Be sure to read today’s post for L.A.mag.com, about the new movie Tangerine. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Year: 2015
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The “Black-ish” House
My good friend/fellow stalker Lavonna is obsessed with the show Black-ish. Von was supposed to fly out to L.A. for a visit along with our friends Kim and Katie this past June, but ended up not being able to. So in honor of her, during our trip we all went to stalk the home where the Johnson family – Dre (Anthony Anderson), Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross), Zoey (Yara Shahidi), Andre (Marcus Scribner), Jack (Miles Brown) and Diane (Marsai Martin) – lives on the ABC series.
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I found the Johnson residence thanks to Geoff from the 90210Locations website. He has a whole page dedicated to Black-ish locales on his site.
In real life, the two-story home, which was originally built in 1946, boasts 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, 4,820 square feet, and a 0.39-acre plot of land.
As you can see below, the dwelling looks much the same in person as it does on Black-ish.
The home is very picturesque and it is not at all hard to see how it came to be chosen for the series.
I have only seen a couple of episodes of Black-ish, but the few times I have watched I have been struck by its many similarities to Modern Family. More specifically, I have been struck by the Johnson family’s similarity to the Dunphy family. Both families have ditzy teenage daughters who pen popular fashion websites – on Black-ish, that daughter is Zoey; on MF it’s Haley (Sarah Hyland). (Well, truth be told, Haley pens a fashion blog, while Zoey runs her own YouTube channel about makeup, but similar enough.) Each family also has a no-so-bright son – on Black-ish it’s Andre; on Modern Family it’s Luke (Nolan Gould). The Dunphys and Johnsons also each have a smart daughter – Alex (Ariel Winter) on MF, Diane on Black-ish. Both series also have a parent obsessed with Halloween – on Black-ish, it’s Dre; on Modern Family, it’s Claire (Julie Bowen). Most striking of all, though, to me at least, are the aesthetic similarities of the two families’ homes. While the residences certainly have their differences, their overall look is very much the same.
Even the two families’ stairwells look extremely similar.
Interestingly, a different residence was used as the Johnson family’s home in Black-ish’s pilot episode – a residence that should look familiar to my fellow stalkers.
It is the same house that was used as the home of Nora Walker (Sally Field) on Brothers & Sisters.
One thing that I am not sure about is the inside of the Johnson home. While interiors are currently lensed on a set at ABC Studios in Burbank, I am unsure if that set was used for the pilot episode or if the pilot was filmed inside of the Brothers & Sisters house or another house altogether. Typically, when a pilot is shot, interiors are filmed at real life locations. Then if a series gets picked up, a set based on those real life interiors is built on a soundstage. In the case of Black-ish, though, very little of the inside of the Johnson home changed from the pilot episode (pictured below) to the second episode, which leads me to believe that a set was used from the very beginning.
On a side-note – The GC and I just became obsessed with Scandal. And I do mean obsessed. Our DVR is over 40% full right now due to the fact that our currently-airing nightly watches are being left untouched. Since viewing the Scandal pilot two weeks ago, we haven’t been able to watch anything else. We are mid-way through Season 3 right now and are still loving every minute of it. I’ve, of course, been researching the show’s filming locations like mad and, while doing so, came across this amazing blog about Scandal’s sets written by a member of the set department. If you are a fan of the series, it is definitely worth checking out.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for finding this location.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Johnson house from Black-ish is located at 4175 Stansbury Avenue in Sherman Oaks. The home used in the pilot episode can be found at 1640 Lombardy Road in Pasadena.
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That Pink Door
I have yet to really hop aboard the Pinterest bandwagon, but I know I’m in the minority on that one. Those who are Pinterest-philes are most definitely familiar with what has come to be known as “That Pink Door.” That Pink Door is actually the brightly-hued front door of a residence in the Indian Canyons neighborhood of Palm Springs. The home also pops up regularly on Instagram (do a search for #thatpinkdoor and you’ll be inundated with blush-colored images) as well as on countless fashion blogs, which is how I came to discover it. I have long been obsessed with fashion blogger Julia Engel, of Gal Meets Glam. Back in May, Julia, her BFF Jordan Jones and their friend Vero Suh visited Palm Springs for what they dubbed a “Best Bebs Weekend.” While in town, they snapped some photos at That Pink Door. When I saw the pics pop up on Julia, Jordan and Vero’s respective websites, as well as the Style Me Pretty website, a few weeks later, I became enamored of the place – and was shocked that I had never heard of it before. So I immediately added it to my To-Stalk list and finally made it over there last week.
