Quote:
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Originally Posted by Martin Pal
In a return to Pershing Square's history as "a forum for public speakers".
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It appears Long Beach had it's own version.
ebay
"Spit & Argue Club", Long Beach
"The story goes that in the 1880s, a woman spotted some tobacco-chewing debaters on the veranda of the Long Beach Hotel and complained to a friend:
"All they do is spit and argue."
And so the Spit 'n' Argue Club became the name of the informal group of mostly retired characters who met daily in Long Beach to chew and whittle while
tackling such issues as God, world peace and the proper methods of plowing a wheat field.
The colorful conclave eventually became a tourist attraction, drawing upward of 1,500 spectators a day and surviving more than three-quarters of a century.
It outlived the hotel (which burned to the ground in 1888) and three piers (Rainbow pier, plus two earlier piers), where the group later gathered."
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb...hen7-2010feb07
This same article says.....
"In downtown Los Angeles, meanwhile, a second outdoor debating society sprouted in a well-known park. Locals called it the
'Pershing Square Country Club'. It was less structured than the Long Beach version and had no designated speaking area. Two dozen face-to-face rhetorical clashes might be raging at any one time in Pershing Square.
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