Many Saluted Rose Bowl’s Beer Ban With a Can of Suds

It was supposed to be a very hot and very dry Saturday in Pasadena for UCLA Bruin and Oklahoma Sooner fans determined to tank up for their college football opener.

No more brew-and-gold. Kaboomer Sooner.

This was going to be the day that threatened to sober up those traditional tailgate party-goers and show imbibing fans just how dry the Arroyo Seco really is.

But for dedicated chuggers, what was ballyhooed as the Rose Bowl’s big beer crackdown turned out to be just so much froth.

“Beer ban, what beer ban?” asked a smiling Jeff Jansen as he stood outside the stadium’s main gate, sporting his Oklahoma Sooner jersey and waving his cold bottle of half-consumed brewsky. “If there’s a beer ban, you can see how effectively it’s being enforced.”

Nearby, some UCLA rooters were polishing off a keg of beer, cans of beer, bottles of beer and the occasional glass of wine while they waited for the kickoff of the 1990 football season.

“I heard that this is illegal but they’re letting it slide,” said UCLA alum John McCutcheon as he nursed a can of beer. “That’s my impression.”

As it turns out, what was happening outside the Rose Bowl wasn’t so much lawless activity but confusion over who was enforcing what.

As some fans walked around drinking openly, others did so surreptitiously. And there was no crackdown by law enforcement officers.

“Right now, we’re not going to stop them unless they get rowdy,” said Pasadena Police Officer W. L. Saltsman.

“It’s been no different than in the past,” said Rose Bowl general manager Greg Asbury. “The only change was that no alcohol was being sold in the stadium and no alcohol was being brought in.”

So what’s the ruling? Here’s an instant replay:

To cut down on mayhem in the stadium and on the road afterward, Rose Bowl officials have banned the sale of beer or any alcoholic beverages inside the stadium during UCLA’s home games. The one-year trial that began with the Oklahoma game is supposed to encourage a more family-oriented environment.

Meanwhile, the city of Pasadena told UCLA officials a year ago that it would begin enforcing a longtime ordinance against drinking in city parks, like Brookside Park which surrounds the Rose Bowl, although they would not target individuals.

On the endangered list, however, were traditional pregame parties where friends or organizations gather to eat and imbibe. One of the largest is the Great Bruin Alumni Tailgate Party, which went private for the first time in its 15-year history.

Geoffrey Strand, a former UCLA cheerleader who helped found the party, which attracts up to 12,000 Bruins, said organizers fenced off their party, charged admission and called it a private affair just so they could satisfy the city’s ban on selling or serving alcohol except at private parties.

“Nobody’s happy with the new regulations imposed by Pasadena and there is some question of their justification, but we are going to make the best of it and we’re going to have fun in spite of it,” Strand said.

An Oklahoma fan, Robert Knott, stood outside the Rose Bowl before the game in his red Sooner shirt, red OU visor, white shorts--and cowboy boots. After arriving from Norman, Okla., to cheer on the high-octane Oklahoma offense, Knott was disappointed to learn of a dry Rose Bowl.

“What we need is high cocktail consumption to fuel the game,” he said.

But others, like high school teacher Rose Gilbert, applauded the ban. Gilbert said she has been going to UCLA games since 1935 and has seen some rowdy drunks “moon one another and take off their clothes and vomit down here.”

Asbury said sales of non-alcoholic beer and bottled water were brisk. And, he said, there were no alcohol-related incidents or arrests among the 53,000 in attendance at the Rose Bowl Saturday.