We were always taught to be prideful of where we came from. No matter where we went, the city came with us. There is something special about Long Beach, something that sets us apart from the rest of the world. An aura surrounds the city, an aura that makes Long Beach home to any and everybody.
The meltiest of melting pots; from the corners of Crip neighborhoods to the business streets of Belmont Shore, there is no better way to describe Long Beach. When you think of melting pots, you think of how many races and ethnicities you see riding through the town, and of course Long Beach has that. On one block you will find the Cambodian family who lives next door to the Samoan family. Walk On over to the next and you will see the African Americans running a game of basketball with the latinos, go down Cherry Avenue and you can play some frisbee with the white boys. So yes, Long Beach is extremely diverse in this sense, but what sets us apart from other melting pots, such as those of Orange County and Santa Clara, is the diversity in culture that our city melts together. The diversity in passions and interests, in art and beliefs, all coexisting..all learning from one another.
This sort of melting pot creates a special blend of person, one who has acquired taste and nitpicked new characteristics from cultures they would not have been exposed to anywhere else. This is a city where you were raised on Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, Warren G, and the entire G-Funk, but you’re best friend was raised on Sublime or True Sounds of Liberty. The beauty of this city is that you and your best friend met at the skate park and he started listening to funk and you starting grooving to some reggae. Cultures do not clash in Long Beach, they mesh and become one. And that is the calling card of a Long Beach native, we are different because we are diverse. We are diverse because nothing is exclusive to a certain group in this city.
These cultures aren’t only meshing, they’re elevating one another. Every demographic in the city is passionate about who they are, and not a single one of them wants to go without being heard or seen. The athletes want to be noticed, the artists want to be seen, the scholars want to be acknowledged. No matter what your talent is, Long Beach will make you passionate about it. No matter what you do, Long Beach can enable you to do it better.
Talent is everywhere, but it is the culture that brings it out of you. It is the culture that will give you that something extra to separate you from the crowd. That something extra that can be found in every neighborhood throughout the LBC. From the east to the west and the north all the way down to the beach, there’s something in the water and it ain’t “Gin and Juice”.
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