I spent all of this past weekend celebrating my birthday (which was fabulous – the GC even bought me a new camera, which I LOVE!), so I was unable to write a new post for today. But I will be back tomorrow with a whole new location.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
As I mentioned in Wednesday’s post about the Sullivan Street Pit from fave new show Parks and Recreation, during our whirlwind stalking adventure last Friday, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I also hit up the house where Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones) lives on the show. Just as it is made to appear on P&R, Ann’s supposed Pawnee, Indiana-area residence is actually located directly behind the undeveloped plot of land in Van Nuys that stands in for the Pit on the series. So, after snapping some pictures of Lot 48, Mike and I walked one block east to do some stalking of the abode. I, of course, found this location thanks to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog – the very same fellow stalker who also informed me of countless other Parks and Recreation locations, including Leslie Knope’s house and the Sullivan Street Pit.
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Ann’s house first popped up in the pilot of Parks and Recreation and has subsequently been featured in pretty much every episode since. During the first season, Ann lived in the one-story residence with her slacker boyfriend, musician Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt), but she ends up kicking him out in the episode titled “Rock Show” after discovering that he had asked his doctor to keep his leg casts on for an extra two weeks because, as he explained to Ann, “I really, really like it when you serve me food.” LOL
In real life, Ann’s house, which was originally built in 1948, boasts two bedrooms, one bath and 1,407 square feet and, thankfully, looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it does onscreen in Parks and Recreation. Even the yellow fire hydrant located at the edge of the front lawn is there in real life, which was absolutely shocking to me as I had always assumed that the hydrant was a prop put in place for the show. I mean, has anyone ever seen a fire hydrant situated inside of someone’s front yard before? Will wonders never cease? 
The property’s back gate area also appears quite frequently on the show.
And the home’s backyard was featured in the Season 1 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Boys’ Club”, in what was hands down one of my very favorites scenes in the entire series – the scene in which Andy takes a bath in a kiddie pool before chasing his neighbor down the street, while naked and on crutches.
And while I would have bet money on the fact that the real life interior of the home had been used in the filming of the pilot episode before later being recreated on a soundstage (which is a fairly typical scenario), I came across some interior photographs of the residence on fave website Zillow and, as you can see below, it looks NOTHING AT ALL like Ann’s house. So incredibly odd!
While doing research for today’s post, I happened to discover that the apartment complex that formerly stood on the site of the Sullivan Street Pit is actually still visible on Bing aerial maps. LOVE IT!
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! 
Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here. And you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Ann Perkins’ house from Parks and Recreation is located at 5655 Murietta Avenue in Van Nuys. The Sullivan Street Pit from the series is located directly behind Ann’s house at at the southeast corner of Hazeltine Avenue and Collins Street in Van Nuys.
A couple of weeks ago, my good friend/fellow stalker Lavonna asked me to track down the residence where Jess (Zooey Deschanel) lived prior to moving into the ultra-cool Binford Building on fave show New Girl. Jess’ former house only appeared once on the series, in the Season 1 episode titled “Kryptonite”, and thankfully I had already tracked down another location from that episode a few weeks prior – John O’Groats Restaurant in Rancho Park, which I blogged about here. I had an inkling that Jess’ former dwelling was most-likely located near O’Groats (since location managers tend to stick to sites in close proximity to each other while filming an episode), so I started searching aerial views of neighborhoods adjacent to the eatery and, sure enough, stumbled upon the home fairly quickly. Yay! So after dragging the Grim Cheaper out to John O’Groats for breakfast in mid-May, we headed right on over to stalk the place.
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In the “Kryptonite” episode of New Girl, Jess – with her eccentric new roommates, Nick (Jake M. Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield) and Winston (Lamorne Morris), and her best friend, Cece (Hannah Simone), in tow – returns to her former residence to demand her television set and clothes back from her cheating ex-boyfriend, Spencer (Ian Wolterstorff). An argument, of course, ensues over one of Jess’ t-shirts, resulting in the ever-hilarious Schmidt slapping Spencer across the face, using his pinky ring for extra force. Gotta love it! As you can see below, Jess’ former house looks much the same in person as it did onscreen. For whatever reason, producers covered over the side porch area with a large fern and removed the hinges and kick plate from the front door, but other than that, the place appears just as it did in the episode.
Even though, in real life, the 1923-era house only boasts a scant three bedrooms, three baths, and 2,200 square feet of living space, it sold this past March for just under $1 million! Welcome to L.A., my fellow stalkers! You can check out the property’s real estate listing here.
