Football Strike Takes Its Toll on Fans : Sports Bars Lament Day Without Rams

“Last Sunday, you couldn’t find a seat,” harrumphed Joleen Hart as she slowly filled two beer glasses at Popeye’s tavern in Costa Mesa. “It was so crazy in here, four or five times I was almost in tears.”

Staring up at the fish nets and other neo-nautical ceiling decor, the 29-year-old bartender sighed, “Today it’s dead. And it’ll be like this until football starts again.” Indeed, a person could have swung a porpoise Sunday afternoon in the popular hangout for sports fans and only struck a handful of patrons.

The first day of canceled games because of the National Football League strike led to a long and mournful afternoon for Orange County sports bars--and fans. Missing, despite a few rare and boisterous exceptions, were the faithful who gather religiously once a week to cheer their hulking heroes on to victory and occasionally “throw the TV out the window if the team loses,” Gary Reese, 29, roared from the end of Popeye’s bar.

“I live for football,” Reese said. “The armchair quarterback, that’s what I am.” But instead of waking up Sunday to Rams and Raiders, he had to watch a rerun of last year’s Super Bowl game. It wasn’t the same, even if his beloved New York Giants won again.

Melancholy Spreads

“My team won; I cried last year. It felt good, touching,” the Popeye regular said. But his voice took on a desperate edge as he spoke of the striking players: “They gotta play for us!”

The melancholy spread to Anaheim Stadium. There, one man walked alone where tens of thousands had been expected to crowd, shove and holler Sunday, before the scheduled Rams and Cincinnati Bengals game was wiped out by the football players’ walkout.

“I’m the only one here,” said security guard David Lipchak, 56, who answered a telephone call after about a dozen rings. “It’s too lonely. I miss the girl-watching.”

Reluctant to get off the telephone, Lipchak confessed that there wasn’t much to do in an empty stadium. “Most of the day I was just chasing people out of the parking lot and doing my rounds,” he said. “It’s very lonely.”

Some, of course, managed to find diversions on a day without professional football, even if it was bright, cloudless and beautiful outside.

“These guys haven’t seen sunshine since the football season started,” said Tricia Barganier of Santa Ana, relaxing on the grass and taking in a volleyball game and some rays at the county’s Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley.

“Does it look like it’s disturbing our Sunday, no football?” she asked, turning her face to get a better angle of sunshine. “More of the guys showed up. They’re not at home couch potatoing.”

“I don’t think (the strike) is any big deal,” her friend, Betty Hamlin of Costa Mesa, volunteered, leaning back in a folding chair. “A lot of people aren’t too concerned. Look at the money both sides make already.”

Fewer Patrons

But at the Sports Page Saloon in Costa Mesa, bartender Sherrie Juras, 28, shook her head. “What keeps them here is football,” she said, scanning a thinly populated tavern, swollen from four people to 11 with the arrival moments earlier of the softball team. “They drink their beers and stay. I anticipated a bad day today.”

Trying his best to put a good face on a bad situation, Sports Page owner Ron Slutsky, 42, listed the other attractions his watering hole offers: darts, pool, softball and basketball teams, and the popular Sunday barbecues.

“Last weekend, we had dove,” he said, a large grin creasing his face. “One of the customers brought a couple hundred back from hunting in Mexico.”

For some, such delicacies are not enough. As Slutsky finished speaking, someone shouted across the bar and over the pool tables, “I miss my football!”