Newport Beach family goes extra yard for Marines, vets with Super Bowl spectacle
- Share via
Sports fans who paid thousands of dollars for nosebleed seats in New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome for Super Bowl LIX would be kicking themselves if they knew about the party going down in Newport Beach on Sunday.
That’s where, at the American Legion Newport Harbor Post 291, hundreds of U.S. Marines on break from Camp Pendleton will join with a contingent of veterans from World War II on up in a celebration for the ages.
Hosted by local residents Gary and Julie Crisp, owners of Costa Mesa-based Crisp Imaging, the invitation-only watch party has become a beloved tradition and a bit of a spectacle since the couple first invited about 80 servicemen and women into the backyard of their former home in Coto de Caza 14 years ago.
“We moved to Corona del Mar about 10 years ago, and the lots are a bit smaller, so we went to the American Legion and sort of sold them on the idea,” Gary Crisp recalled in an interview Friday. “At first they looked at us crooked, now everybody absolutely loves the event.”
Like most good things, the Crisp Family Super Bowl Party became larger and more spectacular as years went by and more friends, sponsors and celebrity musicians and athletes began to get in on the planning.
This year, the festivities will run from about 10:30 a.m. — when convoys of service people will step off of six charter buses to a cheering crowd backed by “The Marines Hymn,” USC cheerleaders and members of the USC Trojans Marching Band — until at least 8 or 9 p.m., when a group of Polynesian fire dancers will close the festivities.
Throughout the day, attendees can enjoy free massages and haircuts, a cigar lounge and poker tables with Vegas showgirls. In addition to free boat tours of Newport Bay and limo rides to the iconic Wedge, organizers are offering live bands, meals, raffle drawings with cash prizes and an exhibition from WWE Wrestling’s Lucha Libre.
During the main event, spectators can watch the Eagles play the Chiefs on a megascreen or one of seven big-screen televisions set up in different areas.
“We have a whole ring, there’s a lot of wrestling going on. But we put it in a tent — we don’t want to scare Newport Beach,” Crisp quipped.
For Crisp, whose father earned a Purple Heart fighting in the Army’s 17th Airborne Division in World War II and whose brothers also served in the Army, including one who served in Vietnam, the annual extravaganza comes from a sincere and humble place.
“This isn’t the Gary and Julie show,” he said Friday. “It’s really about the young men and women who will sacrifice their lives for us and the veterans who already have. It’s a humbling day of gratitude.”
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.