Oddly enough, a different residence stood in for Jess and Spencer’s home in New Girl’s pilot episode. While only the interior of a house was shown in that episode (in the scene in which Jess catches Spencer cheating) it is not the same property that was used in “Kryptonite”, as you can see in the screen captures pictured below as compared to the photographs on the home’s real estate listing. [What do y’all think of my photo collage below, by the way? I am trying out some different photography editing websites, like PicMonkey (my favorite so far), and experimenting with different collages, fonts, shapes, etc. in order to step things up. Do any of you have a photo editing site that you would recommend?]
I am ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED with the collage capabilities of Polyvore (a fashion website, on which I made the graphic below) and am looking for a similar site, but one with which I would be able to edit my own photographs instead of simply using site-provided pics – something similar to Photoshop, but easy to use. The GC purchased Photoshop Elements, the dumbed-down version of Photoshop, for me and I could not even get past the set-up screen! #Idon’tgetlayers! 
Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here. And you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Jess’ house, from the Season 1 episode of New Girl titled “Kryptonite”, is located at 2045 Pelham Avenue in Century City.
As I mentioned in Monday’s post, this past weekend was an absolute whirlwind! It all started bright and early Friday morning when Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I embarked upon what turned out to be a nine-hour stalking adventure across the greater part of Los Angeles. One of the stops on our trip – and the most exciting for me – was the Sullivan Street Pit, aka the Pit, aka Lot 48, from my new favorite show, Parks and Recreation. Fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, had given me the address to the Pit, along with the addresses of about twenty other P&R locations, a few years back, and when I finally started watching the series last month, I became just a wee-bit obsessed with stalking it. So I added the locale to Friday’s To-Stalk list and dragged Mike right on over there after the two of us grabbed some lunch.
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The story of the Sullivan Street Pit is as follows: Once upon a time in Pawnee, Indiana, a real estate developer purchased a plot of land, into which he dug a huge hole before subsequently going bankrupt and abandoning the property, leaving behind a giant pit. At some point afterward, a musician named Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) fell into the Pit, breaking both of his legs, causing his girlfriend, Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones), to complain about the abandoned site at a public forum. When overly ambitious Parks and Recreation Deputy Director Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) learns of the situation in the series’ pilot episode, she makes it her mission to turn the property into a beautiful public park, and the storylines of Seasons 1 and 2 focus entirely on that (misguided) venture. The Pawnee Pit, which, in actuality, was a giant hole dug by the Parks and Recreation crew at an undeveloped lot in Van Nuys, was featured regularly during the series’ first two seasons.
In the Season 2 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Kaboom”, the Pit gets filled in, thanks to the efforts of Leslie, Andy, and Ann, and that filled-in lot is then also featured in numerous subsequent episodes.
I cannot tell you how absolutely incredible it was to see the Parks and Recreation Pit in person! The site is, hands down, one of the coolest locations that I have ever stalked in all my years of stalking. In fact, I think I am going to have to add it to my Los Angeles Must-Stalk List. And yes, I do realize that the place is basically just an overgrown, vacant lot, but, for some inexplicable and intangible reason, it seems to have a certain hold on people, including me. I think it has to do with the fact that the site played such an important role on P&R. As Owen said, the Pit is almost a character in and of itself. Add that to the fact that the the Pit was once an actual hole in an actual neighborhood and not some manufactured set piece and you have one must-see locale. Mike had never actually watched an episode of Parks and Recreation before Friday, but after stalking the Pit he went right out and bought Season 1 on DVD. And when I mentioned the place to my girl Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog (who could normally care less about locations), she said, “Now that’s one site I would really like to stalk.” See what I mean? The Pit just has a certain allure.
As you can see below, the lot, which is absolutely HUGE in person (much larger than I had expected it to be), is currently completely overgrown and it does not appear as if Parks and Recreation has done any filming there in quite some time. Oh, how I would have loved to have seen the place back when it was still in pit form! You can see some fabulous aerial views of what the location looked like during the filming of Season 1 on fave website Virtual Globetrotting.
According to the sign pictured below, the 1.16-acre lot is currently for sale for a whopping $4,999,999. The site has apparently already been permitted for the building of 26 townhomes, with expenses and fees paid, so I am guessing that the story told on P&R (that a developer purchased the land in order to build condos and then went bankrupt) is pretty much exactly what happened in real life, too. I am hoping against all hope that the property does not sell anytime soon. How fabulous would it be if it was indefinitely left its current state for all of us stalkers to enjoy?
