District 6: The trouble with games in Long Beach, CA

The rise of arcades in the late 1970s coincided with efforts to revitalize decaying amusement and shopping centers, rising crime, and increasing diversity in Long Beach, California. Situated at the southeastern end of Los Angeles County, the city of Long Beach had a long history of being home to midwestern transplants and their concomitant conservative values. The vestige of this past can be seen, even as the city began to diversify in the 1960s, in the city’s approach and attitude to policing, arcades and redevelopment.

As city leaders discussed possible uses for these new spaces, their arguments became increasingly rooted in maintaining a sense of homogeneity for their community with prophylactic laws and ordinances to regulate gaming spaces to protect specific neighborhoods. A white, suburban ideology placed literal and figurative guardrails around the community while regulating and coddling white youth. As David Lassiter notes, “The Suburban solution,” to delinquency -- “[was] premised on the social control of middle-class teenagers through constant parental and community surveillance.”[1]Thus, the placement of the arcades within an established but evolving leisure economy within the city was complicated by perceptions suburban and urban youth, how the arcades would be used and by whom, and the neighborhood impact by those from outside the community.   

Arcades grew in popularity through the 1970s and 1980s, but large to mid-size venues were placed outside minoritized neighborhoods, or at best on their periphery. Access to these spaces by Black and other non-white youth required travelling into whiter suburban neighborhoods that regulated who and in what ways individuals could engage with these new leisure spaces. The perception that non-white youth were more dangerous than presumed typical ‘delinquents,’ heightened fears of those who participated in the gaming spaces, leading to the policing of the newest recreative leisure spaces – arcades. Taken together, the picture of minoritized neighborhoods and individuals was increasingly viewed as threatening and can be placed within a historical context of racial separation and late 20th century economic realignment.

As the population of Long Beach slowly shifted in the post-World War II years, the city became proscriptively segregated, influencing social attitudes and a desire for the safety of the suburbs. Between 1960 and 1980 the population of Long Beach diversified and challenged the norms of a city long used to an established dominant white privilege and political culture. The change from being nearly 96% white, and a predominantly middle-class city in 1960, to 1970 when the black population grew to 5 % and then to 9.4% in 1976 began a slow-moving political shift that would take decades to create a more inclusive social and political elite.[2] The increase of a more diverse population also saw the concentration of the non-white population into two city council districts, District 1 and District 6. Importantly, for the focus of this paper, the conversation over arcade regulation tracked along council districts and the racial politics of a changing city that increasingly saw public and private leisure spaces move to the newer suburban areas of Long Beach. Early signs of political change were initiated when James Wilson was elected, in a special election, the first black city council member in Long Beach’s history in 1970.[3] Up until this time, the city council of Long Beach had been exclusively white and male. Wilson served District 6, the predominantly black, and, as designated by the U.S. Census, low-income neighborhood, for more than a decade.  The black population continued to grow and would make up 11% of the city's total in 1980. [4] The Los Angeles Times described District 6 in distinctly ghettoized terminology in 1981: “It’s a long, narrow and physically unattractive district...It’s a district where crime is a major problem, where absentee landlords are rarely seen and where cleanup is high on the list of needs.”[5]  The demographic shift from 1960-1980 dramatically affected the perceptions that white residents had of Long Beach and its downtown core. City policies to create supervised safe spaces for “youngsters” forced a debate over what constituted a safe space and for which community.

Long Beach’s history and its proximity to newer suburbs that grew on its periphery in the post-World War II period galvanized political forces through the 1970s and 80s to remake the city into an idealized memory of itself when it was predominantly white. Jean Bixby Smith, whose great grandfather had been one of the city's first white Rancho owners in the late 19th century and an early real estate developer communicated the longing for a city set in a nostalgic past in 1987 when he was quoted as saying, “For a long time there was a sense that we were self-contained and a healthy community. You get complacent when things go well. And we kind of liked being a quiet, conservative little community.”[6]  City leaders looked for opportunities to erase or cordon off the changes that embarrassed them induced by demographic and economic changes. Their nostalgic past was rooted in a homogeneity conflated with safety that flew in the face of reality and the significant changes after World War II.  To this end, arcades became physical representations of the demographic shifts and the difficulties in regulating sites that were thought to promote or lead to illicit behavior. Most of these concerns emanated from the suburbs where council members again and again made statements like this from Ernie Kell,” There are Public Safety aspects in these arcades... [and] we have heard from the Police Chief...that it is raising the police costs to monitor these machines “and creating a  “deteriorating effect“ on local neighborhoods.[7]

