By Kate Karp, special submission to lbpost.com.
Long Beach has, among numerous other oddments, its own ocean liner, albeit never again to set sail; a popular beachside breakfast and lunch establishment that serves a dish called The Weasel, topped with chili “guaranteed to set you free (I can attest to that); a couple of Rube Goldbergesque one-man-band contraptions that make unscheduled appearances on city streets; and, until a couple of years ago, Ski Demski, who once ran for mayor, had U.S. flags tattooed all over his body and flew the largest-known one in the world at his imposingly decorated home. It would seem, then, that naming a pothole-ridden little road after the attractive girlfriend of a superhero would be looked as just another candied cherry in the fruitcake, but the entire process has been met with enthusiasm, as well as news coverage and blog action.
I’m not into Action Comics, and I didn’t deliberately intend to call the road Lois Lane; I just wanted it to have a name, period. The road is unofficially called the Livingston Service Road, but the name isn’t in the emergency GPS system. It runs three short blocks between Quincy and Bennett avenues, parallel to Livingston, and is in a state of repair that may be compared to that of the aforementioned ship. When we needed to report trouble on the road, the police dispatcher frequently sends the car to Livingston, and the officers can’t locate the problem. Neighbors say that calls to AAA are often futile. If you use a map Web site to visit the neighborhood, you’d be guided to drive over a steep embankment into oncoming traffic and, if you and your car make it across, you’ll still have a curb and a weedy plot of dirt to traverse before you get there.
The problem came to a head for me one morning when I walked to my garage and found a sinister-looking man on a bicycle in my driveway, wearing an expression that made me think that he wanted to run me over and then devour me. He then rode his bicycle onto the unnamed street and lay down in the weeds. I ran back into the house, called the police, and then tried with no success to explain where the Livingston Service Road is. At one point, I hung up in frustration on the dispatcher (she was concerned enough to call back). The police took an hour to get there and warn the man off.
I brought the matter up to then-commander Laura Farinella at a Coffee with the Commander meeting, and she relayed it to Councilman Gary DeLong through his assistant, Julie Malecki. Councilman DeLong informed me that there were a number of little streets in town that hadn’t been entered into the GPS system, and to do that, they needed to be officially named. He told me to bring it up at the Belmont Shore Residents Association Meeting, which I did. After a couple of meetings, acting president Jeff Miller threw the ball solidly into my court and deputized me to poll the neighbors.
I would rather stay home and click my mouse on opinion polls than organize any campaign, but I long ago learned that if something’s important enough to you, you’ll get it done yourself. I distributed fliers to everyone living between Division Street and the service road and asked for suggestions. I received some clever suggestions (Diagonal Alley, Parrot Lane, Bency [between Bennett and Quincy], Pothole Street) and some singular ones, including one person who picked names out of the phone book because they felt that streets should be named after people. From these, I composed a list and sent it to the people who had offered suggestions and asked them to choose their top five. I then made a new list of all names that received more than one vote, and asked the voting public to pick their top three, in order. Lois Lane swept the election like Ronald Reagan. Everyone voted for it somewhere in their top three, except for the phone book couple, who may not have found her in the White Pages.
Lois Lane, not surprisingly, had been suggested by another Long Beach quiddity, my neighbor Robby Russell. Robby’s the host of a Cerritos-based radio show, Garage Mania, and owns one of the largest collections of bobbleheads, TV memorabilia and other tchotchkes that I’ve ever heard of. It takes one to name one, and I subsequently convinced the members of the BSRA that Lois Lane was an appropriate name because it would take Superman to find the damn street. At any rate, they were sufficiently amused to approve it.
With their support, along with that of the Southeast Area community planner Mark Hungerford, DeLong and Malecki, Miller and former BSRA president Nancy Buchanan, Lois went through the planning commission’s red tape faster than a speeding bullet, and a few of us went to the Planning Commission meeting to hear the approval process completed. I felt like a parent at her kid’s graduation from college. Robby wore a red cape. Both of us thanked the commission, and Robby seized the opportunity to plug his show. The suggestion passed unanimously.
As Commissioner Charles Greenberg said at the meeting, only in Long Beach can a bunch of regular people get together and make an event out of naming a street. I’m anticipating the signage, and share the hope of Planning Commissioner Chair Leslie Gentile that Lois Lane will eventually get a makeover. Most importantly, the neighbors and I are delighted and relieved that we will soon be able to call the police and say, “There’s someone loud, drunk and sick all over Lois Lane.”