Year: 2017

The “Mama’s Family” Houses

I have dreamed of writing this post for so long! One of the locations I get asked about the most (I literally get emails and comments about it all the time!) is the house that portrayed Thelma Harper’s (Vicki Lawrence) residence during the first two seasons of Mama’s Family. For those who aren’t familiar with the series and its locales, three different dwellings were actually used to represent the Harper family home throughout the show’s six-year run. Two of them have long been well-documented online. I even blogged about the most recognizable of the three (pictured above) back in April 2009. The third, though, which was featured in the series’ original opening credits, as well as all Season 1 and 2 establishing shots, remained elusive. While I logged quite a few hours searching for it over the years, I never had any luck pinpointing it, largely due to the fact that the only video I could find of the initial opening was an extremely poor quality YouTube clip. Then, last week, I received a tweet from @RLXREI asking about the locale and I thought I should revisit the hunt. This time, luck was on my side. (As I mentioned in Monday’s post, the stalking gods have seriously been smiling down on me as of late.)

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The first thing I did this go round was look for a high quality version of the original opening and, lo and behold, found a fairly decent upload of the pilot episode on Dailymotion. Upon initially viewing the low quality credits, I believed Mama’s house was located in Los Angeles, most likely in Hancock Park and its environs. But as soon as I watched the higher-res version and saw the lack of fencing and general openness of Mama’s front yard, as well as of the neighboring residences, I knew that the property had to be somewhere outside of California. In a fortuitous move, I headed back over to the YouTube clip to see if any comments had been posted about the home. As it turns out, there were several – and my stomach caught in my throat when I saw that a user named “Kelly Frech” had responded to a query stating that she had grown up in one of the residences shown in the intro. Kelly was even kind enough to provide some location information, stating that filming took place on West 59th Street in Kansas City, Missouri.

Not knowing anything about Kansas City or where to begin searching on West 59th (which runs for miles!), I headed over to Google Maps, randomly dropped the little yellow Street View man into a spot on the road, and my mouth dropped. There, right before my eyes, was the Harper home! Though I had picked the spot arbitrarily, fate had led me right to the Mama’s Family house, which I am thrilled to finally be able to report is located at 18 West 59th Street in Kansas City, Missouri! Thank you, Kelly Frech! Amazingly, per the Street View imagery above and below, the residence looks exactly the same today as it did when Mama’s Family originally aired in 1983!

The other houses seen in the opening credits are located just up the road to the west.

Because Mama’s Family was lensed in L.A., cast and crew could not utilize the Kansas City house for on location shots. So they found a pad closer to home – at 675 South Oakland Avenue in Pasadena, to be exact – to stand in for it when called for in an episode. That house is pictured below. Oddly, it does not resemble the Missouri dwelling in the slightest, though it was typically only featured in tight shots, so not much of it was ever shown.

The Oakland Avenue residence appeared in a handful of Season 1 and 2 episodes, including “Mama Runs for Mayor: Part 1” (pictured above) and “Mama Buys a Car” (pictured below). In the latter, we get one of the only full shots of the home shown on the series.

Due to low ratings, Mama’s Family was cancelled in 1984, after a scant two seasons. That should have been the end of the story, but in an innovative move, producer Joe Hamilton decided to try reviving the series via first-run syndication two years later. The revamped show, complete with a new opening and a new Harper residence (pictured below), premiered on September 27th, 1986. It was a resounding success and went on to air 100 episodes over the course of four seasons before ending its series run in 1990.

The residence utilized during those final four seasons can be found at 1027 Montrose Avenue in South Pasadena.

Interestingly, Mama’s Family’s original opening was replaced with the new one in all of the Season 1 and 2 episodes that aired in syndication, which is why audiences are most familiar with the Montrose Avenue house and why many do not even realize that a different home was ever utilized.

The Montrose Ave. residence also appeared – or at least a portion of it did – as Lynda’s (P.J. Soles) home in the 1978 thriller Halloween. As you can see below, very little of the property was shown in the film.

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 house featured in the first two seasons of Mama’s Family is located at 18 West 59th Street in Kansas City, Missouri. The residence used in on location filming during those seasons can be found at 675 South Oakland Avenue in Pasadena. And the property featured in Seasons 3 through 6 (as well as in all syndicated episodes) is at 1027 Montrose Avenue in South Pasadena.

August 4, 2017
The Campbell House from “Soap”

Something must be in the water, because this has been the most fortuitous week I’ve ever had when it comes to stalking. Over the course of the past few days, not only have three of my most-wanted locations been found, but I was even granted access to the interior of one and, remarkably, it still looks exactly the same despite the fact that 27 years have passed since filming took place! A post on that spot is coming soon. Today though, I’m covering the Campbell family residence from Soap, which I have been obsessively trying to track down ever since a reader named Andrew reminded me of the 1977 ABC series in early March. And this past Friday, track it down, I did!

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Thanks to the general look of the Campbell home and the exterior steps leading from the sidewalk to its front porch, I had a fairly solid hunch that it could be found in the Hancock Park/Windsor Square area. Adding to my certainty was the fact that the Tate mansion from the series is located in Hancock Park (511 South Muirfield Road to be exact) and productions often tend to stick to the same vicinity when it comes to shooting locales. So I began the search at 511 South Muirfield and worked my way outward. While I came across a lot of houses with an extremely similar look (like a ridiculous amount – 1524 South Victoria Avenue, 359 North Ridgewood Place, and 367 North Van Ness Avenue, just to name a few) none of them was an exact match to the spot that Burt Campbell (Richard Mulligan), Mary Campbell (Cathryn Damon), Chuck Campbell (Jay Johnson), Jodie Dallas (Billy Crystal), and Danny Dallas (Tedd Wass) called home.

