Imagine what it must be like to cover the goings-on in war-tom Sarajevo as a pho-tographer. You are surrounded by strug-gle on a daily basis, working essentially in a war zone. Amid the din, at a local shop-ping mall, you are stunned to notice the Buffy the Vampire Slayer cafe, a nondescript coffee shop with Buffy posters on the wall and a life-size Sarah Michelle Cellar cardboard cutout greeting customers as they enter.
"The shopping center with the cafe is a big, sparkly new 'mall' full of consumer things;' says Max Reeves, the photographer who sent in the scoop and snapped our pics of the cafe. "Sarajevo is being rebuilt and redeveloped at an ever increasing rate, but the mall is still disconcerting in the context. The neighborhood is still pretty destroyed. A Buffy cafe is one of those odd juxtapositions that you get used to in Bosnia."
The Buffy cafe is a huge testament to the widespread dissemination of Buffy into our daily lives. It's not just a television show anymore-over the past few years, the show has grown beyond a TV phenomenon and entereitself into the fabric of popular cul-ture. For proof, look no further than the scaremongers at Universal Studios Hollywood, who developed their own Buffy tribute in the form of the Buffy and Angel Hellmouth Haunt.
For the first time in the theme park's history, a currently running television show inspired one of their Halloween mazes. In the Haunt, visitors were transported to Sunnydale or Los Angeles to fight demons and vamps alongside Buffy 2 Angel. You could visit the Bronze an Sunnydale cemetery-so long as you were careful to avoid the wolfed-out (Gentleman demon and Acathla snake beast along the way.
To celebrate the opening of Halloween Horror Nights, Universal held its fourth- annual Eyegore Awards, which honor significant achievements in the world of horror. As part of the ceremony, the casts and crew of both Buffy and Angel were presented with Eyegores. On hand to accept were Buffy executive producer Joss Whedon, co-executive producer Marti Noxon, Buffy stars Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Stewart Head, Amber Benson, Robin Sachs, and Angel star Julie Benz. At the event, as Whedon stepped to the mic to deliver a brief speech, his phone rang and was quickly handed off to Hannigan.
"I'm very excited;' Whedon told the crowd. "All of my life more than anything, I've wanted an Eyegore Award. Although it didn't exist, I knew that one day...who is it?
"David Greenwalt," Hannigan replied.
Onstage, Whedon took the phone.
"David, can you hold on one sec? I’m getting an award," he said to Greenwalt: before completing his speech. "I just to thank you all, and thank Universal honoring our sensitive drama about the coming-of-age of a young girl- I mean our scary, scary show."
Buffy has even earned the true earmark of any pop-culture phenom: It's inspired parody show. Writer/director Jason Chin didn't initially plan on using Buffy as the inspiration for his third-annual Thriller Theater Halloween comedy show at Chicago's ImprovOlympic theater. But when his first idea, "Blacula versus Shaft," was shelved because no one knew who Blacula was-"I'd love to take credit for inventing the word 'Blacula,' but I didn't," Chin quips- he turned to two gangs of evil-battling teenagers who have been destined to hang together for years: the Scooby gang from Sunnydale, and the gang from Scooby Doo.
"Ironically, the fact that the Buf(y crew calls themselves the Scooby gang had noth-ing to do with it," Chin explains. "It just occurred to me that it's a gang of teenagers solving supernatural crimes. The people who are really the target demographic for Buffy were fans of Scooby as kids. I inundat-ed myself with both Buf(y episodes and Scooby episodes, and I learned a lot about our generation."
Over the years between Scooby Doo's popularity and the current success of Buf(y, attitudes about horror and the public's ability to ingest it have expanded, as have atti-tudes about the role of women in adventure fiction.

"The original Scooby was a much scarier show; the original name of the show was Mystery Machine, and they added the dog because they thought it was too scary," Chin explains. "The network also said that it can never be an actual supernatural mon-ster, which is interesting to me, considering that Buf(y is one of the most popular shows on TV, and a girl is stabbing guys so they die. You have a girl punching and swing-ing, and I love it."

Buf(y the Vampire Slayer Meets Scooby Doo tells the tale of Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy and Scooby Doo himself heading to Sunnydale back in Buffy's high school days to attend Sunnydale High's Pumpkin Prom. Of course, the convergence of two legendary supernatural sleuthing teams can only mean that trouble is on the horizon, and trouble does indeed appear, both in the form of traditional Hellmouth vamps and the surly criminals that the Scooby Doo cast usually unmasks at the end of each episode. As the dual Scooby gangs get to know one another and attempt to stop the spread of evil in Sunnydale, Xander falls for Daphne, Velma and Willow make a love connec-tion, and Fred and Buffy clash over just who should lead the expanded Scooby gang. Once evil has been vanquished, the show concludes with a massive dance num-ber riffing on the "We Go Together" finale from the film Grease.
An improv theater in Chicago, a Halloween maze in southern California, a coffee shop in Sarajevo- Buffy may not truly be everywhere yet, but it's definitely popping up where it's least expected. As she contemplated her new Eyegore statuette at Halloween Horror Nights, Noxon hit upon exactly what all the recent attention placed upon Buf(y could mean, not just for the
show's immediate future but for its emerg-ing status as a pop culture landmark.
"I don't take credit for this, but I feel very sure that Buf(y is going to be remem-bered for a long time as a significant show," Noxon says. "I feel like people years from now will still be talking about it. It'll be like a Star Trek, where people will still be watching and trying to figure out what we meant by all that."