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I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I totally stalked Julia while she was in town. I follow her on Snapchat (@galmeetsglam) and could tell from one of her videos that she was eating at Norma’s at the Parker Palm Springs. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there in the hopes of getting a pic with her. As it turns out, Julia could not have been nicer! Jordan and Vero were incredibly sweet, as well, and we all wound up chatting for a good ten minutes. I also ended up later purchasing the romper that Julia had on when we met, much to the GC’s chagrin. As I said, I am obsessed! I just think she’s adorable and has such a fabulous and unique fashion sense. If you haven’t checked out her website before, you definitely should! But I digress.
The That Pink Door residence is absolutely massive in person, much larger than I expected it to be.
The post and beam-style home was originally built in 1968 and boasts four bedrooms, five baths, 5,310 square feet and a 0.57-acre plot of land.
The pad’s pink door came courtesy of interior designer Moises Esquenazi, who purchased the residence with his partner, Bryan Graybill, in 2004. At the time, the property was unkempt, outdated and begging for a remodel. The two quickly began redesigning the space into a mid-century modern dream home with such features as glass walls, two fireplaces, a billiard room with a sunken bar, a 75-foot pool with an inlaid tanning shelf, a 12-person spa, two outdoor bars, three fire pits, and an outdoor movie theatre. You can check out what the interior of the home looks like here. While pretty, I had hoped there would be a lot more pink.
The home’s cherry on top, of course, is the pastel pink front door. While Moises and Bryan sold the pad for a whopping $1,820,000 in 2008, the new owners have, thankfully, not touched the color of the door.
The residence has won many accolades, including being featured as one of the “Best Homes in America” in the 25th Anniversary issue of Metropolitan Home magazine. Palm Springs Life also published a piece on it in November 2006. And while the property is said to have been featured on an HGTV program, for the life of me I cannot figure out which program. If anyone happens to know, please fill me in.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: “That Pink Door” is located at 1100 East Sierra Way in the Indian Canyon area of Palm Springs.
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The Den from “Sex and the City”
It goes without saying that I have a tendency to obsess on things (that fact should be apparent to even my site’s most casual visitors). Recently, I found myself obsessing over two locations featured in the L.A.-based Season 3 episode of Sex and the City titled “Sex and Another City.” The first locale I was itching to find was the coffee shop where Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) met up with her old friend “Letterman Lew” (Sam Seder). The second was the steakhouse where the two later had dinner. I wound up finding both thanks to Sam Seder. In late April, I tweeted the actor to see if he by chance remembered where the scenes had been filmed and he tweeted me back almost immediately with an answer. He informed me that the steakhouse was Musso and Frank Grill in Hollywood (which I blogged about here) and, while he didn’t remember the name of the coffee shop, he did recall that it was located on Sunset Boulevard near The Standard hotel. So I immediately got to cyber-stalking and fairly quickly found the place.
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I managed to track the location down thanks to a set of tall, thin paned windows that was visible behind Lew in the episode. The windows were unusual and, from the cars speeding by in the background, obviously faced Sunset Boulevard. So, using Google Street View (which is HORRIBLE in its latest incarnation – don’t get me started!), I began perusing the Strip for those windows, starting at The Standard and working my way east.
I wound up spotting them at 8226 Sunset Boulevard, just one and a half blocks away from the hotel.
The site currently houses a restaurant named The Den, but one quick Google search of “8226 Sunset Boulevard” and “coffee shop” led me to this June 1999 Los Angeles Times article about Coffee House, which occupied the space from 1999 to 2003. Eureka! I tweeted my findings to Sam and he confirmed that I had the right spot. So I ran right out to stalk it a couple of weeks ago while in L.A. with my friends Kim and Katie (that’s Katie in the first image pictured in this post).
I was floored to discover upon arriving that a sign reading “Coffee House” was still installed on the front of the eatery.
