Leisure Time for Youths: Less Fun, More Hazards : Recreation: City and school programs are cut back while activities troubling to parents increase.

For many children and teen-agers in urban America, especially the 2.5 million youths in Los Angeles County, play has become hard work.

Cuts in libraries, recreation centers and after-school programs have limited the options of many youths as they try to occupy themselves in the hours between school and home.

Crime, gang activity and traffic congestion have turned such rituals as bike riding in the streets and playing ball in the parks into potentially hazardous activities.

Faced with these and other pressures, youths in the 1990s are becoming involved in leisure-time pursuits that often trouble parents and policy-makers.

These range from harmless but unproductive activities--what youths call “just kicking,” doing nothing for hours on street corners, in malls or at parks--to “racking” stores through organized shoplifting expeditions.

From South Los Angeles to San Marino, youngsters are banding together to form “posses” and “house crews,” groups that to some adults look and act disturbingly like gangs.

Left unsupervised after school, youngsters are twice as likely to use drugs and alcohol or get into other types of trouble, studies have shown.

“We have talked about so many things that are wrong for children. Overcrowded schools. Unemployment. Poverty. What youths do after they leave their teachers at school and before they return home to their parents is something we haven’t given much thought to,” said Olivia Mitchell, director of youth development for the city.

Jack Foley, a professor in the department of leisure studies and recreation at Cal State Northridge, said: “This may be one of the most neglected areas of public policy today.”

But it is a subject that youngsters--and their parents--wrestle with daily.

Except for education, The Times found in interviews with hundreds of children and their families, the subject of what young people do in their free time is what most preoccupies families today.

Some families manage very well. In some neighborhoods, there is an abundance of public and private recreation. And throughout Southern California, the sun shines, on average, 292 days a year.

However, there are parents who would have their offspring forgo sunshine to be safe inside after school.

A Times poll this spring found that three-quarters of the people living in Los Angeles County do not think it is a safe area for children. One in 10 parents said they will not let their children play outside.

David is an 8-year-old whose mother would prefer that he watch television after school rather than play in their Pasadena neighborhood. “It’s not that I’m so enamored with television. Quite the contrary,” the mother said. “Frankly, I’m scared to let him out of my sight even in this neighborhood. He’s too old to have his mother tagging around behind him, but it’s just not safe anymore, what with the traffic and gangs and so many weird people.”

Lydell, 12, has the opposite problem. He is reluctant to stay inside because of the drugs and violence he encounters in many homes in the housing project where he lives in Watts. “There is bad s--- going on in there,” he said, sucking his thumb.

Nickerson Gardens, one of nearly two dozen low-income housing developments in Los Angeles, is not exactly child-friendly. There are no Boy Scout troops here, no 4-H Clubs, no YMCAs, no Little League teams, no soccer leagues. There are not even any malls or fast-food restaurants.

For many youths, the only place to hang out is a battered gym, where older boys shoot hoops and younger boys ride bicycles. “Gone But Not Forgotten,” says a hand-painted sign outside, followed by a list of dozens of young people who have been killed or sent to prison.

The percentage of fatal shooting victims under age 19 in Los Angeles County has more than doubled in the last two decades, from 12% in 1970 to 26.5% last year, according to the California Department of Justice. Most shootings are associated with gangs, whose membership in the county is estimated at more than 100,000--and climbing.

“I can’t prove that there is a connection, but I could certainly draw you a graph and show that as recreational programs for youths declined in the late 1970s there was a pronounced increase in gang membership and criminal activity among youths,” said Steve Valdivia, executive director of the Community Youth Gang Services.

“Why? Perhaps,” Valdivia said, “it is because we stopped giving our children any alternatives in their free time.”

After passage in the 1930s of child labor laws, which helped get youngsters off farms and out of oppressive factory jobs, educators and policy-makers have come to recognize the importance of play as a normal and necessary part of growing up.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, when many of today’s parents were children, leisure-time activities flourished in California. There were sports programs sponsored by police, athletic competitions in public parks, arts and crafts in city recreation centers, drama productions in community theaters, and story hours at public libraries.

Many of these activities still exist. But in the 14 years since state taxpayers passed Proposition 13, youth programs have deteriorated, especially in the city of Los Angeles.

* Youth Services, which once offered an array of arts and crafts and sports programs at the Los Angeles Unified School District’s playgrounds, has suffered dramatic budget cuts over the past decade, from $17 million to $6 million, while the student population has grown by a third.

* Public libraries, which officials say have become de facto child-care providers, used to stay open until 9 p.m. on school nights. Now they close at least by 8 p.m. and some shut their doors at 5:30.

