Nation Transfixed by Extraordinary Spectacle : Chase: Millions are riveted to their TVs by bizarre pursuit of Simpson. In L.A., crowds flock to the route.

On a day that mixed grand opera with street theater, culminating in a surreal car chase across Southern California, the nation drew together to watch an epic American tragedy unfold Friday.

From the freeway overpasses and streets of Los Angeles--where some gathered to cheer O.J. Simpson as though he were a legendary outlaw--to a tiny tavern with a television blaring in a Nevada mining town, people suddenly stopped their lives to watch a white Ford Bronco on an incredible odyssey.

Work went untouched while television sets worked overtime.

“This is the day Los Angeles stopped,” said David Colden, an entertainment attorney. “Everything just ground to a halt. . . . I bet billions of dollars was lost today in lost productivity. No one’s gotten anything done.”

At Chaya Brasserie in West L.A., patrons came to dinner equipped with miniature television sets that they perched on their tables. In health clubs, people lingered after workouts, afraid to miss a single moment of the rolling melodrama playing out on the screen.

Some members of the audience were moved to join the show, striking a bizarre note as they cheered on a fugitive who, only hours before, had been charged with murdering his ex-wife and her friend.

With dozens of police cars falling in behind and saturation television coverage tracking every movement--north on the 5, west on the 91 Freeway, north on the 405--huge crowds gathered on overpasses to watch as Simpson, reportedly pressing a gun to his head, whizzed by in the car driven by his former college teammate and close friend Al Cowlings.

Intersecting Simpson’s path back toward his Brentwood estate, motorists stopped, got out of their cars in the middle of the rush-hour freeway traffic and waved. Others spilled into the traffic lanes near the loping Bronco. They cheered, honked horns and lined the roadway waving--a scene more reminiscent of a parade or victory procession than a police pursuit of a murder suspect.

Most were glued to television sets when they realized that the pursuit would be passing near them, so they said they jumped in their cars and positioned themselves on on-ramps or along the freeway so they could join in.

“We thought it would be therapy for O.J. if he saw motorists honking and bunching up behind him,” said Steve James of Diamond Bar, who joined the pursuit in Anaheim.

The harrowing chase started around 6 p.m., when law enforcement authorities traced the Bronco to Orange County by following cellular phone transmissions from the truck. By 7:15, after several tries, officers started talking to the Bronco’s occupants on the car phone. They were not the only callers. Radio listeners took to the airwaves and urged the onetime football hero to give himself up.

Shortly before 8 p.m., as Simpson’s vehicle left the freeway at Sunset Bouelvard, near his estate, people were waiting in the middle of the street, some lunging toward the vehicle.

A large, boisterous crowd gathered at Rockingham Avenue and Sunset as the drama wound down, some of them cheering and chanting, “Free O.J.” Others held signs saying “Save the Juice” and “We Love the Juice.” About 50 young people tried to clamber over an ivy-covered hillside leading to the Simpson home, but police pushed them back.

“I just wanted to make sure he didn’t commit suicide,” said Brian Washington, 25, who drove down from Lancaster with his pregnant wife. “Let’s just go on from here. You’ve got young and old out here and we are all pulling for him.”

Todd Gibson, 21, drove up from Orange County after spotting Simpson on the freeway. Holding a sign that said “Go O.J.,” he wanted to get one last glimpse of his hero, he said.

“This is the most incredible thing in my entire lifetime,” Gibson said. “For him to go down like this, well, it’s just not right.”

Brochelle Hale, 35, of Hawthorne, said she was glad when Simpson finally surrendered.

“It doesn’t make any sense for him to go through all he has gone through,” she said. “He should have turned himself in at the beginning. He ain’t no hero.”

In general, though, the mood was festive, and in almost every case, supportive of Simpson.

“The Juice is loose!” several people shouted.

“I had to bring my family to see this,” said one man with a small child on his shoulders.

In the rest of the country, the action was confined to television screens, but was no less riveting for those caught in its grip.

In New York City alone, nine television stations preempted regular programming to carry coverage of the chase.

NBC interrupted coverage of the NBA championship basketball game, joining ABC and CBS in televising what could only be regarded as an extraordinary spectacle--a fallen hero, pursued by police and reporters in full public view.

At Waterhole No. 1 in the tiny northeast Nevada mining town of Golconda, owner Judy Wilson watched the California freeway chase and later developments surrounded by 15 to 20 patrons at any one time in the evening. It was a switch for the small bar; usually they just watch sporting events and the news--and then only in the morning.

“I think it’s quite a show,” Wilson said Friday night.

Dawn Sheggeby, a book editor in San Francisco, had been watching television for the past two hours, since she got home from work at 7 p.m. “We think it’s the most ridiculous thing we’ve ever done, but we just can’t stop. Once you’ve put in a certain number of minutes, you think, ‘What if something happens and I miss it?’ It seems like something that would only happen in a TV show or a movie.”

At the police station in Buffalo, N.Y., a city in which Simpson braved ice and bitter temperatures for a decade to become a football legend, half a dozen local police personnel crowded around a small radio at headquarters to follow the drama as they waited to book the night’s suspects.

“Everybody’s listening,” said Christine Dipasquale, a technician in the auto unit. “Everybody just feels so bad. My son was just saying this afternoon that Los Angeles probably feels bad, but for Buffalo it’s worse.

“O.J. played for us for so long, he lived here for a long time. We remember our stars,” she said. “Everybody feels like maybe he did do it, but we just wish he didn’t.”

It was a particularly somber mood at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City, the organization that awarded Simpson the prized Heisman Trophy a quarter-century ago. A dozen members sat glued past midnight to the TVs at the club, still not believing.

“It’s a feeling of total shock,” said Milton Rodriquez, a security guard at the club. “I can’t believe how far it’s going. It’s so sad, what’s happening. People were asking if we were going to scratch out the name on the Heisman Trophy, or take down his picture. A few were saying we should. But I told them, hey, this is totally different. He won the trophy.”

At Harry Caray’s restaurant just north of Chicago’s Loop, a crowd of about 100, including tourists there for the city’s World Cup opener between Germany and Bolivia, sat transfixed, coming to life only to cheer when Simpson’s car was dodging traffic on the freeway.

“We’re having trouble explaining to the Germans what’s going on,” said general manager Steve Borchew. “I told them it was as if Lothar Matthaeus, their best player, was driving out there with a gun. They can’t imagine it.”

Pursuit Path

O.J. Simpson led authorities on a freeway pursuit Friday after being charged with murder in the slayings of his ex-wife and Ronald Lyle Goldman. Here is the path taken by the car carrying Simpson and his longtime friend and former teammate, Al Cowlings.

Times staff writers Leslie Berkman, Stephen Braun, Greg Braxton, Jeff Brazil, Scott Brown, Rich Connell, Miles Corwin, Tina Daunt, Alicia Di Rado, Michael Granberry, Isaac Guzman, Carla Hall, Greg Hernandez, Nancy Hill-Holtzman, Kevin Johnson, Greg Krikorian, Maria La Ganga, Eric Lichtblau, Frank Messina, Josh Meyer, Matthew Mosk, Richard C. Paddock, Judy Pasternak, Mark I. Pinsky, Mark Platte, Bob Pool, Claudia Puig, Ron Russell, Rebecca Trounson, Tracy Weber, Chris Woodyard and Nora Zamichow and correspondent Adrian Maher contributed to coverage of the day’s events.