Beach Scene: San Pedro Left With Hangover

Charles Arguello had never seen anything like it before. Not on the Fourth of July, not during the annual Puerto Rican festivals, not even on the hottest and smoggiest weekends of summer.

“I got all of these this morning, all along the side of the house,” Arguello said Monday, pointing to several trash cans loaded with empty beer bottles. Arguello gave up counting them when he hit 400. “It is too populated around here to have something like that,” he said. “This is a residential area.”

Arguello and many of his neighbors along Pacific Avenue and 36th Street in San Pedro spent much of Monday morning plucking trash from their yards after the two-day Beach Scene festival on nearby Cabrillo Beach. Besides the beer bottles, there were potato chip bags, soda cans, broken sandals, popcorn boxes--and lots of complaining.

“Look at all of this junk,” said Esther Muncaster, who lives across the street from Arguello, as she surveyed the littered ivy outside her home. “What pigs.”

The weekend festival, which attracted between 175,000 and 200,000 people to San Pedro’s small, harbor-side beach, was declared an extraordinary success by Sylvia Cunliffe, general manager of the city’s General Services Department, which organized the event.

“This was a very mellow event, the audience was good, the performers were extraordinarily good, and the sponsors were happy,” Cunliffe said Monday.

Only 18 Arrests

Police also said the event was relatively calm, with 18 arrests over the two days, none of them for violent crimes.

But many beach-area residents and some merchants along Pacific Avenue complained that the crowds were too large, the traffic unbearable and the noise and litter overwhelming. They hope the first annual Beach Scene will be the last.

About 20 irate residents called Monday morning to complain to Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who represents the area, about bushes and shrubs that were trampled and dozens of festival-goers who had used sidewalks and yards as toilets, said Mario Juravich, a Flores aide. Residents and merchants also complained to the San Pedro-Peninsula Chamber of Commerce and the General Services Department.

Costly to Business

“Calling it a success irritates me to no end,” said Peter Begle, owner of Sailboards West, a windsurfing business on Pacific Avenue. Begle said his business, which was blocked by traffic, lost about $5,000.

“All it ended up doing is trashing this town and trashing the beach,” he said.

Juravich said Flores approved the festival early this year but did not favor the sale of alcohol at the beach. Nor, he said, was she aware of how large the event would become. In light of complaints, Flores has not decided if she will endorse efforts to make the Beach Scene an annual event that would complement the popular but rowdy downtown Los Angeles Street Scene, he said.

“We are quite concerned about the problems in the community,” Juravich said. “If there is another Beach Scene, it will be the primary responsibility of this office to ensure the people will not have to endure that abuse again.”

Regulation Needed

Juravich said many of the problems could have been avoided if the General Services Department had consulted with Flores’ office about specific arrangements. He said the sale of alcohol should have been prohibited, and more shuttle buses should have been available to reduce the number of people cutting through neighborhoods.

“Our office was not included in the planning, and if it had been, we would have been more concerned about the community,” Juravich said.

Leron Gubler, executive director of the local Chamber of Commerce, also complained that San Pedro residents and merchants were not involved in the planning.

“If they had gotten the community involved, they probably would have gotten a better response,” Gubler said. “We were not even aware that it was going to occur until two weeks before the festival.”

But Cunliffe said that while the size of the crowds surprised everyone, including herself, the event was exactly what her office had proposed to Flores several months ago.

More Involvement

“I am really surprised that they feel there wasn’t enough involvement,” she said. “There certainly will be in the future, if that is what they think.”

Cunliffe offered no apologies for the event, saying the crowds enjoying the festival far outnumbered the neighbors who complained.

“The beach is for everyone to enjoy, and just because it happens to be by your property doesn’t mean you have the right to be the sole user,” she said. “The public has the right to a beautiful day at the beach, and that is exactly what they had.”

Several residents near the beach agreed, saying that while the crowds were an inconvenience, they were generally well-behaved.

“I’d be happy to have them back,” said Charles Lilly, who squeezed 25 cars at $10 apiece onto his property during the festival. “It brings a little excitement into the community.”