posted 04-11-2007 10:41 PM               

Chaffee, White, Grissom & Freeman are the names of four artificial islands immediately off the Southern California port of Long Beach. From the shore, they each look like an inhabited island paradise, complete with waterfalls, interesting buildings, many palm trees and crazy nighttime party lighting. In fact, they are offshore oil wells, built on 10 acre Dubai-esque man-made islands created for the purpose of housing the oil wells, and disguised so as to comply with local aesthetic standards.

posted 04-12-2007 08:50 PM               

One of the best viewing places in Long Beach is from a beautiful area called "The Bluff." It's right on Ocean Blvd., and it is a walkway along Ocean Blvd. that goes from Redondo Ave. westward all the way to Cherry Ave. "The Bluff" is high above the beach, so you have a great view of the islands, especially Grissom Island.

During the day, it's very picturesque — some people jogging, some walking their dogs, but most of the people I saw on "The Bluff" always seemed to be looking out at the islands, very thoughtfully and reflectively. And most people called them "the astronaut islands" if you asked them what they were looking at.

One of my favorite things to do when I lived there was to stand on "The Bluff" at night and look out across the water at the islands and think about our astronauts. If you stood there a long time, it was magical. The city would gradually start to grow darker... little boats on the water would suddenly seem to disappear in the night, and you could look west and see the city skyline slowly flickering out, and then at exactly 11 p.m. every night all the lights on the Queen Mary ship would go out, and everything would be totally dark.

Except for the astronaut oil islands! The islands would be ablaze in lights, oranges and yellows and pinks, with the palm trees on them swaying in the breeze and the waterfalls flowing on them, all night long, every night of the year. The islands never went dark, there was always water movement and sound coming from them, no matter what time of the day or night... and so they were truly living memorials, and that was really really powerful.

posted 04-16-2007 09:59 AM            

Designed by Long Beach landscape architect Joseph Linesch, who also worked on the original design of Disneyland, the islands camouflage a 24-7 operation that produced 11.7 million barrels of oil in 2006 alone.

Combined, the islands encompass about 42 acres of land and are named after four NASA pioneers who died in the early days of space exploration: Roger Chaffee, Edward White, Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Theodore Freeman.