When the Lincoln statue was unveiled, something like 50,000 people were in Pacific Park (renamed Lincoln Park with the statue’s arrival) to see it. When the P-T building had its opening open house in 1925, 20,000 people visited it. In early days, virtually everyone in town attended the high school graduation, and the event took up pretty much the entire newspaper that day.”
I asked Tim if it is possible that, as the city began to encourage increased density, and as the investment (financial and emotional) made by residents decreased, they felt less connected to the goings on.
“Sure,” he admitted. “And there’s just so much going on now, whether it’s just staying home looking at violent German porn on the Internet or going to an Angel game. Or Disneyland or other amusement parks. Or anything. There’s a million things to do.
“Old folks tell me the city would make millions if they brought the Pike back, but I don’t think it would do well at all. Times have changed too much. The Pike would have to cost $3 billion to build and it would cost $100 to get in. No one’s going to bring back penny-pitch machines, nickel pinball and fried shrimp stands that would be closed by the Health Department.”
I asked Tim why so many people in Long Beach think of it as a cultural backwater when the truth is that our cultural landscape is as diverse and vital as any great city, anywhere.
“Because,” he said, “we spent so much time as a cultural backwater, probably. The Iowa-by-the-Sea thing was real and Iowans and Methodists had a big impact in terms of mores and laws in the town’s early days — in the whole era that my book covers.
“And being next to L.A. doesn’t help. Neither does the view coming into town on the 710, or anywhere along the freeway. Its a city that doesn’t always make a great first impression. You have to get to know it to appreciate it, and people in L.A. and other big towns don’t bother to take the time to get to know it. Even many people in Long Beach don’t take the time to know their own city. There are people on the east side, and in the Shore, who haven’t been downtown since the 1960s.
“I think it’s changing,” Tim observed. “The East Village in particular has changed dramatically in the past two decades and younger people are moving downtown. Downtown still has a long way to go, but at least it’s getting there, which is more than you would’ve said 20 years ago.”
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Local independent book stores, including Apostrophe Books and Gatsby Books, have Tim’s book in stock. You can also find it in Barnes and Noble, at the Historical Society of Long Beach, and Rancho Los Cerritos.
It can also be purchased from online retailers including Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com in both print and digital versions. It is also available directly from the publisher, The History Press.