THE O.J. SIMPSON MURDER TRIAL : For Brentwood, Roadshow Becomes a Subdued Exercise in Inconvenience : Spectators: There are gawkers, and residents suffer some delays, but large crowds don’t materialize.

Plumbers en route to emergency jobs were turned away at police barricades. Birthday party-goers faced delays getting to their destination. Tourists from Ohio and looky-loos from Whittier clutched camcorders in eager anticipation--some waiting four hours on narrow sidewalks for the procession of flashing motorcycle lights that finally rumbled by in four minutes.

Otherwise, Sunday’s much-feared invasion of Brentwood turned out to be a relatively subdued affair, marked by sunny skies and not a single arrest.

To be sure, the roadshow courtroom of the O.J. Simpson trial brought minor inconveniences and blocked streets into the leafy Westside neighborhood. Some passing motorists flashed obscene gestures at camera crews, and some illegally parked cars were towed away. But the day was not the massive freak show for which the anxious Los Angeles Police Department had deployed 250 officers, many on overtime pay.

“We had to plan for the worst-case scenario of very large crowds,” explained Lt. John Dunkin at Paul Revere Middle School, his command post for the contingent that barricaded two sections of Brentwood on Sunday morning. “But we also asked for cooperation, for people to stay home and watch this all on television. Maybe that’s what they’re doing.”

Indeed, the biggest crowd was near the Mezzaluna restaurant on San Vicente Boulevard, and it numbered only about 150--half of them journalists and television cameramen. It dispersed after the jury’s bus passed by the restaurant, scene of Nicole Brown Simpson’s last meal and Ronald Goldman’s last shift. Before the jurors arrived, a limo company representative stood up in the open sunroof of a parked stretch limousine, holding aloft a tray of champagne glasses filled with orange juice. His sign promised “Free O.J.,” but police made the man take it down so the jury would not misinterpret the joke.

“They should be going to these sites in a limo, not a bus,” said Eddie Ward, owner of Limos for Less.

Across Gorham Avenue from Mezzaluna, the Mrs. Fields cookie shop was doing unusually brisk business in coffee and muffins. As the motorcade snaked down Gorham, the crowd shifted to the curb while another gaggle of onlookers gathered on the median strip of San Vicente.

“It’s like a funeral,” someone murmured as the motorcade including the jury’s bus, 20 police motorcycles and 13 other vehicles passed slowly by, wending from the trendy commercial strip to the gated estates where ivy plants always seem freshly trimmed.

“How can they tell how long it took to get from place to place if they’re going so slow?” another in the crowd wondered aloud.

Behind the onlookers, a man suddenly appeared hawking buttons bearing the faces of Simpson, Judge Ito, prosecutor Marcia Clark and other trial figures.

“There just aren’t as many people as I had anticipated,” observed Ricky Lucero of Azusa, who was part of the orderly crowd. “I thought there would be chaos, but actually it’s quite quiet. I came out of curiosity. The thought did cross my mind that O.J. might try to escape.”

Some residents were philosophical. “We look at it more as an event of American society,” said George Herzfeld, whose wife, filmmaker Marina Goldoskava, videotaped the arrival of the jury.

“Simpson is the sidelight. This is about our relationship to money, our relationship to the police, even the relationship of black people to white people.”

In town for business, Jeff and Deborah Briggs of Baltimore stopped near Mezzaluna before heading to the airport.

“I know we look like groupies,” he said. “We are groupies,” she said.

“Well, not hard-core groupies,” he said.

The brush with celebrity also drew Ohio tourist David Eingle. He had been waiting for hours to see the motorcade, which finally crossed Sunset Boulevard at Cliffwood Avenue at 12:36 p.m. Camcorder in hand, he captured for the folks back home images of a stately procession, but was unable to spot Simpson, the accused murderer, inside one of the cars.

Four minutes later, the police motorcycles and jury bus already were out of sight, heading uphill toward Simpson’s estate. And the crowd of 45 curious citizens and tired journalists soon began to dissolve.

“It was worthwhile, the wait,” said Eingle, a domestic violence counselor from Findlay, Ohio, who believes that Simpson is innocent--and that Brentwood houses, like their price tags, are mind-blowing. “Just to be at the places you see on TV every day.”

The last time people remember any crowds on the street or on porches for a big event event passing by was last June 17, the day of Simpson’s low-speed Bronco chase. Before then, the Olympic torch procession a decade ago brought them out in even larger numbers.

“I’m sick of the tourists, but it’s good for our business,” said Jean Carson, who owns apartments in Brentwood. “Now everybody wants to live here. You want to see my T-shirt?” she asked, holding open her denim jacket to reveal a “Neighborhood in the Spotlight” shirt that featured a map of Brentwood. “I had them made up.”

Patricia Logan, another Brentwood resident, was among those gathered along Sunset’s south side, near Bristol Avenue, where a cool breeze shook the eucalyptus trees. At times passing motorists honked horns or shouted impromptu verdicts: “O.J. did it!” or “He’s guilty!”

A few, however, offered middle-finger salutes to the massed news media.

Logan, meanwhile, speculated that it would probably be a sad visit home for Simpson. “Wouldn’t it be for anyone? If he’s guilty, it will be difficult. If he’s really innocent, imagine how it’s going to feel. I tell you, it wouldn’t be my best day,” she said.

Nearby, on the curb, sat Carmen Perron, wearing a button bearing the photos of Simpson’s lawyers that proclaimed them “O.J. Attorneys Dream Team.” The elementary school teacher from Huntington Beach said she believes in the former football star’s innocence. She even sent him a telegram in jail on his birthday. She speculated that the small turnout along Sunset showed that most people were against Simpson “because of all the prejudice.”

Locals seemed less engrossed in the murder case than in getting weekend chores done. Police had placed orange-and-white barricades at all intersections around a 13-block area north of Sunset near O.J. Simpson’s house, and a nine-block radius near the Bundy Drive condo of his ex-wife. Only people who could prove that they live inside the boundaries were allowed past, and residents had to meet visitors at the barricades.

At the West L.A. police station, callers were told by a spokeswoman that they would need a police escort to get by the blockades. d how would one summon such an escort? “Just step outside your house,” she said.

Jose Hernandez, a garment cutter from Pico-Union, was waiting just above Sunset for his wife, a baby-sitter who had worked overnight on Bristol. He tried to park his old, battered Toyota Corolla in front of a 10-foot-high French-style metal gate to an estate; inside the driveway, a new BMW was parked. But a policewoman shooed Hernandez away, and he drove off to a side street, hoping that his wife would hike down that way and see him.

A group of young lawyers was turned away from its weekly softball game at the Paul Revere School field, which police were using for deployment. Some teammates waited nearby on Sunset to flag down their buddies so they all could look for another place to play, perhaps in Westwood.

“If I knew this was going to happen, I would have slept in,” said Shawn Jeffers of Manhattan Beach, who was in a baseball cap and shorts.

The restrictions set off a screaming fit by one plumber, who said that he was needed in a flooding emergency on Bristol, but police would not call the customer to meet him. One woman--with a sick child in the back seat of her car--was angry that police at first turned her away from her street near Simpson’s home. She circled the cordoned-off area until her identification got her past a second barricade. The birthday party people also had trouble getting through but finally made it.

And, of course, there were some young locals who were bewildered by all the fuss.

“Why do they have to go on a field trip?” wondered 8-year-old Erica Johnson. “Why don’t they go on a funner field trip, like Universal Studios?”

Times staff writers Nancy Hill-Holtzman, Peter Y. Hong, Adrian Maher and Eric Slater, and correspondents Mary Moore and S. J. Diamond also contributed to this report.