Looking on Bright Side in Shadow of Coliseum

The building is faded, windowless. The corridor leading inside is long and dark.

There are loud and unusual noises in there, cackles and hoots spilling out from the dark on to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, wafting across the street to the Coliseum.

So this is it, the nerve center of the worst neighborhood in sports.

So this is the place where the people who live around the Coliseum gather to plot terrorist activities on unsuspecting football fans as they depart and return to their cars.

So this is the biggest unspoken reason the NFL does not want the city to rebuild the aging stadium, why they will not put an expansion team here, why they wish city officials would step their silly crusade and let Peter O’Malley do their bidding.

So this is . . .

“A birthday party,” said Marilyn Offlee with a smile.

She is the owner of the Menlo Club, the official name of this corner building.

It’s not a bunker, it’s a sports bar.

And the only thing the half-dozen patrons are plotting today--as brightly dressed folks from San Clemente to Camarillo scurry past on their way to the USC-Arizona game--is how to honor one of their own.

Nap Davies is celebrating his 45th birthday and, from the looks of things, they have decided on streamers and balloons.

Some of those strange noises are coming from a couple of old chaps preparing to blow up more balloons.

“The people who say this neighborhood is too dangerous for a football team, they never come talk to us,” Offlee said.

Nor, apparently, anyone else in the cluttered blocks surrounding one of the most hotly debated pieces of real estate in Los Angeles.

If the area between King and Exposition is such a war zone on game days, why has Offlee owned the bar for 21 years she says have been mostly trouble-free? Through Trojans and Raiders and even Rams?

If life here is so dangerous, how come Sal Patron has run an auto center across the street for 32 years?

“After 11 at night, it can get tough around here,” he said. “But how many times do you have a game going after 11 at night? I stand out here, and I see only people having fun.”

And what’s with Jose Suarez? For seven years he has attended one of the many privately owned parking lots around the Coliseum, stays there two hours after every game.

And doesn’t even carry a gun.

“A gun?” he said. “I’ve had one thing, a man had his car broken into, it happened when I lost the keys and he had to leave it here overnight. What neighborhood do these people mean?”

The backers of a renovated Coliseum are expected to meet with NFL owners in two weeks in New Orleans.

Their idea is ill-fated for many reasons. Among them, citizens should not be forced to pay for something that O’Malley can privately fund. And if citizens wouldn’t be paying for the new Coliseum, why won’t any of these politicians tell us who is?

There is, however, one hurdle that should go away.

If NFL officials attended a game without actually attending the game, as this Coliseum basher did Saturday, they would stop quietly complaining about the neighborhood.

For several hours around a 3:30 p.m. starting time--hours during which the stadium would be used during an average NFL game--the only thing getting mugged was expectations.

Two large men draped in gold chains walk up, glare. “Need tickets, sir?”

Somebody swinging a bat appears from around a corner. It is a kid coming home from baseball practice.

Backed by reams of police reports confirming that the crime rate here during sports events is no worse than at other Southland venues, insistent fears slowly become wonder at what exactly has scared everybody away.

Is it the ice cream trucks with bars on the windows? Is it the sandwich trucks with menus in Spanish? Is it because there are folks staggering around bus stops with bag-covered beer cans?

Imagine that, a drunk outside a football game.

“Sometimes I wonder if it is prejudice,” Patron said.

That’s what trigger-happy politicians would have you believe.

But in reality, it is something closer to Raider-judice.

The area around the Coliseum earned most of its bad reputation when the Raiders began playing inside. Officials feel it will remain dangerous no matter who takes their place.

Which people outside say is mistaken.

“What happens on the streets depends on what is happening inside the stadium,” said Carlos Vasquez, a parking lot attendant. “People come out of the stadium wanting to fight, the neighborhood will fight them. Soccer games, car shows, we have a lot of problems with gangs at the games trying to fight gangs out here.”

Football games?

“Beside the Raiders, nobody around here much bothers with it,” Vasquez said. “Look at USC. A new football team, everything would probably be cool.”

The Coliseum neighborhood is not a particularly beautiful or noticeably crime-free place. Like many places in the city, there are dangerous streets and wrong turns and yes, if you lose your keys, you might want to sleep with your car.

But safe enough for 10 professional football games a season? Even one that begins at 6 p.m.?

“Not one fist fight yet,” said Stan Davies II, a Newport Beach attorney walking into the USC game, laughing at someone asking something so silly.