Such Tenants! They Invite Huge Crowds Over, They’re Noisy--but Most of the Neighbors Love The Bums

Alicia Brown had promised herself that she would never set foot in Dodger Stadium.

After all, hadn’t the construction of Dodger Stadium destroyed the Chavez Ravine neighborhood where many of her friends once lived? Wasn’t the stadium’s proximity enough to cause other neighbors to sell their homes and flee? Weren’t Dodger fans causing bumper-to-bumper traffic jams outside her front window on Solano Avenue every time there was a home game? Weren’t the Dodgers setting off those fireworks three times a year, turning Solano Canyon into what felt like a sonic boom chamber?

“I thought it would be too uncomfortable to attend a game. I had too many bad memories,” said Brown, chairman of the Solano Community Improvement Organization, a group that has fought to preserve the tiny residential enclave split by the Pasadena Freeway and squashed between Elysian Park, Dodger Stadium and railroad yards.

Brown kept her promise for more than 20 years. Three years ago, she broke it.

The reason? Under a program to have businesses aid Los Angeles public schools, the Dodger organization in 1980 “adopted” the local grammar school, helping to create a sixth-grade enrichment curriculum built around lectures by players, coaches and executives.

Brown had been very skeptical about the school adoption. “I thought the Dodgers would tell the children things that weren’t true,” she recalled, but she came to see it as a valuable experience for the youngsters even if it might be partly intended to smooth ruffled feathers. So when the children and community members were invited to a game three years ago, she decided to attend. She saw, she said, “that the children were very well treated.”

Her embargo ended, she then began to meet with representatives of the Dodgers to discuss such continuing local problems as traffic and litter. Gradually, her personal war with the behemoth up the road became a negotiated truce with intermittent skirmishes. She conceded that she is still not very excited when the season continues into playoffs or World Series games. But she has, she said, learned to live with the Dodgers.

Living or working near Dodger Stadium is a bit like the old joke about the elephant in the refrigerator. How do you know it’s there? Just look for footprints on the Jell-O.

The footprints, in the case of the stadium, are easy to find, according to residents of such surrounding neighborhoods as Echo Park, Elysian Valley, Solano Canyon and Chinatown.

Go down to the area just before or after any home game, especially toward the end of a winning season, they say. Watch the traffic on Sunset Boulevard, Elysian Park Avenue and Scott Avenue. Join the crowds eating at such local restaurants as Barragan’s, Nikola’s, Tonita’s, Les Freres Taix or Little Joe’s or quaffing a brew at the Shortstop tavern. See how many people keep a copy of the Dodgers’ game schedule handy as a guide to neighborhood rhythm even though they may hate baseball. And, conversely, how many local people walk up the hills to games, proudly wearing Dodger blue jackets and caps.

“We’ve all grown accustomed to it all,” explained Viola Redondo, a real estate agent and Dodger fan who is president of the Echo Park Chamber of Commerce.

From her hilltop house on Park Drive, Redondo can see the glare of the stadium lights and hear the cheering of the crowds. To her, that’s a neighborhood perk on those nights when she doesn’t use her season ticket and stays home, with the ballgame on the radio. It’s extra flavor.

Plans Her Schedule

As for complaints that the neighborhood is invaded at least 81 times a year between April and October, Redondo said: “It’s not really annoying. If there is a Sunday game, you just know not to go out shopping at that hour.”

What’s more, she said, “All the restaurants and bars here make good money during the season.”

“It has been a godsend,” Nick Rasic said of the ballpark, which opened April 10, 1962. He and his brothers Walter and Peter own the American-Yugoslav restaurant Nikola’s on Sunset Boulevard.

Many customers, he said, leave their cars in his parking lot and make the 10-minute hike to the stadium after dinner and go back for a nightcap. The specialties of the house are abalone, steak and sports talk.

For six months a year, the Rasics plan their lives and business around the Dodgers (who moved to Los Angeles in 1958), staying open later for night games and opening earlier for day games. Summer vacations are scheduled at times when the Dodgers are out of town or playing colorless opponents sure to draw smaller crowds.

“When the season is over, it’s kind of a letdown,” Rasic said.

