DISQUS

The elegant Jergins Trust was where the hole has now lingered for two decades. A pedestrian subway and shopping court ran under it and linked downtown to the Pike and the long-lost beach. It is an icon of redevelopment's adverse impact on the city. I have never understood the agency's mad rush to clear sites and create more eyesores, including Long Weed Boulevard.

Hooterville's very own "Mr. Haney," has, over the years, been entrusted with running the port, expanding the convention center and skippering the QM right into a sea of red ink. All the while, he has been an arrogant sort, alternately feared and adored by the PT and various denizens of City Hall. Such obvious talent should not go to waste. Joe deserves another shot at running LB into the ground. How about executive director of the LB Museum of Art?

While we're at it, let's also mandate that Marshall's venerate Roberts nostalgia by carrying a full line of Boy Scout wear, Bass Weejuns, 8-Track Players and bell-bottoms, and using the streamline modern pneumatic tube system to process transactions instead of those tacky, nouveau scanners. Bixby Knolls has waited too long for some shopping and for something, anything, to enliven and replace that incredible hulk on Atlantic. Besides, we better act fast before the Commission reverts full time to its favorite pastime, ginning up new redevelopment schemes for downtown.

It is reported today that Ron Kaye, the hard-hitting, pugnacious editor of MediaNews' LA Daily News, is being forced out. His sin: digging up and cutting through the crap for the readers and expressing his concerns over downsizing. Kaye leaves. Rich Archbold, who has spent his career showering the powers-that-be with Valentines, stays. A fitting addendum to your excellent piece on the P-T's self-inflicted implosion.

What a perfect forum for the PT's arch-survivor to spin his misconceptions. Both Rich and Leadership Long Beach, the recipient of lavish coverage in the paper, have been locked in the same echo chamber and mutual admiration society for years. Sorry a reader took offense to my previous shower-room attendant reference. I should have been more precise. The concentration camp I mentioned has nothing to do with the Nazi Holocaust. I was referencing the contemporary model at Guantanamo, Cuba.

So the king of misleading statements makes yet another one concerning the PT, blaming the City Council's concerns on "misconceptions." The architect of the paper's 30-year decline would have made a great shower-room attendant at a concentration camp.

I find it interesting that, on the same web page as this article, is an "Ads by Google" titled "Find local sex partners."

Let's not forget how well Archbold and his enablers treated veteran scribes. I recall reporter Harry Tessel being demoted to nightside GA and suffering serious injuries while driving through the dark to cover some half-ass story. Columnist George Robeson who, as far as a recall, covered Long Beach like a blanket, but knew nothing about Wrigley Field, was shunted off to edit letters to the editor. They were replaced by such stalwarts as Angelo Figueroa, who reached out to our growing Mexican-American readership with personal tales of Detroit and Puerto Rico. A back data search that turned up some of his original submissions, before they were totally rewritten by a kindly city editor, presented strong evidence of near illiteracy. And who can forget how scared to death Archbold & were of a real news when the PT's crack sportswriters umasked the Artesia High basketball scandal.

I find it somewhat amazing that Rich Archbold survived the scrapping of what was once a great newspaper, an important voice for LB area residents and an good place to work. I find it totally amazing that he has the of lack pride to continue to preside over the flaming hulk for which he is largely responsible.

Dean Singleton is merely the greedy cynic who applied the final stab to the PT’s back . Archbold and his management minions, who each received an extra 30 pieces of silver (from seller Knight-Ridder) to stay on following Dean’s initial bloodletting in 1997, facilitated the paper’s long decline, making it ripe for Singleton’s rape.

Fawning coverage of City Hall’s elected and appointed leaders, along with blind boosterism for every stunt they backed or proposed (DisneySea, the Ice Dogs, fly-by-night minor league baseball teams, the many permutations of the Queen Mary, and an economically anemic Navy base reuse rip-off) rendered local coverage useless and suspect to the readership. Opponents of such boondoggles, along with many residents concerned with the quality of life in the LB area, were, when they rarely made it into the paper, generally mocked.

Instead, we were treated to such debacles as a salute to a visit by President Bill Clinton (with a huge A1 banner headline “Welcome, Mr. President”), despite the fact that Bill had signed off on the dismantlement of LB’s military-industrial economic base. We also learned more than we needed to know about the Friends of the Library, Leadership Long Beach, the life and times of Beverly O’Neill, John Morris (the recent subject of another PT Valentine) and of course, thanks to the intrepid Hennessey, the Chicago Cubs.

The Wrigley Field column and the puffy “new publisher” blurb that followed Friday’s bloodbath pretty much sum up the PT’s real and long-running problem. Forget the economy, new media, the price of newsprint and all that other crap. The PT’s leaders have long had – and continue to pursue – a death wish while deftly escaping the carnage themselves.

Joe's spell over City Hall goes back many years to his days with the port and his hiring to oversee the Convention Center expansion. The constant official calls on Prevratil for his services conjures up comparisons between LB and "Hooterville," the fictional whistle stop on the TV show "Green Acres." In tiny "Hooterville," the crafty and corrupt "Mr. Haney" was always the man of the hour. For LB. population 400K-plus, there's no substitute for hiring and admiring Joe. Here's betting he turns up, in full-diving gear, at the aquarium for his next gig.

It would be nice if the chamber actually tried to stir up a little commerce instead of mucking about in LB's "Hooterville"-style political intrigues. Where was the chamber when auto row decamped for Signal Hill? I also recall these boosters declaring the departure of the Navy and its well-paying shipyard would translate into jobs galore once the base was leveled. And what does the PT get for playing footsie with the chamber, other than a bit of socializing for its publisher of the month? It sure hasn't paid off in circulation or ad revenue, much less reader trust and respect .

My first and nearly last visit to LBMA was @ 1980, when I was confronted with "The Art of the DC-10", sponsored by McDonnell Douglas Corp. I recall being moved to tears by edgy, emotive seat fabrics and the lyrical shape of the overhead luggage compartment. How about a redux? The "Art of the Boeing Empty Lot."