ONE NIGHT DURING the first month of the pandemic — with nowhere to go, no one to see, everything locked down — I found myself in the office of my condo watching YouTube. I took in the news of the day, weighing my odds against the virus, and watched various movie clips and long-forgotten ’80s videos. After another glass of wine (the bottles were getting opened earlier in the day during the pandemic) and stirred by the music of my adolescence, I found myself looking for a high school classmate I had a crush on and whom I hadn’t seen since we graduated in 1982. I quickly realized he had no social media presence — no Facebook, no Instagram, no trace of him online. Feeling both saddened and haunted by this fact, I started searching for the places my friends and I hung out in Los Angeles as high school seniors. Unfortunately, many of those places were just as invisible as that boy I hadn’t seen in almost 40 years.

As I stared into my computer, clicking from link to link to link, I realized that so many locations we inhabited weekly — if not daily, in a few cases — were now gone, erased. They simply hadn’t been recorded the way things are today because no one had their own cameras in 1981. Plus, the idea of photographing your sandwich at a restaurant, your friends dancing in a club, the mall during an afternoon spent, or the movie marquee in Westwood while standing in front of it was so far beyond our notion of teen life. It wasn’t until that night in April 2020 when this struck with an aching force — the LA world we lived in and the various spaces we went when we were young had disappeared, and there seemed to be very little or no visual proof that they’d existed.

Sherman Oaks Galleria

The Sherman Oaks Galleria opened the day before Halloween in 1980 and quickly became the epicenter for SoCal high school kids. It was the dawn of the Reagan era, and this place foreshadowed the heedless materialism of the upcoming decade, when teenagers began to rule mall culture, the airwaves, and the multiplexes. The Galleria was considered slightly tacky, but we didn’t care: An atrium gave the impression that it was a three-story open-air shopping mall, lined with mauve carpeting, white-chrome railings, and glass-walled elevators. In 1981, Los Angeles was the focal point worldwide for youth and lifestyle trends due to its proximity to Hollywood. The Galleria became even more popular in 1982 when it was immortalized in the novelty hit “Valley Girl” and the teen-exploitation comedy “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” It became the central teen hangout not only for the San Fernando Valley, but for all of LA. This was due in part to its vast food court, which catered to teenage dietary tastes (Hot Dog on a Stick, Chipyard Cookies, Kaboby), the adjacent state-of-the-art arcade, and the fourplex where Mark Ratner (Brian Backer) worked as an usher in “Fast Times,” pining away for Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who waitressed at Perry’s Pizza across the concourse. Our interest in the Galleria waned when the Beverly Center opened in March 1982; it seemed the more sophisticated alternative, especially with the super-trendy Hard Rock Cafe as its anchor on the corner of San Vicente Boulevard.

Ships

A retro coffee shop on the corner of Wilshire and Glendon was a main late-night hangout, even though it opened in 1958. Ships was a prime example of midcentury Googie architecture — futuristic and space-age, its boomerang-shaped roof and atomic neon sign calling to us like a beacon. Atomic Age culture had made a comeback in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and this throwback style was evident among new wave bands (the B-52s, Devo) and in fashion (skinny ties, taffeta skirts, capri pants). Another lure: Ships was open 24 hours, so it would be the last stop on a Saturday in Westwood. In fact, it was the only place to hang out after we saw a midnight movie at any of the dozen first-run theaters that dotted the streets of UCLA’s Westwood Village. We’d order Cokes and vanilla milkshakes and smoke clove cigarettes. There was an ashtray — and a separate toaster — on each table. The food was never the point at Ships — it was the retro-cool style we seemed to sync with. It symbolized the “Back to the Future” ethos that defined the decade’s first half, just as the Galleria defined the burgeoning yuppie culture that would warp its second half.

The National Theatre

The National Theatre was the grandest movie palace in Westwood (its closest competition was the Fox Village Theatre, which is still standing under a different name, having merited historic status). It was also the newest, having opened in 1970. There we saw everything in that movie-mad decade, from “Electra Glide in Blue” to “The Last of Sheila,” “The Deer Hunter” to “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Reds” to “American Gigolo.” The theater itself was so glamorous it made seeing any movie there an occasion — the building was all softly rounded curves. Beyond the ticket booth was a marble-floor foyer that led to a grand staircase with a sparkling crystal chandelier. Upstairs was a lobby with a massive bronze mirror, 26 feet wide, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the adjacent Lindbrook Drive. The walls were gold, red, and orange, and past the concession stand, oak doors led into the largest auditorium in Westwood. It seemed so vast as to be its own world. The 1,100 seats and the carpeting that lined the theater were the same burnt-orange color, and the huge screen was hidden during intermissions by persimmon-colored drapes. The decor was late-’60s modern, but by 1981 it was gorgeously retro. It’s hard to believe, but this was the last single-screen movie theater built in the U.S. — only multiplexes were constructed afterward. In a time when movies mattered in ways they simply don’t now, the National Theatre was a monument to film-going and the theatrical experience. It closed in 2007.