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A Lonely Coast
He wistfully recalls enjoying the beach as a young man. “Every summer we’d have a state picnic. It was always potluck. The ladies brought all the food.” He chuckles, remembering that picnickers turned away women who brought store-bought food — in those days, homemade was the only way to go. People from Texas, Nebraska, and Iowa sat on the sandy shores of Long Beach to revel in the summer sun. Some visitors from Iowa loved it so much they decided to retire in Long Beach, creating a community of Iowan expatriates. “It was the ideal place to be,” Hendricks says. “It wasn’t what you see now.” His small eyes crinkle beneath his large, black framed glasses as he recalls going to the beach as a child. His voice turns high- pitched with glee at the memory of his youth. “In the summer, we’d go down to the beach all day. The surfboards were made of redwood, they weren’t like the ones people have today. So you had to learn to body surf first. You had to learn to read the wave, learn timing. You have to catch it when it’s breaking. When you’re up on top and look down, you feel like you’re on the top of a ten-story building.”
He fondly recalls teaching his granddaughter how to body surf. He could not teach her to ride the waves he once rode in Long Beach – the breakwater has done just that: broken the water; rather, he took her to the less- polluted Huntington Beach in Orange County. When she grew frustrated, he instructed her, “You have to hold your breath. You have to get your body at the same speed as the breaker.” Hendricks repeats the most important advice he gave his granddaughter with a smile: “You have to hold your head down.” As she plunged into the ocean and took command of the next wave, Hendricks knew she followed his sage advice. “She had the biggest grin on her face. I knew she had kept her head down. From then on she liked to go out there and beat all the boys,” he says with a chuckle.
Hendricks knows better than to take his beloved granddaughter to surf Long Beach, where poor water quality created by the clash of the breakwater and the L.A. River run-off turns these oceanic wonders into chemical cesspools. The pollution from the L.A. River is so bad that, according to Tom Modica, the city Manager of Government Affairs, the beaches must always close for three days after a rain, due to run-off pollution and toxic levels of E. Coli in the water. The water in Long Beach is not for enjoyment, nor is it a place to frolic in the shallows on a sweltering summer day. It’s more like a freeway: a useful method of transportation, nothing more. Children who swim and play in this water will experience gastrointestinal upsets as a result of poor water quality.
Within the confines of the breakwater sit several man-made oil islands, named Freeman, Grissom, White, and Chaffee, after the first astronauts to die in the line of duty. The four islands cluster within several hundred yards of one another, with large, geometric buildings and palm trees protruding from their rocky surfaces. They sit in the shallow, murky water, blocking the horizon. Built in 1964 and owned by the THUMS oil consortium (Texaco, Humble, Union, Mobile, and Shell oil companies, respectively) these four islands, which are really nothing more or less than permanent and expansive oil rigs and shipping stations, are part of the greater Wilmington oil field, which produces approximately 46,000 barrels of oil per day. The combined construction of the oil islands and the breakwater cemented Long Beach’s industrial environment. The ports, the naval base, the oil industry, and the federal government’s construction of the breakwater defined Long Beach: this is a habitat of urban industry.
While Long Beach’s industrial habitat certainly did not begin with the construction of the breakwater, the barrier is a crucial part of its industrial space. It allowed the city to develop oil fields, a naval base, and protected ports and luxury beachfront homes. But the naval base closed, the oil industry mechanized and became less dominant, jobs from these sources disappeared, and the city of Long Beach as an industrial and military colony was no longer a reasonable or workable concept. Still, the breakwater remains, a guardian of economic interest. Its existence solidifies the sea as a means of commerce. I t maims the mighty power of the wave, quiets the ocean, and reduces the awe-inspiring depths to mere human scale; it is nothing more than a trade route. The natural wonder of the beach surrounding the breakwater exists in an industrial prison, encompassed by the former naval shipyard, boiler insulators, drill ships, mechanical rigs, and compressors.
There is no enjoyable natural realm in Long Beach; it is gray, urban, and mechanized. The city dominates and destroys the nature that surrounds it. The little nature that does exist is controlled, manipulated, and molded to fit human convenience in the forms of peninsular oceanfront properties, a world-famous aquarium, piers, ports, and islands built for the production of oil. The sea is controlled, sup pressed, its fate dictated by the interests of commerce. It’s a microcosm of modern man’s depraved relationship with nature.
The view from East Ocean Boulevard is only one example. Driving south, away from the looming and shuttered naval base, the street is lined with cars and tacky apartment homes. One apartment complex – a turquoise and white building at 1762 Ocean Boulevard – boasts a flamingo-pink sign with the words “Now R enting” emblazoned in bold letters. A few blocks before, the Ocean Club Homeowners building sits on the edge of the sandy beach, beside Mike’s Camera and Stereo. Deeper inland, and further to the north, the streets become slums. The apartment complexes look older, more crowded. The chain-link fences become barred fences, and the bright colors turn pale, muted.
Close to the naval base, the same palate of muted grays and beiges, the colors of industry, span the streets. At 2600 Ocean Boulevard, all you can see are parking lots, shipyards, and factories. The crisp salty scent of the sea is absent, even though the water is only steps away. Instead, the putrid smell of sulphur – the mark of an industrial plant — fills the air. It’s a smell that’s rightly associated with the fires of hell.
The beach in front of the breakwater itself reflects the mechanized municipality in which it resides. The sand is a light beige with a gray tinge that makes it resemble cement. After a stormy weekend, it is still damp, firm, and densely packed. The beach is largely empty. A few couples and older women walk their dogs along the asphalt pathway. A young woman on rollerblades whizzes by while a few college-aged boys play football in the dry, yellow grass. Not one person ventures into the water. No one dares go near it. Where the water meets the brown earth, the shore is littered with garbage. Doritos bags, bottle caps, pens, pencils, plastic water bottles, and an empty Top Ramen package lay strewn in the wet sand. A white can of Lucas motor oil rears its red plastic head. There are no seashells, no crabs, no sand dollars or tide pools to enjoy here. No waves to ride, no endless horizon to make you feel tiny, unimportant, or insignificant. Instead, the horizon here reminds you that you are in a place where man is gigantic; a mechanized province, an industrial terrain.
This city’s commercial interests shaped the human culture of its residents. As a result, Long Beach is mostly industrial space. Of the 32 zone areas mapped by the city, eight are industrial or aircraft- related. The other 23 zones are divided among commercial, residential, and private land . One zone is devoted to environmental protection and nature preserves. Places like these — colonized by industrial interests, and home to expansive industrial spaces instead of residences that people care about on an individual basis — tend to create high crime rates. With 40 murders, 120 rapes, 1,507 violent assaults, 1,859 residential burglaries and 3,151 violent crimes in 2008, Long Beach is no exception. Conversely, Newport Beach, which sits a mere twenty-two miles south on Pacific Coast Highway, had just 235 violent crimes in the same year .
The correlation between environmental degradation and poverty is complex and multi-faceted. An industrial environment provides few jobs that require higher education. Instead, the majority of jobs favor low-skilled labor, with a few exceptions for engineers and supervisors. The result is an expansion of the poor and working class, where one in five residents lives below the poverty line . Of the 492,000 residents in Long Beach, 18% live below the poverty level, which, according to the U.S. Census Bureau is $21,834 for a family of four. In San Diego, the figure is lower at 14% , and in neighboring Orange County, the number is a modest 8.9% .
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