Council discussions often pressed on the issue of crime and its association with the economic difficulties of the downtown area. In May 1981 the Los Angeles Times reported that a constituent asked “’What does the City Council intend to do about crime?’” The article demonstrated the fraught atmosphere and concerns of many constituents, stating in one case that “Before the retired boilermaker had even finished speaking, the council meeting erupted into a session of name calling, insult trading, and self-congratulation that lasted almost 15 minutes.”[8]  In July of 1981 the Los Angeles Times published a concerning  piece titled ”Marauders From Inner City Prey on L.A.’s Suburbs.” The article includes a foreboding map that displays” marauders” leaping from South Central Los Angeles into surrounding suburbs, including Long Beach.[9] The fear of criminals infiltrating suburban areas became a noticeable point of fear that council members could not ignore, especially as the spread of arcades into the suburbs was viewed as inviting criminal elements from outside communities who would prey on the community and their children. 

The arguments to curtail crime had begun years earlier and spearheaded several changes in policing and monitoring neighborhoods. In 1978, the City Council approved the first major changes in policing in Long Beach in 50 years. The document approved” new crime-fighting strategies” and stated that “citizens will be encouraged to participate in neighborhood watch programs.”[10]  Citizen involvement through newly organized neighborhood watch programs proliferated throughout the County in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was sometimes cited as facilitating a drop in crime. When Police Chief Ussery called for an increase in the number of officers in 1981, he also advised growing Neighborhood Watch programs in Long Beach. Ussery thought that the programs were “one of the department's most effective crime-fighting tools,” with 900 blocks having organized a Watch program.[11] Ernie Kell of District 5 and Ed Tuttle of District 8 both credited local Neighborhood Watch Programs for decreasing crime in the communities from 1980-81 and Mayor Eunice Sato “called for a Neighborhood Watch program on ‘every block in town.’”[12] Not everyone agreed with the assessment of the effectiveness of Neighborhood Watch programs and the concern of crime infiltrating Long Beach continued – specifically James Wilson who spoke of the lack of investment rather than increased policing.

By the 1980s Long Beach had been divided -- the Westside and Downtown districts were older, poorer, more crowded, and according to the LA Times, “more dangerous, and more ethnically mixed.”[13]  The Eastside, was by then, “rich with parks, golf courses and marinas.”[14] Neighborhoods abutted one another that were inherently separate and separated through work, leisure, and opportunity.  Suburban Long Beach benefited from large parks, newer schools, and a population density considerably smaller than the older portions of the city, but those same suburban residents feared how their new and homogenous space might become criminally infested if arcades and associated clientele entered their neighborhoods. These fears were further amplified by the Long Beach police who viewed arcades as increasingly problematic venues that created “a significant increase in petty theft and loitering stemming from ‘young people playing these games in liquor stores.’”[15] In a stunning display, Police Chief Ussery related a story at a Council meeting about a “small girl last week [who] had been kidnaped and raped by a man...after she had spent her money at a video game in a downtown liquor store.”[16] Arcade games’ association with Downtown and crime were continually magnified and rooted in an older ideology that clarified concerns if the machines escaped unregulated into the safe confines of the suburbs.

The debate over the placement of arcades grew throughout the decade as crime became a critical issue in Long Beach. At the same time, the Long Beach City Council saw dramatic changes to its membership in 1978 that would increasingly affect policy towards arcades. New members included Jan Hall, a Republican from the suburban District 3 and the Democrat Marc Wilder of District 1 that covered downtown Long Beach.[17] Each representing vastly different districts and concerns about redevelopment and criminal activity. Attitudes towards liquor stores and the games they housed continued to be debated for years with Council Members Hall and Wilson often disagreeing. During council debates in February 1982 Hall worried about “students near Wilson High School creating problems as they were hanging out during school hours."[18] Hall’s own district represented a comfortable suburban region of Naples and Belmont Shore that remained 98% white in 1980. She would later run to become Mayor of Long Beach on a campaign that looked to return “Long Beach to its 1950s past, when she was growing up in a comfortable, uncrowded suburban atmosphere.”[19]  Conversely, councilman Wilson saw liquor stores as areas of leisure and respite for many in his community and voiced his opinion as the lone vote against regulating liquor stores: Wilson stated that ”the law would cause the removal of the machines from many stores in his predominantly low-income, central district. He said the machines kept youths entertained and out of trouble.”[20] This statement by Wilson highlights the lack of investment and spatial disparity in available recreational space in his district where sources of entertainment and leisure were fewer than outlying suburbs. Wilson spoke on several other occasions and wanted the council to know that “there’s a difference between an arcade and four or five machines.”[21] For Wilson, the space mattered and the locations of arcades or gamed spaces, whether they sold liquor or not, were important for youth in his community as their access to larger arcade spaces or other leisure spaces were limited by placement and racialized policing.

