The Beverly Center is a shopping mall in Los Angeles, CA. It is housed in a decorated eight-story building situated in the city of Beverly Hills, near West Hollywood. The Center serves the entire city of Los Angeles. The stores include Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and a multi-screen theater. Also present are such retail outlets as Banana Republic, Victoria's Secret, Dolce and Gabbana, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dior and Hugo Boss. The terrace atop the mall offers a panoramic view of downtown Los Angeles.
The mall attracts upscale customers and the existent stores and boutiques that are more costly than those in the usual shopping center. The venerable escalators, which are now being renovated, previously resembled escalators at Paris' elaborate Pompidou Center.
The Beverly Center opened its doors in 1982, and contained the nation's first Hard Rock Cafe, the second to be built after the London original. The Center was originally anchored by Bullock's and The Broadway department stores, before both were absorbed into Macy's in the late 1990's.
Some interesting insights into the Center's background include the fact that the location was once utilized for a small amusement park featuring a Ferris wheel and pony rides, called Kiddyland. In the mid-1980's some scenes from the film Chopping Mall were shot at the Beverly Center. The 1985 work of fiction Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis has a chapter set in the shopping center.
The Center was the principal setting for the early '90s movie Scenes from a Mall, which starred Bette Midler and Woody Allen. While being constructed, the mall was used as the backdrop for the film Lipstick in 1976.
The shopping center also had a role in the storyline near the conclusion of the 1997 disaster film Volcano, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche. A triage area and childcare center for Cedars-Sinai Hospital was set up in the mall's Hard Rock Cafe. In the movie, this area was evacuated when lava erupted nearby, threatening the building and occupants. Lastly, singer Crispin Hellion Glover references the Beverly Center in his song, Auto-Manipulator.