And while Ann’s house is, of course, located directly behind the Pit, I am actually saving that location for a separate post.
On a side-note – I would like to send out a huge CONGRATULATIONS to the love of my life, Matt Lanter, who recently proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Angela Stacy. And while it really should have been me you proposed to, Matt, I guess I am just going to have to be the bigger person here! All kidding aside, here’s wishing you all the happiness in the world! 
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! 
Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here. And you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Sullivan Street Pit from Parks and Recreation is located at the southeast corner of Hazeltine Avenue and Collins Street in Van Nuys. Ann Perkins’ house is located directly behind the Pit at 5655 Murietta Avenue in Van Nuys.
A few months ago, fellow stalker Brandon (the very same stalker who tracked down the Skyline Residence from Crazy, Stupid, Love., which I blogged about back in November) emailed me to ask for some help in locating the Craftsman-style abode where Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) lives on the television series Parks and Recreation. And while I had never actually seen the show, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, is a long-time fan and a few years back had sent me a list of several locales from it that he had managed to track down. Thankfully, Leslie’s house just so happened to be on that list and after emailing the address to Brandon, I decided that I should check the place out for myself. Well, let me tell you, once I laid eyes on it, I absolutely fell in love and decided that this stalker seriously needed to start watching some P&R, which I finally sat down to do last month. And I have to say that I am really enjoying it! I am only mid-way through Season 2 right now, but the series just seems to keep getting better and better with each episode and I love the fact that, thanks to Owen, I now have a whole slew of locations from it to stalk. Whoo hoo!
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As far as I know, Leslie’s house has only appeared once on Parks and Recreation (as I said, I am currently only mid-way through the second season) – in the Season 2 episode that was aptly titled “Leslie’s House”. In the episode, Leslie hosts a dinner party to impress her new boyfriend, Justin Anderson (aka Jen Aniston’s real life main squeeze, Justin Theroux), using the help of several Pawnee Recreation Center teachers, which, in typical P&R fashion, leads to her getting called in for a disciplinary hearing on an abuse of power charge. As you can see below, the dwelling looks much the same in person as it did onscreen, minus the fake snow, of course. I find it quite ironic that producers chose to use the property to stand in for Leslie’s supposed Pawnee, Indiana-area residence, though, being that the Craftsman style of architecture is so quintessentially Southern Californian.
As you can see in these real life photographs of the home as compared to the screen captures below, the actual interior of the property (which is stunning!) was also used in the filming.
In real life, Leslie’s house is quite spectacular! The property, which was originally built in 1916, boasts 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, 2,374 square feet, and sits on a 0.30-acre plot of land.
The Grim Cheaper absolutely fell in love with the huge tree pictured below that drapes over the property and could not stop taking photographs of it. So picturesque!
As you can see below, producers had the home’s address number digitally changed from 2358 to 35 for the filming in what I am guessing was an effort to deter us stalkers. Thank goodness Owen is smarter than the average bear, though, and was able to find the place as I am not sure I would have been able to.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! 
And stay tuned for many more Parks and Recreation locales to come!
Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here. And you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Leslie’s house from Parks and Recreation is located at 2358 Highland Avenue in Altadena.
This stalker had a pretty amazing, but exhausting weekend (which included a fabulous trip to Disneyland – as well as a special preview of Cars Land – with my girl Miss Pinky Lovejoy, from the Thinking Pink blog) and I was unfortunately not able to get a blog done for today. But I will be back tomorrow with a whole new location – from Parks and Recreation, my new fave show. 
I hate to do this again, but because I spent most of yesterday as a reader at the annual Read-In at the school where my mom used to teach, I did not have time to write a new blog post for today. (The door decoration that the class I read for made for me is pictured above. Um, LOVE it! 
