SIGNAL TRIBUNE Serving Bixby Knolls, California Heights, Los Cerritos, Wrigley and Signal Hill
VOL. XLII NO. 48
LONG BEACH CITY COUNCIL
Your Weekly Community Newspaper
www.signaltribune.com
COMMUNITY
POTHOS, PHILODENDRON AND PONYTAIL PALMS
November 20, 2020
ARTS REVIEW
Long Beach Opera’s innovative ‘2020 Songbook’ exhilarates Anita W. Harris Senior Writer
Photo courtesy Pexels.com
Unhosted short-term rentals like those provided by AirBNB may soon be allowed in Long Beach.
City of Long Beach may allow unhosted short-term rentals in revised ordinance Emma DiMaggio Production Manager
On Tuesday, Nov. 17, the Long Beach City Council directed city staff to prepare an ordinance allowing for unhosted short-term rentals (STRs). The council’s approval came to the dismay of hotel workers, who said that short-term rentals exacerbate the already precarious state of the hotel industry. Heather Rozman, executive director of the Long Beach Hospitality Alliance, pointed out that hotel occupancy rates are at record lows due to the pandemic. Hotel occupancy declined by 45% during the first half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, according to a staff report. Room rates have also decreased by 13.3%, revealing a struggling industry. “This new ordinance will only undermine the hotel industry’s ability to recover from the coronavirus pandemic,” Rozman said. “Long Beach families need homes and hotels need guests.” Currently, both city and state health orders allow un-hosted shortterm rentals because they reduce close contact. AirBNB representative Alex Bland pointed out that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has expressed a preference for un-hosted STRs over hotels for the same reason. Both AirBNB and VRBO have see STRS page 5
Kristen Farrah Naeem | Signal Tribune
The new Foliage LB space includes a large Victorian-style couch (right) and a mural of interwoven plants. Saplings and other small plants (bottom left) are placed on a table with a humidifier to ensure they receive adequate moisture. Spider plants, Aralia Fabian and more (top left) are lined on a table in a corner of the store.
New plant store Foliage LB celebrates grand opening that can fill up the corner of a room to hand sized ones for shelves and desks. Other supplies are also Staff Writer in stock, including macrame hangers for potted oliage LB celebrated its grand opening Friplants and gardening shears. day, Nov. 13, gifting free plants to customFoliage LB was co-founded by friends and ers who came to visit the newest Downtown roommates Nicoletta Meza and David Allen. The Long Beach business. pair met as children when Meza became best The small bright space friends with Allen’s sister. features a mural of twisting Reacquainting as adults, they plants on the wall behind a bonded over their love of plants We just knew our large Victorian-style couch and moved into a Long Beach community would with green brocade. Foliage apartment together. LB is aptly named, with Once the pandemic arrived and benefit from some plants everywhere visitors California went into lockdown, more greens and look, hanging from the their apartment’s plant collection ceiling, lining wall mounted grew exponentially, eventually tranquility in their shelves and completely getting out of hand. homes. covering low wooden ta“With the whole quarantine bles. As customers peruse, and being inside, we tried to find -David Allen, co-founder of Foliage small humidifiers nestled a way to make our house a little among the greenery periodmore comfortable and so plants ically release bursts of mist kind of got out of control and into the air around plants that’s how we started,” Allen told from moist climates. the Signal Tribune during Foliage LB’s grand The new store carries a wide range of plants opening. such as Philodendron, corkscrew rush, Monstera After running out of space to fit any more plants adansoii, Monstera deliciosa, gold dust croton, in their apartment, Meza and Allen decided to ponytail palm, pothos and many more. Their open their own business to meet people they could inventory ranges from large potted house plants Kristen Farrah Naeem
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see FOLIAGE page 7
Long Beach Opera (LBO) can’t stage live performances due to the ongoing pandemic, but its streaming “2020 Songbook” showcases LBO’s signature brand of exciting and experimental new operatic productions. The songbook is available to stream through Sunday, Nov. 22. Premiering last Sunday, Nov. 15, the “2020 Songbook” features 20 world-premiere performances by emerging composers commissioned to create short pieces reflective of their 2020 experiences. Five veteran composers who, according to LBO, have created some of the most interesting and dynamic contemporary operas this century– Anthony Davis, Annie Gosfield, David Lang, George Lewis and Du Yun– selected the 20 younger artists and mentored their multimedia compositions. The resulting works are uniformly astonishing, capturing what host Anthony Roth Costanzo describes in the introduction as the power of music, especially during this pandemic time. “It can heal us,” he says. “It can bring us joy.” Costanzo also notes LBO is adapting its 2021 season to be “pandemic proof.” Next year’s operas, curated by artistic director Yuval Sharon, will be performed outdoors or livestreamed from indoor venues. Though LBO had to drop or postpone three out of four of its current season’s productions, it paid the performers 100% of their fees for those shows, Costanzo notes. The 20 new pieces in the songbook were commissioned by LBO donors and all composers and artists were paid for their work. LBO describes the songbook’s works as a “virtual artistic time-capsule that range in subject from the silence brought on by the pandemic; to what breathing means to sick, see LB OPERA page 7