In line with Wilson’s statements and the lack of available leisure venues, the spatial disparity that existed between the newer, whiter neighborhoods and older ethnically mixed neighborhoods can be demonstrated in the availability of open and investment ready property.  As the city moved to the suburbs so did the recreative institutions including “ballparks, amusement parks, and other cultural institutions.”[22]  The newer and whiter suburbs included new local or regional parks, such as El Dorado Park in East Long Beach -- first imagined in the Master Plan of 1958 and completed in 1968. The nearly 622-acre park created near a new suburban development included vast amounts of open space, tennis courts, a golf course, artificial lakes, and an archery range. Likewise, Recreation Park originally acquired by the city in 1923 served District 3 and 4 with open spaces, a baseball stadium, concert venue, and golf course. Investment into recreative spaces in new or white suburban areas were often at the expense of older and more minoritized neighborhoods and is a form of fiscal discrimination.

Even as investment in leisure and recreation space dominated the Eastside of the city, many in the newly developed suburbs grew concerned over increasing crime in those areas. In 1979, the city council argued over the necessity for park rangers at El Dorado Park to carry guns as incidents had increased from 4 in 1976 to 10 in 1978.[23] Council Member Ed Tuttle stated that “it’s time to get tough with the gangs using the parks for their activities.”[24] The council ultimately voted to arm park rangers on a vote of 6-3, with both James Wilson (district 1) and Ernie Kell (district 5) voting against the measure; yet, Kell’s vote didn’t seem to be so much about his concern of arming park rangers as whether it might have been more beneficial to hire a policeman for security instead.[25]  Mayor Tomas J. Clark concluded by stating that “there are some people at the park I would be hesitant to approach myself, and yet that’s what we’re asking the park rangers to do.” The following year, the council looked to help pay for the increased attendance and requirements for park rangers by suggesting an admission price to the largest portion of the park (422 acres).[26] Councilman James Wilson rebuffed such ideas as creating a “country club” atmosphere and essentially discriminating against those who would need to pay admission and could not necessarily afford to do so. The attempts to arm the rangers and charge admission to the Eastside park demonstrate efforts by those in District 5 and other suburban districts in Long Beach to control and contain their separate and white areas of Long Beach from the ideas and people they escaped by moving to the new suburbs. That general view was voiced by an Eastside resident when they stated “[Our] children don’t go to Eldorado Park at night or on the weekends any longer...There’s too much drinking and dope at the park...The outsiders are causing the trouble.”[27]

Demonstrating the growing fear of minority incursion and access into suburban neighborhoods, there were several efforts to close access points between these communities. In 1980, residents of District 5 fought to close the connective Ring Road / Pioneer Blvd between the nearly all white El Dorado Park Estates community in District 5 and the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Hawaiian Gardens that provided easier access to the 605 freeway and Carson Street amenities, yet it was mostly seen as a conduit for crime and disorder by many in the more well to do and walled in community of El Dorado. As Kell stated during Council discussions in May 1980, closing off the road “would make the neighborhood tranquil,” and would cut down on burglaries. Put more bluntly by community member David Wilson, “come sundown, we get some mighty seedy characters driving around here.”[28] Long Beach wasn’t only concerned about its borders with Hawaiian Gardens, in 1982 the city closed off the western edge of Greenleaf St access between Muriel and Coachella Avenues where Compton met Long Beach over fears of increased gang activity. 

Associated with the concern about criminality were the racial components that aligned with both district complaints and council discussion over what constituted an arcade, the proper venue for arcades, and arcade locations – both within the city and the larger venues like malls that might house them. By early 1982, the city of Long Beach declared that large arcades would only be allowed at shopping malls / tourist sites in four locations: The Queen Mary, Bixby Hills Shopping Center, Los Altos Shopping Center, and the new Downtown Mall. These locations excluded but allowed for the extant arcades in District 4, a short-lived Chuck E. Cheese located in a new strip mall, and District 3, that included the Electronic Pier at the Marina Pacifica Mall. Both mall spaces were in overly white and suburban neighborhoods. And while the City Council pre-emptively approved those four spaces, only the new Downtown Mall that opened in 1982 would house a true arcade (Goldmine). The Bixby Knolls and Los Altos locations would both suffer regulatory defeats, and neither project would be approved; [29] the arcade at the Queen Mary while approved was small having most likely 5-7 machines and served mainly as a supplement for the tourists that visited the ship.[30]  The regulatory failures for most of these spaces demonstrate how the placement of arcades in suburban areas in Long Beach was anathema to most of its white residents and were only tolerated if included in safe and policed venues such as new malls. Resident, Dan Robertson, whose comments reveal underlying racial attitudes, who spoke at a council meeting in January of 1982 stated that “Our objection is that the arcade will attract an undesirable element that will overflow on to the residents and adjoining businesses…There is an arcade in the Marina Pacifica that I’ve seen down there. I’ve been in several times, and it is – I think that is a good location for it. I see no objection to something like that in true shopping centers.” Echoing that line of thought was resident Ray Grabinski who also spoke to the council, “If my boys want to go to an arcade, I can take them to Lakewood,” located in a nearby mall surrounded by a community originally created as “the white spot of Long Beach.”[31] 