) I hope all of my fellow stalkers have a fabulous weekend, though, and I promise to be back on Monday with a whole new location!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
A few weeks ago, while doing research on Seward Johnson’s “Forever Marilyn” statue, which I blogged about yesterday, I came across a press release posted on the Visit Palm Springs website and just about passed out over the mention of a desert-area MM location that I had never before heard of! The press release stated, “Marilyn Monroe has many legendary ties to Palm Springs. To name a few, she was photographed and “discovered” by Johnny Hyde from the William Morris Agency at Charlie Farrell’s Racquet Club. She was also rumored to have frequented a Movie Colony estate with Joe DiMaggio, currently known as the Sand Acre Estate, and owned a 1950’s bungalow-style house in Las Palmas.” While I had stalked and blogged about both Charlie Farrell’s Racquet Club and Marilyn’s Las Palmas home, I had somehow never before even heard of the Sand Acre Estate! So I immediately added the place to my To-Stalk list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there this past Friday afternoon while visiting my parents in the desert.
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When we pulled up to the Sand Acre Estate, which is located in Palm Springs’ Movie Colony neighborhood (LOVE that name!), I was shocked to discover the sheer enormity of the place! As you can see below, it is absolutely gargantuan! And I was even more shocked to discover that the manse is located directly across the street from Cary Grant’s former desert home, which I stalked back in July of last year. How in the heck had I not known about this place??
The Sand Acre Estate, which is currently a vacation rental and special events venue, is surrounded by a tall stucco wall that is topped by even taller hedges making the place extremely private and hidden from view. The stalking gods were definitely smiling down upon us that day, though, because the front gate happened to be standing wide open when we arrived, affording us a tiny peek at the site’s magnificent grounds.
The 3,434-square-foot Spanish-style dwelling, which was originally built in 1933 and recently underwent a year-long restoration, boasts 5 bedrooms, 6 baths, exposed beam ceilings, a media room, a large gourmet kitchen, a carriage suite complete with its own bedroom, a tennis court, a pool and Jacuzzi, numerous en-suite wood-burning fireplaces, a gym, and a 1.02-acre corner plot of land.
As you can see below, the property also boasts some breathtaking views of the San Jacinto Mountains. You can check out some fabulous interior photographs of the home here.
The rumors of Marilyn and Joe vacationing at the Sand Acre Estate are, sadly, just that – rumors. Because there is nothing concrete to prove that the couple ever set foot on the premises, Larry Rener, who manages the property, is quoted as saying, “We go with the rumor.” The tower-shaped area pictured below is the room where Marilyn and Joe are purported to have stayed during their frequent visits. And while I am not sure what the starlet’s link to the property was, if one ever even existed, it is definitely easy to picture her vacationing there, unwinding by the pool with her new husband while protected from the prying eyes of the ever-present and hounding media. Besides Marilyn, the Sand Acre Estate also has another Hollywood connection – Linda Gray, Donna Mills, and Morgan Fairchild once posed for a photo shoot there for the cover story of Palm Springs Life magazine’s January 2009 issue.
And on a very exciting side-note – fellow stalker Lavonna texted me on Friday afternoon to let me know that my fan question for Colin Egglesfield on Extra had finally aired! Whoo hoo!
As you can see below, I had quite a bit of fun watching the filming, especially when Colin showed us his AMAZE-BALLS Tom Cruise impersonation. 
Big THANK YOU to Lavonna for telling me about the episode and for making the screen captures that appear in this post.
Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here. And you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Sand Acre Estate, where Marilyn Monroe is said to have vacationed with Joe DiMaggio, is located at 953 North Avenida Palmas in the Movie Colony neighborhood of Palm Springs. You can visit the property’s vacation rental website here. Cary Grant’s former desert home is located right across the street at 928 North Avenida Palmas.
Back in December the Grim Cheaper’s boss, while on vacation in Chicago, spotted a huge statue of my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe towering above the Michigan Avenue skyline and texted me a picture of it. Well, as you can imagine, I just about lost my mind upon seeing the looming bronze effigy and told the GC that we had to get out to the Windy City as soon as possible to stalk it. As it turns out, though, Marilyn ended up coming to me! A few months after learning of the installation, which is named “Forever Marilyn”, fellow stalker Lavonna informed me that it was actually being relocated to the West Coast – to the corner of Tahquitz Canyon Way and Palm Canyon Drive in downtown Palm Springs to be exact! So I immediately called up my parents, who live in the Coachella Valley, and told them to keep me abreast of the bombshell’s status so that I could stalk it as soon it was installed, which, thankfully, did not take long. “Forever Marilyn” was finally unveiled last Thursday evening and I dragged the GC right on out to the desert to see it the very next day.