* The city’s parks have lost half of their 4,000 employees--mostly recreation directors--over the past decade. Two dozen of the department’s 350 recreation centers have closed. Many have much shorter hours and fewer programs.

Some parks are thriving because they have taken advantage of a city policy that allows them to charge fees for programs. Officials say it works beautifully in middle-class and affluent areas where parents can afford $3 for ballet classes, $40 for a season of T-ball, and $150 for summer camp. But the policy does not work in poor neighborhoods.

The Recreation and Parks Department has tried to compensate by putting additional funds into maintenance and security at 66 inner-city parks in recent years. Still, funding disparities remain.

Similar problems plague private recreation programs.

If Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts exist at all in inner-city neighborhoods, meetings are held at schools or in churches instead of homes, and some troops have hired adult leaders. “There are a lot of neighborhoods where parent volunteers simply are not available,” said one Scout leader.

The American Youth Soccer Organization, one of the fastest growing after-school organizations, exists almost entirely in the suburbs, said Lolly Keys, national director of public affairs. Again, the reason is lack of adult volunteers and suitable playing fields in the inner city.

Private recreational programs generally are not accessible to the poor. But a few do reach out. Le Studio, a private ballet school in Pasadena, offers some scholarships to children who are interested in ballet but cannot afford to pay up to $8 an hour for a class.

“The poor get poor and the rich get richer,” said Cal State Northridge’s Foley, who is a former consultant to Los Angeles’ Recreation and Parks Department. “It is what I call ‘recreation apartheid,’ children separated by income, race and ethnic origin.

“Leisure time is an essential part of growing up,” Foley said. “It should be a time of renewal, a time of wonderment. It should be a time of peace and a time of exhilaration, a time to fantasize, a time to try out new roles and new ideas, a time to dream.

“But it’s pretty hard to sit and dream if there are no trees to sit under, if all you see is concrete and asphalt, if what you hear behind you are the sounds of gunfire.”

Shirley, a senior at Santa Monica High School, shares Foley’s concern. “A lot (of teen-agers today) are just bored out of their minds,” she said. “They have no money, and there’s not a lot to do, except get in trouble, which is, I guess, what a lot of people do.”

Like generations before them, many youngsters feel misunderstood, as well as neglected.

“You know, adults just don’t get it. Like, they have all these ruuules.” The young man speaking goes by Thief, but his real name is Joe. He is 17, a junior at Polytechnic High School, a 4,000-student public school in Long Beach. His head is partially shaved. He wears tiny earrings and heavy shoes. When speaking of what he considers the stupidity of adults, he draws out his words with considerable disdain.

“They think that just because we, like, doooo things with our hair and have cloooothes with our naaaames airbrushed on them that we’re gangbangers. EEEEverything we do, they say is ‘gaaang-related.’

“Me and my homeboys, see, we’re the Brown Crowd. But it’s not racial or anything. We’re a posse. We’re not gangbangers. . . We just like to wear our airbrushed shirts and kick back, you know what I mean. We started out as a plain house crew. Then we--me and my friend, Actor--decided to expand. Now you have to battle to get in, something crazy, like take off your pants and run around the street. Nothin’ bad. You understand what I’m sayin’?”

Chances are if you are over 40--maybe even over 30--you do not understand entirely. The point is: This is a group of friends (a posse) who once considered themselves competitive dancers (a house crew). Now they dress alike, have fun at each other’s houses or the mall and have initiation rites. But they are not gang members.

There is nothing new in this desire to form clubs and cliques. It is a normal stage of development, which child development experts say typically begins in the preteen years.

In the past couple years, however, growing numbers of school administrators and others who deal with youths have tried to discourage organized social groups, for fear that they may be precursors of gangs.

Many schools are imposing new dress codes and making their facilities off-limits to youth groups. At Poly, high school fraternities and sororities in existence for more than 40 years have gone underground.

Even in affluent San Marino, there has been an increase in what Charles W. Johnson, principal of Henry E. Huntington Intermediate School, calls “gangy groups.”

“The line between ordinary fun and criminal behavior is getting blurry even in some rather unlikely places,” Johnson said.

Although most children at Huntington are well behaved, there are a few rowdy cliques of white and Asian boys that go by such names as Smash, Macho People and United Brotherhood of Chaos. Like most groups of friends, they tend to dress alike and hang around together but they also get into skirmishes with other students, often over racial differences. Coinciding with the emergence of these groups, according to students who are not members, there has been a rise in vandalism, including graffiti and damage to lockers.

