Just south of the Beach Cities, and slightly north of Orange County, is Long Beach, also located on the Pacific. It is a city filled with diversity and atmosphere and is the second-largest city in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. (It’s also the third largest in Southern California behind LA and San Diego.)
Long Beach is “a big city with a small-town vibe.” It’s also a multicultural place with a cosmopolitan feel, full of arts, culture, adventure, and sunshine. It gets its name from the ten-mile stretch of beach that starts at the marina, south of Long Beach Café, and goes all the way over to the San Gabriel River and the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club. The neighborhoods are diverse and can go from quaint suburbs to something rougher fairly quickly. The cool kids prefer Belmont Shore, while the more affluent live in Naples. If you don’t want to live in Long Beach but still say you live in Long Beach, Signal Hill is your place. One of the biggest benefits of living in Long Beach is the airport – a nice alternative to LAX. And, yes, the weather is great!
Its geographic location, directly east of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, paired with its mostly south facing coastline, results in the city having significantly different weather patterns than coastal communities to the north and south, but there’s plenty of sunshine all year long.
The beaches happen to have the hottest temperatures and warmest ocean water in all of Northern and Southern California. The Port of Long Beach is among the world’s largest shipping ports and is the second busiest container port in the United States. Long Beach also has its own airport, is home to California State University, Long Beach, the Queen Mary and the Long Beach Grand Prix.
