the 80's

Thesis statement #2: the San Fernando Valley was the Haight-Ashbury of the '80's. As a teenager, we not only had our own hangout (Du Paar's) and radio station (KROQ, the inimitable Rodney Bingenheimer providing an updated spin on Wolfman Jack), we actually had our own anthemic movie: "Valley Girl."

The title was taken from the Moon Zappa hit; the pitch was "Romeo and Juliet" for the new wave set. But the film itself was something much more than that. Not really a huge hit (the way the similarly Valley-filmed "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" was), it nonetheless informed the rest of the country that we were a bona fide culture to be reckoned with. Not to mention that the soundtrack, due to decades of unavailability, became the music equivalent of the Holy Grail.