My friend Kris from San Diego was in town for some classes yesterday, so we got together last night. I remembered that he is kind of a nut for planes (hes the same friend I went to Encounter at LAX with), so I suggested going to Long Beach Airport. I remembered there being a restaurant called The Prop Room and viewing deck on the second floor when I flew out of there for Christmas, so we went to check it out! The food actually wasn't half bad, but it was fun to wander around the airport when you weren't having to deal with travel, schedules, or luggage. Long Beach has a great old Art Deco terminal with tile mosaics everywhere. There is a lot of info about the airports history on the second floor. Apparently the current terminal was built in 1941, and the guy who "fathered" aviation in Long Beach used to fly from his family's oceanfront hotel/apartment house in the early 1900's - using the beach as his runway. We also found the location of this really amazing neon sign that I love but I didn't see at Christmas - a "Fly DC Jets" sign on the Boeing plant. It turns out the plant closed last summer, and the neon is dark. I hope theres some plan to preserve the sign - its really beautiful. I'll have to go back in the daytime to take some pics of it.