God. World peace. How to plow a wheat field.
This was just a small selection of the topics discussed by a group of tobacco-chewing old-timers in Long Beach, California, who met on the veranda of the Long Beach Hotel in the 1880s. A woman remarked that, "All they do is spit and argue," and the informal group gained a formal designation. The hotel burned in 1888, but the group simply moved their discussions to the streets. However, local merchants weren't too keen on the boisterous discussions, and they convinced the club to relocate to the Pine Street Pier. |
The event continued after World War II, but the rise of communism and the Red Scare led to less cordial arguments. As noted in a 2010 historical article on the club in the Los Angeles Times,
A 1949 petition signed by 299 people demanded that the Long Beach City Council shut down Spit 'n' Argue because they said it was an anti-American organization whose rhetoric was inflamed "by four psychopaths, two religious fanatics and a crackpot." The council refused.
But the golden days of the Spit and Argue Club were long gone. Television and radio became preferred mediums of entertainment, and the number of Spit and Argue Club participants and spectators declined. Older members passed away. The club was forced from the piers onto a designated area on the beach, but later development made the site all but impossible to access. By 1970 the club was all but gone. In an article in the Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram, Selah Brickman lamented,
So many things are gone. So many of our old members. The people walking around the pier. The breakers, the sound of them. In 1902, a teacher, I came from Live in the Russian Ukraine to get away from the Czar, to find freedom and free speech. Here, yes, they are here! “But our members are old now. When the wind blows, they get cold. They stay home. No, no one chews tobacco any more. No one spits, here at our club. On sunny days, we still talk of everything. A few of us. But the old times have gone.
"Before They Could Spout Off on the Airwaves, Folks Debated (and Spit) in the Open Air," Los Angeles Times, February 7, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/07/local/la-me-then7-2010feb07.
Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram, June 7, 1970, http://kenjonesfishing.com/2017/11/the-spit-%E2%80%98n%E2%80%99-argue-club-at-the-pier-%E2%80%94/.