Call of the Mall : Like, Hanging Out Just Isn’t What It Used to Be

What Anna Sobonja and Kendra Kriegisch did for their summer vacation was, as Anna put it, “awesome.”

Like Valley Girls of yore, these two specimens of the post-Valley Girl era hung out at the mall, of course--trying to impress post-Valley Dudes with their 15-year-old wiles.

“We’ll, like, trip or something,” Anna said.

“Something stupid to make them look at us,” Kendra finished.

Sometimes the two girls attracted the attention of older men in uniform. On about 20 occasions this summer, they say, Northridge Fashion Center security guards escorted them out the doors for such offenses as sliding down escalator frames, “running up and down the mall screaming” and “throwing things off the balconies.”

Like, what sort of things?

“Oh, like gum.”

“And french fries.”

“And slurpees.”

With another summer slouching to an end--classes resume today in the Los Angeles Unified School District--Anna and Kendra decided Sunday to do something different. They didn’t go to the Northridge mall. Instead, they made a pilgrimage to the Sherman Oaks Galleria.

The Galleria --back in the early to mid-1980s, when the Valley Girl was in her glory, it was an icon, the mall of malls for teen-agers.

Celebrated in Moon Unit Zappa’s 1982 satirical single “Valley Girl,” the Galleria raged with the hormones of teen-agers drawn in from all over the San Fernando Valley and beyond. They cruised the shops, hung out near the video arcade and partied in the food court.

The Galleria-- the word itself, pronounced with a bubblegummy musical lilt, was part of Valleyspeak, like ohmygawd! (oh, my God!) and fershur (for sure). High school cognoscenti knew that “the Galleria” meant the Sherman Oaks mall; a reference to the Glendale Galleria required the full name.

Only 18 months old when “Valley Girl” hit the airwaves, the Galleria at first reveled in its celebrity. “Valley Girl,” the film, was shot there, as were “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and several others. A Madonna look-alike contest was held there.

But the Galleria that Anna and Kendra found was not the Galleria of legend. Valley Girls aren’t what they used to be and neither is the Galleria. It seemed like, they said, just another mall.

Galleria management couldn’t be happier. It has taken a long, hard effort, they say, to live down its reputation as the capital of Vals--an image that was thought to be scaring away serious shoppers.

It’s not that the Galleria is now anti-teen-ager. At first, the Galleria’s teen-scene reputation was “very positive,” said Jonathon Alpert, general manager of the huge facility. Then it became a liability.

“What we have found, once you start creating a hangout for kids, the bad element comes in. Ninety percent of the kids are tremendous,” Alpert said. “When we had this image as a hangout, we found it was necessary to take some action.”

There are ways of weeding out undesirable teen-agers, but Alpert would rather not say what they are. “We use an approach that works,” he said.

“We want those kids to come here and enjoy the center and shop. But we do not want them to come out here and loiter and hang out. . . . Our customers are 34-year-olds who make $50,000 a year. That’s the client that we want.”

Anna and Kendra behaved themselves Sunday. (“They have security everywhere,” Anna noted.) After 4 1/2 hours, the highlight had been handling the snakes at the pet store, they said. But then they noticed “two really cute guys” heading into the Time Out video arcade.

They followed them in.

“What could be more better than looking for guys?” Kendra explained.

Once inside the arcade, their pursuit was detoured. But Christian Beck, a cashier at the Galleria’s Pacific Theater, noticed Anna and Kendra, and they noticed him noticing them. Thus began a brief, awkward dance that went nowhere.

A veteran of the Galleria, Beck longs for the past.

“There used to be millions of girls,” he said. “Lots of good-looking girls like that hanging around.”

Still, for many, the Galleria is just fine.

Sixteen-year-old Justin Sarver, unfamiliar with the Galleria of yesterday, offers no complaints.

“I live here,” Justin says with a certain pride.

In his black leather jacket adorned with chains and new black boots, Justin cuts the swaggering image of the young man about the mall.

The boots were a gift from his mother. “My mom paid $90 for them,” Justin said. “She’s a rad mom.”

Then, across the Galleria, something stopped the post-Valley Dude in his tracks.

“I’ve got to meet her,” Justin said. “I’ve got to.”