The placement of large arcades in suburban malls, whether in Long Beach or Lakewood, allowed community members to feel protected either by the spaces themselves being “policed” or that their distance from minoritized and low-income individuals would incline those that played in them to fit their ideal of safe. When Ray Grabinski talked of his kids going to Lakewood, he not only spoke to carting off any problems that might happen at arcades in Long Beach and therefore became another city’s problems, but he spoke to the desire to relocate arcades to presumed safer, whiter areas for his children to engage in play. The Long Beach model, while developed haphazardly over years, reified the city’s own sense of itself and need to keep undesirables out of view and from influencing white suburban youth into criminal acts. 

[1] Lassiter, The Suburban Crisis, 121. He further notes that, “comprehensive criminalization of teenage subculters and spaces, enforced through discretionary and coercive strategies of surveillance.”, 122. 

[2] Los Angeles Times, Dec 23, 1979 pg SE A1 “Long Beach as Home: Natives, Newcomers Find Niche in City.” 

[3] James Wilson was not the first black person to serve in a high political role in Long Beach. That honor would go to Edwin J. Wilson, a lawyer with an office in Downtown Long Beach, who was appointed in 1965 to serve on the Planning Commission after the death of Aubrey L. Edwards in July, 1965. Press-Telegram (Long Beach, California) · Wed, Jul 21, 1965 · Page 33. James Wilson was seated to the City Council during a special election after the death of Cemmett Sullivan, a white councilmember.

[4] Additionally, Long Beach’s population reached 406,000 by 1987, up 17,900 during the last two years and 45,000 since 1980, the state reported. The 1985-86 spurt alone was greater than the city’s growth in the 20 years before 1980. 95.7% v 96.

[5] Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1980,  pg. SE A1, “6th District Contest: Three Opponents Will Test Wilson’s Strength”

[6] Los Angeles Times, September 8, 1987, “City is no Longer ‘Iowa by the Sea’: Once Moribund Long Beach is Booming.

[7] Long Beach City Council Minutes December 8, 1981, pg 17. Councilman Ernie Kell.

[8] Los Angeles Times, May 7, 1981 pb LB1

[9] Los Angeles Times,  July 12, 1981 pg. A1 ”Marauders From Inner City Prey on L.A.’s Suburbs”

[10] Los Angeles Times, Oct 28, 1978 pg SE A1 ”Long Beach Rolls Code 3 to Historic Police Overhaul”

[11] Los Angeles Times “Chances of Becoming a Crime Victim Increasing in Long Beach” May 3, 1981 pg. LB1.

[12] Los Angeles Times,  May 7, 1981 pg. LB1 ”’Caught Off Base,’ Citizen Says: Crime Rate Triggers Verbal Violence on Council” and according to the LAT Ernie Kell  credited “the citizens Neighborhood Watch program... [cut] crime 11.9% in his 5th District over the past year,”  

Los Angeles Times, Jan 15, 1981, pg. SE2, “L.B. Mayor Reviews City’s Key Problems.” by Gerald Faris. 

[13] Los Angeles Times, 1987.

[14] Ibid

[15] Los Angeles Times,  Dec 6, 1981.

[16] Los Angeles Times,  January 7, 1982. Pg. SE1.

[17] Los Angeles Times. March 23, 1978. Pg. SE A2.

[18] Los Angeles Times, February 22, 1982.

[19] Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1988. Accessed at https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-06-02-hl-5780-story.html

[20] Los Angeles Times,  February 22, 1982.

[21] Long Beach City Council Minutes, December 8, 1981. James Wilson.

[22] Avila, Eric. Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles. UC Press, 2006, 6.

[23] Los Angeles Times,  June 7, 1979, pg. Se 1.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid. & Long Beach City Council Minutes.

[26] Los Angeles Times, Dec 21, 1980 pg. LB1 ”New El Dorado Plans: Long Beach Studies Changes in Park”

[27] Los Angeles Times,  Dec 23, 1979 SE A1 ”Long Beach as Home: Natives, Newcomers Find Niche in City”

[28] Los Angeles Times,  May 11, 1980.

[29] Missing info.

[30] Missing info.

[31] Long Beach City Council Minutes, Jan 12, 1982.