Few aspects of Southern California’s landscape have inspired as much disdain as the mini-mall. Perhaps people think that these roadside shopping centers are ugly, or that their presence has displaced some quaint pedestrian corridor or urban garden that would otherwise exist where the vape shop, the smoothie place, and the foot-massage parlor share one fewer parking spot than everyone needs. If the mini-mall’s worst crime is not being more picturesque while providing the harried Angeleno with a convenient way to get a doughnut before tae kwon do, then consider it guilty.
Had there been no Sherman Oaks Square on Van Nuys Boulevard just north of Ventura, I’d be someone else entirely. Easily reached by bike, it was my go-to hub as a kid for everything I suspected was cool and wanted more of. I saw almost every film released during the 1970s and ’80s, various Star Warses and sundry Indiana Joneses, at the General Cinema. It was the setting for my first date, if you’d call four sixth-grade girls meeting up with three sixth-grade boys to see Kramer vs. Kramer and then immediately scattering when it was over a date. (I’d call it paradise.) I special-ordered all my Roxy Music records from the Music Plus, and the Music + Video next door was where I’d go every Friday afternoon to rent A Clockwork Orange and the Ziggy Stardust concert film that I’d watch, rewatch, and return every Saturday before heading to Solley’s Deli to have an egg cream. When Humphrey Yogart opened, my friends and I abandoned Baskin-Robbins for this new, punny place where we could create endless combinations of things called “blend-ins.” A good mini-mall is both reliable and in flux.
This article appears in Issue 30 of Alta Journal.
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Recently, I returned to Sherman Oaks Square to see what was forming the personalities of today’s Valley Girls, Valley Boys, and Valley Nonbinaries. I barely recognized the place. The General Cinema is a Gelson’s; the Baskin-Robbins is a Starbucks; the Music Plus is an Ulta Beauty; Kramer vs. Kramer is a billion TikTok videos. My phone insisted Humphrey Yogart was still there, but all I saw was a Burger Lounge where it used to be.
But like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark, I was digging in the wrong place! Humphrey Yogart is there, a stand inside Gelson’s. It now has green smoothies blended in among the blend-ins that were once considered exotic too. Humphrey was still looking at me, kid, telling me we’ll always have Sherman Oaks.•
Stacey Grenrock Woods is a regular contributor to Esquire and a former correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She writes and consults on various TV shows, and has a recurring role as Tricia Thoon on Fox’s Arrested Development. Her first book is I, California.
