Madness on the Edge of Downtown

The Los Angeles business community’s latest hope to revitalize a flagging downtown, Staples Center, opened a little late Sunday night.

Glitches caused delays for a packed house assembled to hear one of the nation’s deans of rock ‘n’ roll--”The Boss,” Bruce Springsteen, on a reunion tour with his E Street Band.

But once the show got under way, an hour and 12 minutes behind schedule, concertgoers generally acted like enthusiastic crazy people, cheering wildly as first one band member, then another appeared on stage, followed by the man they referred to with a raucous outpouring of love as “Bruuuuuuuuuuuuce!!!!”

Springsteen opened with “My Love Will Not Let You Down,” followed by “Prove It All Night” and “Two Hearts.”

The acoustics, notoriously unrewarding in many barn-like arenas, seemed better than in most. Springsteen commented from the stage: “It sounds real good.”

The celebrated New Jersey rocker, who has made a career of writing songs about the dreams and struggles of ordinary people, was hailed by arena management as the splashiest debut act possible--although the arena’s general manager recently confirmed that his first choice was a reunion of the surviving Beatles, a pie-in-the-sky effort that quickly fizzled.

But Springsteen’s appearance was mildly ironic given the setting: a 20,000-seat arena where some luxury boxes sell for more than $300,000 per year and where lines between social classes--in terms of where they can sit, eat, drink, park and smoke--are boldly marked.

In comments from the stage that drew some of the biggest applause of the evening, Springsteen poked fun at the large number of sky boxes, looking up at those in the priciest seats and remarking: “You have to come out of your room to see a rock show.”

The tour marks the first road campaign by Springsteen and the E Street Band in more than a decade, and began with a three-month run across Europe.

Some of the early evening entertainment was outside as at least two dozen stretch limos competed for curbside space, and television crews in helicopters hovered overhead while increasingly irritated fans strove to get in.

They were hampered by parking and will-call ticket window hassles. But there were other delays as well, some of which were caused by plumbing problems.

Long lines materialized at will-call windows, partly because of a well-intentioned plan to prevent scalpers and ticket brokers from demanding exorbitant prices for prime seats. To frustrate the scalpers, ticket holders in the first 25 rows were required to claim their tickets in person, then be escorted to their seats.

A complete review of the Bruce Springsteen concert will appear in Tuesday’s Calendar section.

Scalpers made do by asking hundreds of dollars for less desirable seats.

As the scheduled show time of 7:30 p.m. came and went, hundreds of frustrated concertgoers were still waiting in seemingly interminable lines at the will-call windows, bemoaning organizational woes and blaming what they described as uninformed and slow-moving arena employees.

Air Force Master Sgt. Lou Nagy, 39, of Palmdale claimed considerable authority as a longtime Springsteen fan and concertgoer in declaring: “We never have delays like this.”

“This is a little sickening,” said Jerry Janskn of Waco, Texas, celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary, after he discovered that he’d been standing in the wrong will-call line for half an hour.

Parking was, well, eventful. Some of those who arrived early reported no problems. But some who arrived closer to the scheduled show time said they found themselves paying bribes.

Larry Isro, Staples Center director of parking, said as showtime approached that he was pleased with the way things were going, as more than 100 employees sought to direct concertgoers to 8,900 parking spaces in 26 lots. Isro was focused on Sunday night as a dress rehearsal for tonight, when Springsteen redux will compete with downtown traffic on a work night.

But some of his Sunday night patrons were less than sanguine as they tried, with increasing desperation, to figure out where to park.

One glitch was the failure to post signs warning regular ticket holders that they were pulling into parking for suite-holders only. They were told to pull out.

One increasingly desperate pair pleaded with a private parking lot attendant who said his lot was full.

“I’ll give you $20,” one of the pair said.

“I’ll move my car,” the attendant replied.

Some devoted fans arrived hours early. Dave Perkins, a 43-year-old Anaheim strip club worker, was relaxing with a beer and blaring “Born to Run” from the back of his van in a parking lot in the late afternoon.

“We weren’t taking any chances,” said Perkins, who estimated that this was his 75th Springsteen concert. “I have a friend who works here. He said it was going to be a nightmare.”

Arena General Manager Bobby Goldwater said: “It seems like everybody’s having a great time. The building’s performed well.”

He said he will be studying ways to reduce dependence on the will-call box office, which was swamped in handling 1,500 individual ticket envelopes on opening night.

Opening night was years in the making. Plans for the new arena were launched when two business tycoons--one of them the world’s fifth-richest man--bought the Los Angeles Kings and decided they should no longer play in Inglewood’s Great Western Forum.

The tycoons--Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz and Los Angeles industrial real estate developer Ed Roski Jr.-- next bought 25% of the Lakers from Forum owner Jerry Buss.

Then they began negotiations with the city to build their facility somewhere near downtown, finally settling on a site next to the city’s struggling Convention Center.

Like arena and stadium developers elsewhere, Anschutz and Roski looked for a significant public financial contribution. But little was forthcoming--and what little there was became even less when Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs threatened to put any contribution at all to a public vote.

In the end, the developers avoided an election when Wachs won their promise to, among other things, guarantee repayment of $58 million they needed in city bonds.

In an effort to make the arena part of a more vibrant downtown, the developers say they plan to develop 30 acres nearby as an entertainment zone similar to Universal City’s CityWalk.

The arena is already certain to be one of the nation’s busiest. It is the only one in the United States that will be home to three major professional sports franchises: the Kings, Clippers and Lakers. In addition, it will host an arena football team and is booked as the site of the 2000 Grammy Awards and next year’s Democratic National Convention.

Staples Inc. paid $116 million for naming rights. Ten corporations, including The Times, each paid an additional $2 million to $3 million per year for the right to advertise in and around it.

Smokers were happy. Two were puffing away on cigars in the arena’s pricey cigar club, the $10,500-per-year Grand Reserve Club. And on one of three patio areas set aside for less affluent smokers, Thomas Lianozo, a concierge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, said, “This is great. . . . It means that the designers of this place were thinking about the smokers.”

In one of his trademark recognitions of ordinary folk, Springsteen sent aides into the upper reaches of the arena to reward a lucky few with up-close seats.

Jerry White, 37, of San Leandro, was in the second-to-last row of the upper deck, one seat shy of being as far away as a person could be from the stage.

Then someone from Springsteen’s entourage tapped him on the shoulder and asked how he would like to be upgraded. Within minutes, he found himself in the Promised Land: Sitting front-row center.

“I’m on Cloud Nine,” said White, who bought his first Springsteen album--”Darkness on the Edge of Town”--in 1978 and had never seen the performer in concert before.

“I can’t believe this. It’s just unreal. I don’t know what to say.”

Times staff writers Hugo Martin, Shawn Hubler and Kenneth Reich contributed to this article.