Pasadena Puts on Best Face for International Visitors : World Cup: The final reports on business aren’t in yet, but the city, basking in glow of soccer festivities, figures all the free publicity can’t hurt.

It’s a little wacky out there.

A 300-pound inflatable crab bobs atop a Pasadena restaurant, its greedy pincers clutching--what else?--soccer balls. A Pasadena optometrist hawks World Cup souvenirs at a roadside stand. A bartender in Old Pasadena kicks more soccer balls behind the bar than he spears olives with swizzle sticks.

But it won’t be long before World Cup leaves town and life gets back to normal (until Jan. 1, that is).

The local World Cup spectacle is, whew, more than half over. The monthlong international soccer tournament started June 17 in nine U.S. cities, including Pasadena, which will host the championship game at the Rose Bowl on July 17.

For local residents, the question has been not so much which team is going to hoist the 18-karat gold trophy but: What’s the traffic like? What’s the economic impact? What’s the long-term benefit?

So far, the local impact--giddiness, notwithstanding--is hard to gauge. The business news so far has been mixed, and merchants are withholding judgment until the final week, when some are bracing for Super Bowl fever times infinity.

But aside from a few political flaps and traffic problems, most local authorities already are pronouncing the event a success, if only because the 40 law enforcement agencies hunkered at their Rose Bowl command post haven’t had to handle marauding hooligans or bomb scares.

“We are very pleased with the first games,” said Pasadena Police Cmdr. Mary Schander. “We have more to go, and they’ll build in intensity as we get closer to the championships.”

Each of the remaining game days poses a special problem: Today, traffic is expected to be especially heavy because of the Fourth of July weekend; on July 13, the game starts at 4:30 p.m., just as Wednesday evening rush hour starts; and on July 16 and 17, the final games, tensions are expected to be high.

Schander advised residents to avoid the freeways adjacent to the Rose Bowl on game days, especially two hours before starting time and 1 1/2 hours after the game’s end.

“This is not a UCLA game or even a Rose Bowl game,” said Schander, who has fielded hundreds of media calls since the World Cup began. “It’s bigger, and the duration is longer.”

But whether the enthusiasm will translate into local dollars is another question. Merchants are unsure whether to believe a rosy USC study that predicts World Cup will bring more than $523 million in business to Pasadena and the Los Angeles area.

Some businesses--such as restaurants, bars and souvenir shops--are going great guns, said Jack Smith, president of the Old Pasadena Business and Professional Assn. But for others, it’s business as usual.

“You have to be realistic about why people come to these events,” he said. “They’re down here to have a good time. If they’re from another country, they don’t necessarily want to buy an armoire and throw it on a plane.”

Smith, who owns California Basket Co. in Old Pasadena, is among those whose business has not picked up in response to the Cup. Still, he said, he’s “tickled to death” that the World Cup is here and predicts a long-term boon from all the publicity.

Each World Cup game is expected to draw about 100,000 people; the championship game alone is expected to draw 2 billion TV viewers.

“Any time you have a huge, world-class event seen by billions of people,” Smith said, “and it focuses on Pasadena, people will say, ‘I’ve heard of that. It’s a neat area.’ ”

At times, the publicity has backfired.

Media reports warning people to stay away from the Pasadena area on game days are hurting business, complained Michael Haddad, owner of West of Java, a furniture and accessory store in Old Pasadena.

In fact, said Haddad, police are doing such a good job with traffic control that thousands of visitors are bypassing Old Pasadena entirely.

“I think it’s going to be a disastrous month for us,” said Haddad, who sat in his empty store, two hours before game time on a recent afternoon.

And some of the publicity has put Pasadena in a bickering limelight. City officials feuded with World Cup authorities over Pasadena’s family oriented soccer festival, Soccer Carnaval, and a World Cup sign at the Rose Bowl that said “Los Angeles”; Pasadena officials eventually agreed to not hold the carnival on game days and worked out an agreement to erect a separate Pasadena sign nearby.

Nonetheless, international visitors are seeing Pasadena at its best, all decked out and spruced up, like a high school gym at senior prom.

Several international visitors have remarked that Pasadena reminds them of a small European town, said Denise Nelson Nash, the city’s coordinator for World Cup affairs. Tourists are so enthusiastic that the city’s two information kiosks in Old Pasadena--each stocked on game days and weekends with more than 3,000 brochures on restaurants, special events and maps--have nearly run out of material, she said.

“I think people are taking away (the feeling) that this is a very special community where you can feel at home and a community that you want to come back to,” she said.

The carpe diem mood is striking locals too.

At Il Fornaio restaurant, regulars are wagering on World Cup games. On the lawn in front of John Bull English Pub, optometrist Gail Murphy temporarily set up a souvenir stand so she could get in on the action.