Baseball at the Tavern

A few doors away, at the Shortstop tavern, baseball is king. Dodger memorabilia line the walls and a Dodger schedule dominates owner Michael Balmer’s small office behind the pool table.

“If there are 50,000 extra people in the neighborhood and only a very small portion of 1% gets thirsty and stops by, that’s good for us,” Balmer said.

Postgame business is not always predictable. But one thing is sure, Balmer explained:

“A winning season is better than a losing one, a lot better. It has a lot to do with the enthusiasm that’s generated, with people wanting to continue their evening. If they are down in the dumps, they won’t come out after the game.”

Not everyone in the area, however, hopes for a winning season.

Last week, the Echo Park Renters’ and Homeowners’ Assn., in conjunction with three other local residents associations in northeast Los Angeles, sent Dodgers President Peter O’Malley a letter protesting what its author, Barbara Vineyard, called the annual “six months of disruption of our neighborhoods.”

“You can imagine the frustration we feel when our already trying rush-hour commutes are made still more difficult by even more traffic over a prolonged rush hour. And when we finally arrive in our own neighborhoods, traffic-control officers deny us the right-of-way to our own homes! Many of us are actually relieved when the Dodgers have a poor season, since they then draw smaller crowds,” Vineyard, an association member, wrote.

Schedules Requested

Vineyard requests that the Dodgers mail trilingual game schedules--in English, Spanish and Chinese--to all residents in the area from Chinatown to Silver Lake and Atwater so they can better plan their commutes.

And she proposed that a professional study be conducted of traffic generated by the ballpark.

Bob Smith, the director of stadium operations, said most drivers attending games use the entrances and exits hooked up with the Golden State or Pasadena/Harbor freeways and never get onto local streets. The proof, he said, is that it can take up to an hour to get out of those freeway exits and only a half hour on the ones to Scott, Elysian Park or Solano avenues.

Asked about those neighborhood association proposals, Smith told The Times that he will consider them. “We want to get along with our neighbors,” he said.

Some longtime residents still speak bitterly of what they considered a sweetheart deal between the city and then Brooklyn Dodger owner Walter O’Malley in the late 1950s to clear out the mainly Latino community in Chavez Ravine to make way for the new stadium.

Bill Shumard, the Dodger director of community services and special events, conceded that, as a result, relations with some neighbors had been delicate.

Shumard said, however, that things have improved recently, especially since the Dodgers adopted the Solano Avenue School. “It hasn’t all been positive, but not exactly strained either. We just didn’t know each other that well before,” he said.

Communication With Fans

As a result of discussions with Brown and other community leaders, the Dodgers’ enormous electronic flash board usually urges fans not to litter or disrupt neighbors on the way home.

Some area residents say they are annoyed by people who park on local streets to avoid either the $2 parking lot fee or the exit delays. Because of that parking, most often on relatively isolated hillside streets, auto break-ins, auto thefts and other street crimes usually climb about 60% in the area during baseball season, according to Sgt. Robert Freet, who heads the Special Problems Unit at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division.

The stadium hires a force of off-duty police officers and civilian attendants to guard the ballpark’s 16,000-vehicle parking lots. Since last year, Freet’s unit has responsibility for surrounding streets during home games, with plainclothes officers usually watching with binoculars from three hilltops and communicating via walkie-talkie with three radio chase cars. Freet said his patrol has contributed to a significant drop in reported car break-ins and thefts on local streets on game days.

On a recent Friday night when the Dodgers met the Padres, Freet sat on a folding lawn chair on a grassy cliff’s ledge atop Whiteknoll Drive, just southwest of the stadium. Behind him was a spectacular view of downtown Los Angeles; below were the enormous stadium lights and lots and such side streets as Lilac Terrace. He had binoculars in one hand, his walkie-talkie in the other. At his feet was a radio tuned to the voice of Dodger announcer Vince Scully.

“Anybody driving or walking around down there after the second inning sticks out like a sore thumb,” said Freet, a 15-year veteran of the police force. The suspicious vehicles both that night and the next all pulled away without any trouble.

“Maybe they’ve got the message that we’re here,” he said.