L.A. Stamps July 4th With Own Independent Spirit : Holiday: Residents mark the day by running in a 10-K, feeding the homeless, taking in a car show--even traditional cookouts in parks.

The spirit of 1776 was abroad in Southern California on Sunday’s Fourth of July holiday.

It lay under a red, white and blue beach umbrella, watching the Americanism parade go by in Pacific Palisades.

It stuffed its face with Korean barbecue, hamburgers and carne asada in a dozen parks across Los Angeles.

It danced and leaped through a Pasadena park, waving an American flag in spite of a broken wrist.

It ran a 5-kilometer race dressed as a pint of cookie dough ice cream.

It did the Twist in a wheelchair at a street carnival in Long Beach.

It wore his-and-her flag shirts at a Pomona car show to honor two sons who had served in Operation Desert Storm.

It even loosened one British upper lip sufficiently for a toast to the old Colonies in a mug of English ale.

From people who were just relieved to get a holiday and didn’t care whether it was the third or the fifth, to people who got misty-eyed at the memories of the day, Angelenos turned out under clouds that broke into thin sun to disport themselves, eating, listening to music, watching horse shows and car shows, playing softball and Mexican bingo, and finally settling down for fireworks.

To 8-year-old Joshua Uko of Carson, playing games with his family in Pasadena’s Brookside Park, this is the day “when the presidents graduate.”

The meaning may elude some, but the pleasure of the day was unfading.

At Pacific Palisades’ annual parade, where the parking lots didn’t seem as full as usual to one vendor, Eric and Jennifer Seysarth said they drove over from Eagle Rock because they like the Midwest feel of it.

“You can put things behind you for a day. You can be unabashedly American and not worry about it,” Eric Seysarth said. “This is a day to wave the flag and not feel like an idiot,” a kind of pleasant escapism from the nation’s problems.

Out in Griffith Park, where the barbecue smoke seemed almost as heavy as the morning cloud cover, Walter Benoni, an Alabamian, was picnicking with the Los Angeles family he married into. Independence Day “freed this country,” he said. “But I heard Janis Joplin say, ‘As soon as we find someone to take the taxes off us, then we’ll really be free.’ ”

Up in a Newhall park, Brad Accosta, 69, liked the Cajun music they were playing well enough. But it’s just not the same, he said as he listened from a lawn chair, an American flag poked into his golf cap. “You don’t hear patriotic music anymore. . . . You’re politically incorrect to show your patriotism, and I think that’s bad because other groups can show theirs.”

Although auto mechanic Richard Horner, cooking hot links and chicken at Griffith Park, said he never thought of the Fourth as much more than a day off for barbecuing, Patricia Kennedy of Pasadena, out with her husband and business partners in the park, said she is disappointed when people “seem to view it as just a day off.” Just that morning she had been listening to a John Wayne recording of what America meant to him, and “it kind of gives you goose bumps . . . to know we still have our freedom.”

Palos Verdes had no such qualms: It calls its event the Old Fashioned 4th of July Celebration, and Sunday’s was the 33rd.

The smell of cinnamon wafted up from 10 apple pies waiting to be judged. Bryan Hardwick took a thoughtful bite and jotted something on a clipboard. His white hair and navy blazer cut a striking figure, as they should: He founded the event, “because patriotism was getting to be kind of a bad word. I thought this is the one time of the year when we ought to take advantage of it.”

“Where else in the L.A. area do you see people making a big deal about baking apple pies? This whole thing is like something out of a Norman Rockwell picture,” marveled Gene Schugart, a former Palos Verdes resident. “We moved to Pasadena three years ago but we still come back for this.”

The celebration also honors the winner of the Kenneth Norris Heritage of Freedom Award; this year it was comedian Red Skelton--”the Jay Leno of 50 years ago,” Brooke Case, 16, explained to her fellow students as they lounged on the grass.

“I remember when I was a boy, 5 years old, I could recite the Gettysburg Address by heart,” said Skelton, 79. On Sunday, he pulled out a Fourth of July poem he wrote for his wife: “We are a rainbow of colors. . . . We are beautiful, not a glob. . . .”

