Be sure to read my latest post for L.A.mag.com today, about the Olivia Pope & Associates offices from Scandal. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours. (On a side-note – I wrote this article several weeks ago, before I became disillusioned with the show.)
My buddy, fellow stalker Owen of the When Write Is Wrong blog, is a huge Jennifer Love Hewitt fan. Like huge. He is also a fan of filming locations and, over the years, has managed to track down the vast majority of locales featured in his fave JLH movie, 1998’s Can’t Hardly Wait. One that had eluded him for some time, though, was the convenience store where Kenny Fisher (Seth Green) shopped at the beginning of the flick. He recently got a tip from a crew member that the market was in Altadena and, after some Google Street View sleuthing, surmised that it was most likely the Ezzz Stop Food Store on Lake Avenue. He asked me to confirm his hunch by doing some recognizance of the shop’s interior the next time I was in town. I was able to stop by shortly thereafter and, sure enough, he was right!
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As luck would have it, the owner of the Ezzz Stop Food Store happened to be onsite while we were stalking the place and could not have been nicer.
Not only did he confirm that Can’t Hardly Wait had been filmed on the premises, but he also let us take all of the photographs of the place that we wanted.
In Can’t Hardly Wait, Ezzz Stop Food Store is where Kenny unveils his “love kit” to his friends, Homeboy #1 (Branden Williams) and Homeboy #2 (Robert Jayne). The owner told us that he had a blast during the filming and that all of the actors were hilarious, especially Seth Green. He loved watching them ad-lib and goof off between takes.
Most of the scene was shot on the eastern side of the store, opposite from where the cash registers are, in the area pictured below.
Though some changes have been made to the Ezzz Stop Food Store’s interior, portions of it still look exactly the same as they did onscreen, including the yellow and blue “ICE” signage pictured below.
The wood paneling that used to run above the refrigerators is also still intact . . .
. . . but has since been painted white, as you can kind of see in the photographs above and below.
The fridges themselves haven’t changed at all and even have the same white-stickered lettering pasted on them.
The super-nice owner also informed us that the shop next door, Lindsey’s Liquors, belonged to him, as well, and that it had been featured in an episode of Weeds.
I was pretty stoked upon hearing the name of the liquor store (for obvious reasons) and quickly posted a pic of it to Instagram with the caption, “I’ll consider it a personal affront if they don’t sell champagne.” Thankfully, they do. 
Lindsey’s Liquors was featured in the series finale of Weeds, Season 8’s “In Time: Part I,” in the scene in which Silas (Hunter Parrish) and his wife shopped for goats milk, among other things, before heading to visit his mom, Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker).
On a JLH side-note – Jerry Ferrara, one of my faves, shared a pretty amazing story about the actress recently on his Bad 4 Business podcast. It is definitely worth a listen. You can do so here.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Ezzz Food Stop, from Can’t Hardly Wait, is located at 2427 Lake Avenue in Altadena. Lindsey’s Liquors, from Weeds, is located next door at 878 East Mariposa Street.
For those who are unfamiliar with the area, Palm Springs is HOT in the summer. Well, it’s hot year-round, but in the summer it’s hot hot – like 115 most days. One nice consequence of that fact is that hotels drop their prices during the inclement months. My family loves to partake of the low rates with short staycations in various area hotels. Last week, we had the pleasure of checking into Triada Palm Springs. Though not a filming location, the place does have quite a few celebrity ties, so I figured it was most definitely blog-worthy.
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I was unfamiliar with Triada until my mom booked our recent stay and was under the assumption that it was newly-built. Upon checking in, I got to talking with the front desk clerk about the hotel’s history (as I am always apt to do) and was shocked to discover that the place has a ton of it! Though the property opened as Triada less than a year ago, its origins date back to the 1920s!
The man who checked us in turned out to be Triada’s sales manager and, prior to the hotel’s opening last November, he put together an extensive article on the site’s past, including its ties to Tinseltown. He lit up when I began asking for information (turns out he is just as big of a Hollywood history buff as I am) and even offered to give me a tour of the historic parts of the property. I, of course, took him up on that offer and was thrilled with what I learned.
The property now known as Triada was originally a private residence built between 1927 and 1929. Owned by a woman named Lucy Berry, it was the first home to be constructed in the Palm Springs Estates neighborhood. The dwelling was situated on the southeast corner of East Via Altamira and North Indian Canyon Drive, in the area where Triada’s Alma Building, which houses the hotel’s lobby, business center and restaurant, now stands.
