THESE KIDS TODAY : L.A. FAST TRACK ENVELOPS CITY'S YOUNG.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

In Adam's social circles, kids drop anywhere from $15,000 to $90,000 on a bar mitzvah. His own included a glassblower, a go-go dancer and a steel drum band during the appetizers.

Money has ruined lots of kids he knows, says Adam, with a wisdom beyond his 13 years.

``And not to brag, I feel it has ruined me.''

Lindsey, of Calabasas, wanted a nose job at 12, but her parents made her wait until she was 18. Six of her 10 closest friends have had plastic surgery - nose jobs, breast reductions, breast enlargements, liposuction.

Then there's G-mo, 20, author of a rap single about livin' the high life, L.A. style. In the single's video version, G-mo is served lobster and malt liquor off a silver platter by swarms of bikini-clad women.

``It's the American Dream,'' he says.

G-mo, Lindsey and Adam are just three of the several dozen L.A. youth profiled by photographer Laura Greenfield in a startling new exhibition at the Stephen Cohen Gallery. Aptly titled ``Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood,'' the exhibition reinforces the popular image of Los Angeles as a place where fantasy bleeds imperceptibly into reality, adolescence is a fleeting ideal and it's often hard to tell the adults from the kids.

Funded by a grant from the National Geographic Society, Greenfield spent four years working on the project, hanging out with kids from Bel-Air to South Central, Beverly Hills to East L.A. With a cool anthropologist's eye, she shot Topanga pool parties and Compton graffiti artists, Westlake promgoers arriving in limos at the Biltmore Hotel and restless homeboys cruising Hollywood Boulevard.

Disquieting and often jarringly funny, the 36 prints document the way L.A. kids - regardless of class or ethnicity - get force-fed many of the same pop culture fantasies of sex, money and power. Greenfield's photos may become to the '90s what David Hockney's paintings of languid poolside patrons were to the '60s, an image of a culture frozen in self-reflection.

Greenfield's prints also have been excerpted in the New Yorker and U.S. News & World Report, and recently published in book form by Alfred A. Knopf (Carrie Fisher wrote the introduction).

A 1987 Harvard University graduate who grew up on the affluent Westside, Greenfield says she wasn't immune to L.A.'s image-conscious, materialistic climate. She wanted the same stuff that her friends did: to be thinner, to have a car, nicer clothes.

``When I read `Less Than Zero' there definitely were things that rang true, and when I saw `Beverly Hills, 90210' there were some things that rang true.''

Yet, despite their strong viewpoint, her photos refrain from moralizing, either about their young subjects or about the cultural forces that shaped them.

``These are extreme manifestations, and not unique to L.A.,'' Greenfield stresses.

A few of the kids involved in the ``Fast Forward'' project are no longer alive. Cube, a female East L.A. tagger, was killed in a gang shooting. So was Ennis Beley, a talented young photographer to whom Greenfield had grown very close. He was brutally murdered just before his 16th birthday. The book is dedicated to his memory.

Like others in ``Fast Forward,'' Ennis was a smart kid who knew the dangers and temptations surrounding him.

But as Greenfield points out, that's not always enough.

``You can be conscious of the pressures and still be vulnerable to them.''

THE FACTS

What: ``Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood.''

Where: Through May 24 at Stephen Cohen Gallery, 7358 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles.

When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is free. For information, call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) ``It seems like everyone is in such a rush to be an adult. It's not cool to be a kid,'' says Mijanou, who was voted Homecoming Queen in high school.

(2--Color) G-mo, as he is known, during the filming of a video. ``Everybody wants to have money. Everybody wants to be surrounded by beautiful women. Everybody wants the mansion. It's the American Dream.''

(3--Color) Ashleigh, 13, steps up on a scale while her friend and parents look on.

(4--Color) Brandon, 13, and his mother as they celebrate his bar mitzvah at Shutters on the Beach hotel in Santa Monica. ``My mom does embarrass me because sometimes when we go somewhere together and she dresses in these outfits.''