Execution Drama Replaces Sports Television at Bars

Ray Vrtis sat at the polished wooden bar at the Raintree Inn in Carlsbad, a pint of beer at one elbow and a copy of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition at the other, talking about public executions as a spectator event.

This, by the way, was the perfect place to hold court on such a topic--a sports and conversation bar along Interstate 5 with four televisions that usually glare with images of Darryl Strawberry swinging a baseball bat or Wayne Gretsky leading a power play.

But, as the clock ticked past midnight Tuesday morning, there was a different sort of image emanating from the color screen over the bar: state officials gathering to perform California’s first execution in a quarter century.

And regular customer Ray Vrtis, as usual, had a front-row seat.

“It’s like that movie ‘Faces of Death’ that shows real footage of people dying,” he said. “If it’s real, there’s always going to be people who like to watch.”

Like Vrtis, warming his regular bar stool, there were others late Monday night sitting at bars around the North County, for the moment willing to tune out their sports to watch the coverage of a condemned man’s final hours. In fact, bar owners said, the Harris execution was just the latest example of changes in customers’ tastes that has seen real news more often take the place of more light-hearted topics.

Raintree manager Gary Misbach had seen it happen several times.

First there came the Oliver North hearings that snatched people’s attentions like a nifty Willie Mays catch. Then the Clarence Thomas hearings gave a new definition to the charge of personal foul.

But, the Big Daddy television event of them all, he says, was Cable News Network’s coverage of last year’s Gulf War--a round-the-clock viewing habit that eclipsed most sports coverage like a slam dunk.

“Now, if a current event is important to people’s lives, that will take precedent,” he said. “We’ve got a couple of TVs, so I can make everybody happy. Sometimes I’ll just go out and take a vote to see what people want to watch.”

Monday nights in April are not normally big sports nights at local watering holes. Monday night football is just a heavy-breathing memory. The Padres were playing at home. The NBA playoffs don’t tip off until later this week.

So the locals at The Raintree had the place to themselves. For a moment, some of them hazard guesses about what it would take for public gassings and lethal injections, electrocutions and firing squads to become regular fare at sports bars.

“Maybe it could become something of a half-time special at big football games,” said Vrtis, a 29-year-old chemist from Carlsbad. “You’ve saw Fox TV’s Super Bowl half-time special. Maybe they could have something like ‘Men on the Death Penalty in Living Color,’ that sort of thing.”

Not all the customers at the Raintree were tuned into Monday night’s drama. Like the two German tourists drinking straight shots of tequila, sucking lemons as chasers.

Friedhelm Wiemer, a 22-year Volkswagen salesman, said murder isn’t an issue in modern-day Germany because it just doesn’t happen that often. More people die in car wrecks each year on the Autobahn, he said.

“This kind of violence, it’s something you have here in the United States,” Wiemer said in careful English. “In Germany, we have a police drama television show. Back home, this kind of show isn’t reality--it’s a violent fantasy people like to watch. Here, it’s reality.”

Over at the Crazy Burro, things were so slow you could hear bartender Rick Walsh’s glasses clinking together in a hurried rhythm. Even here, in a singles bar-restaurant in La Costa, where talk usually revolves around salaries, foreign cars and personal fitness instructors, there was talk of the gas chamber.

“Earlier, we had a group in here, a teacher and a lawyer and some others, debating whether getting gassed was humane treatment,” he said. “I wasn’t listening, but I know where I stand on the issue.

“I’m for an eye-for-an-eye treatment. They should put these guys in prison for as long as they can. And then execute ‘em.”

At Yogi’s sports bar in Cardiff, the drinks fueled emotional opinions on the impending execution. As it became apparent that condemned killer Robert Alton Harris would not die on schedule at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, John Henning’s mood turned foul.

“Does it upset me that it’s not going to come off tonight?” said the ironworker from the Los Angeles area. “Let me count the ways.

“They should have public stonings and sell rocks--river rocks. I’d buy a whole wheelbarrow full and get a front-row seat and let ‘em fly.”