In early January, the World Health Organization first announced the emergence of a mysterious coronavirus that had been discovered in Wuhan, China, nearly 7,000 miles from Long Beach, a city basking as usual in the weeks before spring, living life as always: Shopping, dining out, attending concerts and sporting events, attending classes, gathering with friends, only barely aware of the virus and not overly concerned about it.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
From our current vantage, it’s difficult to believe life once went on like that.
For a while, it was a faraway problem. The virus was immune to distance and boundaries, though, and it stealthily traveled from person to person, country to country, aboard airplanes and cruise ships, and when it came, it came hard and changed how we live in Long Beach and throughout the world, and, in one short but ferocious year it killed more than 2.5 million people worldwide, including more than 520,000 in the United States and 857 in Long Beach.
Surrounded by the whirl of cyclists, skaters, walkers, stair-climbers and scavenger birds, planted underneath the watchful gaze of the Long Beach Museum of Art and at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more fitting home for Dr. Asher David Kelman’s, “Puff of Wind,” the stainless steel sailboat he hopes will inspire young people to follow their dreams.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
Thirty-one-feet high and 17 feet long, Long Beach’s newest piece of public art appeared a few weeks ago where Junipero Avenue dead ends at the beach. If you’re familiar with the area, you know it is teeming with activity, making it a natural landing spot for Kelman’s sailboat, which not only conjures up images of movement through its design but actually moves when enough wind is caught in its gleaming sail.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
The health pandemic, along with the protests and unrest over police brutality that erupted last summer, also managed to eclipse some significant news stories that would have made an end-of-year Top 10 list in any year but 2020.
Remember JetBlue leaving the city? Or when key members of the Queen Mary operating team were arrested in Singapore? We also had a couple elections this year that were pretty significant.
Here’s a short list of the huge news events that may seem a bit blurry in the backdrop of this obscenely busy news year.
JetBlue departs for its final flight out of Long Beach Airport on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020. Photo courtesy of Erik Skindrud / @Erik Bookman.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
A mother embraced her children with tears in her eyes before heading into the terminal in Long Beach and excited children exclaimed “grandpa!” as the door to a minivan opened up and whisked them away.
They were all part of millions of Americans that ignored pleas from public health officials to not travel for the holidays as the United States continues to fail to stop a massive surge in COVID-19 cases.
While substantially fewer travelers are boarding planes compared to last year, almost one million passengers per day have been processed at domestic airports over the past week, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration.
Fake Viagra and Air Jordans seized at California ports
$32M in counterfeit products were seized from containers arriving from China
1 906 1 minute read $32 million worth of fake Viagra pills, knock-off footwear and other counterfeit goods were seized at the ports of Log Angeles and Long Beach Thursday, according to customs officials. (Photo: CBP)
More than $32 million worth of fake Viagra pills, knockoff footwear and other counterfeit products were recently seized in shipments arriving from China, authorities said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other law enforcement agencies seized the illicit goods from three containerized shipments at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on Thursday.