L.A.’s Easter: the Rich and the Poor of It

FROM THE brimming banquet tables of a luxurious Westside hotel to the soup line at a Skid Row homeless shelter, Los Angeles celebrated Easter on Sunday, with children scampering to hunt for eggs, families flocking to the beach and hundreds of worshipers donating scarce lilies to the Hollywood Bowl Sunrise Service.

People donned their Sunday best for neighborhood Easter parades, and a hang-gliding Easter Bunny visited a group of handicapped children with candy and cookies in Sylmar.

Between 11,000 and 12,000 were in the Hollywood Bowl for pre-dawn services, which, for the first time in the ceremony’s 68-year history featured Christian and Jewish sermons. Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman accompanied five Christian ministers to deliver a message of love and the need for unity.

Service producer Norma Foster said worshipers, up to the last minute, donated handfuls of calla lilies to make up for a shortage that had threatened to mar the service.

“The public really came to our rescue,” Foster said.

More than half a dozen choirs, including a children’s chorus from Uganda, sang hymns before white pigeons were released to symbolize peace.

Easter brunch, meanwhile, was the high point of the holiday for many people. However, the fare and trappings differed significantly depending on locale.

Amid the graffiti-covered warehouses south of downtown, the Fred Jordan Mission provided brunch and Easter services to more than 2,000 homeless men, women and children.

“We’re surprised at this huge crowd today--they just came out of the woodwork,” said Pansy Newbill, one of the organizers of the brunch. “Did you notice all the women and children? There are so many of them.”

A block of 5th Street was cordoned off and converted into makeshift banquet facilities, with metal folding chairs and tables covered festively with pink cellophane. Volunteers served up a meal of hard-boiled eggs, corned beef hash, peaches, doughnuts and fruit punch.

“Of course we need to feed them, but the main reason we’re here is to give them the word of God,” said Tom Jordan, whose father founded the mission in 1949.

The meal was preceded by an Easter sermon, which put off at least one person who came to eat.

“Just give me a plate of food so I can go!” a man shouted.

Mission’s 3rd Biggest

At least 500 volunteers helped prepare and serve the brunch, which ranks just behind Thanksgiving and Christmas as the mission’s biggest holiday meals.

A few miles away, a far different Easter Sunday brunch was offered in the restaurant at Le Bel Age Hotel in West Hollywood.

Although the Easter eggs there were purely decorative, patrons who paid $33 each for the brunch were content with the selection of more than 80 items, including smoked salmon, soft-shell crab almondine and rock Cornish game hen.

“The food is really superior, and the presentation is just superb,” said diner Rebecca Morse of Sylmar, as she gazed at the sumptuous buffet tables. “Normally, we eat at home on Easter, but we decided we’re going to have Christmas in the family and have Easter here.”

With more than 700 patrons arriving to enjoy a leisurely afternoon of fine food and champagne, Easter is one of the restaurant’s most popular brunch days, surpassed only by Mother’s Day, said Ferdi Har, director of food and beverage for the hotel. As befits such an occasion, the fern-lined walls of the restaurant at Le Bel Age were awash in Easter pastels.

Tipping Their Top Hats

In Angelino Heights, members of the Carroll Avenue Restoration Foundation celebrated Easter with their second annual Victorian Parade.

About 100 people turned out to see women dressed in lacy, frilly Victorian dresses complete with bonnets, gloves, parasols and wire hoops. Men were dressed in suits from the 1880s, politely tipping their top hats as they escorted women up and down Carroll Avenue.

Free cake, lollipops and Easter lilies were passed out as children rode past the Queen Anne-style, late-19th-Century homes in a horse-drawn carriage.

Romelia Ibarra has lived in her Victorian home at 1324 Carroll Ave. since 1965. Dressed in a beige lace dress, pearls and matching parasol, Ibarra said the neighbors put on the parade in the Easter spirit. “It’s fun, there’s a lot to do, but we do it for us and everyone else because it’s just fun,” Ibarra said.

At the Griffith Park Equestrian Center about 300 people in their Easter best turned out for a festival complete with an Easter egg hunt, an animal-petting zoo and a horse show. Balloons, baskets of jelly beans, chocolates and other Easter candies were plentiful.

‘I’m Sick and Tired’

As children under 8 scattered across well-manicured lawns to gather as many of the colorful plastic eggs as possible, some were cheered on by parents who seemed more enthusiastic than the kids.

“I’m sick and tired of this . . . catching so many eggs,” Kristina Rivas told her mother. Kristina, 6, from Tarzana, dressed in a frilly, light blue dress, seemed more interested in holding her baby cousin.

Thousands spent their Easters at the beach, soaking up the rays and riding the waves.

Lifeguards estimated 275,000 people crowded Venice, Santa Monica, Will Rogers and Topanga beaches, fewer than during last week’s heat wave but enough to “keep us on our toes.”

“Everybody seems to be having an enjoyable day. Everybody brought their families out, it’s a family kind of day. Easter seems to be on everyone’s mind so people are behaving themselves,” Senior Ocean Lifeguard Ralph Lee said.

Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson contributed to this article.