And at Wise Guys bar in Old Pasadena, bartender George Alberto’s playful soccer-ball kicks sometime knock down plastic beer pitchers to the brick floor.

One night, Colombian native Rafael Marin grabbed his video camera to tape Alberto’s antics.

“Beautiful,” said Marin, a 52-year-old Miami pediatrician, his voice heavy with emotion. “The blood is warming up here.”

He slammed a fist into his hand.

“Now we’re feeling like we’re in the right place.”

Some say that spirits are so high that Pasadena can’t help basking in the afterglow.

“It’s a harmonic convergence,” offered Frank Van Joolen, a 44-year-old Pasadena hospital orderly, his Netherlands World Cup cap snug on his head. “The world’s soul is here, right now.”

Others find local enthusiasm lacking.

“It’s nothing like the Super Bowl or the Rose Bowl or the Olympics,” mused Robert Dang, a 30-year-old production coordinator for a Thailand news crew. He struggled for the proper analogy, and then it hit him: “I’d say like another golf game.”

In fact, Dang said, for a Bangkok TV news story, his crew interviewed people in Pasadena, Rosemead and El Monte to check out the local response to World Cup.

“They’re like, ‘World Cup? What is World Cup?’ ”

At Viva Pasadena, an open-air market set up for the games, sparse crowds have wandered through the 120 booths featuring crafts, souvenirs and food. A large Cameroonian contingent sat morosely at picnic tables for a ham-and-cheese sandwich lunch, lamenting the low-key atmosphere.

“It’s not big at all,” complained Cameroonian fan Afata Andre, a 34-year-old professional drummer who wore a tattered San Diego Chargers cap. “Four years ago in Italy (at the World Cup games), it was so nice. Not like this. It was a party.”

But from a Pasadena perspective, the city put on a whole new face to welcome the Cup. World Cup banners hang almost everywhere, World Cup trash cans and ads dot what seems like every street; even churches unfurl signs that welcome soccer fans.

World Cup merchandise is sold at department stores, grocery stores and hotels, and at tables in the parking lots of liquor stores, bars and gas stations.

Kids trade World Cup pogs, fans wear T-shirts that boldly proclaim, “Soccer is Life” and residents buy the very local “South Lake Avenue” World Cup pins.

High culture isn’t immune to the World Cup bandwagon, either: the Pacific Asia Museum is exhibiting an Edo period scroll showing two boys playing soccer, and the Pasadena Pops orchestra was scheduled to perform Saturday at Descanso Gardens in a musical salute to World Cup countries.

Crowds are steady at the Armory Center for the Arts’ exhibition, “The World of Cups,” featuring cups in different art forms commissioned from prominent artists; visitors even dropped by on a Monday, when the art gallery was closed, said Torri Scott, marketing manager.

Police have more than doubled the number of officers on full-time foot patrol in Old Pasadena to a total of 25 during World Cup, Sgt. Jim Shear said, although problems so far have been mostly confined to a few drunks.

On foot patrol one night, Pasadena Police Officer Ed Calatayud stopped in alarm when a man leaving a souvenir shop told him: “There’s a robbery in there.”

And then the man grinned: “ A jacket for $1,500.”

Crowds have been rowdy but good-humored, said Michael Vieyra, the doorman at Q’s Billiard Club.

“This town has really come alive,” said Vieyra, 28, watching a postgame crowd stream steadily by. “It took me back to high school when I used to go down to Palm Springs, and people were going up and down the street, screaming and waving. It was cool.”

Even residents who have to put up with the traffic and noise are mostly good-natured about the disruption. Steve Bridges, president of the Linda Vista/Annandale homeowners association, said he has heard few complaints from neighbors.

“The neighborhood seemed very quiet except for the normal noise you associate with the Rose Bowl,” he said. “For having a major event like that, (police) did a very good job.”

In fact, in neighborhoods near the Rose Bowl, a few residents turned entrepreneurs, hawking lemonade, hot dogs and other refreshments behind the backs of police who shut down stands that lack business permits.

Scott Davids, 13, and a friend sold cold drinks out of their backpacks to fans walking to the games. They’ve been averaging $400 profit a game but are unmoved by the whole spectacle.

“It’s like any other day,” Scott said. “Cops close the street, people walk through, next day, it’s all over.”

On a recent game day, resident Ray Brown stood across from the Rose Bowl in withering heat, trying to wave passing cars into his church lot, where the parking fee was $20.

Two hours after the game, the Rose Bowl was a darkened, empty shell, its end zone littered with empty water bottles and film canisters left by photographers. Under a bright moon, the trampled field perked up under the shower of giant sprinklers, ready for another day.