OMG, She Died
A moment of silence for the mall
“The colorful walls that once welcomed guests to John’s Incredible Pizza are filled with graffiti. The glass of an abandoned arcade game has been broken and a coin-operated kiddie ride offers a glimpse into the space’s past life.”
-Los Angeles Times, “California’s dead malls hit by blight, vandalism, crime. They deserve more respect, fans say,” January 16th, 20261.
The mall has been on her way out for sometime now. Between COVID, a bust economy, buying literally everything online, and the changing habits and predilections of younger people, we can’t say we didn’t see it coming. But, as a valley girl2 myself, I think it’s the recent images published by the Los Angeles Times that make her death official: a series of eerie photographs of well-known malls in Southern California that are now abandoned, vandalized, and graffitied3. The images solidify that the mall is literally a symbol of a bygone era; she has no present functionality within commerce. In 2026, many previously popular shopping malls are a relic actively being used for something else: social media clout.
The nostalgia exposes how integral the constant hum of shopping and consuming is to the feeling of social connectedness
Along with the “post-apocalyptic” photos, the Los Angeles Times reports that the vacant malls have proved to be “a large canvas for content.” Many are seeing the malls being defaced in “[v]ideos on social media and YouTube show[ing] people tagging empty storefronts, skateboarding or riding bicycles indoors.”4
It’s telling that in 2026, the mall is perceived, experienced, and reduced to social media fodder. The mall is no longer a place suburban, middle-class-ish people physically go, but rather another removed, online voyeurism to be consumed anywhere with a wifi connection.
Still, the sentimentality of the local communities around these abandoned malls (“There’s still a legacy and respect that these spaces deserve,” one woman in Huntington Beach argues), suggests a kind of class nostalgia that only a resident of Orange County could muster. The saccharine tonality suggests something more unique or indie than, say, a chain Foot Locker and JCPenney:
For generations, the Westminster Mall operated akin to a town square for central Orange County — a place to socialize and be seen.
It’s where teenagers strolled hand in hand on first dates, where parents took their kids to catch the latest box office hit and even the most frustrating day of shopping could be improved with a giant pretzel or cinnamon roll from the food court.
When it closed last year, there were tears and even a funeral for the Orange County relic. But that was just the beginning of the indignity for the beloved mall.5
The evoking of nuclear families—“teenagers,” “parents,” and “kids,”—is significant. This is where the Valley Girl6 and the original, economically-robust 1980s shopping mall first captured popular American culture. It was the adorably middle-class, white Valley Girl that first sold Americans on the wholesomeness of a mall outing. In a time when “greed is good,” recreationally spending money to support a booming economy in a “safe,” commercial space was coded as family forward. These elements conflated to offer a kind of Norman Rockwell hue to otherwise corporate, sanitized, and serialized spaces for very specific Californians.
The language of “town square,” is also revealing; a kind of soppy romanticism for a solidly profit-driven real estate development that summoned $45 million dollars in renovations in 1987. To contrast, a town square is public, free, and open to all. The dynamics that distinguish these two spaces could not be more pronounced. But in the memories of Californians who spent formative years in malls, they are remembered and felt as one space.
It was the adorably middle-class, white Valley Girl that first sold Americans on the wholesomeness of a mall outing.
The nostalgia exposes how integral the constant hum of shopping and consuming is to the feeling of social connectedness in Southern California. To purchase, particularly from a national brand that sells the same products everywhere, is to, oddly, feel in community. Again, it’s not exactly a local farmer’s market, but if you squint over the language, the narrative could very well be the same.
This wistfulness also obscures the dark American history of malls gentrifying neighborhoods, particularly in California7, by prompting unaffordable housing and higher-priced businesses that erase local, community-oriented businesses. For every deceased mall that is remembered fondly, many beloved homes and small businesses died first. These dynamics, of what malls ultimately do to legacy communities across housing, space, and cost of living are deftly explored in the 2024 documentary Secret Mall Apartment. (It’s currently on Netflix. You should watch it.) The objective by local artists to make an apartment within the underutilized space of the mall is a deeply political commentary that, although set in Rhode Island, could apply to many places in the United States.
It’s within this context that the vilification of said “vandals”—the people graffitiing and making social media videos—has more texture. As malls have died, public parks in Los Angeles have also declined. Actual public space (much closer to the “town square” analogy) has declined in quality, accessibility, even national ranking8. There are simply fewer places to go in Los Angeles without spending money and in a time when cost of living continues to climb9.
The lingering mall corpses are offensive in their gluttony of so much privately-owned, nonfunctional space when usable public space is so sorely needed. To “respect” them, as the Huntington Beach resident advocates, lacks a class consciousness for how these developments have holistically impacted all Southern Californians—not just the valley girl set.
But the overall decline of the mall as a commercially viable space for shopping raises another question: if the mall has died, then where did the Valley Girl go?🌴
Next week: the Valley Girl has left the building.
As I wrote earlier this week, I’m giving a free and virtual talk tomorrow (2/6) in partnership with Girls Write Now about how I write this newsletter. While this Friday Night Salon is designed for developing writers, the event is open to all. If you regularly read Valley Girl, you’ll get special insight into how I approach this topic. Register here.
Fry, Hannah. “California’s Dead Malls Hit by Blight, Vandalism, Crime. They Deserve More Respect, Fans Say.” Los Angeles Times, 16 Jan. 2026, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-01-16/californias-dead-malls-have-become-magnets-for-blight-vandalism. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
Lowercase “valley girl” to indicate a female-identified or pangender individual who happens to be from or inhabits the San Fernando Valley.
Fry, Hannah. “California’s Dead Malls Hit by Blight, Vandalism, Crime. They Deserve More Respect, Fans Say.” Los Angeles Times, 16 Jan. 2026, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-01-16/californias-dead-malls-have-become-magnets-for-blight-vandalism. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Uppercase “Valley Girl” to indicate the manufactured caricature.
Miller, Leila. “This L.A. Mall Is Famous for Its African American Santa Claus. Can It Survive Gentrification?” Los Angeles Times, 17 Sept. 2017, https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-crenshaw-development-20170915-story.html. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
Lopez, Steve. “L.A. Parks Get Low Marks, but Opening Schoolyards Could Improve Grades.” Los Angeles Times, 29 Aug. 2025, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-08-29/l-a-s-parks-get-low-marks-in-national-ranking-but-schoolyards-could-boost-report-card. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
High Cost of Living a Growing Concern for L.A. County Residents in Year 10 of UCLA Survey, 16 Apr. 2025, https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/cost-of-living-survey-2024-luskin-ucla. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.