I did a sea tour and a shore tour at Long Beach in the ‘80s. I thought it was far superior to being stationed in San Diego.
I went there, touring, in 1993, visited the Queen Mary in between visits to the Getty Museum and touring the coast road (Highway 1) up to San Francisco and Redwoods National Park.
Later I saw a photo published in Soldier of Fortune, when they were writing stories about the Clinton scandals, of Slick Willie making a speech on the quay in Long Beach, pitching the city fathers of Long Beach on his plan to sell off the Long Beach Navy activity to a PLA-controlled Chicom company -- and with a sensitive USMC commsta right across the fence, and CMC raising hell behind closed doors! I was so pissed at people for voting for that traitorous swine .... he was such a pig, on so many, many levels.
But I vividly remembered the forest of masts and haze grey hulls from my visit, when I counted what I remember as maybe 15-18 auxiliaries and landing ships of different descriptions. It seemed to me that Long Beach belonged to the Big & Slow TYCOMs.