Walk down to Shoreline Drive on a Saturday around 4 p.m. this month and something looks different. The Shoreline lot is a staging area for shuttles. An AquaLink boat is loading near the Aquarium of the Pacific with people who are not tourists heading to brunch. The Queen Mary is lit up on a Tuesday. If you have lived here for a while, you know the waterfront has always been a place other people visited. That is the part that changed.
The thesis of this guide is simple. The center of gravity on the downtown waterfront has moved. For decades it was the Aquarium and the Queen Mary, with the restaurants clustered inland. As of June 6, it is an 11,000-seat outdoor concert venue with the Queen Mary as its backdrop, a legacy restaurant reopened next to it after years dark, and a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway that is quietly stitching itself back together with new food. If you already live in Long Beach, this is the summer to reintroduce yourself to your own coastline.
The night the map redrew itself
The F&M Bank Amphitheater opened as an 11,000-seat waterfront venue with a Snoop Dogg concert on opening night. The amphitheater officially opened its doors on June 6, 2026. It sits near the Queen Mary and Harry Bridges Memorial Park and is operated by Legends Global.
Two things about the venue matter for residents more than the marquee names. First, it is genuinely large. The City of Long Beach selected Legends Global to operate and manage the City's first-ever amphitheater, the biggest waterfront amphitheater in Los Angeles County. Second, the city built it without a parking lot attached, which forces a different rhythm on concert nights.
There will be no general admission parking at the amphitheater. Attendees can park in the designated Shoreline Drive lot and use free shuttle service to the venue. Long Beach Transit also will operate AquaLink water shuttles from a dock near the Aquarium of the Pacific before and after the show.
If you live in Belmont Shore, Bluff Park, or Alamitos Beach, the practical read is that a bike ride or an AquaLink boat is now the fastest way to a summer show. AquaLink boats run by Long Beach Transit will leave every 30 minutes from a dock near the Aquarium of the Pacific before and after the show. They cost $5 for a round trip. There is also storage outside the venue for bikes and e-scooters, and on show nights free admission to the Queen Mary.
The economics are worth a beat too. The $21.3 million venue was originally promised to open in fall 2025 and have a $14 million price tag. But the city altered plans midstream to add upgraded seating and a VIP lounge, along with two more screens on stage. Increased construction and labor costs also inflated the bottom line. The projection from the city's Economic Development Department is that the $21.3 million venue could pay for itself within eight years. Whether that pencils out depends on how many of the 40-ish annual events actually sell.
The calendar residents are planning around
The inaugural season is stacked into August and September, which is why traffic patterns will feel different for the next eight weeks. Announced dates include:
- Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz, Aug. 1
- TOTO, Christopher Cross and The Romantics, Aug. 14
- Luke Bryan, Aug. 15
- 311 and Dirty Heads, Aug. 18
- Jack's Mannequin, Something Corporate and Andrew McMahon, Aug. 22
- Nas and The Roots, Aug. 28
- Los Ángeles Azules, September
- Mötley Crüe with Tesla and Extreme, Sept. 19
Those bookings come from the venue's announced performances for its inaugural season and confirmed acts for August and September 2026 including Mötley Crüe with special guests Tesla and Extreme, and TOTO. If your calendar runs on when Ocean Boulevard will be busy, this is the version of it worth pinning to the fridge.
The Reef timed its comeback to the room next door
For anyone who grew up here, the reopening buried at the bottom of the news cycle might land harder than any concert booking. The Reef reopened last week, hoping to build on its already rich Long Beach legacy. David Tallichet was famous for his empire of restaurants that included the Proud Bird next to LAX and the Castaway in Burbank, but that business started with The Reef.
The reopening was not accidental. Owner John Tallichet, David's son who took over the business after David's death in 2007, said they were waiting for the right time. The opening of Long Beach's new waterfront amphitheater, practically next door, was the perfect opportunity. The address, for the file: The Reef, 880 Harbor Scenic Drive, is open Thursday through Sunday from 11:30 a.m.
The bet embedded in the reopening is that thousands of concertgoers per night, most of them arriving early to avoid parking chaos, will look up from Harbor Scenic Drive and want a table with a view of the Queen Mary. If you have driven past the shuttered building for years wondering what would happen to it, you now have the answer.
