Volleyball Tournament Up in the Air

It’s been dubbed the Wimbledon of the sand.

It is widely credited with transforming beach volleyball, once a refuge of gangly beach dudes, into an Olympic sport and a made-for-TV event replete with bronzed and buffed hard bodies.

But now the success of the Manhattan Beach Open, by the pier in a town where the sport has deep roots, may be the very thing that could kill it.

The state Coastal Commission, meeting last week, voted to nix paid seating at the tournament, which is scheduled for mid-June. In turn, leaders of the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals, who in recent years had begun charging for a limited number of seats, say they may pull up their nets and leave local beaches if they cannot charge for all seats at their tournaments.

The commission vote casts a spotlight on varying viewpoints about the proper use of public beaches, which in this case has prompted everything from a lawsuit to volleyball-related graffiti along the strand winding through the South Bay. Some say the beach should be open to business. Otherscontend that access to the sand must remain free.

The commission action drew a line in the sand: no charge for an event held on a public beach between Memorial Day and Labor Day, when demand is at its peak. The only exception, said executive director Peter Douglas, might be a charity event.

The rule, he added, applies throughout California.

The considerable irony, of course, is that pro beach volleyball began in Southern California--in particular in Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach immediately to the south--and the tournaments in both towns were prestigious in beach and volleyball circles long before beach volleyball became cool around the nation.

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Some stars on the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals tour grew up in Manhattan Beach, among them Mike Dodd, the 1996 Olympic silver medalist. A five-time winner of the Manhattan Beach Open, he says in a press kit that his most “memorable experience” on the tour was winning it for the first time.

In the wake of the Olympics, seeking to capitalize on the booming popularity of beach volleyball, the association had intended this year--for the first time at the Manhattan Beach Open--to charge all adults admission for weekend seats.

Association officials say they need to sell seats because they have tapped sponsors--primarily Miller Lite beer--for about all they can get.

The tour has expanded to seven months, 24 cities, 15 states--and $4 million in prize money. The association also has TV contracts with NBC and FOX to televise live most of its tournament finals.

Besides Dodd, those scheduled to compete in Manhattan Beach include his partner Mike Whitmarsh and Olympic gold medalists Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes. Tickets, ranging from $10 to $60, went on sale a few weeks ago.

From its inception in 1960, the Manhattan Beach tournament, as well as others along the beaches of Southern California, had a tradition of totally free admission. Beginning in 1993, however, with Coastal Commission approval, 25% of the roughly 5,000 seats at Manhattan Beach went up for sale, according to Jim Wolfe, the city’s director of parks and recreation.

The break with tradition became even more pronounced last summer. At the Hermosa Beach Open, 100% of the seats were sold--the first Los Angeles-area beach volleyball tournament to charge general admission.

A tarped fence went up around the courts--which critics promptly dubbed the “Green Berlin Wall.” Opponents, including some players, complained that the fence separated the beach from the volleyball. “We’re not on a beach anymore,” one tour veteran said. “We’re in Iraq.”

The move to paid admissions drew intense ire in the beach cities. It prompted graffiti--”Stop the AVP!”--that appeared in black paint on the strand. And it energized local activists.

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“We knew we had to put an end to this, and it looks like we have,” Donley Falkenstien, a 37-year-old technical writer, said after the Coastal Commission vote. He had filed a lawsuit--which is pending--seeking to block ticket sales to the Manhattan Beach tournament.

Douglas called last summer’s Hermosa Beach Open an experiment that didn’t work.

The Coastal Commission made clear that this year’s Manhattan Beach Open--and the Hermosa Beach Open, which follows in July--can take place. It simply disallowed admission fees. On a 10-1 vote, it rejected an amendment to a Manhattan Beach land use policy, the “local coastal program,” that would have authorized such fees.

Douglas, the commission’s executive director, said that the vote was neither anti-volleyball nor anti-fun in the sun.

He said it followed extensive commission study, including an agency staff report produced in December, that described “a growing concern” over access to beach and parking areas “frequently being usurped” in recent years by a welter of events--volleyball tournaments, water skiing and surfing contests, music festivals and more.

Over the “last five or so years,” Douglas said after the vote, “this has become more and more of an issue,” as an increasing population crowds the state’s beaches and as authorities wrestle with such issues as traffic, parking, noise, garbage and pollution.

“The commission really had to wrestle with this,” he said. “Looking down the road to the future--or down the beach, you might say--it was very concerned about establishing a precedent that would allow the charging of fees for people coming to see an event on a public beach.

“We don’t have a problem with the event,” he said. “We just don’t believe people ought to be charged to use a public beach to observe an event.”

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The volleyball association and some South Bay officials question whether the commission’s new rule is arbitrary.

They ask why the rule for the beach should be different in the summer months than at other times.

Consider, they say, the Santa Barbara International Jazz Festival.

In its ninth year in 1997, the three-day event is scheduled for late September on Leadbetter Beach in Santa Barbara. A one-day pass costs $10, and last year’s festival drew 25,000 people, director Jack Butefish said.

Commission critics also question why the rule for the beach is different than the rule for the parking lot next to the beach.

For the past several weeks, the way-out circus troupe Cirque du Soleil has been playing--at $49 for many seats--in the parking lot by the Santa Monica Pier.

“It is different [on] a parking lot,” Douglas said. In addition, the troupe’s stay by the pier ends today--before Memorial Day.

Critics also ask why the rule for the beach simply focuses on free access--even if an admission fee might limit crowd size.

They cite the X Games, a televised showcase of street luge, barefoot water-skiing, in-line skating and other so-called “extreme” events, that rolls into San Diego’s Mission Bay next month. No problem, the commission ruled last week--there’s no admission fee.

Now that the commission has ruled out an admission fee for the Manhattan Beach Open, association officials are considering their options.

Among them: holding the event on the beach with free seating; moving it off the beach and trucking in sand as on some inland tour stops; or canceling the event and offering refunds.

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Jerry Solomon, the associations’ chief executive, said promoters want “to explore every possibility” but also made it plain: “We need paid seating.

“The Manhattan Beach tournament is in its 38th year. We are not going to allow that tradition to end--though that does not necessarily mean it’s going to take place on the beaches in Manhattan Beach,” he said.

City officials rejected any notion that they would fully underwrite the 1997 tournament. But with the possibility of profit and the prestige of nationwide TV exposure on the line, they remain hopeful that the event will not be spiked--and, at the same time, bitter at the commission action.

“I know I’m ranting,” Mayor Joan Jones said during an interview, “but I’m angry.

“What’s astonishing is if they’re protecting the beach for the use of the people of California,” Jones said, referring to the Coastal Commission, “and the people of California for some 30-some years have decided they like beach volleyball and they’re now willing to pay for it, who are they to decide that that is an inappropriate use of the beach?”