It is thought that portions of the lobby (pictured below) may be original to Lucy’s house.
In 1934, Lucy sold her home to a venture capitalist named David Margolius, who planned to use it as a winter residence. It was not long before he changed course, though, and decided to capitalize on Palm Spring’s growing tourism industry by transforming the property into a hotel. He converted Lucy’s home into a small inn and then began purchasing the land surrounding it. By 1938, he had acquired the neighboring 1.4 acres and that same year began constructing a building and a courtyard, the design of which was reminiscent of his favorite city, Barcelona. Today, that building is Triada’s Mente Building (pictured below).
As you can see in the photograph below as compared to this picture from the book Palm Springs in Vintage Postcards, Mente looks almost exactly the same today as it did when it was originally built.
The archways pictured in this 1943 photograph are also part of the Mente Building. The side of the arches that appears in the historic image has since been covered over with shrubbery, so I was not able to snap a matching photo. The picture below is taken from the opposite direction, but it still shows how little of the archways has changed in the ensuing 72 years.
Margolius named his inn The Ambassador Apartment Hotel and it was opened to the public in 1939. It quickly became a success. You can check out some pictures of the place in those early days here, here and here. In 1947, Margolius added a swimming pool to the property, which you can see a photograph of here. Sadly, that pool has since been filled in and the Triada’s Corazon Building now stands in its place. The Corazon’s central courtyard (pictured below) is situated in pretty much the exact spot where the former pool was located.
In 1948, Margolius renamed the site The Ambassador Hotel. To accommodate his growing patronage in the years that followed, he expanded Lucy’s former residence by adding two large wings with guest rooms, the first in 1951 and the second in 1956.
Celebrities flocked to The Ambassador. Such luminaries as Tyrone Power, Lana Turner, Jimmy Durante, Esther Williams, and Italian opera singer Amelita Galli-Curci are all reported to have stayed there. It is said that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton trysted at the hotel on more than one occasion and typically did so in the Penthouse, aka Room 125, the entrance to which is pictured below.
Room 125 boasts its own private stairwell and entrance, which afforded the two the ultimate in privacy during their stays.
Howard Hughes preferred Room 312 in what is now the Mente Building. Since Triada took over, more than a few strange happenings have occurred in that particular suite. Apparently, shortly before opening, a photographer was set to snap some publicity shots of the hotel and several of the rooms, one of which was 312. The space was dressed prior to the shoot, but when the photographer stepped inside, he found that the never-been-used sheets had been removed from the bed, balled up and stashed in a corner. Perhaps Hughes enjoyed his time at The Ambassador so much that he chose to move in permanently in the afterlife – and bring his eccentric habits with him.
After Margolius’ death in 1969, his widow sold the 34-room hotel to an Italian-American family. They sold the property just a few years later, in 1972, to Sue Ladd, actor Alan Ladd’s widow. She renamed the site Alan Ladd’s Spanish Inn and during her tenure as owner, many of Ladd’s Hollywood friends and contemporaries stayed on the premises.
Sue passed away in 1982 and her estate sold the hotel five years later. The new owners renamed the place The Spanish Inn and set about remodeling it, but wound up going bankrupt less than a year after acquiring the property and Ladd’s estate subsequently foreclosed. The Spanish Inn was eventually shuttered in 1994 and, outside of a few attempts at renovating it, sat abandoned for the two decades that followed. When I found this information out, I just about fell over. A long abandoned property in Palm Springs that I never had the chance to view? How is that possible? I did just discover and stalk a different abandoned hotel in the area that I will be blogging about during my Haunted Hollywood postings, though, so I guess there’s that. I am already counting down the days until those posts! Why can’t it be October yet?
After being bought, sold and partially renovated several times, The Spanish Inn was finally purchased by Pacifica Host Hotels in 2012. The company completed the many different renovations that had been started on the site, all the while preserving as much of its history as possible. As you can see in the aerial images pictured below, the first of which was taken in 2000 by architect James A. McBride II, the site still looks very much the same today as it did prior to the remodels. Notice that in the 2011 aerial view, the second pool in the courtyard of the Mente Building had yet to be built. (Bing Maps does not currently provide a more recent aerial image, unfortunately.)
