An Ignored Theater of the Absurd : City Life: A mostly unnoticed drama is played out daily by down-and-outers who frequent Horton Plaza Park. Downtown workers avert their eyes as they scurry past the park that the city hopes to reclaim by removing benches and grass.

The Broadway steps of Robinson’s downtown department store are front-row seats to live theater.

The stage is historic, palm-lined Horton Plaza Park, but the play is not a popular one with its themes of despair, desperation, violence, addiction and homelessness. The would-be audience of office workers and shoppers hardly glances at the show. They skirt around it as though it were not there.

Many wish it were not. City officials and downtown business interests are taking steps to ensure that the production will soon end its long run in city center.

The San Diego City Council voted Oct. 8 to remove benches from the historic site and replace the grass with shrubs and flowers to discourage loitering.

“It’s an experiment, a tall order,” admitted Ted Medina, a district manager with the San Diego Park and Recreation Department. “And, if it doesn’t work, if it doesn’t make Horton Plaza more attractive and more accessible to the general public, everything will be put back the way it is now.”

The following portrait of Horton Plaza Park comes from a day spent on the front row and inside the production that plays only to itself:

9 a.m.--The Victorian fountain, centerpiece of the small plaza, glimmers in the strong morning sun of a Santa Ana day. Its soothing spray of water muffles the steady traffic on Broadway. A husky park employee with a no-nonsense attitude, keys jangling at her side and a walkie-talkie stuffed in her back trouser pocket, hoses down the tile walkway that crisscrosses the small plaza.

About 25 people lounge on the benches that ring the park and line the walkways that join at the fountain. Each of the 18 benches is occupied, mostly by men who are either sleeping or sitting quietly. Nobody is on the grass. The men hardly shift their positions as the park employee directs the jet of water from her hose under their feet. Only one barefoot man, in dirty black polo shirt and trousers, stands out, animatedly talking and gesturing to himself, oblivious to his surroundings. The mood is desultory, static, a sharp contrast to the city bustle.

Stylish men and women, apparently late for work, rush around the plaza to reach their jobs. Within an hour, only two actually cross through the plaza itself. Each assiduously avoids the faces of the bench-warmers.

10 a.m.--Robinson’s opens for business. Women shoppers begin to stream up the steps. Two men with long beards and long hair, looking like down-and-out cowboys in their flannel shirts, denim jeans, vests and hats, are arguing. They look to be in their early 40s. One suddenly jumps up and screams a string of epithets that carries to the Robinson’s steps. Nobody pays attention to the outburst, and the man sits down again, taking a swig from a bottle in a brown bag.

Two spit-shined police officers with crew cuts stroll into the plaza from the western end. They seem relaxed and accustomed to patrolling this beat. One of them spends 15 minutes talking to a man with close-cropped gray hair and dressed in white shorts and T-shirt. The officer finally hands him a pink slip, apparently a citation for drinking in public, pours out the remains from a beer can and tosses it in the trash. The police do the same with the cowboys sitting at the eastern end of the park. They ignore those who are sleeping, banter casually with those awake.

The procedure has a familiar, routine air. The park occupants take no more notice of the police than they do of the pigeons that are still the only ones on the grass.

11 a.m.--The park employee continues to clean the plaza, scrubbing walkways, planters and benches with a long-handled bristle broom. It is a morning-long job. Everyone moves out of her industrious path this time; no more than 20 remain in the park. Three men are on the grass, one sleeping, one lounging with his head propped in his hand and another sitting on a plastic bag against one of the willowy palms, studying a newspaper.

Like a prima donna commanding a stage, a woman in a lace wedding gown with a long red scarf draped around her neck enters from the west, striding slowly across the plaza. Her black skin is covered with a white substance, giving her face a gray aspect. Her discolored skin and strange, slow walk at first make her seem like a very old woman, but watching her more closely reveals she is hardly middle age.

Nobody pays attention to her entrance. They ignore her as she gestures with her fingers to her lips to indicate she wants a cigarette. She does not speak.

Failing to cadge a smoke, she stops beside one of the planter urns that sprout dwarf palms and removes a pair of black trousers from under her floor-length dress. She slings them over her shoulder and continues her promenade and pantomime requests for a cigarette. When someone finally gives her one, she nods her head and slowly makes her way back into the city streets from the east end of the park.

Her costume is the most dramatic, but many wear them.

