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Been there many times, including a Clippers playoff game the night before the Rodney King riots broke out.
The NHL Los Angeles Kings called that place home, in addition to the Long Beach Arena, before the Forum was completed and opened in January 1968. I believe that the WHA Los Angeles Sharks played in the Los Angeles Sports Arena during their two seasons (1972-73 to 1973-74).
Once SC’s basketball team finally had a new arena, the Sports Arena was doomed. It’s so old even its successor, the Forum, is defunct.
Well, considering L.A. is mostly third world now, a soccer stadium makes perfect sense.
Me dad took me too a few Laker games and I saw my first hockey game there whatever the Los Angeles Hockey team was called back then. As a native of Los Angeles Hockey was not something I understood..LOL
Please ping me with any Southern California related articles. Thank you!
If you want on or off this ping list, please FReepmail me.
I remember when they brought down the Kingdome up here is Seattle. They went to all the trouble of spending the price to implode it, advertise when, got all these people to come see it, even in the harbor. But they apparently didn’t think about the dust cloud that ultimately covered the city and caused all kinds of problems cleaning it up.
Heavy clouds of yellow, white and gray dust billowed out seconds after the first explosions at 8:30 a.m., obscuring the final view of the carefully orchestrated implosion.
Dust choked downtown for nearly 20 minutes, blocking out the sun and leaving a layer of film on cars, streets and storefronts. The dust cloud reached nearly as high as the top of the Bank of America Tower, 76 stories almost a thousand feet, and drifted northwest about 8 miles an hour. It took weeks to clean it up. I was down in Tacoma and giggled for days
red
Sad. So many memories of the Fabulous Forum as Chick Hearn called it. Saw Rush concert there. Awesome concert venue for a sports arena.
Because she was president of the local chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), my mother was able to get a gallery pass the Democrat National Convention when they nominated JFK for president.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8Qbo0WqvOI
One of the worst arenas ever built. Deserved to be torn down. The Long Beach Arena, finished two years later, also needs to be torn down.
Besides hosting the 1960 Democratic Convention, FReepers might be interested in knowing that another political event, of a conservative type, was held at the Sports Arena in August of the year following.
I'm referring to the huge rally organized by Dr. Fred Schwarz and his Christian Anti-Communism Crusade in August, 1961, which was attended by throngs of business people, activists and high-school and college students by the busload.
It was possibly the largest political event (aside from the aforementioned Democrat convention) of the decade in Los Angeles, lighting a fire under thousands of participants--myself included.
Besides Dr. Schwarz, who appeared throughout the 3-day event, some of the speakers were W. Cleon Skousen, Herbert Philbrick, Dr. Edward Teller, Congressman Walter Judd and a senator from Connecticut (!), Thomas J. Dodd. Those names wouldn't mean anything to Gen-Xers but those of us who grew up in the duck-and-cover years very much appreciated what they had to say about the communist menace and what we could do to resist it.
All the local TV stations covered the rally, interviewing some of the participants and speakers for the evening news. The Times even wrote about it, although not favorably IIRC.
It was a big event. Lots of people, flags and banners, funny hats, flyers and books for sale. More like a convention than many conventions I've been to, except nobody voted.
Another thing or two: there were no demonstrators, no protests, no shouting down of the speakers. Everything was very civil.
This was pre-Vietnam, pre-Kennedy assassination. After that, it all changed.