Pasadena Down in the Dumps as Carson Lures NFL’s Interest

You could call it indignation or frustration if you want, but it strikes me that what’s coming out of Pasadena these days is good old-fashioned snobbery.

Local officials seemed to think all they had to do was show an interest in making the Rose Bowl home to a pro team, and the National Football League would come running.

Well, it turns out the NFL seems to prefer Carson, the South Bay city with no football stadium, no tony Colorado Boulevard and no famous parade, unless you count city officials doing the perp walk.

Pasadena City Councilman Paul Little was “uneasy about the whole process” when the NFL stunned his fair city this week, committing $10 million to exploring Carson as the next home of pro football. Rose Bowl rep John Moag was crying in his beer, and former Mayor Bill Thomson certainly didn’t flatter Carson when Mr. Sour Grapes said:

“I’m not worried about being in competition with a toxic dump.”

Start worrying, Bill.

For the record, Thomson was not calling Carson a toxic dump. At least I don’t think he was. He was referring to the fact that the proposed stadium location in Carson is a landfill cleanup site.

Does the NFL have to draw pictures for Pasadena?

It doesn’t want historic, quaint or pretty, so the Rose Bowl is out.

Of course, it is possible that the NFL owners, who are shadier than Carson politicians, are using blue-collar Carson to put the squeeze on Pasadena. But I doubt it. The Belmont Learning Center site has a better chance of getting an NFL franchise than Pasadena.

The NFL would much rather have a glitzy new stadium and dozens of posh skyboxes filled with corporate thieves, even if it’s built on a bubbling chemical caldron.

Not that anyone asked, but Carson gets my vote for a number of reasons, the most important being that game-day traffic will have relatively little impact on me, personally.

Sure, the current mayor is under indictment, and a former councilwoman just became the sixth person to plead guilty to extortion in connection with a city waste-hauling contract. But Carson officials have handled the stadium competition with much more class than their white-shoed counterparts to the north.

When Pasadena looked like it was in the lead, you didn’t see Carson’s city bosses sniveling and throwing tantrums. So I went down to have a look at the site of the proposed stadium, just south of Del Amo Boulevard next to the 405, and not far from the 110.

Right away, you feel like you’re in football country. The marine air is crisp and cool, and you’ve got vast open spaces and great freeway access.

I pulled up to a locked gate and a sign said:

“CAUTION: Unsafe area. Unauthorized persons keep out.”

Unsafe, yes, but there are ways to clean this stuff up. And besides, there’s no carcinogen deadly enough to keep the NFL from tapping the second-largest TV market in the land.

A guard came over to ask what I was up to, and I asked how he was feeling.

He said he was fine after working there a year. No shortness of breath or sixth toe or anything like that. He said he’s seen foxes, birds and skunks on the property, and none of them have keeled over on his watch.

Whereas Pasadenans are irritable and nasty of late, citizens of Carson could not be friendlier. As I was peering at the dump site, a man pulled up to offer his help. I’d just met him while interviewing folks on their morning walks at nearby Cal State Dominguez Hills, and he was the one who told me exactly where to find the football site.

Now Hans Hoogendam, a kitchen and bathroom contractor, had driven out of his way to tell me that if I really wanted to check the pulse of Carson, I should go to the doughnut shop next to the Sizzler, across from the mall.

This could have been 6,000 locations in Greater L.A.. But Hans got me pointed in the right direction, and I found a lively crowd at Supreme Donuts, which is next door to Gold X Pay Day Advance, for “Fast, Easy, and Confidential” service.

So the regulars are sitting there with coffee -- several black guys, a couple of Latinos and a Dutchman in a shop owned by a Cambodian named Muny Meas -- and everybody gave thumbs up to football in Carson except the Dutchman, who prefers soccer.

No NFL team would get this kind of across-the-board support in Pasadena. You’re going to have haughty residents yammering about the impact on the Arroyo ecosystem while others carp about riffraff mixing in along Colorado Boulevard.

Carson has got more of the underdog grittiness you need for honest beer-drinking at a football game, and most important, it could use a boost.

“We need it more than Pasadena,” said Reuben Thompson, who got nods from his pals Noble Taylor, Clem Johnson, Abraham Thomas and James Hall.

If the doughnut business picks up, owner Muny Meas might be able to sponsor the new ballpark.

And given the number of local politicians who’ve gone to prison, I’ve got a team name the NFL will like.

So order those tickets now, sports fans, and be sure to catch all the action of the Carson Outlaws at Supreme Donut Bowl.

Pasadena can watch on TV.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes. com.