One of the odder things I have discovered since moving to downtown Long Beach … is the clear popularity of skateboarding among non-white teens and pre-teens. Latino and, especially, black kids are riding skateboards all over the place. This is interesting. Curious.  Because I had never thought of skateboarding as anything but a white-kid — […]

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Not just name-dropping here. Trying to establish something vaguely resembling tennis credentials. A lifetime ago, back when Gannett News Service, and its sports boss, Jerry Langdon, were ambitious and had money to spend … I got help with expenses for the 1985 tournament, and even more help in 1986. I had a local-local reason for […]

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Rafael Nadal just defeated Roger Federer in the longest championship match in Wimbledon history, and it had the feel of a torch being passed. From the former tennis king to the new one. Nadal has been whittling away at Federer’s supremacy, beating him now and then … to beating him regularly on clay … and […]

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You always hear it, around sports. The legs go first. Uh, no. The belly goes first. And I’m not talking about abs here. I’m talking about the stomach. The ability to eat massive amounts of food and … not die. There was a time when the idea of “competitive eating” might have intrigued me. This […]

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Kenneth Reich didn’t know me, but I knew of him. He was in the L.A. Times newsroom in the fall of 1975 when I was a wide-eyed intern there, and I saw him all the time in the run-up to (and coverage of) the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Practically nothing was a news story, before […]

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This story is silly and semi-stupid but true, and I feel like relating it. So. I live in Long Beach, you may have noted, and it’s maybe 20 degrees cooler here than it is in the Inland Empire most summer days. (I remind myself of that, whenever I start to mewl about “it’s kinda hahhht […]

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You’ve seen “Its a Wonderful Life,” yes? The Christmas-themed Frank Capra move starring Jimmy Stewart? From 1946. Well, of course you have. Unless you’re so young you remember only this stingy era of “one showing per year” … NBC or somebody owns the rights to the film, and doles it out (once, and only once […]

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I rode the Blue Line from Long Beach to Staples, an hour ago, and I can say with certainty I have never been on a Metro Link train that was as crowded. In the middle of the 17-stop trip, passengers were standing … up and down the train. I was on the line at 3 […]

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Time. All I’ve got is time! I was fired, oh, a year ago? I forget now. And I wake up day after day with little or nothing on the schedule. All day, all night, all I’ve got is time. Like a guy doing life at Folsom. Not goin’ anywhere, no one to see, just hangin’ […]

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I’m a sucker for T-shirts and posters. If I had money to waste and the energy to fill out lots of order forms, and 500 days a year to wear a different T-shirt every day and unlimited wall space to put up posters only I and a few other sophomoric guys find funny, and if […]

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