UTC is an acronym. It is also a shopping mall, a place to live, or as I like to refer to it, a layer of hell realized into everyday life. It stands for University Towne Centre, which makes me think of a renaissance fair, or a Ye Olde Shopping Mall. And as much as I dislike renaissance fairs, UTC pisses me off much, much more.

Let’s start with the food court. What in the hell is that smell? Is it the ice rink? Is it Sbarros? While we’re on the topic, who eats at Sbarros? It’s not this big trick like Star Wraps, where you eat there once because you don’t know what it tastes like and never do it again.

I mean, everybody knows what Sbarros tastes like — it’s at every goddamn mall from here to Maine — but for some reason people still eat there. I suppose there is some sort of appeal for pizza that’s been sitting under a heat lamp for a week and cheese that has an amazingly similarity to smegma. They should sell T-shirts. Instead of “”This Man Wants to Do Your Laundry,”” they could have “”I Ate the Worst Pizza in the World, and lived!””

But the smell isn’t just Sbarros — I’ve eaten at other food courts, and they don’t smell nearly as bad as UTC’s. Maybe it’s a combination of all the really bad restaurants there, and together they form that lingering aroma that nauseates me and sort of smells like your shirt after you’ve been snowboarding for a week and haven’t showered. But oddly enough, they’ve changed out all the restaurants there, and yet the smell is still the same. When Steak Escape was Arby’s, it smelled like shit. When Great Khan’s was a poster store, and before that an arcade, it smelled like shit. And I’m sure five years from now, it’ll smell like shit.

I remember my first experience with UTC. I went to Hold Everything with my parents. It’s this furniture store that doesn’t exist anymore, which is somewhat poetic justice because they charged $5 for a hanger. At the time though, there was no IKEA, and actual furniture shopping down Miramar consisted of looking at really neat $30,000 coffee tables and beds that used to be trees in some third-world country. It was either that or Ralphs. After that, we went to Hops, which isn’t even named Hops anymore, but I’m sure is still overpriced and not unlike every other restaurant within a five-mile radius.

Overpriced seems to be the general theme of UTC. I recently had to go there for a haircut at Rocco’s. Imagine my surprise when they tried to charge me $18 and moved the student discount to only valid one day in February on leap years. I can accept lousy haircuts: I’m quite used to not being able to go out of the house for about a week while my hair grows back to a state where I don’t look like some Asian asshole who has a spoiler for no apparent reason and a girlfriend in a black miniskirt who smokes Marlboro Reds and doesn’t say very much, but is surprisingly good at pool. I’m fine with that.

What I’m not okay with is paying $20 for it. If I wanted a shitty haircut for $20, I’d just go to Supercuts and get it over with; at least there I wouldn’t have to endure a fake conversation that can be reduced to what razor to use and the length of my sideburns with intermittent ramblings about how my stylist really wants to travel in Europe or work with kids, but is instead forced to inhale toxic fumes all day. Not that I’m bitter.

While I’m waiting for my appointment to get a haircut, I usually walk around the mall a bit, but I don’t get very far before some guy with bleached hair in a cheap dress shirt from Ross asks me if I have a cell phone. The main point is not to answer him because an affirmative would lead to a discussion about the quality of service, and a negative would lead to a discussion about my hidden desire for a cell phone that is inside of me and desperately wants to be resolved. If I’m particularly bored, I’ll talk to him, ask him questions about the most expensive phone he has, pick out a few accessories, a 10-year extended warranty and then say I’ll need to think about it. Salespeople call this procedure “”stroking.””

I did some extensive research for this column, which consisted mainly of typing UTC into Google, and I found from a 1998 press release that it takes in more than $300 million in annual sales with specialty store sales per square foot of $373. That’s $373 per square foot. When I think about that concept, I picture a store with just stacks of money in neat little squares.

I also picture Mr. Westfield, and he’s got one of those big rooms of gold like in “”Duck Tales,”” and he’s doing the backstroke. Which is really a waste if you have a lot of money — I’d just get a room full of trampolines. Another good idea is a room that’s just a big bed. You open the door and then fall onto this massive bed, which spans from wall to wall. Or perhaps I could suspend mattresses on the walls to, but that may be a bit too much like a padded cell.