Simi Valley Gets Zip : A new line of T-shirts prompts question: What if Simi Valley also had its own prime-time teen soap opera?

Simi Valley video store owner Mark Tusher knows plenty about movies, but he’s also no slouch when it comes to what’s hot on TV.

Take, for example, that wildly popular show with a ZIP code in the title, the one about teen-agers dealing with everyday issues against the backdrop of a city that provides everything a screenwriter could hope for.

“It’s a pretty spoiled town,” Tusher said. “It’s a nice place to live, but on the other side, people are removed from the realities of inner cities. . . . One difference is that the SAT scores here are probably a lot lower than in Beverly Hills.”

Wait a minute. Weren’t we talking about the show “Beverly Hills, 90210”? We could be, but we’re not. In this case, Tusher wasn’t talking about a TV show, but the new, hot-selling “Simi Valley, 93065” T-shirt.

“We thought we might be stuck with them because they came out almost the same day of the Rodney King decision. But the response has been one of pride in living here,” said Jacquie Richardson, whose husband, Reg, came up with the idea for the T-shirts to benefit the Simi Valley Optimists Club.

Tusher carries them in his three video stores, where he says they are “selling like crazy.” The shirts can now be spotted everywhere from local restaurants to strip malls.

“Interesting enough, more adults are buying them,” said Richardson, who worked for several years with teen-agers in the Simi Valley Unified School District. “And the nature of the beast in teen-agers is that since so many adults have them, they don’t want them.”

Richardson, like Tusher, sees plenty of parallels between teen-agers in Simi Valley and their counterparts in, well, let’s just call it that other town with Rodeo Drive running through it. And if there were a spin-off Simi Valley series, maybe the way “Knot’s Landing” was to “Dallas,” she said she thought the issues would be pretty much the same.

“The basic problems with peer acceptance would be similar,” she said.

Granted, “Simi Valley, 93065” probably wouldn’t have room for someone like teen-idol Luke Perry’s television character of Dylan McKay, a recovering alcoholic who also is an emancipated 17-year-old worth $100 million. (This is the amount left to him after his father was taken to jail for insider trading.)

And teen-agers on this new show--if we stick to realism--also probably shouldn’t be portrayed pulling out their American Express Gold Cards to rent a hotel suite for an evening’s party with a nationally known rock band. (A private home, used while their parents are out for the evening and have no knowledge of high school kids being charged $5 a head to enter, would be more like it.)

But Simi Valley could provide the backdrop for plenty of other characters--ones that could speak to teen-agers in as many countries as the original show does (“90210” now is seen in 20 countries and has received fan mail from Russia).

All it would take is one influential producer to bring them to life:

* Marsha, a pretty, fresh-faced Simi Valley High School junior whose tragic bout with acne forces her to give up her dream of being a “Star Search” spokesmodel and think about college.

* Marsha’s mother, Sarah, a docent with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library who is depressed about not having more reading material for people to check out.

* Marsha’s father, Hugh, a Simi Valley policeman whose pride in his city’s low crime rate and family values makes him beloved by schoolchildren.

* Tommy, a recent high school graduate whose relationship with Marsha becomes strained as he gears up for junior college.

* Tommy’s father, Bill, whose fervor for getting involved in community issues recently included opposition to the creation of a Simi Valley Cultural Assn.

* George, Tommy’s dashing but dyslexic best friend who has heard his parents refer so often to where they live as Woodranch, that he thinks it’s a separate city.

* George’s father, Bob, a Congressman who has such a fear of illegal aliens that he requires the family’s Latina maid to wear her green card pinned to her blouse at all times.

Anyone interested in auditioning, just form a line to the left.

* THE PREMISE

Attitudes is a column about a variety of current trends and issues.