Hints of a Storm in Port : In a lively harbor area that prides itself on independence and diversity, some proposals for vacant Navy housing have residents worried about the stranger in town: intolerance.

If there is a place where the crazy mix of Los Angeles has milled together for generations with a minimum of fuss, it is in this diverse waterfront section where sailors arrived generations ago from many ports and where the children of Croatian cannery workers, Mexican farmers and Italian fishermen tout their community’s ethnic roots.

Yet the idea that homeless or low-income people might move into vacant Navy housing on Taper Avenue, above Los Angeles Harbor, suddenly has residents worrying about population shifts.

For some, the worry is that troublesome elements will move in.

Longshoreman Pat Scognamillo, 53, a lifelong San Pedran, says: “Everything’s gone upside-down. People are moving in who have no respect for neighborhoods. Gangs are moving in.”

Others think the troublesome element already has arrived: intolerance.

“That’s what disturbs me because I was raised on the notion of tolerance,” said native Arthur A. Almeida, 66, whose forebears came from Mexico.

When did San Pedro, with its lively port, where people are constantly coming and going from all over the world, suddenly start worrying about who was entering town? Some residents feel the flash point might have been the slayings of two 19-year-old college students from Japan outside the local Ralphs supermarket last year. Abruptly, San Pedro scenes flashed on television screens around the Pacific Rim. The community’s sense of security seemed to shatter.

Yet the tragedy also brought out the best of San Pedro, as residents flocked to the market day after day to drop off lilies and other flowers. Some left cards and candles, and the San Pedro Garden Club watered the flowers.

Crime and distrust might be distasteful realities in San Pedro--but just as real is the sense of community that built a shrine for strangers in a parking lot.

Many speak of San Pedro’s tradition of generosity--the donations fueling the Rainbow Services shelter for battered women, the volunteers and parishioners at Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church who hand out 250 brown-bag meals each day to the hungry who come to the church door.

Some say the wariness about Taper Avenue’s future is actually an outgrowth of a deep-seated spirit of independence, dating back to San Pedro’s two decades as a city in its own right before being annexed in 1909 by a harbor-hungry Los Angeles.

Even today, this community of nearly 76,000 seems far detached from the rest of the city, a 25-mile drive due south of Downtown to the end of the Harbor Freeway. Residents call themselves, not Angelenos, but San Pedrans (pronounced Pee-drans.)

Here, at the bottom tip of the nation’s most populated county, the tenor is remarkably small-town. The aesthetics are less Los Angeles, more New England fishing town with a Mediterranean flavor.

The hills are lined with clapboard and stucco cottages, the palm-shaded gardens are encircled by picket fences. The air is often cleaner than elsewhere in the basin. And at the foot of the sloping streets is a waterfront dominated not just by wide beaches and roller-bladers, but also by gritty docks, sleek ocean liners and hulking container ships.

The San Pedro waterfront is remarkably un-yuppified, with no glitzy equivalent of New York’s South Street Seaport or Baltimore’s Harborplace acting like a magnet for tourists.

It does have a small complex of gift shops called Ports o’ Call Village, as well as the smallish but popular Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, a mecca for schoolchildren. Angry animal rights activists picketed the aquarium last year when an octopus named Octavia literally pulled the plug of her tank and died. But with that gaffe fading into memory, Cabrillo last month launched a brand-new 3,200-gallon kelp forest tank and is readying more ambitious expansion plans.

Like so much else in San Pedro, the Taper Avenue drama has ties to the sea. For years, the community has served as home to sailors and others in the military, many living with their families in the 1960s-vintage blue and yellow buildings on 27 acres of northern San Pedro. But the U.S. Navy declared the vacant housing project surplus in the fall of 1993 and its prime parcel of land available for public sale.

Then the trouble began.

At first, the parcel appeared destined to become a large homeless shelter run by a group from South-Central Los Angeles. The plan appeared unstoppable, since federal law gave groups representing the homeless the right of first refusal on surplus defense property. But after months of lobbying by outraged homeowners, the homeless project fizzled.

Now a new law no longer grants homeless groups first priority on surplus military land. So planning for the Taper Avenue site began anew this spring, with eight groups filing “expressions of interest.” A Long Beach group hopes to erect senior citizens housing. The Norbertine fathers wants to build a larger home for Mary Star of the Sea High School. Several groups still hope to launch homeless shelters.

Although the parcel is valued at $7 million, its actual price tag will depend on who wins out, with private developers paying market value and others paying less or even nothing.

The schemes are now under study by city planners and a community group that will meet again Wednesday.

Some San Pedrans already have their minds made up: They want a high school or a senior citizens complex--but not a homeless shelter or a relocated housing project, especially not one pushed by outsiders.

“One thing that really arouses a San Pedran,” said Andrew Mardesich, 51, “is when an outsider comes in and tells us what to do and what to say.”

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San Pedro Inside Out People Population: 75,821 Households: 28,890 Average household size: 2.59 Median age: 32.1 *

Ethnic Makeup Other: 1% Asian: 5% Black: 5% Latino: 33% White: 56% *

Money and Work Median household income: $35,045 Median home value: $297,100 Employed workers (16 and older): 36,815 Self-employed:2,721 Car- poolers: 4,848 *

Average Yearly Household Expenditures *

Source: Claritas Inc. Household expenses are averages for 1994. All other figures are for 1990. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number. *

THE REAL STUFF: What makes someone a bonafide San Pedran? The local newspaper, the News-Pilot, compiled a list that was expanded by a local print shop. The result is a popular poster on the walls of many real San Pedrans’ homes. Among its findings:

A real San Pedran’s last name ends in a vowel or the last syllable is pronounced “ez,” “ich” or “ia.”

A real San Pedran keeps wondering what happened to San Pedro.

A real San Pedran still has relatives in the Old Country.

A real San Pedran votes Democrat, but thinks Republican.

A real San Pedran didn’t go to college, but his children did.

A real San Pedran still eats fish on Fridays.

A real San Pedran doesn’t like quiche.

A real San Pedran doesn’t even know what quiche is.

ONE MORE: And of course the one we all knew (didn’t we?) “A real San Pedran never says San ‘Paydro’ and gets mad when people do.”

LOS ANGEWHAT? San Pedrans think of themselves as a city. They refer to the local Los Angeles municipal offices as “San Pedro City Hall.” And some rue the vote back in 1909 that put San Pedro into the city of Los Angeles--a move that gave a port to the big city up north, in return for schools and police services.

San Pedrans prefer to honor an earlier date, 1888, when the community was incorporated as an independent city. In 1988, they threw themselves a 100th birthbay bash.

GOLDEN VINCENT: Some call San Pedro, full of hills, views and occasional fog, the San Francisco of the Southland, with the Vincent Thomas Bridge playing the part of the Golden Gate.

But seven years ago, a resident named Juanita Chavez was visiting the San Pedro of the Northland and noticed that the Golden Gate had something that the Vincent Thomas lacked.

Lights.

Her observation led to a proposal, passed this spring by the City Council, to light up the high-arcing, 32-year-old bridge. Now a national competition is under way to find a lighting artist.