When Cher Horowitz felt impotent and out of control in Clueless, she found sanctuary in a place where she could gather her thoughts and regain her strength: the now-shuttered Westside Pavilion. When Jackie Brown pulled off a sting, conning both the feds and her gun-dealing accomplice, she chose the Del Amo Fashion Center. When they weren’t stuck in school (or disrobing by the pool), the teens in Fast Times at Ridgemont High spent most of their time at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. Hollywood didn’t create the mall, but it does reiterate what Angelenos know to be true: These centers of commerce are vital to the city’s culture.
There’s no better digital representation of this than the parody Twitter account devoted to The Americana at Brand, a giant shopping, entertainment, and residential complex in Glendale, a Los Angeles suburb on the city’s northeast border. Americana at Brand Memes is an absurdist paradise of hyperspecific viral humor—all devoted to one extremely odd place, a manicured retail haven that a lot of home-bound Southern Californians are missing these days.
The Americana at Brand is inherently ridiculous. It’s an open-air alternative to the traditional (and enclosed) Glendale Galleria across the street. It’s designed to look like a small town center, and while it’s technically in downtown Glendale, it’s full of luxe chain stores and restaurants instead of independent mom-and-pop shops. And no small town—not Stars Hollow, not Pawnee—was ever so ridiculous. Here, there’s a Bellagio-style fountain in which the water dances to Frank Sinatra songs. A trolley rolls through the not-quite-big-enough space, a grounded alternative to a monorail. Cupcakes are dispensed out of an ATM, a Capital One Cafe serves as an alternative to the coffee shops, and a small re-creation of the Eiffel Tower sits atop a parking deck. It feels a lot like a theme park, and the giant concrete wall that overlooks Colorado Boulevard on the south end of the complex is a reminder that it is, in fact, private property. Moreover, the Americana never really closes: Above the retail spaces
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