One man wears boxy black shorts with knit leggings and height-of-fashion ankle boots. Another wears a white athletic outfit, including a forehead sweatband, and a gray suit coat. A young, slim bleached-blond woman has on a white strapless semi-formal dress and spike heels.

If you were to look only at the outfits, you wouldn’t be able to tell if you were in New England or Southern California. A man on one bench dozes in a turtleneck and trench coat worn like a cape, while the man next to him is bare-chested. It is as much a parade of style--albeit different--outside Robinson’s as within.

Noon--The park fills up again at midday. But not with the professionals, office workers or shop help who begin to appear again on the streets. They stride determinedly around the perimeter of the plaza on errands and in search of lunch. Some scurry up the steps into Robinson’s, casting furtive looks. Two or three pairs of tourists with cameras venture into the park to photograph the fountain. An impeccably groomed, silver-haired man in a suit marches through the plaza, shooting looks of disgust at those on the benches.

Not one of them brings lunch to eat in the sunny plaza with the only patches of grass in center city.

Yet the park is quite crowded now, at least 40 people are within it, mostly young and middle-aged men, in what appears to be a cross-section of races--black, white, Hispanic, Asian. Most of the younger men cluster at the eastern end, at 4th Avenue and Broadway. The cluster attracts a stream of other younger people, casually but cleanly dressed. There are short conversations; money exchanges hands and they go on their way.

It is as though an invisible wall, or an unspoken covenant, prevents the downtown workers and shoppers from crossing into the Horton Plaza park. The Horton Plaza they frequent is the multi-colored shopping center that goes by the same name.

The mind’s eye can visualize people in business suits and bright dresses picnicking on the plaza lawns, ignored like almost everything else by the regulars on the benches. They will be having lunch there soon, if Centre City Assn. plans go through. Only it will be at private lunch concessions placed around the plaza whose tables and chairs will be available only to paying patrons, according to Medina of the city Park and Recreation Department.

1 p.m.--It is hot even in the shade of Robinson’s steps. The mood of boredom that hangs over the plaza is heavy. Some have been here since early morning. Others who left have returned. They switch benches, stand up and stretch, take short strolls to break the monotony of the long, hot day.

A tall, shirtless man with weightlifter pectorals and a slim waist stops circling the park to drop down on the grass and do 50 push-ups in one minute.

A middle-aged man with long brown hair and beard, wearing a cap that says Vietnam Veterans of San Diego, pushes a shopping cart through the plaza. People stop him to buy cigarettes for $1 a pack. He can sell them for half the market price because they are bought cheap in Mexico, someone explains.

It becomes clear that the people in the park know each other well. Those who leave the park for a while ask bench neighbors to watch their gear, bedrolls and backpacks. Everyone bums cigarettes from each other, even if they have a pack in a shirt pocket. Most acquiesce to the requests; it appears a breach of park etiquette to refuse.

A panhandler approaches Robinson’s, the only one to do so in four hours; a small, older, toothless man.

“Lady, I’m sorry to disturb you reading, but I wonder if you might have a little money to give me.”

When he is refused apologetically, he responds genuinely, “I’m sorry, too!” and saunters away, saying, “Have a wonderful life!”

Another man approaches, perhaps in his mid-40s, robustly healthy with dark curly hair and a bushy mustache.

“I was evicted today,” he announces. “But I’m going to fight it. Tenants have rights, too, you know, they have a right not to pay!” He laughs at his own joke.

“What are you reading?” he asks.

When he learns it is the diary of Anais Nin, he critiques her writing.

“I’ve liked some of her poetry,” he says. “And what she’s written about the fantasies of women. I always like to get the female perspective on things.”

He is silent for a few moments, absorbed in his Marlboro.

“Isn’t that amazing I knew what you were reading when I didn’t even see the title?” he says.

He’s reminded that he was told the title.

“Oh,” he says sheepishly. “Well, it would have been amazing!”

The conversation on the Robinson’s steps is cut short as four officers enter the plaza, the two with crew cuts who patrolled earlier, and a new pair. The man with the mustache carefully watches their progress. Again, the officers do not disturb the sleepers, but ask a few men who are standing near the fountain and sitting beside the planters to move on.

Then, they approach Robinson’s.

“Folks,” one tells the few people who have gathered there in the shade, “The store wants these stairs for people to go into the store, not to sit in front of it.”

Everyone moves away quietly, without protest.

