Teetotal Tailgating? Fans Say No Way

Veteran tailgaters collided for the first time at Thursday night’s Los Angeles Rams game with Anaheim Stadium’s new ban on parking lot drinking, and while police reported few incidents, most fans remained disgruntled about the crackdown.

Citing an increase in alcohol-related incidents in recent years, stadium management, Anaheim officials and police decided to get tough on enforcing a city law against consuming alcohol in the parking lot.

Most season ticket holders received notice of the drinking ban through the mail. Other fans learned about it on entering the stadium from new signs that have been posted around the parking lot.

While this first preseason, mid-week game between the Rams and the Seattle Seahawks did not produce the level of tailgating activity that will occur during the rest of the season, it provided both police and fans a taste of what can be expected, Police Lt. Del Wade said.

“The city will attempt to obtain voluntary compliance,” said Wade, the department’s special operations bureau commander. “People will be told the first couple of games to have a good time, to continue tailgating, but please, no alcohol. But there will come a point where compliance will have to be adhered to.”

‘Let Them Try’

But most tailgaters were indignant about the crackdown and said it would not affect tailgating parties or the level of drinking at them.

“They’re going to have problems. Let them try,” said Warren Hubert, a Corona resident and Rams season ticket holder for seven years. “If they want to ban drinking out here, they should also ban drinking inside. It’s pretty silly.”

“It’s terrible, an infringement on our privacy,” said Don Koontz of Mission Viejo. “Most tailgaters come to enjoy the game, and we’re being blamed for the problems the troublemakers cause. I don’t see the difference in drinking out here and going inside and paying $3.75 for a cup of beer at the concession stand.”

Koontz and five friends and relatives had laid out a table with vegetables, dips, chips and champagne, which they drank from large silver goblets.

Jerry Pruitt of Orange said he received notice of the policy with his season tickets. Pruitt and several friends arrived early at the game and held forth modestly from a cooler in the back of a pickup stocked with several brands of beer.

Pruitt said he had taken the precaution of bringing along plastic cups from which to drink the beer in order to be a little less conspicuous. “But nobody has said anything to us so far,” he added.

Switch to Paper Cups

But as the stadium parking lots and designated tailgating areas filled up, the police presence picked up as well. Patrol cars slowly wound through the parking areas and officers informed fans that drinking was no longer allowed. They were told that next time they would be cited.

F.R. Weber of Costa Mesa and his wife, Junell, who had been drinking beer from cans, were warned twice by passing patrol cars about the drinking ban. They quickly switched to paper cups.

“I think it is just a way for management to get us inside and buy more beer from the concessionaires,” Junell Weber said. “The American way is baseball, football, hot dogs and beer. It’s almost like a right.”

Wade said officers will not be checking the contents in every paper cup in Anaheim Stadium and insisted that officers would continue to use discretion.

“It’s like the freeway,” he said. “If you’re doing 60 or 65 m.p.h., chances are you are not going to be stopped for speeding, where if you’re doing 100 m.p.h., you almost surely will. Law enforcement is a very discretionary business. We are targeting people who have no regard for the rights of other people to have a good and safe time at the games.”