All I Want for Christmas Is Northridge Fashion Center : Holiday shopping just isn’t the same without a mall to call your own. What do you do when the stores penciled in on your list remain buried in the rubble?

I dreaded this holiday shopping season. No, it’s not bah humbug for me. I love the holidays. I’ve been looking forward to watching my daughter, who will be 2 months and 4 days old on Christmas Day, stare at my wife and me, wondering why we are acting like children.

It was the shopping I did not look forward to. See, I’m a man without a mall. My mall, Northridge Fashion Center, is closed for earthquake repairs. Oh sure, they’ve reopened The Broadway and Sears, Roebuck & Co., but two stores do not a mall make.

I tried other malls, but they just wouldn’t do. None of them will ever be as close as Northridge Fashion Center is to me, which is exactly six miles.

I used to shop at Panorama Mall, when the Robinson’s was open. I know, it’s hard to imagine that at one time there was a Robinson’s in Panorama City.

I could never live in an area that did not have a mall. For years my wife wanted to move to Valencia, but I refused on the grounds that there was no mall. I won that argument until two years ago when a mall opened in Valencia. “What’s your excuse now?” my wife asked. “They don’t have a Bullock’s,” I was known to say before Jan. 17. “Neither does Northridge,” she has been know to say every day since.

*

Northridge Fashion Center was my mall. If you live in the Los Angeles area, you must have a mall, a burger place and a grocery store. My grocery store is the Vons at Devonshire Street and Sepulveda Boulevard. There is a Hughes across the street and a little farther north, but I shop at Vons. Hughes is my wife’s grocery store. They both carry the same items, but I know where everything is in Vons.

If I ever lose my sight, I know when entering Vons through the door closest to Sepulveda I can walk through the turnstiles, make a left, head over four aisles, take a right, open the second freezer door on my left, and on the third shelf from the bottom find the Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Toffee Crunch. I can’t do that in Hughes. The same moves in Hughes would put me in the meat section holding a chuck roast.

My wife shops at Hughes because she likes the meat better. I refuse to shop for groceries at two different stores. My cousin Harry who lives in Sylmar does that. If shrimp goes on sale at Alpha Beta, London broil at Lucky and chicken wings at Albertson’s, Harry shops each store. Don’t try to tell him that the money he’s saving on food gets eaten up in gasoline because he’ll tell you he buys gas for $1.03 a gallon. Yeah, in Carson.

Harry’s favorite burger place is whichever is having a sale. When I lived in Los Angeles, I had several. The Fatburgers at La Cienega and San Vicente, Pinks on La Brea and Molly’s on Vine. However, after moving to the Valley, I discovered In-N-Out Burger and my waistline has never been the same.

*

This holiday season my wife invited me to do my shopping with her at Topanga Plaza. She said they have the same stores as Northridge. “The same stores in name only,” I said to her at the end of a frustrating day. My favorite store at Northridge was Bachrach. There’s one at Topanga Plaza, but the one in Northridge had a better selection of sport jackets. There is a Gap at Topanga Plaza too, but the one at Northridge had better items on the sale rack. There is an excellent food court at Topanga Plaza but no Cinnabon.

Most of all, I didn’t know where all the stores were at Topanga Plaza. To shop a new mall requires memorizing the layout. When I’m holiday shopping, I like to know the location of the stores I need so I don’t end up zigzagging the entire mall. The second thing after making my Christmas list, I number the items in store order.

If Northridge mall were open, I would have parked in the lot near Tampa and Plummer, entered Bullock’s passing through the women’s shoe department on my way to the perfume section to pick up a gift for Mom. Next, I would take the escalator down to men’s, bear to the right and pick up a few shirts and ties for Dad. Then I’d go out the door, make a left, down a few stores to Lady Foot Locker to buy some cross-training shoes and a warm-up suit for my wife.

After that, I’d venture across the way to Casual Corner to pick up a suit, also for my wife, and then stop into the Gap to check out the sale rack. Then I’d head upstairs to Cinnabon for a snack before going to Lechters for a cookie jar and a pasta-drying rack for my sister Stephanie. But for those people on my holiday shopping list, those gifts remain buried in the rubble.

So, without a mall to do my holiday shopping, I decided to buy gifts for my loved ones at my other favorite place to shop. Vons! This year, everyone on my list got a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Toffee Crunch.