2 p.m.--Back on the benches, small dramas are taking place, heated conversations, arguments. The cluster of mostly young Latinos at 4th and Broadway attracts even more comers. A black man on a bench says they are drug dealers. A handsome young Mexican couple, agitation and worry on their faces, approaches the group. After half an hour in its midst, they leave, smiling and relaxed.

A young Mexican family joins the group. The woman is pregnant and smokes constantly; the man plays with a child, who looks no older than 4. Others play with the boy, too, but he strikes back angrily when they grab him roughly around the neck and jostle him. He goes back to his mother, smoking on the walkway, and lays his head on the curb, sighing. They stay there for most of the afternoon.

A Carl’s Jr. employee in checked apron and cap storms into the park with a man, probably her husband, from the fast-food restaurant across the street that the bench regulars frequent. The man screams at a thin young woman whose front teeth are chipped and blackened, claiming he will beat up her boyfriend the next time his wife is threatened. The swearing tirade goes on for at least 10 minutes, the young woman silent throughout. When the burly couple finally leaves, the girl tells her neighbor she doesn’t know what her boyfriend did to cause the offense.

3 p.m.--Two crisply dressed evangelists are belting out gospel songs and sermons, passing out leaflets to the disinterested congregation. Perhaps inspired by the spirituals, two men and a woman, whose ankles are so swollen she appears to walk in pain, sing a Barry White song in harmony. Their tenor, alto and bass voices are strong, rich and full. The bass wears a long hunting knife in a knee holster. Beside them, people sit, some bent over, heads in hands, or staring into space; others read newspapers and heavy-metal music magazines.

Shopping center security officers appear on the Robinson’s steps, standing there as though guarding the only available shade from loiterers. A young woman with a Nordstrom bag sits on a bench to have a quick cigarette before walking on, the only shopper in the park all day.

A fight nearly begins over a beer. One man passes out almost all the cans from a 12-pack, but refuses a tall black man with reddish hair and green eyes, whose fist and arm are bandaged.

“Hey, I’m family, man, gimmee one!” the tall man pleads.

“Ain’t giving you nothin’; you shouldn’t a hit my man so hard. Put him in the hospital, man, you ain’t gettin nothin.”

“He drew blood first, wasn’t my fault, I was drunk.”

“Was your fault, you shouldn’t a hit him like that, knocked him out cold.”

“Hey man, you guys are family,” another man pipes up. He looks like Harpo Marx with a too-small hat perched on top of thick blonde curls. “When the Japanese invade, it’s going to be a whole different story around here, so you’d best hang tight.”

Meanwhile, a young Asian man beside him struggles to finish the quarter-inch remains of a marijuana cigarette by rolling a longer piece of paper around it as a makeshift cigarette holder.

4 p.m.--The argument, apparently over a fight the night before that put one man unconscious in the hospital, escalates until both of them suddenly rise to their feet, spit on the ground, and raise fists. Those sitting nearby wipe off the spit the wind carries into their faces and try to ignore the confrontation.

The tall man walks away, the other returns to the bench to finish his beer. He takes one swig when a blonde in a short skirt walks briskly down the walkway, calling to no one in particular: “One, one alone . . . one, one coming.”

Immediately, the drinkers stash their beers in the planters, in trash cans, in their packs and bags. Moments later, a short, stocky police sergeant appears, greeting many by name. He banters with the park people, joking that the new jail being built at Otay Mesa will have plenty of room.

Asked what the plaza is like at night, the sergeant grins ironically.

“Fights, drugs, beatings, robberies,” he says. “It’s rough. We had a man killed here a couple of months ago, stabbed three times.”

The man who nearly had the fight over the beer he bought nods in assent while the sergeant talks.

“It’s nice right now, quiet,” he says. “But you gotta see it at night--there’s a lot of violence; I seen it.”

5 p.m.--The sun lowers in the sky, downtown workers head home. The sergeant has just left too. New faces appear; the crowd around the supposed drug deals grows larger. The feel is different, more tension in the air, more comings and goings, as though the plaza is steeling itself for the evening and the long, dark night.

The ominous note is echoed by the man with the beer, clearly angry over the news he read in the paper that the benches will soon be removed and the grass stripped away.

“This place is the Central, man, ain’t no place else to sit in the sun,” he complains.

“You just wait and see what happens when they do it,” he warns, lowering his voice. “You just wait and see.”