Laker Girl by Jeanie Buss & Steve Springer

Author:Jeanie Buss & Steve Springer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books LLC
Published: 2013-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

Our realistic goal at the Forum was to be booked 250 nights a year. Basketball and hockey filled 125 to 130 of those evenings. We also had tennis exhibitions, volleyball games, and the Los Angeles Lazers indoor soccer team. In 1993, we added roller hockey. If we had a good year with concerts, we would host 25 to 30. In a bad year, maybe 10. We also always had special family shows like the Ice Capades, Harlem Globetrotters, and Sesame Street.

To fill the remaining gaps, we booked gymnastics, indoor rodeos, and any other attraction that could draw a crowd of at least 10,000.

One sport we had to pass on was arena football because our scoreboard at the Forum was too low to accommodate the arc of the ball on passes and kicks.

My dad, always the innovator, thought we should look beyond our shores for potential events. He looked way beyond, all the way to the Soviet Union.

This was in the mid-1980s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dismantling of the Soviet empire, and the end of the Cold War.

My dad sent me, along with Claire, Linda Rambis, and attorney Jerry Fine to Moscow. The idea was to bring attractions like the Moscow Circus and the Leningrad Ice Ballet to Inglewood. The first step was to open up the lines of communication with the Soviet cultural ministry.

I went there filled with optimism, too young and inexperienced to understand how difficult a task this was going to be. It wasn’t, I would soon learn, like dealing with Rod Stewart.

For our first meeting, we were ushered into a conference room along with our translator.

In most of the meetings I attend, everybody just takes a seat wherever he or she feels comfortable. That’s what we did, spreading out around the table.

When the Russians walked in, we were told, “No, no, no. You can’t sit like that.” They made us move so that we were on one side with their contingent directly across from us. Since we had five people, they made sure they had five people.

They served us Pepsi, very proud of the fact that they had an American drink.

The Russians directed most of their conversation to our lawyer because he was a man. We had previously exchanged letters, so we came prepared with questions about the production and operation of the shows and the costs they had presented us in their proposal.

After they answered our questions, we asked if we could have 15 minutes alone in the room to talk among ourselves.

When the Russians left, we started going over the details of what we had heard. For example, we were told they would supply the bears for the circus. One of us mentioned we would need appropriate cages for the animals.

When we invited them back into the room, the first subject the Russians addressed was cages for the bears.

How did they know we were concerned about that?

Hmm. Could the room have been bugged? Had they listened to everything we said?

Yes, I was very young and naïve.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.