Triada, which is Spanish for “three related parts,” opened its doors on November 22nd, 2014. The Marriott Autograph Hotel boasts three wings, 56 rooms, two pools, a hot tub, a restaurant, two bars, and a gym. Its motto is “exactly like nothing else” and my family found that absolutely to be true. Triada is an incredibly special place and we loved our time there. Not only is the property gorgeous and peaceful and the rooms fabulously modern and sleek (I could happily live in one of the rooms!), but the customer service is bar none. We are already eager to return. In fact, my dad is currently making plans to do so. I, for one, can’t wait.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Triada Palm Springs is located at 640 North Indian Canyon Drive in Palm Springs. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.
Don’t forget to check out today’s post for L.A.mag.com about Clifton’s Cafeteria’s many appearances onscreen. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Anyone who has ever driven on the I-10 Freeway east of downtown Los Angeles has most likely noticed the A-line, red-roofed building that towers over the skyline to the south. That building is Bob Hope Patriotic Hall. I have passed by it hundreds of times and have always wanted to venture inside. A couple of weeks ago, while on our way back to the desert, the Grim Cheaper and I finally did. Though the Bob Hope Patriotic Hall website says that the property is open to the public, that is actually no longer the case. When the security guard manning the door saw my disappointment upon hearing this news, he took pity on us and allowed us to tour the lobby area. I am so thankful that he did because the space is nothing short of spectacular.
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Construction on the 85,000-square-foot building, which was originally named “Patriotic Hall,” began in 1925 and was completed in 1926. The ten-story Italian Renaissance/Romanesque-style site was designed by the Allied Architects Association and was the tallest building in Los Angeles at the time of its inception.
In late 2004, the structure, which is comprised of offices, a gymnasium, locker rooms, dining rooms, meeting spaces, ballrooms and an auditorium, was renamed Bob Hope Patriotic Hall in honor of the legendary comedian.
The property went through an extensive, $45-million, 7-year restoration process beginning in 2006 and the result is pretty darn amazing. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the ornate plaster ceiling.
Sadly, we were not able to venture upstairs to the upper levels of the building, but you can check out photographs of some of those areas here.
Bob Hope Patriotic Hall has been used in hundreds of productions over the years. Most famously, it was in the building’s Nimitz Room that Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals) auditioned for the Pittsburgh Dance and Repertory Company in 1983’s Flashdance.
That same room stood in for the Basil St. Mosley School of Dance in The Wedding Planner.
In 1986’s Back to School, Thornton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) took his oral exams in another of the Patriotic Hall’s ballrooms.
The property’s lobby and a meeting room appeared in 1988’s Stand and Deliver, in the scene in which Jaime Escalante (Edward James Olmos) confronts the Educational Testing Service about his students’ AP Calculus test scores.
Bob Hope Patriotic Hall’s tenth-floor gym appeared in Patches O’Houlihan’s (Hank Azaria) informational video about dodgeball in the 2004 comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.
And while many sources say that the iconic opening scene from Patton, in which General George S. Patton Jr. (George C. Scott) delivered his famous Speech to the Third Army, was shot in the hall’s auditorium, I do not believe that information to be correct. Because only a large American flag and portions of a curtain were shown in the background of the scene, I was fairly certain upon watching that it was shot on a set. Then while researching this post, I came across an article titled The Photography of PATTON by George J. Mitchel that states that the scene was lensed at Sevilla Studios in Spain. Because there is so little to go on with this one, I cannot say for certain either way, but my best guess is that Mitchel is correct.
We did get to tour the auditorium while visiting the Hall and, though my pictures don’t do it justice, the space is absolutely gorgeous.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Bob Hope Patriotic Hall, from Flashdance, is located at 1816 South Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles. The building is currently only open to veterans.
Be sure to check out my latest post for L.A.mag.com about the Cohen mansion from The O.C. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
My parents surprised us by booking a little poolside family getaway for the week, so I will not have any new posts this week aside from my usual Los Angeles magazine column on Thursday (it’s a really exciting one – I’m telling the story of my favorite only-in-L.A. moment!). I will be laptoping it by the pool for most of the week as I have three articles due for Discover Los Angeles, so be looking for those in the near future as well. In the meantime, I hope all of my fellow stalkers have a fabulous week.
I would like to wish a very happy Labor Day to all of my fellow stalkers! I hope everyone is enjoying a fabulous three-day weekend with loved ones.
Don’t forget to read my latest post for L.A.mag.com about the Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round from Teen Witch. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Be sure to check out a recent interview I did with Occidental magazine about the filming of Clueless. There’s even a locations quiz at the end! You can read The Clueless Guide to Occidental College here and The Ultimate Guide to Clueless Movie Locations in Los Angeles here (Part II is here), both of which are mentioned in the interview.
