2024 was a definitively wild year—and yes, that certainly includes craziness and joy here at Longbeachize. While Kendrick asserted they not like us, Luigi is garnering nationwide adoration, Charli proved a Brat Summer was the only summer to be had, and Beymas proved she needed no Super Bowl, Long Beach was filled with national moments—no, we are not Venice Beach—and, perhaps more importantly, stories that were its own. Some horrifying, many inspiring, all worthy of our attention.

Nearly 600,000 unique visitors and nearly 1.6M pageviews across 431 articles published this year made 2024 Longbeachize’s most successful year ever.

So how, exactly, did I rank the stories? In all frankness, the easiest way to do so was by the number of views and reads. However, in the interest of cultural importance and being timely, articles about events, festivals, and parades have been left off the list because there is little reason to discover you missed a disco dance party aboard the Queen Mary.

Here are the Longbeachize stories about food, culture, history, development, and controversy the readers of Long Beach were glued to…

15. Chef Philip Pretty of Heritage Long Beach’s second restaurant? It’s in a place as surprising as it is cool

Chef Philip Pretty and sister-slash-partner-in-crime Lauren Pretty have had a wonderful year:  following their Michelin-starred Heritage, Olive & Rose opened on Oct. 2 of this year. Sleek, sexy, and minimal, the space is a welcomed departure from Heritage and a new style of dining for Downtown Long Beach.

Built in 1962, the City Center Motel was once a mid-mod dream of a space that mimicked (though not quite as beautifully and much more affordably) the sense of Edward Killingsworth’s Lafayette Hotel down the street at Broadway and Atlantic. And now, after years of neglect and eventually full-on abandonment—outside of a nice appearance in Netflix’s “Griselda” series, which saw multiple Long Beach locations throughout its run—there is a group ready to restore it to glory. And that included bringing on Olive & Rose.

14. Long Beach Lost: The forgotten LB origins of one the most notorious white power gangs, PEN1

Wait—how was an article printed in Longbeachize in May of 2023 one of the top stories of 2024? This story received multiple viewer spikes—resulting in thousands of new reads across 2024—as President-Elect Donald Trump went head-first into his presidential campaign. It began with the release of Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2023 report on hate crimes in June of 2024, outlining a significant pique among white supremacy-related incidents, including hate crimes. Right-wing radicalization, white supremacy, disinformation, and false conspiracies all rose in 2023—and deeply affected interest in how the insidious cloud that is white supremacy looks across the country. This story—continually updated across the years since its first publication in 2016—is but an example of thousands that help contextualize one of our nation’s most horrifying characteristics.

13. Sonoratown opens its first Long Beach location

Sonoratown, the mighty and decorated DTLA-born taqueria, opened its first Long Beach location Downtown. Sonoratown, with its consistent waft of mesquite-grilled meats and lard tortillas, has long lived up to the hype. 

“The magnificence of Teodoro Díaz Rodriguez Jr. and Jennifer Feltham’s Sonoratown taqueria rests first on the flour tortillas cranked out by their master tortilla maker, Julia Guerrero… [It] is the flour tortilla against which to judge all others in Los Angeles.”

These are the words of Los Angeles Times food critic Bill Addison, who placed Sonoratown at number 12 on his 101 Best Restaurants list (which also included three other Long Beach establishments). And the importance of Sonoratown in the larger discussion of SoCal’s taco game is paramount: They helped usher in regional Mexican tacos in a way that emphasized specificity. Their menu? Minimal, tight, focused. In fact, it had had only one significant addition—cabeza—which they added when it opened its Mid-City location. Their quality? Unparalleled. 

12. 2028 Summer Olympics and Long Beach: Your guide to everything happening

Despite NBC calling Long Beach “Venice” during the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games—prompting local publications to properly call out the egregious error—there is no question that the incoming LA28 will have a huge impact on our city. Long Beach is investing a lot of money into everything from temporary venues—Long Beach is slated to host eight sporting events so far for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games—to permanent infrastructure projects that will benefit nearly every neighborhood.

11. Construction moves forward on Long Beach’s largest infrastructure project: Connecting Colorado Lagoon to Marine Stadium

This Longbeachize story reached tens of thousands of readers this past year—and it was likely because the city’s largest infrastructural project was set to be completed in 2024. However, its perpetual delay—including the fact that its surrounding streets were supposed to be accessible again but alas are still not—has led to continual frustration, from residents nearby to commuters who depend on the roads to connect to the 22 Freeway. Let’s hope 2025 is a bit more amicable toward the project.

10. An ode to Golden Burgers—and the immigrant-led diners that have long defined Long Beach and L.A.

Golden Burgers, after more than four decades of slingin’ diner grub, had its last day of service in 2024 before formally becoming a part of the Eat Fantastic chain. What these diners represent is much, much more than just greasy spoon spaces that help ease the choices made in a long night out. They are—especially in Long Beach and L.A.—an inherent part of our neighborhoods and are shining examples of how immigrants have influenced our culture. It’s a rich history worth sharing over and over. I really loved writing this piece—and luckily, so did Longbeachize readers.

