With summer approaching quickly, Millikan students are in anticipation of a long awaited break. Every summer students flock to the beach, the mall, and the park with their friends. But after a few weeks, summer boredom kicks in and students find themselves scrolling on TikTok and spending endless hours playing video games. Here is a list of free things to do instead of giving in to boredom.
When thinking about spending time outside most teens think of hiking, biking, or swimming, but another fun option is geocaching. Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity that uses an app to provide coordinates to hidden containers in real life, called geocaches, in areas around where they live. With the difficulty of how geocaches are hidden varying, it’s a fun, free, activity to do by yourself or with friends this summer.
Yogalution offers free yoga classes every day at 11 am and again at 6pm on the bluff of Long Beach. These classes are beginner friendly and everyone is welcome to join. This is an excellent way to practice mindfulness and relaxation by yourself or with friends while enjoying the summer sun.
The city of Long Beach offers tons of free outdoor entertainment for everyone to enjoy. Free concerts happen all over the area including The El Dorado Nature Center, Shoreline Village, Naples, 2nd & PCH, and the Long Beach Peninsula. The Long Beach Municipal Band also does free concerts all over the city.
If you are less interested in classical music and more into jazz or rock, then the OC parks summer concert series will be more your speed. This summer’s lineup consisting of bands like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Ozomatli is going to be a lot of fun.
Orange County also offers free movies as part of the OC Parks Sunset Cinema every Friday evening starting at 6pm on Jun. 7 and ending on Aug. 30. In summer 2024 they will be showing newer movies such as “Wonka” and “Barbie”, as well as older movies like the “The Goonies” and “Men in Black”, to name a few.
Another free opportunity to have some fun outside with your friends is the Huntington Library Free Days. The Huntington Library is more than just a library, it is so full of libraries, museums, and beautiful botanical gardens that it would take days to see everything. The Huntington Library offers free admission every first Thursday of the month. In order to get tickets for the event, you must join an online queue the last Thursday of the month before you want to attend. Personally, I have never had an issue getting tickets by joining the que about ten minutes before numbers are drawn.
Like the Huntington Library, many other museums offer free days, and others always offer free admission. The LACMA offers a free membership for L.A. County kids 17 and under which allows them to bring one guest with them for free. The Long Beach Museum of Art just started offering a free teen membership that allows free admission until the summer after your senior year. They haven’t put this on their website yet, but you can get one in person by showing a valid school-issued ID at the main desk. Other museums that always offer free admission include but aren’t limited to the Broad, the Hammer Museum, the MOCA Grand Avenue, the Griffith Observatory, the Orange County Museum of Art, the Californian African American Museum, the California Science Center, and the Hollywood Bowl Museum (check out this article from timeout.com to see more).
Alexa Tafoia, a freshman in PEACE, said that although she likes to hang out with her friends over summer she still experiences boredom.
With all the free options available around our city and cities around us, students should have plenty of things to do all summer long.
