What Did It All Mean for L.A.?

And so the last speech has been delivered and the balloons have been dropped. The demonstrators have made their last march across the city, having created no real chaos, but plenty of confusion. The pundits have had their say, telling us, predictably, that politics have become too predictable.

What did it all mean?

Los Angeles is a big city, and the Democratic National Convention that concluded Thursday will leave behind few lasting traces: a refurbished roller skating pit and boardwalk at Venice Beach; glowing red, white and blue towers at Los Angeles International Airport; caterers’ bills to beat the band; and a minor backlog of misdemeanor cases in Municipal Court.

Still, to say that this odd event had no meaning would be wrong. It was meaningful as a circus is meaningful--to the spectators in the tent, to the trapeze artist working without a net, to the passersby, who can’t quite understand what all the fuss is about.

In the end, the convention mattered not because it delivered any great revelations--no unique political message emerged, no fortunes were lost or won--but because 35,000 delegates, politicians, journalists, protesters and their hosts wanted it to matter.

It mattered, of course, to Al Gore, the high-wire act in this circus. He needed to give a performance that would make the nation--or at least 50%-plus-one of its voters--begin to see him no longer as President Clinton’s sidekick but, rather, as he put it himself Thursday night, his “own man.”

It mattered to the street vendors who made a few hundred extra dollars selling their fried chorizo. It mattered to the A-list Washingtonians, who rented out Los Angeles for a week as their own private sound stage.

And it mattered to Chief Bernard C. Parks and the Los Angeles Police Department, who had been more or less put on notice that another Rodney G. King outbreak, or even a post-Laker-championship-style melee, would not be tolerated.

Demonstrators who hoped Los Angeles would climax a year of street protests were parried and repelled. But their message still got out, under a thousand headlines and on countless channels around the globe. They promise they will not disappear.

Parties blossomed everywhere, even if not everyone could get in. The production crew of television’s “West Wing” chuckled at one woman’s pathetic plea for a pass to their exclusive bash for Chelsea Clinton. The journalist shouted and begged--she would lose her job without a ticket!

Soon, she may be looking for work.

At one party early in the week, giant images of the city and its people splashed across downtown high-rises, bringing a smile to the face of a Venice man named Pappy. Swaying to the salsa music, the 55-year-old summed up his joy this way: “I am just loving all of this. We invited in the whole world, and we really put our best foot forward.”

But some were ready long before week’s end to snatch up the welcome mat. A secretary named Angela seethed about how protest marches and police skirmish lines turned her one-bus, 20-minute commute into a two-transfer, 3 1/2-hour voyage of the damned.

“I’m more than ready for the Democrats to go home,” she said. “Right now!”

For most others, the roar in the heart of the City of Angels was a vague and distant thunder. Rafael Brown, a 21-year-old surfer, spent Thursday at Santa Monica Beach. “What’s the convention?” the West Los Angeles resident asked. “Is that where all the people are talking for president on TV right now?”

LAPD Ruled the Blacktop

“Whose streets? Our streets! . . . Whose streets? Our streets!”

The chant echoed all week, but no matter how much the activists wished it were true, it was the LAPD that ruled the blacktop.

The locals were backed up by 2,700 California Highway Patrol officers, who were ordered to Los Angeles by Gov. Gray Davis. So many brown-uniformed state officers prowled the streets that one might have wondered who was watching the highways in Yolo County.

The show of force worked. The LAPD recorded 194 arrests, fewer than the 390 made during the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. All but 59 in L.A. were for misdemeanor offenses. There was no serious property damage and no major injuries.

A defining moment turned out to be Monday night’s street confrontation--after a polemic-laced concert by the thrash-rap group Rage Against the Machine.

Small errors by the police and a single bad decision by a protest organizer made a bad scene worse.

It began as the concert wound down. A small group of spectators in the protest pit began throwing rocks, cement chunks and bottles at police. Officers let the fusillade last for about half an hour, before they pulled the plug on a second band and ordered everyone to disperse.

Twenty minutes later, nearly 200 people who did not make it out were caught between police horses and the pellet-rifle squads outside. Pinned against a locked gate, they were unsure whose orders to follow. One group of officers shouted, “Get down! Get down!” Others yelled, “Move it!”