9. Fairmont Breakers—years in the making—opens in Downtown Long Beach

Long Beach is now home to its first luxury hotel and spa: Slabs of marble and onyx. Tiling that simultaneously acts as an ode to art deco while being utterly contemporary. Light fixtures that hold captivation worthy enough of its own essay. Make no mistake, Long Beach: We are now home to not just one of the most beautiful hotels in the region but the entirety of the West Coast thanks to the Fairmont Breakers.

Longbeachize readers were not just ecstatic about the hotel itself but particularly its food. The return of Sky Room and the newly minted Nettuno, headed by a Long Beach Italian cuisine legend, made the hype all the more real.

8. The 4 Shore drama in Naples

A multi-pronged Longbeachize story that, I assure you, will have new stories attached come 2025, the 4 Shore restaurant debacle was one of the most entertaining of 2024. Starting back in 2023, 4 Shore already got off on the wrong foot when co-owner Joshua Sanchez boldly proclaimed that the name was entirely serious and that the space would have everything from required bottle service to dress code enforcement. That all was dismissed by Sanchez later, saying he was “misquoted” by the Press-Telegram. Opening to little fanfare, accusations about contractors not being paid and skyrocketing costs made 4 Shore a for sure failure, closing just six months after opening.

The thing with 4 Shore—and why readers were so intent on following their drama—wasn’t just its brow-furrow-ing name. It was its lack of connection to the community, its disjointed concept, and its discombobulated culinary character. The first red flag of a business is always its chosen emotional distance from its community.

7. The $100 bagel and $85 calzone: Redefining (and questioning) luxury food in Long Beach

It spawned t-shirts and lively conversation: The infamous $100 bagel and $85 calzone. Each item shares some sticker shock value for many. However, the push behind them comes from different perspectives, purposes, and philosophies. Ultimately, it forces a more extensive discussion about the evolution of Long Beach’s food scene, its influx of new patronage with much more coin, and the fact that plenty of people are willing to spend hefty amounts of money on things as earthly as food.

6. Jin from BTS chooses Long Beach’s Retro Row as backdrop for new music video

This story? Well, what else is there to say: it’s just rad, Long Beach—and readers agreed. Jin—one-seventh of the massive K-pop group that is BTS—opted for the Los Angeles area to be the epicenter for his video for the lead single of his first solo album, “Running Wild.” And not just L.A. proper: The singer opens the video with an ode to Retro Row as he witnesses the world collapsing as it gets pelted by meteors. While everyone else loses their minds, Jin opts for a day with his puppy while taking in his last day on earth.

5. EA Seafood Restaurant is the old-school Cantonese neighborhood space Long Beach longs for

If there is proof that Long Beach has a severe cuisine gap when it comes to Chinese representation, look no further than the success of this Longbeachize article on EA Seafood. The Cal Heights gem has already become a stand-out hit within its less-than-a-year of operation, amping up its menu with the city’s first dim sum service and bringing a classic take on Cantonese food that is common in the Valley but rare in Long Beach.

4. The disturbing, creepy history of Long Beach’s ‘Scorecard Killer,’ Randy Kraft

Following the recent news that, nearly 50 years after his death was falsely ruled as accidental and his body unidentified, Michael Ray Schlicht’s body was identified and his death attributed to Randy Kraft’s ruthlessness. Schlicht died when he was 17 in 1974 and is believed to be one of Kraft’s earliest victims. In this vein, I opted to revisit a story I originally wrote in 2017. And that story is the perturbing tale of Long Beach’s “Scorecard Killer,” Randy Kraft.

3. The dishes that define the Long Beach food scene

There is no question that the Long Beach food scene has undergone a wild transformation over the past few years—let alone the past decade or more. While many places have come and gone, Long Beach still has that mingling of legacy restaurants that have withstood the test of time, along with newly minted stars that have created some truly remarkable dishes. Together, they create a new definition of what Long Beach food is. The array of dishes that will kind of always be there—I say “kind of” because, well, life is temporary—drew the love of readers and food lovers alike.

2. Underrated Long Beach restaurants: 2024 Edition

Each year, it typically knocks off any other story in terms of views, engagement, and sharing—and this year was little different. Sometimes, people don’t want “the best” but the places they’ve might’ve missed, looked over, or outright dismissed. This year’s list was a wonderful sampling of the Long Beach food scene’s downright beautiful breadth: From Oaxacan and Thai to Japanese and Californian cuisines, our underlooked spaces are some of our strongest stand-outs.

1. Meet Anne Bergstedt, the alleged Long Beach rental scam artist whose cover is being blown

Over 50,000 people have read the absolutely wild story of Anne Bergstedt so far. After our publishing, Anne soon found herself on various news stations and other publications across the country. This woman has allegedly scammed many renters out of tens of thousands of dollars before they moved a single item of theirs into the space. If that doesn’t convince you to read it, well, there are also evil twins. Cancer. An emotional support pig named “Olive Garden.” Alleged arson. And uncredited roles on television.