Asian Game Called a Gate to Health

Why are these people hitting a ball around on the grass at Santa Monica’s Culver Park? Why not? It may be good for you. It’s certainly good for them.

“In Japan they say the people that play gateball, less of them go to the rest home and old-age home,” says Kiyoko Nakamura, 72, who has been playing with the Bay City Gateball Club since 1988. “It’s good for the health, and it keeps your memory working.”

The game is like croquet, but different. For one thing, you need 10 people to play. But the Bay City Club has only four members, so they generally get together with a larger group from West Los Angeles for their games on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons.

Originally from Japan, gateball is also a team sport. Players are assigned numbered balls, red or white depending on which team they are on, and they wear red or white bibs to help keep track of whose ball is whose.

You start by putting the ball into play through a wicket, which scores one point. If you hit a scoring pole in the middle of the field, it counts for two.

You score another point by going back out through the wicket, but it’s more fun to stay in and knock the other team’s ball out of play with power blows and cunning spins.

Newcomers are welcome, Nakamura says. If more than 10 show up at a time, the extras bide their time by refereeing, then rotate in.

“The more the better,” she says, preaching the gospel of fresh air and exercise. “You use your legs to walk around. You use your arms to hit the ball, then you bend over to pick up the ball. Anyone can play.”

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THE NEW OLD EL CAPITAN: Workers broke through the wall of the lobby at the El Capitan building this week, revealing the original interior decoration for the first time in decades.

But the hands swinging the sledgehammer for the “wall-breaking” were not those of the ordinary worker. That honor went to Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, aided by TV personality Johnny Grant, who glories in the title of honorary mayor of Hollywood, and Jeffrey Rouze, an official of Wisconsin-based Century Life of America, which is restoring the building to its 1920s splendor.

The El Capitan also houses a gloriously decorated El Capitan movie house, which was restored earlier under the sponsorship of the Disney empire’s Buena Vista production company and the Pacific chain of theaters.

Now the building itself, once home of the Barker Bros. furniture chain, is scheduled for a make-over and a return to the real estate market as office space.