Recreation

With school out for the day, 12-year-old David Coulter was shuffling a deck of cards and ready for action. He sized up a group of kids sitting at a picnic bench and blurted out loudly, "Anyone want to play?" Fortunately for David, there was no shortage of playmates or activities on this sunny Friday afternoon at Pearson Park, where the boy and his three brothers have been coming each day to play soccer, T-ball and other sports.

David Eucevio was soaking wet after an hourlong kayaking workout, and his slender, 11-year-old body was covered in goose pimples brought on by a chilly wind whipping through Newport Bay. Did he want a sweat shirt? "No," he said. Did he want to join his friends rowing back to shore? "No." He shook his head. At the risk of freezing, David wanted to get back in the water and paddle a few extra laps before he had to go home.

In the early morning, the dusty baseball diamond in Boyle Heights' Evergreen Park is carefully marked off with masking tape and transformed into a field for gateball, a traditional Japanese form of croquet. About 15 members of Eastside and downtown gateball clubs gather on the edge of the field watching the play. Traffic rushes by on 4th Street and a group of young boys scramble for a basketball on a nearby court.

You see them on Pacific Coast Highway, on San Vicente, on Zoo Drive, on the Angeles Crest. You see them all over the Southland--usually early in the morning, wherever traffic is light and the scenery pleasant. They're bicyclists riding together--sometimes in a tight pack, sometimes in a long string. Who are these people who have been known to provoke the ire of motorists? Chances are they're members of one of the dozens of bicycle clubs in Southern California.

He knows they're down there, somewhere, vacuuming red worms out of the silt just as they've done for millions of years. He also knows the chances one will pass beneath his 3-foot by 4-foot hole in 138,000 acres of ice are not good. So John Mattes watches closely, one 20-pound trident on his left, another spear with four tines on his right, staring into the rectangle of eerie green light minute after hour after day after year, 30 seasons now.

Studying leisure and recreation is not all fun and games. Consider the varying theories one must weigh when deciding whether an activity can be elevated to play: Is the motivation intrinsic? Is there a suspension of reality? Is there a locus of control? These are just some of the concepts that students grapple with as they pursue their bachelor's and master's degrees from the department of leisure studies and recreation at Cal State Northridge.

Rob Lowe, who stars as Chris "Literally" Traegar on NBC's "Park and Recreation," talks about destiny, the challenges of doing TV comedy and what to expect this season. In your memoir, "Stories I Only Tell My Friends," you take the mind-set that everything happens for a reason. How does "Parks and Recreation" fit that idea? I was just finishing up on "Brothers & Sisters," which had an amazing and successful run. After four years on a show, both in terms of the writing and the acting, everyone has sort of gone through their bag of tricks.

For many children and teen-agers in urban America, especially the 2.5 million youths in Los Angeles County, play has become hard work. Cuts in libraries, recreation centers and after-school programs have limited the options of many youths as they try to occupy themselves in the hours between school and home. Crime, gang activity and traffic congestion have turned such rituals as bike riding in the streets and playing ball in the parks into potentially hazardous activities.