New Tysons Wing Is, Like, So Awesome

Shopping Mall Extension Gets Squeals of Approval From Teenage Girls

"Eeeeee!!"

"Eeeeee!!!!!"

Long hair flying, tight shirts clinging, a gaggle of 13-year-old girls run down the gleaming stone tile floors and fling themselves into the arms of two girls they just saw at school two hours ago.

This is different, though. This is the Mall. And it is a new Mall, and they've never seen one another here before.

"Eek!" say the two new arrivals, pointing at the canvas Urban Outfitters tote bags some of the others are carrying. "Did you get those for free?"

"Yeah, you buy stuff and they just give it to you!"

Eek! The two new girls whip around and start running down the hall.

The other five, eighth-graders at Longfellow Middle School in Falls Church, stroll on.

They came straight here after school to explore the new 320,000-square-foot wing of Tysons Corner Center, which opened yesterday to a line of people stretching out the door. Some high-schoolers skipped school to come early, but the Longfellow girls waited until after school and got here as soon as their parents would drive them.

Hanging out at the mall, is, after all, a suburban teenage passion. And this is new. And the first day.

The elevator lifts them from the second level, away from the Gap, Hollister Co. and Abercrombie & Fitch, to check out the third level, home of a food court and an AMC movie theater with the second-biggest screens in the country.

Liz Velander, 13, declares that the theater, with its wall-to-wall carpeting and groovy lettering, "kinda looks like the '70s a little," based on an MTV show she saw depicting that decade. Christine Tran, 13, wonders aloud whether the theater has "those IMAX seats, like the ones that rise."