Night Howls : Even With Little Cash and No Wheels, Kids Find Plenty to Do on a Friday Evening

Come nightfall in Ventura County, teen-agers drift into that awkward, cash-poor limbo between living at home and leaving home: Hanging out.

Clustering at football games, video arcades and shopping malls from Ventura to Simi Valley, they wolf junk food, share gossip and ogle the opposite sex.

And all across the county, they complain: “I’m so bored, there’s nothing to do in this town!”

Yet, youth counselors say, Ventura County has plenty of things for teen-agers to do. Hanging out is a way of searching for purpose in life, a crowd to fit in with, a niche in the grown-up world.

And the universal teen-age gripe, they say, is just part of that search.

“ There’s nothing to do. They’ve been saying that for years and years and years,” said Toni Garubo, a guidance counselor at Adolfo Camarillo High School. “It doesn’t seem to matter whether there really is anything to do. For the person who complains, they usually wouldn’t do anything even if you gave them a list.”

All people--particularly teen-agers--yearn for a sense of belonging, said Carol Walker, a Westlake Village family therapist.

“Kids that age like a lot of excitement and a lot of adventure, and wherever kids are, they often feel it’s kind of boring,” she said.

“Parents worry that kids hang out to use drugs, and sometimes they do. . . .But it’s a very natural, developmental thing for teen-agers to want to hang out and just talk.”

In fact, with little money, no wheels and no particular place to go on a Friday night, Ventura County’s teen-agers find plenty to do.

Girls cruise The Oaks mall to check out the latest fashions and eye cute boys.

Boys pound on glaring, booming video games in Ventura, straining to beat each other’s high scores.

Self-described weirdos preen and thrash in the glorious noise of a punk band in Simi Valley.

Teen-age couples in most towns park somewhere dark and neck.

And outside an Oxnard Taco Bell, high schoolers shiver at the cold and wonder whether anyone’s throwing a party tonight.

Most teen-agers’ formula for a good time is open-ended, but precise:

“What we look for is a . . . place where your parents can’t see you and you can smoke,” said Jane Johnson, 16, a Westlake High junior dragging on a cigarette outside the Vampyre Lounge Cafe in Simi Valley.

“We look for a place with no parents, where nothing bad happens and there’s no little gang bangers.”

By most accounts, the Vampyre is just such a place.

*

Owners and patrons say that some Simi Valley preachers condemn the Vampyre as a temple of sin where Satan worshipers offer animal sacrifices to the devil.

In fact, it is only a coffeehouse in a strip mall.

Even Simi Valley beat cops say it is safe and its young patrons are mostly well-behaved. And by 9 p.m. most Fridays--like this night--it is packed with kids and thumping with music.

“THERE WAS A BOY,” wails the lead singer for Sienna, throttling power chords out of a beaten Gibson Les Paul. “HE FELL IN LOVE WITH THE TELEVISION.”

One shaggy boy in baggy overalls jogs furiously in place, flailing his head and fists to the beat. Another, 15 feet from the shattering noise of the drums, dozes in an armchair.

Teen-agers in heavy makeup and offbeat threads lounge in battered armchairs, nodding in rhythm and occasionally shouting comments to each other.

A $4 cover fee buys thrash, ska, speedcore and blues music from two live bands on many weekend nights, and the privilege of getting a little wild without grown-ups jumping down their throats.

Outside, draped on cars and curbs, kids smoke, roughhouse and gossip.

Two girls slap playfully at each other’s faces, giggling.

A boy smashes a disposable lighter to the sidewalk, where it explodes with a bang.

“Hey!” shouts 18-year-old John Buettgen, a wiry, goateed bouncer with serious eyes. “You do that? You’re not coming back in! A piece of shrapnel from that could go in someone’s eye.”

The offender slinks back to the curb, snickering, and Buettgen sums up the Vampyre’s appeal: It is the only cheap, “cool” hangout in town.

