Quick-action projects can spark change and build momentum.
That’s the headline of AARP’s Community Challenge, which each year provides small grants for hundreds of “livability projects nationwide, with a focus on meeting the needs of adults age 50 or older.”
One of this year’s recipients is Long Beach Fresh, which is employing the grant money (plus contributions from the Port of Long Beach and the Bixby Knolls Community Foundation) to put on over a dozen events this week primarily aimed “to connect seniors with healthy food in Long Beach — the gardens, farms, and restaurants of the city through a connection between culture and walkability.”
But the potential benefits could be enjoyed by residents of all ages. LB Fresh Director Ryan Smolar calls their “Week of Actions” part of a series of “urban acupunctures applying innovation, new thinking, and models of sociability around already-established groups, activities, neighborhoods who just need encouragement and [to be guided toward the] next steps. In particular, we’re using Long Beach’s own secret weapon, which is our incredible diversity and numerous cultures, as the tip of the spear of change for the city. […] Our events are targeting the creatives, entrepreneurs, stewards, and critical institutional players to build momentum and alignment.”
The event series kicked off on Saturday at Food Finders’ monthly Community Marketplace at Admiral Kidd Park, which LB Fresh elevated with some simple programming that lifted it from a simple food-distribution event to a neighborhood party. Later in the day came an edible-plant foraging talk at Grow2Zero Urban Farm, followed by the Feel Good Community Table, “a pay-what-you-can, community-centered food experience.”
A centerpiece of the week’s events is a screening of Close Encounters of the 34th Avenue Kind: The Story of NYC’s Best Open Street, which documents a program that enables residents and organizations to self-determine the transformation of their neighborhood streets “into public space open to all[, …] empower[ing] communities to become stewards of their streets and reimagine them as valuable local assets.”
Smolar points to Beach Streets as a sort of local analog, though with control delegated to the people who live on and around those open streets.
“The screening is important because it’s the story of an idea — NYC Open Streets — that could be a game-changer for our city if it took root here,” he says. “The idea is that communities manage their own streets and their own street closures, deciding with your neighbors when you want to close your street to vehicular traffic and make it a place for people. Essentially, it’s [like making] a plaza or town square for your neighborhood. In New York, this is everything from one block that’s closed on the weekend for play streets or movie screenings or putt-putt or neighbors selling knick-knacks or just sitting and reading books, all the way to the longest open street, which is 26 blocks long. It’s like a permanent Beach Streets run by the community itself. Seven thousand students use that open street to get to school safely. Traffic fatalities in that neighborhood were reduced by 70%. There’s beautiful programming from cumbia in the street to afterschool programming to bike rides to service outreach and ESL….”
Jim Burke, co-founder of the 34th Avenue Open Streets Coalition, says the best thing cities can do to facilitate such endeavors is “step back and let it happen.” Following the screening, Burke will participate in a panel discussion that includes Krista Nightingale, executive director of the Better Block Foundation; and Alex Jung, City Fabrick’s director of Urban Planning & Design, who will provide insight on unnecessary impediments (expense, bureaucracy, inefficiency) at present to doing such closures locally. The screening — free with RSVP — takes place at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Art Theatre.
Smolar, who literally travels the globe advising cities on how they can “bridge foodways, ecological health, and human connection — weaving networks where people trade skills, share abundance, and imagine better futures together,” says cities like Long Beach often take exactly the wrong approach to facilitating placemaking and community growth.
“There’s this layer of nonprofits and institutional players and bureaucrats who are supposed to be the facilitators of this who cannot execute it effectively because they’re not moving at the speed of community,” he says. “They have a model that’s really outdated and oriented toward the wrong end goals and not the process of enlivenment, activation, and growth. […] The answer is trust and capacity-building. Until a community builds the capacity to take on these responsibilities, they’re not trusted to do so — but if they’re not trusted to do these things, they never build the capacity to do them themselves.”
An example of Long Beach electeds not moving at anywhere near the speed of community is the Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation program (MEHKO), which “allows eligible residents to prepare and sell meals directly to consumers from their private home kitchen.” Although the State of California passed legislation allowing MEHKOs in 2018, for reasons passing understanding the City of Long Beach did not officially begin considering the possibility until 2024, despite the fact that LB Fresh had been advocating for MEHKOs since 2019. The city council finally approved the program in April.
Smolar notes that an irony about the program is that although it is immigrant communities who are the most likely to set up and benefit from MEHKOs, they are also the least likely to hear about it — “so they need an extra special invitation to understand what that law means, how they can envision it.”
Hence Thursday’s “How to Open a Home Restaurant.” Hosted by LB Fresh at Lomo Fuego, a Lakewood MEHKO that LAist calls “L.A.’s best new Peruvian restaurant,” attendees will sample the food and ambiance while hearing from founder Heidi Randolph about how home cooks can turn their talent into a sanctioned neighborhood business — as she did for a mere $2,000.
Smolar notes that although Long Beach (a city that he knows inside and out) enjoys a plethora of advantages over many cities, outdated bureaucratic thinking is holding back growth at the grass-roots level.
“I was just advising the City of Buffalo and listening to their ideas about economic development,” he relates, “and what you hear is, ‘If only we had a port, if only we had oil money, if only we had a Convention & Visitors Bureau, if only we had hotels, if only we had a beach, if only we had the space industry’ — and I can sit there across the table and go, ‘Long Beach has all those things, and we’re still structurally broke.’ Having amenities does not guarantee quality of life in your neighborhood.”
This is why LB Fresh’s Week of Actions focuses on how denizens of every demographic can uplift their communities, food-wise and otherwise.
“Loving the place you live, being a good neighbor, really supporting each other’s visions and dreams and organizing those into bigger ideas in the neighborhoods is really what we’re trying to do,” Smolar says. “This project is all about empowering community agency. This city has a $58 million deficit. They’re struggling to keep librarians. They’re not going to be saving us anytime soon. So we need people in our community to be empowered to start their own businesses, to help create content and programming on their own streets. That’s what this event series is all about: to show techniques and strategies and ways in which community can be the answer to their own problems and the way for their own dreams to come true.”
For a list of public events during LB Fresh’s Week of Actions, go here.