Further west on Olympic Boulevard, homeless activist Ted Hayes made a snap decision that ratcheted up the tension. Frustrated and disappointed that his Homeless Convention down the street had drawn little attention, Hayes led a candlelight procession of just 30 followers directly into the chaos.

Holding a parade permit and toting an American flag, Hayes joined the other protesters just as they were finally beginning a slow retreat. Many turned back to confront the police again. Others lingered, uncertain, but still in the line of fire.

Seconds later, the shower of rubber pellets began to bruise and sting again.

Hayes noted ruefully later that the police, nervous and tired, had some justification: “To them, I was just some black guy, carrying an American flag and looking like he was leading a re-attack.”

“It was not smart on my part,” he said. “If I was an officer in that situation . . . I am probably going to drop the guy out in front and make it stop.”

Apparently, police thought exactly that. A police bean bag blast sent Hayes crumpling to the ground, one leg wrapped in his American flag.

For almost a week, the derelicts and pigeons of Pershing Square were forced to give way to a new menagerie--vegans, young socialists, anarchists, Rastafarians, Green Party members, trade unionists. In the words of San Francisco poet Gg Poetrescr who wandered through the square, it was an assemblage essentially “down with everything.”

A Wide Variety of Causes

One protester earnestly told a radio reporter about his campaign to ban breast-feeding. His mother had nursed him, the man explained, and he had been left obsessed with “oral gratification” and needing to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day.

One afternoon, during a march against “corporate greed,” a group of environmentalists rolled a butchered stump of an old-growth redwood down Figueroa Street. Behind them were protesters costumed as Gore and George W. Bush, lolling on a mobile bed, with a bevy of “corporate whores.”

There was method in the mayhem. The vivid images caught the eyes and lenses of journalists from around the world. The excitement infected young activists, who made plans to stick with what one called “the new democratic movement.”

One group of Los Angeles teens said they are already planning a school walkout this fall, demanding more school spending and less support for the nation’s “prison-industrial complex.”

“There is always concern that any movement traveling around like a circus might lose its momentum and its flavor,” said Luis Sanchez, an organizer for the group, Youth Organizing Communities, and a native of the Eastside. “But we are in this for the long run. . . . We are not going away.”

From a Business Angle: Mixed Tally

Los Angeles’ business community has become accustomed to living with lowered expectations--when big events promise to bring in big money.

The 1984 Olympics weren’t the moneymaker for business that they were supposed to be. Neither was the 1994 World Cup. Some experts were already guessing Friday that the Democratic convention too would fail to meet the projection of a $132.5-million boost to the local economy.

The ledgers are far from balanced, but businesspeople suggested a mixed tally at best.

Area hotels were supposed to book 94,500 “room nights” for the convention. But the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau said they had logged only 77,233. Party planners, restaurants and bars hoped for $12 million in sales. But the lavish spreads promised to total much more.

The jewelry district downtown went into virtual shutdown. Fearing vandalism, the businesses inflicted losses of up to $30 million on themselves. Other merchants--including an office furniture store, a grocery and a ticket broker--near Staples Center were temporarily put out of business by police barricades.

A special shopping night for delegates at the downtown mall newly named 7 + FIG, drew just 50 patrons, despite raffles, discounts and free giveaways.

Sy Zagha said his City Blues clothing store on Broadway hadn’t seen it so bad since the 1992 riots. Business was scared off by all the police and the demonstrators, said Zagha, 64.

“A little retailer,” he said, “can’t take losing this kind of business for long.”

But for many others, pluck and persistence paid off. Pouria Gotriz, owner of Broadway’s Milano Jewelry--one of the few gem shops that stayed open--was so busy she had to hire two more salesclerks and keep her repair man on seven days, instead of his usual five. Business was up 50% and Gotriz was crowing: “All the other jewelry stores downtown are afraid of a little chaos.”

Cabbies and caterers also profited.

Timothy Bopp, 55, pulled down at least $300 on a Monday shift in his cab that would normally net $100. “It’s a fabulous moneymaker for the city,” said Bopp, a lifelong Angeleno.

On the other side of the ledger, the public had been spared some of the expense of, say, Philadelphia, which joined other public agencies in putting $24 million into last month’s Republican convention. L.A.’s tab is expected to top out at $11 million in cash and advance services, with police overtime and other costs adding at least $6 million more.

But the city also fell far short of its early pledge to run the first national political convention funded entirely by the private sector.

Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said the city would probably obtain a better bottom line with a “heavy-duty” business convention.

“If someone ever asks if we should bid for another political convention,” he said, “my answer would be no. What did we gain?”

High Stakes Inside Arena

There was business being transacted inside the hall too, but the stakes could be considered much higher than lost sales of pants and watches. The fall product line was Al Gore, Joseph I. Lieberman and the 2000 Democratic ticket, and the party’s marketers had stitched together a four-day spectacle aimed at whipping up the regulars, subtly swaying the media and luring millions of television viewers.

The challenge was no small one. On the historic night of Lieberman’s nomination as vice president, after all, the Democrats ran into nearly 29 million Americans more interested in who would be kicked off television’s “Survivor.”

“Look, at the end of the day, we know people tune the Republicans out and tune us out,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe. “But if we put on a good show, we can change a few minds out there, get people charged up.”

That task of firing up folks at home and on the floor fell to Gary Smith, a gray-bearded veteran of past Democratic conventions who orchestrated this year’s four-day affair and many of its TV images from a control tower directly across from the vaulting pastel gray podium.

Smith choreographed an arsenal of cameras--from hand-held models snaking along the convention floor to a massive, 360-degree rotating eye in the sky.

Every time the networks chose to use one of Smith’s determinedly uplifting images, he chalked up a victory for the party and Gore.

“Whenever we can get them to use our shots,” Smith said, “it’s a small win. That’s our message getting out.”

A few fleeting moments actually pulsed with the power of great television: Gore’s high-fiving emergence from the hall, Clinton’s power strut through Staples’ backstage maze, Al and Tipper’s amorous, time-stopping embrace before 20,000 cheering voyeurs.

But much of the confab droned past like the final bleary hours of a Jerry Lewis telethon, tightly choreographed, terse, barely memorable. Forty politicians a day shuttled to the podium, their entrances so timed that some of them ran to their marks.

Smith’s crew knew in advance where actors Harry Hamlin and William Baldwin were sitting, knew when to train on vanquished primary foe Bill Bradley and the Gutierrezes of San Antonio, a Texas family planted in the gallery to symbolize victims of dilapidated schools.

On the final night, Smith led his electronic orchestra like a conductor swept away by his score.

From the moment Gore appeared on the convention floor, Smith was a man possessed. He bounced in his seat. He waved his arms. Barking at his lighting crew to dim the hall, he pounded the air with his fists and stamped his feet as if his motion alone might get it done faster.

As Gore neared his finish, Smith was almost out of his skin with tension--glancing at his watch, shuffling papers endlessly.

Finally, on the last page, he leaned into his seat. As Gore’s “God bless America” was drowned out by the final roar, Smith was out of his seat, arms skyward.

“Go balloons! Go music!” he bellowed. Smith looked toward the roof just as the first red balloon floated loose. Then he collapsed back into his chair.

With the last balloon yet to settle to the floor, the media monolith that had taken over Staples Center began to loosen its grip.

Technicians spooled up 300 miles of cable that had tethered hundreds of cameras and microphones to the outside world. Workstations were collapsed and stacked. Reporters hugged and promised not to wait four years to see each other again.

Outside the hall, the armies of CHP officers already had their cruisers pointed toward home. A few hundred protesters staged one last stand outside the Twin Towers jail, demanding the release of their brethren, but then peacefully dispersed. Pershing Square belonged to the pigeons again and a few exhausted police officers.

Amazingly, in a week without secrets, party functionaries managed to hide the fact that the president of the United States--or a reasonable facsimile--had watched Gore’s speech from a sky box high above the floor.

Two hours after the address was over, the chief executive and a small entourage tried to slip out a back door of the arena. But dozens of stragglers spotted him and, true to form, he could not resist the crowd--hugging delegates, posing for pictures, soul-shaking with a union member and even granting a quick interview for Chilean TV.

Then President Josiah Bartlet--actor Martin Sheen from “West Wing”--strode out the back door of the arena and into the night.

Their brush with Hollywood now complete, the out-of-towners could go home, one Virginia delegate gushing: “This is the closest I’m going to get to the president.”

The Democrats are gone. And Los Angeles is spinning back on its axis again.

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Times staff writers Bobby Cuza, Jeff Gottlieb, Lee Romney and Stuart Silverstein and researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this story.