“For anybody between the ages of 14 and 18, there’s nothing to do,” Buettgen says. “First of all, the majority of them don’t have jobs. . . .Most of the jobs out there for people under 18 are, like, flipping burgers. Second, there aren’t that many places at night for them to go to.”

*

The Vampyre teen-agers pride themselves on being mostly sober and self-governing.

‘We’re off the streets, we’re not doing major crimes,” huffs Bree Lindberg, 15, a Simi Valley High sophomore. “At school if you dress strange like this, people stare at you. You come here and you get accepted for being weird.”

Everybody else, they say, is off playing pool or bowling or--uncoolest of all--yelling their lungs out at a football game and getting wasted at post-game parties.

But the games draw huge numbers of Ventura County teen-agers on autumn Friday nights, and many fans never miss a game.

One such night, cheerleaders chant and fans scream as Ventura High stomps Santa Barbara Dons in the second quarter.

“Stick ‘em, baby!” a fan bellows at the teams. “Let’s go, Duane, let’s stick these pansies!”

Leaning back on their elbows, three 15-year-old Ventura High School sophomores scope out their boys in black.

“There’s some pretty rad guys on this team, and you can quote me,” says Sandra Link with a grin.

“Eric Olsen’s really rad, he’s the quarterback,” offers Melissa Hall. “We’ve got a lot of hotties on our team.”

“One of them likes my very good friend Sarah,” confides Nicole Little. “I’m waiting for him to notice me.”

The Ventura Cougars muscle the ball downfield on a strong running play, and the home crowd erupts in cheers, but the girls keep kibitzing.

Senior Rita Dunn says she hangs out at the football games because “Ventura sucks. There’s nothing better to do here.

“But then I’ve lived here all my life, so I’m burnt out,” adds Rita, 17, gobbling a chicken sandwich. “You can’t go anywhere because there’s this gang that goes everywhere and ruins everything. They come and start fights and steal things and vandalize--but other than that, the people in Ventura are all really nice.”

Many Ventura County teen-agers structure their weekend nights to avoid gangs.

Some retreat to brightly lighted, adult-run refuges such as the Colonia Gym and the Thousand Oaks Teen Center.

Playing 21 on the Teen Center’s basketball court, two boys taunt a buddy with a lesson about fat from a despised biology teacher, shouting “Lipid! Lipid! Lipid!” as they charge in for a layup.

Three younger boys shoot pool and argue about rap music while MTV blares from the stereo big-screen TV in the corner.

A dozen more debate the powers of demons and wizards, losing themselves in the arcane fantasy world of a sword-and-sorcery card game called Magic: The Gathering.

And hundreds find peace in the malls.

Drive-by shootings and gang violence make Saticoy’s streets “too crazy” to hang out on at night, says Junior Burciaga, 14, and older boys shoo him away.

On Halloween “the big guys told us to go home, man,” he says. “They told us to go home because we’d get blasted.” Sure enough, the three heard gunshots later that night, he said.

So, Junior and his Buena High schoolmates, Miguel Lopez, 15, and Joel Ramirez, 14, cruise the Esplanade mall in Oxnard, checking out clothes and hoping to snag phone numbers from girls they meet.

They are also, he admits a little sheepishly, killing time until they can get a ride home from Junior’s sister.

She walks by, but they ignore her coolly and lope off to flip through the latest rap CDs.

Four other teen-agers pore over a jeweler’s gems, passing time before hitting the theater.

*

They reminisce about raves--late-night, drug-free underground parties they have attended in warehouses and hastily rented fraternal organization halls.

And they grouse about their parents’ lectures on Oxnard’s curfew law--no one under 18 is allowed on the streets without purpose between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m..

“Tonight, they’d only let me go out because they know who’s taking me,” says Tina Perlingos, 16, of Port Hueneme. “My mother’s like, ‘Call me at 6, call me at 7, call me at 8 and let me know where you’re going.’ ”

She adds wistfully, “If we were old enough, we’d go to The Dome, it’s this club near Hollywood. I’m going to be 17. I’d love to be a year older.”