“For the most part, I think it’s nothing to worry about,” Johnson said. “Mostly it’s behavior that I refer to as ‘flocking.’ It’s a normal part of growing up. But there seems to be more of it. Maybe as families break down, kids have a greater need to find someone who cares.”

Analysts estimate that half of the state’s children will spend time in a single-parent family before their 18th birthday. Mothers are entering the labor force in ever larger proportions--50% in 1970, 65% in 1980, 72% in 1990. What’s more, many married parents are working longer hours--the equivalent, according to a congressional study, of five more weeks per person in 1989 than a decade earlier.

These changes are having an impact on how many youngsters, especially girls, spend their free time.

In the suburban community of West Covina, after the dismissal bell rings at Giano Intermediate School, dozens of boys can be seen playing on the schoolyard, but the vast majority of girls head straight home, according to their teachers.

The earlier the girls get home, some parents reason, the safer their daughters will be. Plus, the house has to cleaned, laundry has to be washed, dinner has to be cooked, younger siblings have to be cared for.

Four out of five children in seventh and eighth grades are home alone or with an older sibling at the end of the school day, according to a University of Minnesota study.

“I think it is kind of embarrassing. . . . There’s never any time to have fun,” said one 15-year-old, who cares for her older sister’s 3- and 5-year-old children every day after school while her sister and mother are at work.

Because of these and other changes in society, city recreation directors and community youth organizers have tried to compensate for what youths lack in after-school activities.

One program, set up at five of Los Angeles’ housing projects by the Community Development Department and the Housing Authority, provides low-income boys and girls with job training, education counseling and a place to hang out. It also gives them activities that middle-class children and teen-agers take for granted: trips to Magic Mountain, the beach and the Forum.

“I figure it this way,” said Jim Smith, director of the Nickerson Gardens program. “Between (the ages of) 8 and 16, if we don’t grab them we lose them to gangs and the streets. Between 16 and 21, if we don’t help them, then the prisons will get them or they’ll be six feet under.”

Across town at Ramona Gardens, a predominantly Latino housing development, there are two programs--one run by the Community Development Department and another financed by the Amateur Athletic Assn. with money generated by the 1984 Olympics. They provide outings and other recreational opportunities.

Still, many children at the project wander around, kicking stones, aiming homemade peashooters at birds, teasing a “crazy old lady” who they say is a drug addict.

Sometimes, they leap on the back bumpers of city buses and catch rides to nowhere in particular. Other times, they go on “candy runs” to the market. One friend distracts the person behind the counter while the others make off with candy, beer or whatever else catches their fancy.

The older homeboys, or gang members, are the only role models that many boys have, said Peter Flores, a counselor and youth organizer.

“Many of them have no fathers, or they don’t know who their fathers are,” Flores said. “And yet they want so much to have someone to look up to, someone to play with them, to show them how to act and be when they grow up.”

Mitchell, of the city’s youth services office, said: “We’re creating children who are hostile and angry--and we’re doing it by policy. The libraries aren’t open, but to buy a paperback book doesn’t cost 95 cents any longer; it’s now $6. We tell young people they can’t hang out at a rec center because we don’t have enough money to hire staff. There are not enough soccer leagues to join. There are fewer clubs. School newspapers have all but disappeared.

“I think, sooner or later, we’re going to pay a big price for all of this neglect.”

The civil upheaval in Los Angeles has spurred some city officials into action.

Fearful that violence could reignite over the summer, Aldolfo V. Nodal, general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, has accelerated plans to redesign the city’s art, music and cultural programs to meet the needs of inner-city youth. One of the department’s most controversial goals is to work with more graffiti artists.

“We’re all operating on a 1950s model,” Nodal said. “Finally it’s getting through that these programs aren’t working. . . . Our first step will be to ask the youth themselves what they want and need.”

Officials at the Los Angeles city library are working on plans to convert some branch libraries into after-school youth centers designed by students.

“They may not always be appealing to older library patrons . . . but it is clear something needs to be done,” said Robert G. Reagan, the library’s public information director.

After the riots, Jackie Tatum, the newly appointed general manager of the city’s Recreation and Parks Department, started asking corporations to help finance new summer camps so that all youngsters, not just the middle class and affluent, would have something to occupy them this summer. She also is seeking donations of riot-damaged property for redevelopment as recreation sites.

“It’s going to be a long hot summer,” Foley said. “I think we need to think very hard about what our youth are going to do while they are out of school.”

Janet Lundblad, Times research librarian, contributed to this story.