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“Forever Marilyn” was originally constructed in 1996 by American-realist sculptor Seward Johnson as part of his ICONS REVISTED series. The design was based upon the famous 1954 photograph of the starlet taken by Bruno Bernard, aka Bernard of Hollywood, during the filming of The Seven Year Itch’s iconic subway grate scene (the location of which I blogged about way back in June 2008). The statue did not make its debut until 15 years after its inception, though, when, on July 15th, 2011, it was unveiled as a temporary installation in the middle of Chicago’s Pioneer Court. Of the work, the now 82-year-old Seward states, “In this series, ICONS REVISTED, I am trying to discover what makes an image stay with us; become something more than its one moment in time. Marilyn has come to represent beauty, and the white dress blowing up around her is a type of teasing sensuality. There is something about her pose: the exuberance for life without inhibition, which is quintessentially American. It expresses an uninhibited sense of our own vibrancy.” Because The Seven Year Itch was the first MM movie that I ever saw, the image of the starlet trying to hold down her billowing dress has always been one that I’ve held extremely close to my heart. As photographer Mark Anderson asked in the October 2008 issue of Vanity Fair, “Who ever forgets the first time they saw Marilyn Monroe?” So true!
“Forever Marilyn”, which was constructed entirely out of bronze and stainless steel, measures 26 feet tall, 17 feet wide and weighs a whopping 34,300 pounds. It is owned by The Sculpture Foundation, Inc., an educational organization that provides public exhibitions and works of art to various communities around the globe.
Earlier this year, it was decided that the Coachella Valley would be “Forever Marilyn’s” next temporary stop and, on May 7th, a crew of six dedicated men began the dismantling process before the blonde bombshell embarked upon the long journey to her new home. (You can check out some fabulous photographs of her cross-country drive here.) Of the move, Seward said, “I am very pleased that Marilyn will be on view in Palm Springs. It was, after all, a location of her own choosing, and I assume she was drawn to the beauty and stillness of the landscape.”
As you can see here, the positioning of “Forever Marilyn” in relation to the skyscrapers of downtown Chicago was quite deceiving and made the statue appear to be much taller than it actually is. As the GC and I made our way down South Palm Canyon Drive towards the sculpture last Friday afternoon, I kept expecting to see it towering over the short one- and two-story buildings that make up Palm Springs. When we finally did come upon the icon, I was quite shocked as she is much shorter than her Chicago surroundings made her appear. Don’t get me wrong, “Forever Marilyn” is HUGE, just not as huge as I had originally anticipated.
“Forever Marilyn” is honestly one of the coolest works of art that I have ever seen in my entire life and I was literally pinching myself the whole time I was stalking it. I have a feeling that I will be making regular pilgrimages to see it when visiting my parents in the desert over the next year.
I am absolutely IN LOVE with the photograph below that the GC took of “Forever Marilyn”. I think it is can’t-take-my-eyes-off-it stunning and if we had any blank wall space left in our apartment, I would so have it blown up and framed.
I would be remiss in my blogging duties if I did not mention here that located directly across the street from “Forever Marilyn” is a statue of Lucille Ball that was designed in 1995 by the husband-and-wife sculpting team of Emmanuil and Janet Snitkovsky.
I actually stalked the statue, which is titled “Lucy Ricardo”, way back in May of last year for fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, whose mom is a HUGE Lucy fan, but I never got around to blogging about it.
While doing research for today’s post, I discovered that I had unknowingly stalked another of Seward Johnson’s statues while in San Diego back in 2008. The 25-foot-tall “Unconditional Surrender”, which is part of a 2005 series, recreates the infamous photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse in the middle of Times Square on August 14th, 1945 – the day that the end of World War II was announced. I saw the piece at Tuna Park Harbor, just outside of The Fish Market Seafood Restaurant, in downtown San Diego. It has since been relocated to New Jersey for restoration, but according to a May 28th, 2012 Los Angeles Times article, a replica of it is currently being created and will eventually be on permanent display at the seaside park.
Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here. And you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: ‘Forever Marilyn’ is located at the northwest corner of South Palm Canyon Drive and East Tahquitz Canyon Way in downtown Palm Springs. The statue will be on display through June 2013. You can visit the “Forever Marilyn” Facebook page here. The “Lucy Ricardo” statue can be found directly across the street from Marilyn on the northeast corner of South Palm Canyon Drive and East Tahquitz Canyon Way, in front of The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.
I will be taking today and tomorrow off for Memorial Day, but will be back on Wednesday with a whole new location. I hope all of my fellow stalkers had a fabulous three-day weekend! 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