Nick at Nite TV Land Mall Tour makes landfall on Long Island on October 6, 1989


Before the Nickelodeon Hotel, the cable channel embarked on its first voyage out of the cathode ray tube into real life: the Nick at Nite TV Land Mall Tour. The date is etched in the calendar like a tattoo on a sailor's forearm: October 6, 1989. 

Picture this: The sky over Long Island is that particular autumnal gray, the kind that makes the sodium-vapor lamps in the parking lot flicker on early, casting everything in a glow that's half diner at midnight, half perpetual twilight zone. Green Acres Shopping Center, this behemoth of a mall—two levels of linoleum dreams, anchored by Macy's on one end and Gertz on the other, with escalators humming like the arteries of some great retail beast—has been prepped for invasion. And what an invasion! Nick at Nite, that sly after-dark alter ego of the kiddie channel Nickelodeon, the one that's been beaming reruns into living rooms since 1985 like a bootlegger slinging moonshine in a racetrack parking lot, has rolled up with the full monty: a traveling circus of celluloid ghosts, life-size cutouts, and interactive gizmos designed to yank the baby-boomer soul right out of its JCPenney Fox polo and into a time warp. And Long Island would be the first victim, on October 6 through 8.

You step through the entrance, and pow!—you're not in South Valley Stream anymore. You're in TV Land, that mythical backlot where the 60s and 70s never died, where the laugh tracks echo eternally and the sets are as sturdy as a politician's promise. 

Who could have been prepared for a life-size Mr. Ed? Certainly not the good people of South Valley Stream! By God, there's the police cruiser from Car 54, Where are You? surrounded by yellow crime scene tape. There's your emcee, a pre-Zima Roger Kabler. And another capital-C celebrity, Paul Petersen of The Donna Reed Show, signing those glossy black-and-white photos that are now warping in attics across Long Island. 

God bless the crowd, that great, shambling American herd, polyestered and permed, with their Members Only jackets slung over shoulders,and their frosted jeans creased just so. Here comes the Levittown lawyer, tie loosened after a day dodging traffic on the LIE, towing his brood of three, the youngest clutching a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure like a talisman against the yuppie apocalypse. Over there, the Valley Stream homemaker, her feathered-and-Aqua-Net hairdo defying the humidity, eyes lighting up like she's spotted the ghost of her own adolescence as she air-kisses the Dick York cutout. And the teenagers, those sullen satellites in their Swatch Guards and their Benetton sweaters, pretending not to care but sneaking peeks at the Partridge Family bus replica, dreaming of shag carpets and that one summer before they were even born when David Cassidy was god.

Nick at Nite gets it, you see; they've been peddling this potion since '85, turning the witching hour into a wonderland of wit and whimsy, but now they're busting out, going peripatetic, hitting the malls because that's where the people are—not hunkered in front of Zenith consoles, but prowling the aisles for Batman toys and Garbage Pail Kids.

By dusk, as the families file out into the creeping chill of an autumnal Long Island night, clutching their swag bags—buttons, bookmarks, a dog-eared Green Acres script excerpt—they carry a piece of TV Land home, to the wood-paneled rec rooms where the VCRs whir and the rabbit ears twitch. 

The tour would forge on to Boston on October 13-15, at The Mall at Assembly Square in Sommerville. Then, faster than George Peppard could row on the Charles, it would sail onward to the Yorktown Shopping Center in Lombard, Illinois outside of Chicago. Before it was over, nine American cities would be graced by this traveling boomer boob tube show. But was it really over? In the rerun world of TV Land, after all, the credits never quite roll for the last time.

Location: 2034 Green Acres Rd E, Valley Stream, NY 11581, USA

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