Coffee House originally opened in May 1999, but founder Brent Bolthouse (yes, the same Brent Bolthouse from The Hills) first began the endeavor of establishing a 24-hour coffee shop on the Sunset Strip in 1995. He secured the location – a two-story cottage-like structure originally built in 1923 that once housed the infamous Fifth Estate coffee shop – easily enough, but converting it into what he had envisioned proved troublesome. Bolthouse, who also started the popular clubs Opium Den and Babylon, even wound up being sued by his partners at one point during the transition.
When it did finally open, Coffee House quickly proved popular with the Hollywood set, which makes sense being that Christian Slater, Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz, producer Andy Gould and celebrity hairstylist Jonathan Antin all had a stake in the place. Just a few of the stars who hung out there included Robert Downey Jr., Balthazar Getty, Tobey Maguire, Britney Spears, Anthony Kiedis, Paris Hilton and members of the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync. Leonardo DiCaprio was said to have been so fond of the place that he visited daily!
The 1999 Los Angeles Times article described Coffee House as “a cross between a French country restaurant and an English cottage” with a large outdoor patio “fenced off by tree branches.” The place sounds as if it was idyllic, not to mention right up my alley! Lattes, a tree-lined outdoor patio AND Leonardo DiCaprio? If only I had known about it before it was shuttered in 2003!
After Coffee House closed its doors, the space operated first as Wacky Waffles and then as Hadaka Sushi. In 2009, restaurateur Michael Gans opened The Den at the site. While the restaurant looks adorable and charming, and the menu appears to be quite amazing – mac & cheese, fried chicken sandwiches, German pretzels, deviled eggs, wild mushroom and goat cheese flatbread – um, count me in – unfortunately, it was closed when we arrived so we could not venture inside. I was able to snap the photos below through the front windows, though.
In “Sex and Another City,” Coffee House masked as “The Flowing Tree,” a New Age café that according to Lew “is known for its green tea infusions.”
While some minor elements, like the windows, remain the same, sadly the space is virtually unrecognizable from its onscreen appearance.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Den, aka the former Coffee House from Sex and the City, is located at 8226 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. You can visit The Den’s official website here. The restaurant is open each Monday through Friday from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m., each Saturday from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m., and each Sunday from 12 p.m. to 2 a.m.
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The Bates Motel
Today’s location would be better suited for a Haunted Hollywood post, but because it is set to be torn down by the end of the year, I figured time was of the essence. While spending the week in L.A. last month with my good buddies Kim and Katie (that’s Katie pictured above), a friend named Becky mentioned that I should stalk the abandoned Sunset Pacific Motel in Silver Lake. The property is more commonly known as the “Bates Motel” thanks to both the fact that it sits at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Bates Avenue and that it has been in a decrepit state for decades. The 3-story, 37-room structure was recently painted white as part of a temporary art exhibit, which only serves to make it all the more eerie. Becky thought I would enjoy seeing it in person and she was right! The place did not disappoint!
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From what I can gather from the Historic Aerials website, the Sunset Pacific Motel was built sometime between 1954 and 1964. While the property provided a home away from home for tourists in its early years (it even had a pool that has since been cemented over), by the 1980s it had fallen into a serious state of disrepair and had become a haven for drug use, prostitution and violent crime. A 2002 Los Angeles Times article described it as “one of the city’s most dangerous properties.” Concerned neighbors had been trying to get the facility shuttered for decades, to no avail. Finally, in December 2000, longtime owner Edward Eng was charged with two dozen housing code violations at the property and was eventually forced to close it in March 2002 when the city revoked his operating license. The Sunset Pacific Motel has sat boarded up ever since. You can check out what it looked like during its boarded up phase here and here.
In September 2009, the Board of Commissioners of the Department of Building and Safety voted to raze the motel. Before the demolition took place, though, the site was purchased by Frost/Chaddock Developers with the intent of building a large mixed-use project on the site. Those plans have met with some opposition, though, and while on hold, Frost/Chaddock decided to allow French artist Vincent Lamouroux to paint the property as a temporary art instillation.
In mid-April, Lamouroux began his instillation which he titled Projection. He and his crew used sprayers and hoses to coat every square inch of the Sunset Pacific Motel with an eco-friendly lime wash.
Lamouroux also painted the back of the motel’s billboard;
its sign;
and its palm trees.
It really is a sight to see!
The lime wash will fade over time (it has already begun to disappear from the palm trees) and the motel is slated to be demolished at the end of the year, so if you would like to see it in all of its blindingly white glory, I would get over there as soon as possible.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Becky for telling me about this location!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Sunset Pacific Motel, aka the Bates Motel, is located at 4301 Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake.
