You’ve read all those other year-in-review stories, now how about watching one? These are our favorite videos from 2018.
In June, Long Beach joined with 750 other cities in 120 countries to celebrate Make Music Day, with more than 50 locations around town hosting performances by local musicians and groups. Read more.
What some might have assumed was a POW! WOW! Long Beach mural going up in July was actually a unique project taken on by the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association to bring Seattle-based artist Peter Robinson to town. Read more.
Tyler Dilts’ four Long Beach Homicide novels are excellent police procedurals that are liberally adorned with real Long Beach locations. He gave us his tour of town in August. Read more.
Harold Ray Brown is back. All the way back to where his life in many ways began. The War and Low Rider Band’s drummer gave us an inside look at his process in the gymnasium of the 113-year-old First Lutheran Church in Downtown Long Beach in August. Read more.
Kurtis Colamonico was a professional skateboarder for years. Then, he became a dad. After watching his son take to the board as a toddler, Colamonico realized that other kids could benefit from the sport that saved his own life. He started Skate Kids two years ago to bring important life skills to youth across Long Beach and Orange County, teaching workshops at schools and parks to kids of all ages. Read more.
The Cambodia Town Film Festival exists as a direct response to the norms of Hollywood, which for decades has failed to include Asians on the big screen and continues to lack representation of the diversity of Asian and Asian-American experiences. Originally published Sep 12, 2018. Read more.
September marked the 20th anniversary of Good Foot, a long-running monthly funk, Motown, soul night led by DJ Dennis Owens at Alex’s Bar. Read more.
There are signs of Jim Danno all over the south half of Long Beach. He repairs, installs, cleans up and otherwise maintains city signs, roughly 100,000 of them in his half of the city, a territory that stretches from just east of the 605 Freeway to the Terminal Island Freeway, between Wardlow Road and the Pacific Ocean. Read more.
On Saturday, Sept. 15, 2018, Long Beach Zine Fest brought 120+ independent publishers to the Expo Arts Center in Bixby Knolls along with panels, workshops, music, food, live art and more. Read more.
In October, the Post went live from the break room with Jelly of the Month Club for #RocktheVote.
Since 1988, Midnight Insanity has been the premiere Rocky Horror Picture Show shadowcast in SoCal. Every Saturday at midnight, an all-volunteer cast performs the cult classic at the Art Theatre, while the crowd shouts lines and throws things in accordance with long-standing unspoken rules.
Release the Bats was one of the longest-running death-rock/goth nights in Southern California. In the 240 monthly Friday nights since it began in 1998, Release the Bats has served as a launching pad for a number of SoCal’s underground death-rock bands, such as Cinema Strange and Mephisto Walz, while providing a sanctuary for generations of goths and industrial lovers. On Friday, Oct. 6, 2018 founders Dave and Jenn Bats celebrated the monthly event’s 20th anniversary by ending it. Read more.
From headless roller-coaster riders to doomed brides, Long Beach has a long history of gruesome tales. In the spirit of Halloween. This year, the Long Beach Post compiled a series of videos looking at the city’s scariest stories. Read more.
When Maxwell Wilson was 2, multiple respiratory infections landed him at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County floor at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo. He spent multiple stints there wearing a mask and was forced into quarantine from the other young patients. While the stays were brief and Maxwell, now 7, has been granted a clean bill of health, the memories of CHOC never left him. He said he knew as early as first grade he wanted to do something to help, and the way he would do it was by making handmade books, illustrations included, with the proceeds being donated to CHOC. Read more.
Narsiso Martinez’ inaugural solo exhibition, FARM FRESH at Long Beach Museum of Art is deeply influenced by his own experiences working in fields between schools to earn a living as an undergraduate at CSULB. Read more.
From sweet to savory, Southern to Northwestern, Long Beach has always been a haven for people who want to take their time and make pies the right way: by hand. Read more.
The creator of an increasingly popular Facebook page called Humans of Long Beach, you can find Matt Roberts on his black Trek mountain bike riding through different neighborhoods, stopping strangers on the street to take their portrait and ask them thought-provoking questions. Read more.
Senior Elijah McGee is leading the Cabrillo boys’ basketball team in scoring this season—and he’s basically doing it with one hand. McGee, 17, was born with amniotic band syndrome—a congenital disorder caused when the fetus has an appendage wrapped up in uterine bands during the pregnancy. Read more.
The Khmer Arts Academy opened its doors in December to let the public see parts of Cambodian culture you don’t always get a chance to see. Students and teachers demonstrated almost every part of classical Cambodian dancing, starting with showing the painstaking process of putting on the heavy Mokot Apsara, or Apsara crown, by tying it on to the head. Read more
Step inside the studio of Oaxaca-born artist, Narsiso Martinez, who draws attention to the lives of field workers in his first institutional solo exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art, on view through Jan. 6, 2019. Video by Mark Hill. Read More: https://lbpost.com/life/arts-culture/video-in-the-studio-with-artist-narsiso-martinez-who-paints-from-the-lives-of-field-workers/