Stars and Bars : Comfort, Camaraderie, Make Taverns a Spot to View Sports

There are three color televisions in the small, dark cocktail lounge.

The guys at the bar watch a fight on a screen above the cash register. The Houston-Seattle basketball game shows on a television in the far corner. A big screen along the opposite wall offers the afternoon’s premier event, the Kentucky Derby.

But no one is drinking mint juleps at the Red Chariot in Van Nuys on this Saturday. At a table by the jukebox, a group of men huddle over beers and discuss hockey.

“Who’s gonna take it?” one of them asks.

This brings a cacophony of answers.

“How about the Islanders?” says a man wearing a New York Islanders T-shirt.

“The Islanders?!” scream the rest.

With red vinyl seats and Formica tables, somber paintings on the walls, the Red Chariot is by no means a fashionable or fancy bar. But with a satellite dish on the roof and ample television screens, it is a fine place to spend the afternoon watching sports.

Such bars have long been popular among fans who meet to drink liquor and ponder the serious business of athletics. The sports bar has become a tradition of sorts. Patrons compare analysis of the zone defense. They agree or argue loudly or, perhaps, lay a small wager here and there.

Some bars are singularly devoted to sport. They are decorated with mementos and photographs. They may be owned by a former sporting great. They bear names like “The Locker Room” or “The Gridiron.”

In the San Fernando Valley, the dozen or so bars popular with fans aren’t so thematic. They are simply neighborhood lounges, such as the Red Chariot, or larger restaurants and clubs like Tracton’s House of Prime Rib in Encino or the Red Onion in Woodland Hills. When a playoff game or championship fight is televised, they give themselves over to a sporting image and a devoted patronage.

“There’s a camaraderie,” says Terry McInnes, a Northridge sales manager, as he watches a Lakers game at Tracton’s. “The people you’re watching with know more about sports.”

A man sitting beside McInnes nods.

“My wife doesn’t know anything about basketball,” says the man, a lawyer who identifies himself only as Brian. “Neither do my kids.”

The sports bar’s popularity may owe to more than their customers’ desire for knowledgeable companionship. What may be at work is a sociological dynamic known as collective behavior.

“My guess is that the reason a lot of people would rather go to a bar to watch a game is that it sort of captures that stadium or arena feeling that they can’t get at home,” said John Schneider, who last semester taught a course in “The Sociology of Sport” at USC. “Certain individuals would rather experience sporting events with that group feeling and that’s what draws them to sports bars. It’s that much more of a thrill for certain people, like being at the Coliseum and watching the Raiders.”

Bar owners have caught on to this dynamic. At the very least, they have recognized that televised sporting events attract customers.

“All bars have video now, whether it’s the corner bar or the big night club,” said Laura Scholes, associate editor of Nightclub and Bar Magazine, an international trade publication. “The people who own bars are using sports events on TV as promotions all the time. That’s been going on ever since they started putting sports on television.”

“It brings in a lot of people,” said Steve Reeves, the bartender at Elmer’s Bar & Grill in Simi Valley. “We show everything from surfing to baseball to horse racing.”

Football lures largest crowds, followed closely by Lakers games, bartenders say. Super Bowl Sunday is the always the biggest day of the year.

Customers who come to watch sports tend to be noisier than other types of crowds, bartenders say. And they drink more beer.

“Most people are in a good mood and having a good time,” Reeves said.

The majority of such customers are men, say bar owners and patrons. But women are not excluded. Edna Venegas, 42, of Van Nuys, said she likes to go to bars to watch boxing.

“I love boxing,” she said. Venegas bottles beer for the Miller brewery but said she doesn’t drink the stuff. And, she always goes to bars with her husband.

For some people, a bar or restaurant is the only place they can watch a game.

“If you don’t get cable, you have to go to a bar,” said Dennis (Gipper) McSchwertz, 48, of Van Nuys.

That is why most bars have a satellite dish, with which they can receive cable and standard broadcasts from across the continent. However, cable companies have begun to thwart bar owners. To keep their telecasts from being pirated by satellite-dish owners, the cable companies began scrambling transmissions so that only paying viewers could receive them.

The Robin Hood Tavern, in Van Nuys, used to pick up English rugby and cricket matches by satellite from Canada. For a long time, Reuben’s in Northridge attracted lunchtime crowds with telecasts of Chicago Cubs games.

All that ended with scrambling. “I think we’ve lost business because of that,” said Neil Thompson, a bartender at Reuben’s. “There are a lot of Chicago people who live out here and like to watch the games.”

There remain bars that pay for cable. And there are events broadcast on regular television. For such games, bars will offer discounted drink prices or free hors d’oeuvres.

At the Red Onion, in Woodland Hills, when there is a championship fight, rows of chairs will be placed across the dance floor before a tremendous screen. Tracton’s offers a computerized game that customers can play along with the game that is being shown. T-shirts and hats are offered as prizes.

Of course, with home cable and a six-pack in the refrigerator, it is cheaper to watch a game in the privacy of the living room. But sports bar patrons have their reasons for spending a little more money to go to the bar. The regulars at the Red Chariot offer a few.

“You don’t have to get up to go to the icebox,” said a Red Chariot customer who identified himself only as John. “You can just sit here and have them bring the beers.”

“We like to watch female wrestling,” McSchwertz, a studio gripper, said.

Mick Coles, another Red Chariot regular, insisted that it is more than beer and sports that brings him to the lounge.

“This is like a neighborhood bar,” said Coles, 40, of Sherman Oaks, who is the road manager for a rock band. “You know people. They’re friends.”

Coles proudly points to a trophy on the wall, won by a handful of Red Chariot patrons who formed a softball team. Others at the bar play golf together. But friendship, said Coles, does not get in the way of old-fashioned rooting.

“You get the yelling. The ‘I’m for Boston! I’m for L.A.!’ “Coles said. “They’ll put a baseball game on one TV and a hockey game on another and on the big TV you’ll have golf. Everybody’s happy.”

“And,” said John, “it smells like a locker room.”