A Long Beach caf\u00e9 that was born out of tragedy has quickly become a space for healing and connection after its owner created it to honor his late girlfriend.<\/p>\n
Tommy Le created Reinne\u2019s Place as an ode to his late girlfriend, Reinne Lim, who died in 2022 after a DUI driver traveling the wrong way on the freeway struck the couple head-on. Le survived the crash and knew he needed to pursue his shared dream with Lim in opening their own coffee shop.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a girl’s girl, she was a free spirit,\u201d Le said of Lim. \u201cShe loved living life and she loved just everything about it. And when she came into my life, I think it really brought so much light into my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Right now, Reinne\u2019s Place is operating as a pop-up at Open Gallery in Long Beach while construction for its brick-and-mortar location continues. Once it opens, Le said he\u2019ll display something called a \u201cReinne check\u201d to share the stories of love and grief from those who wish to participate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a little card that looks like a guest check from diners, and people are able to write messages to loved ones,\u201d Le said.<\/p>\n
Describing it as a \u201cplatform for anyone to just get something off their chest,\u201d Le said that so far, he\u2019s collected hundreds of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it’s something we all share as human beings: loss,\u201d Le said. \u201cI think my being able to build a space that empowers that and allows you to feel that is a beautiful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those \u201cReinne checks\u201d are expected to be displayed at the brick-and-mortar caf\u00e9 later this month, Le said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Long Beach caf\u00e9 that was born out of tragedy has quickly become a space for healing and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-119068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}