Then, he grabbed a video camera. His wife was judging the apple pies. “I’ve gotta get a picture of Mrs. Skelton eating a pie.”

Far from the peninsula and the scent of ocean, in the heat of Skid Row, celebrities brought old clothes and more to the Fred Jordan Mission. Zsa Zsa Gabor, who worked among the homeless as part of her sentence for slapping a cop, brought homemade Hungarian goulash to feed 100, but thousands showed up.

Mike Armstrong, a homeless man who got some of the goulash, pitched some woo to the much-married Gabor through a reporter: “If she isn’t married, I’m available. She makes the best goulash I’ve ever had.”

The Skid Row homeless had to wait in long lines for hot dogs, watermelon, sparkling water and T-shirts from a tanning oil company, but few seemed to mind. The celebrities “are so nice,” said Essie Henry. “If it wasn’t for them, I couldn’t get a nice meal. I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t be happening.”

Up in Griffith Park’s equestrian center, where a barbershop quartet eyeballed the gray sky and sang hopefully, “Wait ‘Til the Sun Shines, Nellie,” four friends, three from Illinois, who always get together on the Fourth danced the two-step in the parking lot.

“We see each other every (Fourth of July) holiday. We will live, die, do everything for each other,” said Mary Merrill, 27.

At Brookside Park, Eddie Pacheco, 29, said he would take the Fourth of July over Cinco de Mayo any day. “We’re more or less American-Mexican,” he said.

Independence Day was a much more solemn event in his native Nigeria, said Ekong Uko, 35, joining his family in Brookside Park.

In Nigeria, which won its independence from Britain in 1960, there are fireworks and picnics, but “political things are brought up and discussed, (particularly) how Western civilization influences our political culture,” Uko said.

For him, the Fourth of July is “for the family to get together and barbecue, and that’s about it.”

Crowds were equally unenthusiastic about the Santa Monica beach, in part because of cool weather and in part, speculated 22-year veteran lifeguard Gabriel Campos, “because they no longer shoot fireworks from the pier.” In years past, the fireworks drew “bad elements,” and there were problems with violence, he explained. A year ago, officials tried dawn fireworks, but this year they simply scratched them.

For whatever combination of reasons, barely a quarter-million people made the beach scene in Los Angeles County, about half the usual holiday crowd, said county lifeguard Lt. Robert Schroeder.

In Santa Monica, at the King’s Head pub, which is decked out with the trappings of Britain’s Imperial glory days, Briton Phil Pomfret toasted the day with Bass ale and American friends.

“Today’s the day that we gave the country back to you Americans,” he said. “I’ll have a drink to that.”

Freedom’s celebration for 43-year-old Johnny Griffin meant the obstacle-free street carnival in Long Beach, where he could go anywhere in his wheelchair--or just stay put and dance to the bands. “Being in a wheelchair you sometimes feel shut in. When they have street carnivals, there’s no barriers for my wheelchair.”

At Long Beach’s “Rock Around the Block” celebration, Al Nichols came for the ‘50s and ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll bands. “I can’t really celebrate Independence Day until all men have independence. We’re enjoying the festivities, but the Fourth of July is just a date.”

But his son, Isamu, 14, couldn’t even enjoy the music much: “I’m not old enough for this music. But being with my dad is great.”

The spoilsports of the day: those who would rather run than eat--the competitors in the Pacific Palisades’ 5- and 10-K runs. “This is healthy and fun and better than eating fatty chocolates and barbecued meats,” said Darren Statt, from Scotland.

And in Monterey Park, 23-year-old Matthew Tran, who came here from Vietnam nine years ago and just graduated from Cal Poly Pomona, was leading a group of children in their weekly Buddhist training classes.

“The only reason I am here,” he said, “is because of freedom. . . . It’s a very important day to me.”

Contributing to this story were Kenneth Reich, Aileen Cho, Jeanette Regalado, Theresa Willis, Miguel Bustillo, Christina Lima, Chau Lam, Brian Ballou, Elaine Tassy, E. J. Gong Jr. and Chip Johnson.