O.C. Police Keep Holiday Revelry Under Control

With the precision of a military exercise, Huntington Beach police sought to squelch all signs of wild Independence Day revelry that has plagued Surf City in years past, arresting drinkers on sight and cordoning off a wide swath of downtown and surrounding neighborhoods.

Throughout the day, the city’s finest, reinforced by Orange County sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers, removed public drinkers from city streets, arresting and jailing 62 by 10:30 p.m., far fewer than the 400 hauled off by the same time last year.

As police girded for trouble, trouble had difficulty getting there: Virtually all of the downtown and the densely populated residential streets north of Main Street were barricaded from 1 p.m. Friday through 2 a.m. today.

To get in or out, even by bicycle, residents had to prove to police that they lived in the off-limits area. And anyone caught there without proof after 1 p.m. faced being “stopped and cited.”

“There’s probably a third less people out here than last year,” Huntington Beach Lt. Dan Johnson said, surveying the normally bustling Main Street area across from the city’s famous pier.

That might have had something to do with the city’s new restrictive laws designed to prevent any kind of celebration from degenerating into drunken melees and mass arrests.

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Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg flooded the city with bright blue fliers, labeled “Attention-Important-Attention-Important,” sternly warning that even revelers partying with a beer on their own unfenced lawns could be nabbed for drinking in public.

The stringent ban spilled over to downtown eating and drinking establishments. Mitch Bailey complained as he closed at 8 p.m. that business at his Hurricane’s Bar & Grill in downtown Huntington Beach had been slashed dramatically.

“Everybody went someplace else,” Bailey said. “Huntington Beach is turning into a ghost town. Our Fourth of July [business] is pretty much gone.”

A few brave people ventured into town to watch the arrests. Nabal Sodha, 46, of Anaheim, with his wife and three children along, arrived too late to the city’s parade, so he went downtown.

In one 15-minute stretch in the early evening, Sodha said, he saw six arrests for drunkenness. Other than that, “it’s been real calm,” he added.

To police, of course, the mellower evening was a welcome sight.

“It’s the kind of people we want here--not the riffraff we usually get,” Officer John Blackwell said of the decidedly more sober crowd that did manage to make it downtown to mingle.

“It looks a lot more peaceful, a lot more quiet, the way it should be,” said Johnny Cribari, 27, a resident of Huntington Beach who recalled last year’s street skirmishes, problem drinkers and automobile congestion.

“Last year, there were just too many people, and just too few cops,” he said.

If the mood was tamer in Huntington Beach, it was partly because some of the revelers went next door to Newport Beach.

At Kay Yi’s Bal-Port Liquor store at Balboa Boulevard and Coast Highway, shoppers buying beer stood 30-deep through most of the day.

“It’s like this every year,” Yi said.

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To avoid trouble this year, Blackie’s by the Sea, a bar across from the Newport Pier, had last call at 8 p.m. instead of the usual midnight.

“It’s like World War III out there after dark,” manager Les Bobbitt said of prior years’ celebrations.

Newport Beach police cited many for drinking in public and related offenses, as they did last year. By 10 p.m., 60 had been arrested, compared with 80 last year.

Despite a few scattered instances of firecracker throwing and police taunting, Newport residents experienced a quieter holiday. Sort of.

Michael Dominguez, 46, who lives amid the lit Tiki torches on Seashore Drive--party central in Newport--said two very inebriated young women burst into his home and wouldn’t leave without making a fuss. So he called police.

That commotion notwithstanding, Dominguez said, “it’s been really quiet this year.”

That’s because Newport police, too, took a dim view of public drinking.

The heavy police presence in Huntington Beach prompted mixed feelings.

Some lamented, pined even, for the spark and spirit of celebrations past.

Take Cathy Gentemann, who was enjoying herself at a house party Friday evening at Orange Avenue and 9th Street, where the owner erected a new picket fence so his guests could legally sip mango-banana-pinapple-and-rum concoctions--in the cool night air.

A lifelong Huntington Beach resident, she said she misses the days when streets were roped off for block parties and the holidays were festive.

“We only want to burn sofas one day out of the year, what’s wrong with that?” she said facetiously, referring to the 1995 partying marked by numerous small fires.

But their neighbors across the street like the change. One year, hoodlums smashed their potted plants, trampled across their flower beds and tore out their holiday flags.

“That year, it was like Kuwait. We were running down the street holding hands” while people were throwing things, Kari Bailey said. “There’s no action going on, but that’s OK.”

Mark Johnson, 31, of Fullerton, complained about how boring it was.

“With all these cops, I don’t think Benjamin Franklin could have fun.”

* 221 YEARS OLD

Cities from sea to shining sea celebrate a nation’s birth. A32