This weekend while out doing some stalking of L.A.’s Westside, I dragged my boyfriend to the W Hotel, which was featured in both fave movie Win A Date With Tad Hamilton and the new 90210. I have wanted to stalk the W ever since I first watched Win A Date over four years ago, but somehow never got around to it until this past Sunday. I actually can’t believe that I waited so long to stalk the modern style hotel, but, as I’ve said before, in L.A. there’s just so much to stalk and so little time! 🙂
The W Hotel is actually featured quite a few times in Win A Date. The poolside restaurant, named “The Backyard”, shows up in the very beginning of the movie as the location where Tad and his agents (who are both named Richard Levy) do lunch. It is during this luncheon that Tad is told he must clean up his public image and thus the “Win A Date With Tad Hamilton” contest is born.
The W also shows up a bit later on in the movie as the hotel where contest winner Rosalee Futch (aka Kate Bosworth) stays while she is in L.A. The front entrance of the hotel is shown when she first checks in, as well as when she is picked up and dropped off for her dream date with Tad.
The lobby area of the hotel and the stairway leading up to the pool are also both featured in the movie.
On the new 90210, Naomi Clark, following in the footsteps of Dylan McKay from the original series, forgoes living with her parents to permanently check in to the ultra-trendy W. In the episode entitled “By Accident”, Naomi moves out of her cheating father’s house and into Room 723 of the hotel. The W has been featured on the series several times since then, most prominently in the Valentine’s Day episode entitled “Of Heartbreaks and Hotels”.
Many areas of the hotel were shown in that episode including the front entrance;
the lobby;
the hotel’s NineThirty Restaurant where Silver and Dixon share a Valentine’s Day dinner;
the hotel’s coffee bar where Naomi first meets cutie bartender Liam (in real life the coffee bar is set up daily between 6 and10am just outside of the NineThirty Restaurant, but sadly it had already been removed by the time we got there, so I didn’t get to snap a photo of it);
the hotel’s Whiskey Blue Bar where Silver and Naomi grab some tea;
and, just like in Win A Date, the hotel’s Backyard restaurant where Naomi gets stood up by Liam.
I HIGHLY recommend stalking the W! The hotel somehow manages to be ultra-trendy and ultra-modern, yet extremely welcoming at the same time. The staff truly could not have been nicer to me and answered all of my silly questions about the filming of 90210 and Win A Date. 🙂 Since we were stalking the place in the middle of the day, though, we weren’t able to grab a drink in the hotel’s Whiskey Blue Bar. But you can bet that is something I am going to do in the very near future. I also must book a room and drag my boyfriend there for the weekend sometime! Even though ultra modern hotels are usually not my thing, I really fell in love with this one. 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: The W Hotel is located at 930 Hilgard Avenue in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. You can visit their website here.
This hotel was previously the Westwood Marquis Hotel and Gardens. I worked there in college and it was a hotbed of celebrities and movie junkets. Most notably, the hotel pool (shaped like a shell) was the pool used in the movie “Pretty Women” where Julie Roberts meets with Kit. The producers apparently didn’t like the Beverly Wilshire’s pool so filmed this little piece of it here.
Very cool! I’ve been there a couple times while my dad was staying there. The bar serves Goldfish brand pretzels & I’ve been hooked on them for about 5 years thanks to that!