Jedediah Laub-Klein

Download: The Triffids “I Am A Lonesome Hobo”

Download: The Go-Betweens “Dive For Your Memory”

As everyone who’s read about half of anything I’ve written knows, it makes me sick that Acres of Books is going to be demolished. Knocking Acres over makes no sense at all: Building new lofts when we could be about three weeks from the New Depression? Snuffing out a loved (and solvent) landmark business just because screwy deals drafted decades ago demand it? Removing one of the last unique things that keeps Long Beach from becoming just some by-committee tryhard imitation of Santa Monica?

Of course the city will regret this at some point down the line—probably when people who are barely teenaged now climb into power and wonder what happened to the Long Beach their parents loved, and probably when some think-tank study finally discovers years from now that unrestricted construction of dingbat live-work lofts is about as healthy for a struggling downtown as a neutron bomb. I can almost hear the speeches now, and they sound a lot like the apologies the city had to make for the successive generations of fiasco built and rebuilt on the site that’s now CityPlace. But ideas as bad as this one breed too many bulldozers to stop, so Acres gets plowed under. They close for good Wednesday and the maybe-official wake will be tonight in the back at the last Hobo Alley. Bands will play, hot dogs will be cooked and a lot of respects will be paid. My respects below.