For just over a year, the Southern California Streets Initiative, the co-publisher of Streetsblog Los Angeles and publisher of Santa Monica Next, has teased that a "Streetsblog Long Beach" is just around the corner. After forming a local advisory Board, and publishing news/opinion pieces by the Long Beach Post's Brian Addison, we're proud to make a little different announcement.
During the week of December 2, we are going to re-launch Long Beachize. The popular website for news and culture for Long Beach's bike culture, which last published in March of 2012, will get a new editor, a somewhat new look (we're not crazy enough to change too much the excellent branding of the website), and a broader range of topics. In addition to cycling, Long Beachize will cover Long Beach Transit, transportation issues around the port, open space, highway expansion and removal, public health, the unique culture of Long Beach communities and more.
"Long Beach is home to one of Southern California's most vibrant biking and pedestrian-oriented communities. Tack onto this the fact that it harbors one of the nation's largest ports, an increasingly active urban design culture, and a triad educational structure that is inherently connected to the employment and creative sphere, it becomes clear that the discussion of the implications of these structures in a city as large as Long Beach becomes essential," writes Addison, the future editor of Long Beachize.
"I truly believe Long Beach doesn't just need but deserves a media outlet that is solely dedicated to the subject of its health and well-being."
In addition to Addison and myself, we've recruited a powerful team for our Long Beach Board of Advisors who have helped guide us and will contribute to Long Beachize in a variety of ways. This team includes former professional cyclist and president of Cruz Industries Antonio Cruz, Long Beach travel writer and photographer Kayte Deioma, Peace Builders founder and Millworks managing director Michelle Molina, program and design coordinator for City Fabrick and original co-editor of Long Beachize Baktaash Sorkhabi and executive director of City Fabrick Brian Ulaszewski.
Sorkhabi first pitched the idea of re-launching Long Beachize.
"I started Long Beachize with the goal of recording and sharing the burgeoning bicycling culture in Long Beach," he explains. "I feel that Streetsblog will maintain and build upon this mission by providing more in-depth journalism that can engage and capture a larger readership."
Long Beachize will launch with the support of the Long Beach Community Foundation through their partnership with the Knight Foundation, the Vida Feliz Foundation, and Pocrass and De Los Reyes Personal Injury Attorneys LLC. Between now and December 2, we will continue to publish Addison's work here at Streetsblog Los Angeles. There's still some work we need to do to the website to ready it for re-launch, and there's the matter of combining the social media, but we're confident we'll be ready to go right after Thanksgiving break.
If you would like to support Long Beachize you can do so through the Streetsblog donation page, for now. Make sure you mark the donation for Los Angeles in the dropdown menu. If you have any leads for other sponsors, email damien@streetsblog.org.
