Local malls are restricting teens. Gen X would never have survived.

Gen Xers can’t stop talking about our childhoods spent running wild in the streets. We were out there, “Goonies”-like, doing hits from rusty garden hoses and climbing jagged jungle gyms as our Keds melted on the asphalt, our parents unsure of where we were until dinner or the streetlights came on. That independence continued into our teens, though we switched to running the halls of various malls, holding court at the food court and trying on the bounty of sweaters at Gap.