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New “L.A.” Mag Post – About the Gamble House from “Back to the Future”
Don’t forget to check out today’s post for L.A.mag.com, about the Gamble House from Back to the Future. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
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The “Lizzie McGuire” House
Though I am unabashedly a tween at heart, one show that I never got into was Lizzie McGuire. I have always liked Hilary Duff, so I am unsure of why exactly the show remained off my radar. Regardless, I was thrilled when a fellow stalker named Gina posted a comment on my site recently letting me know that she had tracked down the house where the titular character lived with her family on the Disney series. I stopped by to stalk it two weeks ago while my friends Kim and Katie were in town visiting from Kentucky (that’s Katie in the photo above).
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Oddly, while I had heard that the house appeared regularly in establishing shots on Lizzie McGuire, I scanned through several episodes before writing this post and only ever spotted it in the Season 1 episode titled “Pool Party.” (“Pool Party” was the series pilot, but, for whatever reason, was not the first episode to be aired.) As you can see below, the residence looks very much the same today as it did when “Pool Party” was shot in 2001.
The real life interior of the home was also used in “Pool Party.” You can check out some photographs of that interior here.
Once the series got picked up, a set of the interior of the McGuire home (one that did not match the interior seen in the pilot) was built inside of a soundstage for all subsequent filming.
In real life, the Lizzie McGuire house, which was built in 1990, boasts 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, 4,466 square feet, and a 0.22-acre plot of land.
The interior of the same pad was also used as the interior of the Burnham home, where Lester (Kevin Spacey), Carolyn (Annette Bening) and Jane (Thora Birch) lived, in American Beauty.
For exterior shots of the Burnham home, producers used the “Griswold House” at Warner Bros. Ranch, so named because it also masked as the Griswold family’s residence in Christmas Vacation.
The Griswold house is regularly altered for film shoots and looks much different today than it did in either American Beauty or Christmas Vacation, as you can see below.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Gina for finding this location!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Lizzie McGuire house is located at 11388 Homedale Street in Brentwood.
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Juliette, Georgia from “Fried Green Tomatoes”
I have a very special post coming to you today – the first of its kind at IAMNOTASTALKER! Sara Johnson, one of my longtime readers, recently headed to Juliette, Georgia for an epic Fried Green Tomatoes stalking trip and was kind enough to write up her experiences to share with my fellow stalkers. So, without further ado, I present to you the first ever IAMNOTASTALKER guest post. Enjoy!
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We drove all night from New Port Richey, Florida to Juliette, Georgia and arrived at the The Old Mill Riverfront Cabins, where we were staying, at around 6 a.m. The first thing you see driving down to the cabins is the train tracks and the Whistle Stop Café on your right and the Juliette Grist Mill on your left. As you pull up to the cabins and shut the engine off you can hear the river just down below. Just a few minutes later, you hear a train coming by with the whistle blowing so close you could throw a rock at it. I close my eyes and I can imagine Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker) and Idgie Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson) throwing cans of food off the train to the homeless people.
First thing in the morning we walked over to downtown Juliette which is basically one small little road. The Whistle Stop Cafe wasn’t open yet, but some of the gift shops were starting to open and the tourists were already walking around taking pictures.
There is one small restaurant called Romeo’s in Juliette that was open for breakfast so we decided to stop in and eat. Ladonna, the owner of this restaurant, is also from California. Her father was the baker at a bakery called D’Eliso’s in Whittier and at 72 he is baking bread and muffins for Romeo’s in Juliette. The food there was amazing and the people so friendly that we came back a few times to eat.
This is the third time I have visited Juliette and one thing is for sure, everywhere you go you will meet somebody who has lived there their whole life. As my boyfriend, son and I were sitting talking, a gentleman, named Mark, at the next table overheard us and asked where we were from. We told him Tampa and he pointed to the yellow house across the street and proceeded to tell us that that was his grandmother’s house. Well, you know this opened the door for me to ask a ton of questions about the history of Juliette. He used to own the antique shop, which is now the Whistle Stop Cafe. He has lived in Juliette his whole life and still lives just up the road. He told us how the dam was built in 1920 and that they are currently trying to tear it down, but the town is fighting it. He remembered when the movie crew first showed up in town, looking around and asking questions. In fact, the restaurant where we were eating breakfast was the same place they used to feed to movie crew. The movie crew made the Whistle Stop Cafe the way it is today and part of the deal was the owner requested it be left that way after they were done filming. We were sitting across the street from the Sheriffs station and the Opry House, where they still have concerts once a month. Mark’s church donated some old pews to replace the shaky seats that used to be there.
