Let’s be honest. When Streetsblog began its “community based reporting” plans for L.A. County, Long Beach was always in our sites. At long last, we’ve finally added “Long Beach” to “Eastside,” “South L.A.” and “Santa Monica” to our masthead.  Regular Streetsblog coverage is coming to Long Beach, starting in a couple of minutes when I upload the first story from our Long Beach writer, Brian Addison.

If Addison’s name sounds familiar, he’s previously served as editor of the Long Beach Post where he still writes regularly.  In his own words:

Brian hails from the perched mountain tops of Big Bear, barely escaping a life relegated to straight white Christian patriarchy in order to fulfill his life as a full-fledged flatlander. Though his love for academia still remains, the pointlessness of his degree in the art of writing unfortunately forced him into that strange thing called reality or what the world calls Long Beach. Beer and coffee are always welcome in order to alleviate the stress of that whole reality thing.

As you’ll also read in a moment, he also brings something totally new to L.A. Streetsblog: articles with footnotes.

If you’re already familiar with Streetblog’s Long Beach coverage, you’ve grown used to stories about how great the innovative bicycle infrastructure is and how stupid the 405 expansion project is. As Kris Fortin, Gary Kavanagh and Sahra Sulaiman have already shown, doing true community-based reporting on Livable Streets issues requires a broader approach.