(July 18, 2008) -- Thanks to TheDistrictWeekly.com's Theo Douglas and Chris Ziegler, LB knows that someone anonymously conveyed his/her opinion of LB officialdom with anti-Lowenthal graffiti on the soon-to-be-former Acres of Books building.

LB's gargantuan bookstore at 240 LB Blvd, in the 2nd Council district represented since June 2006 by Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal, is a shrine to Ray Bradbury (see LBReport.com's unsanitized video of Mr. Bradbury's June comments at the store) but it is "blight" to geniuses in charge of the city's "Redevelopment Agency," a separate layer of government run by city staff governed by a non-elected board.

Here then, in front of our eyes, is the latest chapter in LB's downtown March of Folly, the same misguided reasoning that justified erasing LB's downtown beachfront and made the ocean invisible from much of downtown Ocean Blvd.

Again, a unique LB asset; again, something rare, something that can't be found elsewhere; again, something priceless being done to dust to produce what we expect will be some plasticized replica of something that can be found just about anywhere.

As the final how do you do, this is taking place at what City Hall envisions as the gateway to an "arts district." Artists using their unique talents to creating one-of-a-kind works in a city with a one-of-a-kind bookstore. Anyone see a connection here?

This is all so powerfully stupid, so reminiscent of wrongheaded City Hall decisions of the past (applauded by the usual suspects) whose consequences we now endure today -- that it shouldn't go quietly.

On July 14 Mr. Douglas wrote on the TheDistrictWeekly.com that somebody "scrawled across the outside of the store's back wall...the words "Lowenthal 452?" in black paint -- possibly a reference to the store's Long Beach City Council representative, Second District Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal, and to author Ray Bradbury's famous novel, Fahrenheit 451."

By the time we got around to photographing this on July 16 at about 11:50 a.m., the message had been whitewashed by someone...a message in itself. Fortunately, LB photog Daniel DeBoom had preserved the sight digitally a day earlier and allowed us to use the photo below.

July 15, 2008. (Bicyclist unrelated to graffi.) Photo credit: Daniel DeBoom

July 16, 2008

LBReport.com took the rest of the photos below on July 16...including one of a worker taking a sledgehammer to what remains of the building immediately next door to Acres of Books.

July 16, 2008

July 16, 2008

July 16, 2008

TheDistrictWeekly.com's Chris Ziegler wrote the next day (July 17), "There was a little line at Acres of Books at 10 AM sharp today -- people already ready to make the first picks from the two million books now set to sell (or else) as the landmark bookstore officially begins its slow but so far dignified death...I even met the man who put LOWENTHAL 451 on the back of Acres -- he identified himself only as "Agent J" and slipped back into the stacks after I shook his hand."

Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal holds a Doctorate in Policy, Planning and Development from USC. Before her election to public office, her citizen testimony (roughly a decade ago) on the downtown Plaza development was among the most well-reasoned we have ever heard. It was basically ignored by the City Council at the time.

We think some of that brain power needs to be applied here.