NYT critic reduces Long Beach’s Olympic closing ceremony to a ‘beach party’ — like that's a bad thing?

The Paris Olympics are over and now all eyes have turned to Los Angeles, which has big shoes to fill in four years when it hosts the Games.

On Sunday, during a closing ceremony celebration that included over a hundred acrobats, dancers and circus artists, the first woman mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, passed the Olympic flag to the first woman mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass.

As is the Hollywood way, “Mission Impossible” star Tom Cruise then leapt from the top of the Stade de France, rappelling to the ground where he took the Olympic flag from the 11-time Olympic medalist Simon Biles, attached it to a motorcycle and rode out of the stadium.

Then, in a prerecorded clip, Cruise rode the bike through Paris and onto a plane, which he later jumps out of above LA. Cruise made his way up to the Hollywood sign (modified, of course, to include the Olympic rings), where he passed the flag off to a series of past and present U.S. Olympians, who carried it through the streets of LA until it reached its final destination: Long Beach.

There, the Red Hot Chili Peppers opened the beachfront show for the SAG-actor-filled audience at Rosie’s Dog Beach with “Can’t Stop,” followed by Billie Eilish performing “Birds of a Feather.” Then, as it should be, Snoop Dogg strolled out singing “Drop It Like It’s Hot.” He was then joined by none other than Dr. Dre for a performance of “The Next Episode.”

Long Beach locals lit up social media, proud to see their city playing a central role in the ceremony — as well as to defend its honor when multiple newscasters and official posts incorrectly identified it as Venice Beach. But with one of our oil islands (Island Chaffee, to be exact) in the background, the location was obvious to all Playanese people who saw it.

Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson even took to social media to correct an official Olympics page, which misidentified the city. And in French, no less.

(LA Taco has a fun list of all the other ways locals knew it was Long Beach, not Venice.)

Just minutes after the closing ceremony ended, however, New York Times’ Chief Pop Music Critic Jon Pareles made it known that he was unimpressed with the waterfront musical display as part of the newspaper’s live coverage.

“After the grand scale and ambition of the Paris spectacle, a big bang, the handoff was a self-satisfied whimper,” Pareles wrote Sunday evening. “The Red Hot Chili Peppers slammed away, Billie Eilish emoted and Snoop Dogg brought on the least unexpected guest, Dr. Dre, but I have to wonder what L.A. 2028 was thinking; it reduced all of them to beach-party entertainment.”

I’m a big fan of Long Beach. It’s the city I was born, raised and still live in, so maybe I'm a little biased. But having lived here nearly 37 years, I have to wonder what this 70-year-old critic from Connecticut, who now lives in New York, really knows about Southern California and the vibe we live by. Maybe he’s just showcasing his cliched general contempt for the West Coast?

Pareles certainly has the musical and journalistic background to critique music. A flutist and pianist, he graduated from Yale University in 1977 with a degree in music. He was associate editor of Crawdaddy in the late ’70s as well as associate editor of Rolling Stone and music editor of The Village Voice in the ’80s. He started contributing to the Times in ’82.

But what makes him an expert on West Coast lifestyle and culture?  What does he think would showcase Southern California better?

“I thought it was dope,” Mayor Richardson told me yesterday after returning from Paris. “We like Snoop Dogg, we like Billie Eilish, I remember Red Hot Chili Peppers when they were hot, so I thought it was a great way to preview what to expect. This area has a lot of culture, a lot of music.”

Of course, the mayor is probably just as biased as I am. So I stepped outside the Long Beach bubble and tapped Los Angeles Times columnist Anita Chabria to get her take.

“LA has long suffered from New York snobbery,” Chabria said. “I think the East Coast fundamentally doesn’t understand the artistry and the genius and the talent that comes out of places like Los Angeles and San Francisco.”

Seeing four mega-stars from all around the Greater Los Angeles area take the stage in Long Beach demonstrates the fact that the region is an incubator for diverse talent, Chabria said.

“What I saw in Long Beach on that stage was the best of what the West Coast does, which is help people find their talent and find their dreams,” Chabria continued. “And I think it’s always been hard for New York to understand that.”

And what is the problem with a beach party anyway?

There are 75 miles of mainland beaches in Los Angeles County alone. Like, 93% of Chili Peppers — a band I don’t even like but now have to defend — songs are about sunny California, which normal people associate with sandy beaches and ocean breezes.

Eilish was born and raised in LA, and is the epitome of laid back — embodying the easy-going SoCal vibe. And, of course, Snoop Dogg is from Long Beach.

Aside from the direct connection to Snoop, who has become something of a staple for the Olympic games, serving the past two weeks as a correspondent for NBC in Paris after being a torch bearer, Long Beach is set to play a major role in the 2028 Games. It only made sense that our beach was the perfect beach for the closing ceremony.

Outside of LA proper, Long Beach will host the most events. The city’s lineup includes handball at the Long Beach Arena, artistic swimming and water polo in the Convention Center parking lot, canoe sprint and rowing at Marine Stadium, and sailing, marathon swimming, and the triathlon along the coast. And that’s just what we know of. There are a few Olympic events as well as all of the Paralympic events that have yet to be announced.

“The entire Long Beach experience is going to be a beach party,” Mayor Richardson said, laughing.

“I promise you, when people come to the Olympics they’re coming to our beaches,” Chabria said. “The idea that the beaches aren’t integral to what LA is and what the Olympics are going to be is just foolish.”

So how does a high-flying Hollywood production ending with a star-studded beach party not encapsulate everything LA ’28 should be? As Chabria said, “It was very Hollywood, it was very LA, but isn’t that what we want to show the world? Exactly who we are?”

Maybe just stick to the East Coast, Jon. We’ve got us covered.

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