Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial end of summer each year, but that doesn\u2019t make the final beach days any easier. Crowds headed to Ocean Beach Park last weekend to capitalize on a few final chances to take in one of the many highlights of the City by the Sea.<\/p>\n
The beach season, which began with weekend-only access on May 23 and opened every day on June 19, yielding a longer than average operational time \u2014 meaning more beach time for all. \u201cHonestly, this year was a beautiful beach year,\u201d said Massi Decarolis from Oceanside as she left Lafayette Boulevard Beach after spending four hours.<\/p>\n
Aside from agreeable weather and an extended calendar, every beachgoer saw a distinct upgrade to their visits after the \u201cTickets to Paradise\u201d booth-painting project helped to further beautify the beach. The simple wooden sheds at nearly every beach entrance were turned into genuine pieces of artwork from talented local artists. The city also installed additional access mats, \u201cMobi-mats,\u201d with a total of 13 beach entrance points now accommodating people with wheelchairs, walkers or strollers.<\/p>\n
Long Beach resident Jean Fay racked up roughly five hours of beach time on Saturday, despite some natural nuisances. \u201cI like when there\u2019s no flies. Today, there were a lot of flies because have a north wind.\u201d Aside from the unavoidable insect issue, Fay managed to end the season on a positive note. \u201cWe always love the beach,\u201d Fay explained. \u201cAlways good times with family. It was a good day out.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the absolute end of the season, when lifeguards on every stand blew their whistles for the final time, calling in swimmers at 6 p.m. Monday evening, the annual round of applause and celebration broke out to close the summer in appreciation. With the beach season concluded and lifeguards remaining off-duty, swimming is officially prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial end of summer each year, but that doesn\u2019t make the final beach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,181667,181668,133,181669,174355,132,158337],"class_list":["post-460719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-beach-season","tag-long-beach-beaches","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-labor-day","tag-long-beach-lifeguards","tag-long-beach-news","tag-ocean-beach-park"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460719","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=460719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}