By Chris Colucci
Internet memes are part artistic expression, part social commentary and part cultural snapshot. The images or text they present are terse one-liners, driving home a point or evoking an emotion.
For Rockville Centre native Drew Guarini, that creative outlet has evolved into a social media success story, blending his professional expertise with a deep appreciation for his adopted hometown of Long Beach.
The result is the Instagram account LongBeachNYMemes, which has attracted more than 20,000 followers since 2020. The page, operated by the West End resident, continues to offer relatable memes about life in the City by the Sea while supporting small businesses and encouraging residents to explore local music, arts and restaurants.
Guarini, 37, graduated from South Side High School in 2007, where he was voted “Most likely to be online.” After developing a penchant for creating rudimentary websites, distributing music files and organizing online photo albums for friends, he graduated from NYU in 2011 with a degree in cinema arts.
He was a writer and editor and worked in social media management, eventually completing attention-grabbing social media projects for brands including Budweiser, McDonald’s and Netflix.
After he moved to Long Beach in 2013, Guarini’s constantly running mind and his newfound love of the town’s lifestyle merged into the now-popular memes page.
“Think about the vast majority of towns on Long Island. Is anybody going to wear a hoodie that says ‘Massapequa Park’ or ‘Rockville Centre?’ No,” Guarini said. “But if you walk around Long Beach, you’re going to see an endless parade of people rocking a Long Beach hat, Long Beach tank top, Long Beach shirt. People want to be here. They want to live here. They want to visit here.”
The site, longbeachnymemes.com — a standalone webpage separate from the social media page — explains his work as “an absurdist humor love letter, topical commentary, and news about the City by the Sea.” Guarini estimates that he has spent thousands of hours creating hundreds of posts per year, typically distributing batches of 15 to 20 images at a time and posting several times a week.
Topics include anything the average Long Beach resident could recognize or relate to, from the boardwalk to longing for beach days in the middle of winter, nearly always with an optimistic spin.
“I’d like to think of my page as sort of a palate-cleansing sorbet between 20 courses of mud as you’re scrolling through social media,” Guarini said. “There is so much negativity. There’s so much bad news. It’s sort of suffocating, all-encompassing and unavoidable. And I’d like to think that the vast majority of what I post is kind of a reprieve and a refresher from that.”
The Highlights section of his page is a collection of stories showcasing everything from “This week in LB” — a rotating collection of musical performances and activities around the city — to Long Beach-focused “history” and current food and drink specials offered at local bars and restaurants.
“The amount of free promotion and impressions that I’ve given to businesses, that most influencers or pages of my size would charge people for — I’ve probably given away hundreds of thousands of dollars in free promotion,” Guarini estimates.
He also offers city-centric merchandise linking to shirts, towels and hats through an Etsy store. The merch, like the website, was never meant to be a real source of income. He views the site as a break-even project, at best.
“When I check my DMs and somebody says, ‘Hey, thank you for sharing this — somebody came in and purchased something,” Guarini said, “that is, far and away, the most rewarding thing for me. Just giving back to our community and helping people out.”
His next big venture is a step away from the screen, going IRL, or In Real Life. Spurred in part by the shuttering of Long Beach Cinemas in 2023, Guarini began looking into developing a physical venue — an arts center — for the city’s prominent arts community to showcase its work year-round and foster the creative talents of potential artists.
“Long Beach has no sort of dedicated space meant to fulfill the passions of adults who love art in the community or make arts,” he said. “There’s no centralized location for adults who have an appetite for the arts or young people who want to develop a passion for the arts. And I think this could be a real value and resource to our community.”
Guarini acknowledges that his plan is still in its infancy, but he’s moving ahead with a strategy and has biweekly meetings with a dedicated team.
“There’s discussions going on about the trademarking of the name, developing a brand identity, trademarking the logo,” he said of the behind-the-scenes work. “Trying to make things happen in the background and taking care of these smaller things before going into developing a 501c3 and scouting out art spaces.”
Reflecting on what’s at the core of Long Beach that captured his attention and his heart, Guarini said it all comes back to the community spirit.
“Everybody really cares about Long Beach, but they all really care about each other,” he explained. “You can see this when the O.G. Sorrento’s went on fire,” he said, referring to the 2021 fire on West Park Avenue that displaced the longtime Italian eatery, “or [when] somebody gets sick and has medical bills. Within a week or two, there’s a bar hosting an event for them and the bar is packed out. The fundraiser is over its fundraising goal. People just really come together for each other here, and it’s a beautiful thing to see.”