The strangest news stories in Long Beach this year – Long Beach Post
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Can we all agree that 2024 has been a weird year? We decided to look back on a few of our favorite absurdities as we get ready to ring in 2025.
It was Oct. 27 — not the Fourth of July, New Year’s Eve or even Halloween — when a massive fireworks show lit up the Downtown Long Beach skyline.
It jolted neighbors awake and sent police scrambling to figure out what was going on. The culprit? A group of people setting off an unsanctioned pyrotechnic display from the Queensway Bridge.
There’s still some mystery left to this day: Why? Maybe they had a premonition about the Dodgers winning the World Series three days later.
When a statue of a man standing at least 30 feet tall appeared off the coast and anchored just off the beach, nobody new exactly what to make of it — at least at first.
Quickly, we all connected the dots that it was a towering likeness of Kid Cudi promoting his new album, INSANO.
The Grammy-winning rapper then stopped by Long Beach in the flesh, signing fans’ albums at Fingerprints.
Apparently, Long Beach attracts weird firework stories.
Shortly before the Fourth of July, when neighbors were still complaining about their neighborhoods sounding like warzones, Cory Schmillen ended up closer to danger than most. A stray firework burst through his apartment’s wall and detonated in his bedroom.
He was disoriented, but thankfully no worse for wear, even joking that the worst of the damage was his clothes ending up smelling a little like smoke. He even had the presence of mind to snag a video of the aftermath.
We were all ready. This was Long Beach’s time to shine.
As the 2024 Olympics came to a close in Paris, organizers were preparing to hand the baton to Los Angeles as it preps for the 2028 games, and we knew that a glut of celebrities had been secretly filming at Rosie’s Dog Beach. Snoop, Billie Eilish and the Red Hot Chili Peppers would be on hand to show off Long Beach’s beauty during the closing ceremonies.
Then, the unthinkable: TV announcers erroneously told the whole world that they were looking at the pristine coastline of … Los Angeles. What a snub. The mayor even went on a little bit of a Twitter tear trying to correct the record.
Oh well. Let’s hope they do better in 2028 when at least eight Olympic events take place in Long Beach — not L.A.
Jeremiah Dobruck is executive editor of the Long Beach Post where he oversees all day-to-day newsroom operations. In his time working as a journalist in Long Beach, he’s won numerous awards for his investigative reporting and editing. Before coming to the Post in 2018, he wrote for publications including the Press-Telegram, Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. Reach him at [email protected] or @jeremiahdobruck on Twitter.