Still, it has been a fun--if expensive--night out. They will end it watching a long-awaited show of “Interview With the Vampire.”

And they began it by lurking in the fake fog, eerie light and throbbing techno music of a new sci-fi battle parlor in Oxnard, sniping at each other with laser rifles.

“Lazerstar’s probably going to be the new trend,” Jausch Galloway, 17, says about his new-found obsession. “Lazerstar is it. If you talk to anyone who hangs out at Golf N’ Stuff, they’re losers.”

Losers or not, teen-agers pack the Ventura amusement center on Friday nights.

Amateur golfers goof their way around Golf N’ Stuff’s tiny plastic putting greens, shooting dimpled balls past windmills and other absurd obstacles.

Amateur drivers in sputtering go-carts tear through the chicanes and switchbacks of a miniature Indy speedway. They bounce their fiberglass cars off walls and each other, laughing giddily in the November chill.

“It’s fun, it’s a safe place to go, and there’s no violence or drug activity,” said Tricia O’Neill, 16, a Buena High junior, straightening her hair after a wild, 17-m.p.h. race in a seat three inches above the track.

*

Classmate Colin Gallagher, 16, stabs a finger at two drivers who jammed him into the wall in the last race, and swears revenge: “Those two guys, I’m going to GET ‘EM!”

Out on the sidewalk, a girl pouts to a friend about a lover’s spat: “So he’s all, ‘Well give it to me,’ and I’m all, ‘You think you’re such hot crap!’ ”

Inside, Buena High’s Nate Saylor, 17, and Alex Dennis, 18, slug it out at the controls of Primal Rage, each trying to kill the other’s video alter ego--a snarling prehistoric giant.

Nate’s monster stomps Alex’s into the turf, then battles the game computer’s monster with hammerlike fists and greenish clouds of toxic flatulence.

“Strike a pose, Nate, strike a pose!” Alex urges. Alex’s girlfriend Jennifer Hutton, 17, hugs him close.

Later, Alex and Jennifer lean together against a vacant pinball machine, nuzzling amid the video room’s electronic thunder and the smell of snack bar fries.

Up at Grant Park, parked cars line the road with more serious nuzzling going on behind their steamed windows.

Misti Guilford, 17, and Jay Badaracco, 18, of Ojai, pull up in his pickup truck. Oil rig lights glow offshore.

“There’s nothing to do in Ojai,” says Misti. “Usually we go to football games, but tonight we went to a car show at Hudson’s Grill.”

Some come to drink beer or smoke marijuana while gazing out over all of Ventura and the Santa Barbara Channel.

But Misti and Jay have come with a blanket in the truck, they admit candidly, to make out.

Nearby, a Honda stops and two girls get out. One stumbles over to a stone wall and vomits. Without a word, they hop back in and drive away.

*

Bryan Gross, 17, and John Redding, 15, pull up from Santa Paula and park their white pickup facing Ventura Avenue.

They ease onto the hood, light cigarettes and stare down at the glittering field of street lights stretching away into the dark Ojai Valley.

“There’s nothing to do,” Bryan says quietly after awhile. “Nothing to do except for cruising around.”

Indeed, there is little to do in smaller cities such as Fillmore and Santa Paula other than hang out at fast-food joints or house parties, said Fillmore High guidance counselor Joe Torres.

“We hear a lot about partying, drinking and use of drugs,” Torres said. “We do have a lot of kids who just don’t have access to cars, and they just stay around town . . . doing with what they have in front of them. And lots of times it’s booze.”

Those who can muster the gas money drive into Ventura or Oxnard to the malls, the all-ages clubs--anywhere they can get out of the house and hang out with their friends for a few hours, he said.

“The main things kids want,” said therapist Carol Walker, “is to be with their peers, and to be liked by their peers. And they’re also looking to figure out, ‘Who am I?’ ”