Looking for Cover From the Dog Days of Summer : Weather: Temperatures above 90, unhealthy smog levels and beach closures help trigger record demands for electricity. Malls and theaters provide at least a temporary escape.

Beating the heat is no sweat for Barbara Kafka.

When the mercury climbs past the 90-degree mark and smog reaches “very unhealthful” levels, the 85-year-old North Hollywood resident simply heads to her local air-conditioned mall to watch youngsters ice-skate.

She was there again Monday, at the Ice Capades Chalet in Laurel Plaza. “This is the only way to beat the heat,” Kafka said as she watched a young girl spin and glide on the mall’s Olympic-size skating rink. “I think it’s just wonderful to see these youngsters and stay cool at the same time.”

On Southern California’s 10th straight day of oppressive heat--a day on which the thermometer registered 99 in downtown Los Angeles--the area’s climate-controlled malls and movie theaters appeared to be doing better business as a steady stream of hot, frustrated customers looked for a place to cool their heels.

Those looking for a break in the hot, muggy weather will have to be patient, the forecasters say. Today and Wednesday should be similar to Monday, with high temperatures in the upper 90s and low 100s throughout most of the region and humidity remaining well above normal.

Jack Ohringer, general manager of the Fashion Square Sherman Oaks, attributes a slight increase in patrons over the weekend to the heat. The mall was converted from an open-air mall to an enclosed, air-conditioned structure in 1990, and “this is exactly the kind of weather that made us think about enclosing,” he said.

William Haynes, manager of the Pacific Crest Theater in Westwood, said, “Yeah, the heat was very good for us. People just get out to where they can get cool. It’s either us or the shopping malls.”

Some people have not quite mastered the concept of going indoors to escape the heat. At Universal Studios, the hottest attraction over the weekend continued to be “Backdraft,” in which patrons watch a simulated warehouse burst into an inferno.

Universal Studios spokeswoman Joan Bullard said that although fans are used to keep patrons from feeling the direct heat of the blaze, “it gets as hot as a flame in there.”

There was nothing Gabriel Aceituno, who spent most of Monday re-roofing an apartment building in North Hollywood, could do to keep cool.

“What can we do? We can’t hold some stupid little umbrella over our heads,” he said as he wiped his brow. “But I’ve been doing this for 10 years and the sun does nothing to me. I could work in a desert.”

The hot, humid weather has caused record demands for electricity, largely because of the increased use of air-conditioning systems, Southern California Edison Co. officials said. Saturday’s peak of 15,875 megawatts was a record for a Saturday, according to the utility.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials said that if the heat wave continues, elementary schools lacking air conditioning would be given the option of shortening the school day, beginning Wednesday.

Air quality ranged from “unhealthful” levels in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys to “very unhealthful” levels in the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys on Monday. Air Quality Management District officials said it should be even smoggier today, with “very unhealthful” air in all four areas.

Beach closures expanded Monday when a 300-yard stretch of shoreline in Redondo Beach was closed to swimmers after a sewer pipe began to leak under the city pier. The leak, which raised the bacteria count above acceptable levels, was quickly stopped and the beach is expected to reopen today, a county Department of Health Services spokeswoman said.

Officials are still searching for the source of bacteria that has washed down from Ballona Creek and forced closure of a five-mile stretch of beach between Venice and Playa del Rey since Saturday.

Rick Dittmann, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which supplies weather information to The Times, said temperatures above 90 will continue until Thursday, when the thermometer will drop to about 90 downtown, and then into the 80s by the end of the week.

The high temperature at the Los Angeles Civic Center on Monday was 99 degrees--plenty hot, but well below the record high of 104 for the date, set in 1885. Monday’s overnight low was 74. The relative humidity at the Civic Center ranged from 32% to 74%.