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Halleljuh! LB Mayor Pleads For Sac'to Permission To Lift Closures That Needn't Have Occurred

by Doug Krikorian
Special to LBREPORT.com

Mr. Krikorian, an award winning journalist and author of two books, earned multiple awards in his 22 years of writing for the Long Beach Press-Telegram and 22 years for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. He is happily retired in Naples.


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(May 27, 2020, 6:10 p.m.) -- Well, has Ol' Blood and Guts, the honorable Long Beach Mayor, Robert Garcia, finally lived up to his nickname?

He informed Long Beach restaurateurs and saloonkeepers during a conference call yesterday [May 26] that he was sending the necessary coronavirus health data and other vital papers up to Sacramento to his master, Generalissimo Gavin Newsom.

He said he expected to get the A-OK from our state's powerful strongman -- and believes that Long Beach's bars and restaurants might be allowed to finally open their doors this weekend.

Hallelujah!

Alas, I'll believe it when I see it, and, if it actually happens, might even celebrate the historic occasion with an alcoholic beverage, which would be the first one I've had in more than a month, the longest streak of sobriety insanity of my adult life. . .

I can understand Mr. Garcia not wanting to cross the scarily despotic Newsom because he would like his job one awful day, but Ol' Blood and Guts should immediately cease being so embarrassingly subservient to the LA Mayor, the reprehensible Eric Garcetti. Such deportment is roughly tantamount to cowering in the presence of a hummingbird. . .

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Spoke on the phone to one of the storied characters of Long Beach yesterday, Dickie (Too Fast, Too Furious) Babian, owner of the Hall of Fame dive bar, Crow's, and he was finding it a curious phenomenon that about a mile and a half away from his Naples establishment he was at a tavern legally drinking his standard double Grey Goose on the rocks.

"I'm at The Irisher in Seal Beach and it's filled with people having a good time,"' said Babian amid a raucous atmosphere. ``Yet, my business has been closed down for more than two months. Why? I know so many people who have been deprived of their livelihood, who have lost their jobs, who are going bankrupt, who are terribly depressed. How depressed are our politicians who caused all this with their lockdown insanity? I'm sure not one bit. I can't even see a manicurist. Heck, I can't even get a massage!"

The colorful 5-foot-3, 271-pound, 85-year-old Babian says he's seriously considering departing Long Beach.

":I can buy a helluva bar-and-restaurant in Corona for $775,000," he says.

Corona? Why not Fontana or Ontario?

Please, Dickie, for the good of all professional tipplers in these environs, stay in Naples!...

For the first time in 35 years, Big Mike O'Toole, owner of the venerable Naples Gondola Getaway, will not be in Venice, Italy this week for the famed Vogalonga Regatta to participate in the popular rowing race that annually features more than 2,000 boats and 7,000 participants.

O'Toole usually brings along a couple of his gondoliers to the proceedings, and has built up such a large group of Venetian friends across the decades that he plans to visit Venice later in the summer if the city returns to normal.

"Right now, the place is pretty well shut down with no tourists -- and the city depends on tourists, '' Big Mike says sadly. ``I'm not driving a car this week, and will walk everywhere, just like I do in Venice. And I'm also going to cook nothing but Venetian food. This is my way of honoring the greatest city in the world, along with Long Beach, of course."

Incidentally, O'Toole's gondola business is back in action -- why in tarnation was it shut down in the first place? -- although the ever creative O'Toole found a way for it to still have a positive impact the past few weeks.

He had a few of his gondoliers, some of whom are classical singers, row around the Naples canals and dispense entertaining early twilight serenades that became a popular event in the area.

"I kept asking our local leaders why I was shut down since the average length of our boats is 28 feet and there isn't any social distance problem whatsoever," says O'Toole, who, natch, is the long-time president of the Naples Improvement Association. ``They told me my business was non-essential. Non-essential? We've had dozens of marriages and hundreds and hundreds of marriage proposals over the years on our gondolas. I'd say romance is quite essential."

Again, why in tarnation was O'Toole's business, which has become an iconic part of the Long Beach landscape for the past 38 years, shut down in the first place?. . .

I never realized the Emmy-winning Food Channel Network star, Guy Fieri, worked three years as a manager at Parker's Lighthouse from 1990-93, where he would meet his wife, whom he's been married to for 25 years. They have two sons and reside in Santa Rosa...

In the interest of transparency, I've written a couple of columns in the Long Beach Report for Bill Pearl, who happens to be owner, editor and writer of this 24-hour on-line publication. Also in the interest of transparency, I consider Mr. Pearl to be the most independent journalist in Long Beach totally detached from the suffocating ties to politicians, unions, land developers and countless others in this city immersed in shameless cronyism who routinely benefit financially from the many tendentious edicts dispensed by the ghastly group of entrenched folk controlling our civic proceedings...


Previously by Mr. Krikorian:

  • My Beloved Long Beach: A Victim Of Irrational Government Overreach Beyond Reasoned Response To Virus
  • Speak Up, Mr. Mayor, On Governor's Unwise Edicts. You Can Do That And You Should


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