Food Scene Week overlaps the opening month
If you are a Long Beach resident who tracks restaurants, this week is the week. Long Beach Food Scene Week 2026 will kick off Friday, July 31, through Sunday, Aug. 10. And, with it, will feature the city's best restaurants, cafes, and pop-ups as, for the first time ever, over 100 spaces have confirmed their participation for the fourth iteration of the annual celebration.
The first-time participant list is unusually deep this year. New to the week: Homareya, Colossus, Nick's, Stormburger, Hey Brother Baker, Viaje, Massimo's, Proudly Serving, Brother's Keeper, Steelhead Coffee, Anna's Pizza Joint, OBRA Hand Bakery, Second Owl, Appu's Cafe, Cyclops Coffee, Buen Provecho, Lima Cebechería Peruana, Waldo's Pizza, Seaside Creamery, Royal Indian Curry House, Bubu's Restaurant, The Modern, and multiple legacy restaurants participating for the first time, including Joe Jost's and Naples Rib Company.
Joe Jost's on Anaheim Street has been pouring since 1924. Naples Rib Company is a Second Street institution. The fact that both are joining Food Scene Week for the first time, in the same August as the amphitheater's first full month, is not a coincidence so much as a signal. Owners who typically ignore restaurant weeks are treating this summer as different.
If you are picking one meal, the through-line is that this isn't about discounts or deals, though some may be offered at places, but chefs and restaurateurs flexing their culinary muscles. During Long Beach Food Scene Week, diners will have the opportunity to experience our city's top restaurants in ways they aren't able to on the regular. Translation: order the thing you would not normally order.
2nd & PCH quietly refills
The other piece of the shift is happening five miles inland at 2nd & PCH, the retail complex at the mouth of the Peninsula. Two openings in particular are worth watching.
Brodard. Brodard, the famed Vietnamese restaurant, will be opening a location in Long Beach at the 2nd & PCH retail complex. The Long Beach outpost is going into 6480 E. Pacific Coast Hwy. #100 in the former Tocaya space. Context on why this matters: Opened in 1996 by Diane Dang and her daughters, Brodard helped define what Vietnamese dining could look like for its own Vietnamese refugees who now called OC home, and for a broader Southern California audience. Approachable. Precise. And deeply rooted in tradition while quietly setting new standards. An opening date is still soft. "As of right now, we don't have a specific date as to when Brodard Long Beach is opening," said Roberto Lemus, a representative with 2nd & PCH. "But it is coming sometime in 2026." It joins a tiny but growing list of traditional Vietnamese spaces, Sesame Dinette and Pickle Banh Mi come immediately to mind, that are offering Long Beach the flavors of the southeast Asian culinary cornerstone.
Storm Burger. StormBurger officials have said they are opening in the first quarter of 2026. StormBurger officially has their truck outside the location while construction continues. The truck-before-the-buildout approach means the food has been in circulation while the space is finished.
Bacari. Already open and useful to know about on concert nights. Now with ten locations, Bacari has brought its usual formula to Long Beach. This mini-chain's LBC outpost has a vaguely Mediterranean patio with a retractable roof, a small plates menu with everything from lamb kebab to mac and cheese, and a bottomless mimosa brunch on weekends. There's also an open bar special available nightly, where $35 gets you as many Baca-ritas as you'd like in 90 minutes.
What this adds up to for someone who already lives here
If you have been in Long Beach five years or more, the summer 2026 to-do list is genuinely different from the summer 2025 one. You have a new large-format venue that you can reach without your car. You have a legacy waterfront restaurant back on the menu after years dark. You have more than a hundred kitchens in an eleven-day sprint of trying to out-cook each other. And you have a retail node at 2nd & PCH that is finally filling its empty spaces with tenants worth planning a night around.
The best move for a Long Beach resident this month is to treat one weekend as a waterfront weekend. Take the AquaLink at least once. Book The Reef before it is impossible to. Pick one Food Scene Week menu you would not normally sit down for. See what your own coastline looks like from a top-row amphitheater seat with the Queen Mary in the frame.
When it comes time to think about a move, a listing, or a home that lives more comfortably alongside a city that keeps changing shape, Coastline to Desert Homes is built for exactly these conversations. Schedule a Relocation Consultation with the Barajas Team when the summer settles.
