Either this guy has very poor peripheral vision or he really just isn't interested in all that pulchritude.

Long Beach's most famous former Citizen is Comedian Billy Crystal. His Broadway Show "700 Sundays" is mostly about his growing up in Long Beach. The City Of Long Beach took a big hit from Hurricane Sandy and Billy played a large part in its rehabilitation.

A boardwalk has run along most of Long Beach's shoreline for the past 100 years. As there's no boardwalk here, the picture probably was taken on the west side of town near Atlantic Beach, where there's a boardwalk-less stretch of shoreline. The far east side of Long Beach also lacks a boardwalk, but I don't believe that area would have been developed back in 1925.

City lore has it that circus elephants were used as beasts of burden in the construction of the boardwalk. Alas, that isn't quite true; the developer in charge of construction had some elephants paraded to the worksite, but there's no evidence that the pachyderms did any actual work. New York's zealously turf-protecting construction unions wouldn't have allowed it.

Trivia: along with Glen Cove on the North Shore, Long Beach is one of the only two communities on Long Island that's an actual incorporated municipality. All other communities are unincorporated parts of much larger townships.