Monkey Business : A big Chinese New Year celebration won’t include the Bicycle Club card casino, which led one disgruntled city official to say: “They’re saying, ‘Well, alcohol’s good, but gambling’s bad.”’

A dispute about who should sponsor--and participate in--the San Gabriel Valley’s first official Chinese New Year parade has stirred bitter feelings among parade promoters, chamber of commerce leaders and city officials.

The controversy started two weeks ago over a proposal to have a Bell Gardens card club as a sponsor. Last week, it escalated, involving alcohol companies, the card club, and mayors and city council members from Alhambra and Monterey Park.

The card club, the Bicycle Club casino, had proposed a poker demonstration booth for Saturday’s Chinese New Year festival in Alhambra. The Year of the Monkey celebration is set to follow the Chinese New Year parade along Garfield Avenue in Alhambra and Monterey Park. The cost of sponsoring a booth is $100.

As the card club operators saw it, dealers in the booth would teach passersby how to play Super Pan 9 poker--minus the money, of course. The booth idea had been a hit at the 1991 Tet Festival in Westminster’s Little Saigon, at the Lotus Festival last summer in Echo Park and at a Chinese-American trade fair last weekend in Pasadena, they said.

“We always jump at the chance to get involved, especially in the Asian community,” said Quin Marshall, the Bicycle Club’s public relations and marketing manager. “Our customer base is over 60% Asian.”

But the proposal met with an emphatic no from parade organizers, who include school officials and business people. Instead, the organizers offered a compromise. Contingent on the approval of the mayors of both cities, the card club could enter a float in the parade.

Cost of a float is $2,500; most of the 15 scheduled in the parade are sponsored by banks, restaurants and other businesses.

Mayors Sam Kiang of Monterey Park and Mary Louise Bunker of Alhambra, however, shuddered at the thought of fresh-faced high school drill-team members marching alongside glittering piles of poker chips and the club’s joker insignia, which were part of the float used in other parades by the Bicycle Club. They rejected the float idea.

Meanwhile, not knowing the mayors had said no, a parade organizer invited the card club. But Marshall declined, citing the steep cost of entering a float and the lateness of the invitation.

It seemed that the matter was over, at least for this year. Then Monterey Park Councilman Fred Balderrama heard about the disagreement. He was livid.

“Where do you draw the line?” he said, pointing to the fact that Kiang and Bunker did not object to sponsorships from Adolph Coors Brewing Co., Martell Cognac and Passino Distributing Co., which sells Budweiser beer.

“They’re saying, ‘Well, alcohol’s good, but gambling’s bad,’ ” Balderrama said.

Monterey Park Councilwoman Marie T. Purvis agreed, adding that the Bicycle Club is a legitimate business and a dues-paying member of Monterey Park’s Chamber of Commerce.

For a while, Balderrama threatened to boycott the parade. He changed his mind Wednesday after parade co-chairman Paul Talbot telephoned club officials to invite them once more to enter a float. But again, the club said it wasn’t interested.

“It was very clear we weren’t welcome,” a miffed Marshall said Thursday.

Kiang, meanwhile, defended his position. “I don’t think anyone thinks gambling is good,” he said. “We are trying to promote the Chinese New Year, and gambling’s just not part of it. You don’t see the Rose Parade promoting that kind of thing.

“I’m sure a lot of people drink. Once in a while I have a Coors. . . . Of course, you can get into a lot of trouble with drunk driving.”

For next year’s parade, Kiang said, he will propose a ban on sponsorships from any hard liquor, tobacco or gambling company. But beer, he added, “is OK.”

The parade will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday at Monterey Park City Hall and continue down Garfield Avenue to Valley Boulevard in Alhambra. The all-day arts festival will be on Valley between 4th Street and Garfield.