primalflowerfront Pastry chef Justina Fenton and eco-florist Shelley Anders, tenants of a downtown brownstone that is a cornerstone of the burgeoning movement toward a more-authentic Long Beach, will be the featured guests in the opening segment of Greater Long Beach Radio with Dave Wielenga this evening to share the joys, stresses and strategies of this grass-roots experiment.

The show’s second half will be a conversation with Michelle Lecours, who studied journalism but worked as a school counsellor until a layoff sent her back to her first professional love. The Signal Tribune reporter, who also issues video news reports from a home studio, will provide her take on the Long Beach’s fractured media landscape—from what it may costing the city to what opportunities it may be presenting.

Greater Long Beach Radio has a new day and time for the summertime—Thursdays at 6 p.m. on KBEACH.org, the online radio station at California State University/Long Beach. The show is available live, in the KBEACH.org archives or by downloadable podcast.

shortninbreadslider Anders worked for 25 years in the florist industry before transplanting herself from Texas to a shop on the downtown Long Beach corner of 3rd and Elm, where she and her partner, Jeremy West, opened Primal Flower almost 10 months ago.

A couple of months later, Fenton made good on a decade-long dream—since her days at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco—when she and her Uncle Keith gave Long Beach a real corner bakery they call Shortnin’ Bread.