Lights Brigade : Elaborate Electrical Displays Bring a Glow to Neighborhoods--Even Indoors

It’s a holiday tradition at Steve Campanelli’s house.

Gifts are opened. Greeting cards are exchanged. Circuit breakers pop.

That’s because of the 16,000 blinking Christmas lights and the electrical Christmas displays that Campanelli plugs in each December at his tiny Lakewood front yard.

“The cords have to be worked out carefully,” said Campanelli, who has learned the hard way that his 7,000-watt display can be just a few amperes away from overloading his household electrical system. “We can’t turn many regular lights on in the house.”

Not that there’s much need to. Neighbors say Campanelli’s lights cast a glow inside and out along Bomberry Street.

“Everybody puts lights up on their house now,” said next-door neighbor Robert Schug, a sheet-metal worker who portrays Santa Claus every year in a big chair in Campanelli’s yard. “The decorations bring the street together.”

Some decorations in the Los Angeles area unify neighborhoods on a grand scale.

Residents of the Upper Hastings Ranch area of Pasadena have banded together for the last 36 years to decorate their 1,100-home neighborhood. Curbside symbols such as snowmen or angels are placed in front of about 900 of the houses to proclaim each street’s motif.

The spectacle draws thousands of onlookers each evening to the community off Michilinda Avenue, about a mile north of the Foothill Freeway. In recent years, the display has even earned a spot on the commercial tour bus circuit.

For 71 years, residents of nearby Altadena have strung Christmas lights among fir-like deodar trees that line a half-mile stretch of Santa Rosa Avenue between Woodbury Road and Altadena Drive. San Marino residents do the same thing to trees that form a canopy over a shorter stretch of St. Albans Road.

In Woodland Hills, homeowners living near Hatteras Street and Penfield Avenue have turned their streets into a series of Candy Cane Lanes each year since the 1950s.

Cerritos residents started a decorating tradition along Kings Row Avenue near Castle Place about six years ago. In Long Beach, residents create Christmas Tree Lane along what is known at other times as Daisy Avenue.

Decorations in most neighborhoods are not as organized--a string of lights over the garage door here, lights outlining windows and eaves there. But many homeowners admit that front-yard holiday lighting can be contagious.

“Seeing the lights every year is one of the perks of living here,” said stockbroker Gary Burkland, whose modestly decorated home is directly across the street from Campanelli’s. “One of the reasons we moved here was so my daughters could see his yard. . . .”

Campanelli, who works as an industrial exhibit maker, changes his homemade decorations yearly. This year’s theme is a winter carnival that features tiny moving trains, Ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, a Santa-sleigh aerial tram and an intricate miniature twirling teacup ride. It requires four motors--and an umbrella to keep the rain from filling the cups and overloading the electric motors.

The display cost him $2,500 to construct, he said. He estimated that this month’s electric bill will jump by $200 over his normal $120 charge.

“It all started with one string of lights on the roof,” Campanelli said. “I got so many complaints from my family that I was a Scrooge that I decided to really decorate.”

Campanelli escorted neighbors to his back yard to inspect his electric meter. When he flipped on a patio light, the rotation disc inside the meter’s glass cover could be seen spinning wildly. After a quick look, Campanelli switched the light off.

“Can’t leave the light on too long,” he explained, eyeing his circuit breaker box cautiously.