He also told us the cabins where we were staying were originally made with parking spaces underneath for motorcycles. When we came back to the cabin and saw the space underneath it made total sense. I took some pictures with Mark with the thought that we would see him again before heading home. After all, it is a small town and I’m sure he is a regular at Romeo’s because everybody sure knew who he was.
After leaving Mark, we walked over to the Whistle Stop, which was still closed. The restaurant is only open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, but you can go around back to see Smokey Lonesome’s (Timothy Scott) house and the famous grill.
In a cement slab right by the grill you will find the words, “Here lies Frank Bennett of Valdosta. ‘The secret was in the sauce’ and here!” You can almost smell the BBQ cooking just standing there.
The whole time you are in Juliette, the trains go by often. After leaving the small town we walked back to the cabin along the train tracks and found several railroad spikes, which I collected to bring home. I have had people ask me to bring a rock from Juliette, but I think the railroad spikes are much better souvenirs.
We decided to take a walk up the river towards the dam that Buddy Threadgoode (Chris O’Donnell), Idgie and Ruth walked across right before Buddy got hit by the train. If you ever decide to do this, make sure you wear water shoes because the rocks hurt to walk on. It really is a beautiful sight to see and looks exactly as it did in the movie. You can also see where Idgie sat fishing when Ruth was trying to make friends with her right before they jumped into the train car and threw food to the homeless, and where Idgie sat by the fire with Big George (Stan Shaw) right after Buddy died.
The one thing we had to do was walk across the dam like they did in the movie and I figured out that the water was shallow enough for me to carry my camera to take pics. The view from the dam with the Juliette Mill in the background is a beautiful sight to see.
That night my boyfriend and I took all four kids to eat at the Whistle Stop Café. It’s a pretty busy place on a Saturday night with locals and some tourists. The menu offers good ol’ southern cooking with all the fixin’s, like mac and cheese, greens, stewed tomatoes, creamed corn, and fried okra. I had fried chicken and it was so yummy. My boyfriend Alex had the BBQ pulled pork (“The secret’s in the sauce!”), and, for sure, we had fried green tomatoes as an appetizer.
The inside of the cafe looks almost exactly as it did in the movie, except that the booths are situated a little differently now. After dinner we took all the kids around back to take pics of the BBQ pit and Smokey Lonesome’s house.
After dinner, we went back to the cabins and I hung a sheet off the deck, pulled out my portable projector that I bought from Brookstone and we all sat and watched Fried Green Tomatoes with the trains going by in the background – the perfect way to end to a perfect day in Juliette, Georgia.
Last but not least, we visited the Juliette United Methodist Church where Buddy’s funeral was held.
The sad part is that the Threadgoode house, the train tracks where Buddy was killed, and the club where Idgie and Ruth played poker are all pretty far away from Juliette. I really wanted to see the train tracks where Buddy got his foot stuck.
All in all, this was by far one of the best vacations I have been on. The people of Juliette are all very sweet. I also highly recommend the cabins where we stayed: Old Mill Riverfront Cabins. If you are a Fried Green Tomatoes addict like our family is please make sure you put this on your bucket list.
A huge, special THANK YOU to Sara for writing this amazing guest post!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Whistle Stop Café is located at 443 McCrackin Street in Juliette, Georgia. Romeo’s in Juliette Italian restaurant is located at 465 McCrackin. Juliette United Methodist Church is located at 69 McCrackin. The Old Mill Riverfront Cabins are located at 5543 Juliette Road. You can visit their Facebook page here. The Old Mill is located just south of downtown Juliette and the dam is located just due east of the mill.
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Happy Fourth!
I would like to wish a very happy Fourth of July to all of my fellow stalkers. I hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday weekend.
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New “L.A.” Mag Post – About the U.S. Bank Tower from “Independence Day”
Be sure to check out today’s post for L.A.mag.com, about the U.S. Bank Tower from Independence Day. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
