For Coliseum Area, It’s One in String of Losses

Across from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a graffiti-stained billboard at the rear of an overgrown parking lot proclaims “Los Angeles Raiders--Commitment to Excellence.”

In the neighborhoods around the historic but no longer grand stadium, signs of the Raiders were everywhere Friday. Drivers sported the team’s black and silver caps, and Raiders T-shirts were so common you could almost believe that it was the Sunday morning before a game.

But at Mr. Ed’s Pharmacy, Ed Borquez was feeling a tad fed up. “If they leave, I think it’s hooey!” Borquez said. “What are these games the city is playing?”

Borquez has enjoyed the Raiders years, brief as they have been. He was a fan when the team was still in Oakland, and the games bring business and old friends into his store. But, he added, “people aren’t going to go out and riot about it.”

The news that team owner Al Davis plans to leave the Coliseum, just five years after seducing the loyalties of the South Los Angeles neighborhood, met with little emotion in the Coliseum area Friday. Perhaps the truth had not sunk in, or maybe even Raiders fans are skeptical of pronouncements from Davis.

But the reaction should be no surprise, coming from a part of the city whose reputation has been battered over the years.

In the 22 years since the Watts riot, which occurred miles away except in the eyes of suburban ticket holders, the Lakers, Kings, Rams and UCLA have all fled the Coliseum and adjacent Sports Arena. They all left for better stadium deals, but they were also heeding the fears of the suburban customers who fill the stadiums of big-time sports.

Each of the teams settled outside the inner city of Los Angeles, away from the poverty that surrounds the Coliseum and the frequent murders and gang shootings that plague the area.

The neighborhood itself, once a bastion of black families, has seen its own version of the flight. Many black families have left, and the front porches and side yards were busy Friday with Central American immigrants.

Along Martin Luther King Boulevard, the parking lot-lined street south of the Coliseum, the Tyson Choice ticket agency plans to leave after 30 years. The block is being knocked down to make way for redevelopment. “If the Raiders leave, they leave. It doesn’t matter,” manager David Bort said.

The same for Coliseum French Dip, the old grill at King at Figueroa. It is closing this fall and the building is to be torn down for a new shopping center, part of City Hall’s redevelopment plans for the area.

Move Good for Business

Ken Solky, the general manager of Murray’s ticket agency, another landmark of the Coliseum area, has already looked at sites in Irwindale and said he thinks that the move will be good for his business and the Raiders. The agency, however, plans to keep its home office on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Even the area’s councilman, Robert Farrell, was restrained, although he held out hope that Davis and the Raiders would remain.

“It’s not over. It ain’t over until the ink’s dry and the deal’s done,” Farrell said. “But if they leave, the Coliseum and Sports Arena will still be there and we’ll find new tenants. The Raiders are an absolutely great client, but that’s it. Nothing more.”

The giant University of Southern California campus north of Exposition Park, where the Coliseum is located, is far more important to the people who live nearby, Farrell said.

Home Parking Lots

But on West 41st Drive, residents are not so sure. Every Sunday when the Raiders play, front and backyards all along the street turn into parking lots. For $5 to $10, residents jockey the cars of well-heeled Raiders fans into position and keep watch during the game.

“We want them to stay,” said Michael Wilson, 18, who parks cars on the lawn of his grandmother’s house. “I can make $105 if I fill up.”

The Raiders are a big event on the street, and not just for the money. “When it’s almost football season, everybody starts talking: ‘The Raiders are coming back.’ Everybody’s interested,” Wilson said.

Last Saturday, for instance, Wilson and Javier Aceves walked the three blocks to the Coliseum for an exhibition game with the San Francisco 49ers. If the team moves to the Irwindale gravel pit where Davis wants a new stadium, those days will be over.

“I like having football here in my neighborhood,” said Aceves, 13. “We can just walk over and don’t have to worry about getting lost.”