So I decided to revisit my Soap DVDs to see if any episodes provided additional clues and was thrilled to discover some shots of the Campbell house which offered a glimpse of the neighboring property, along with its gambrel-style roof – a design element that is not very common in Los Angeles. Optimistic it was the key to pinpointing the locale, I started scouring aerial views in the Hancock Park area for a gambrel roofline and it was not long before I came across one at 344 North Van Ness Avenue in Larchmont. When I dropped Google’s little yellow man down into Street View, I saw what I was fairly certain was the Campbell house next door at 338 North Van Ness! As it turns out, the place is located just 1.6 miles from the Tate mansion.

Besides the obvious matching facades and gambrel-roofed neighbor, I pinpointed a few additional elements of the Campbell home that lined up with the Van Ness dwelling. Both properties have seven steps leading from the sidewalk to the front porch. Also, the driveway of the Campbell house is located on its left hand side, while its neighbor’s driveway is located just to its right. The driveway schematic is the same at the Van Ness pad.

Though it is just barely visible in the screen capture below, the front porch portico of the Campbell home has crisscrossing woodwork on its lower half. The portico of the Van Ness residence also bears the same design.

And on the frame of the Campbell pad’s front door, a three-digit address number is visible. While the numbers are too blurry to make out, the fact that there are three digits parallels the address of the Van Ness home.

Though many elements of the property line up, there was no smoking gun, no definitive feature that told me it was definitely the right spot. And because there are SO many similar homes in the area, I was not 100% sure of my find – especially considering the fact that the neighboring residence with the gambrel roof was not at all visible on Street View due to a massive amount of foliage, so I could not compare it to my screen shots. Also casting doubt on my find was the driveway of the Van Ness home. On Soap, the Campbell driveway was flush with the front lawn, but the driveway of the Van Ness residence is graded. So I called on my friends/fellow stalkers Michael (you may remember him from his many guest posts) and Owen (from the When Write Is Wrong blog) for their opinions. They both wrote back telling me they thought I had the right spot. As Michael pointed out, not only do the trees that flank both homes’ front yards greatly resemble each other . . .

. . . but the angled lawn lining the curb of the driveway of the Campbells’ neighbor’s home matches that of the neighboring home on Van Ness.

Owen mentioned the front yard trees, as well, and also brought up the matching crenelated roof eaves and notches located at the top of the portico posts, all of which gave me 99.9% certainty that we had the correct locale.

Then, while stalking the home this past Sunday afternoon, I found my smoking gun! During my Soap scanning earlier in the week, I had noticed some sort of metal bar situated at the bottom of the windowpane next to the Campbells’ front door. I wasn’t sure what the bar was, but thought it looked a lot like a mail slot (though it seemed to be a rather odd place for one being so close to the ground). Well, I just about fell over when I arrived at the Van Ness residence and my eyes zeroed in on a metal bar in the exact same spot! As it turns out, it is a mail slot! Bingo!

I was also able to catch a glimpse of the neighboring home with the gambrel roof. Unfortunately, short of actually walking up the driveway, the photograph below is the best shot I could take of the the property’s side. As you can see, the roofline, the half-circle window just below it, the two rectangular windows on the second floor, the first floor overhang, and the lower level windows all match what was seen on Soap. Again, bingo!

A more close-up view of the house next door is pictured below.

I also noticed that the driveway of the Van Ness home had been completely redone since filming took place – it is now comprised of stone instead of cement – which makes the grading of it all the more plausible.

In real life, the Campbell home was originally built in 1920 and boasts 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, and 2,636 square feet of living space.

Only the exterior of it was utilized on Soap. The interior of the Campbell residence was a set built on a soundstage at Sunset Gower Studios, where the series was lensed.

I cannot express how exciting it was to finally be standing in front of the Campbell house and to see a place so ingrained in my childhood memories come to life.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to my friends/fellow stalkers Michael (aka guest poster extraordinaire) and Owen (from the When Write Is Wrong blog) for their help in verifying this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Campbell family home from Soap is located at 338 North Van Ness Avenue in Larchmont.

August 2, 2017
Carrie and Big’s Penthouse from the “Sex and the City” Movie

I know I am in the minority when I say that I like the 2008 Sex and the City movie. Was it the greatest flick ever? No. But I did enjoy it. Seeing it was like being with old friends again, friends I’d missed ever since the HBO television series went off the air in early 2004. The more I watch it, the more it grows on me. Though, again, I know I am in the minority. One aspect of the movie that audiences did pretty much unanimously adore was the exquisite penthouse apartment that Mr. Big (Chris Noth) purchased for longtime girlfriend Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). So last April, while visiting New York, I, of course, was all about stalking the Ziegler House, which was used for interior shots of the penthouse. And, oh, what an interior it was!

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Before I get to the Ziegler House, though, I thought I should mention 1010 Fifth Avenue, the Upper East Side building that served as the exterior of Carrie and Big’s penthouse. I covered the property in a brief post back in 2008, but, in the interest of being thorough, figured it would be appropriate to detail it once again here.

The 15-story prewar building was designed by real estate developer Frederick Fillmore French in 1928.

The Italian Renaissance-style property, which was converted to a co-op in 1979, looks much the same in person as it did onscreen.

Located across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the tony site is just the type of place I’d picture Mr. Big calling home. You can check out what a unit in the building looks like here.

1010 Fifth Avenue is also where Chuck Rhoades, Sr. (Jeffrey DeMunn) lives on the Showtime series Billions, though, as you can see below, the address is changed to “10101 Fifth Avenue” for filming.

Now back to the penthouse interior! As soon as Carrie and Big step over the threshold of 1010 Fifth, they are standing in the Ziegler House, located about 20 blocks south at 2 East 63rd Street. I first learned of the locale thanks to a reader named Allie, who wrote a comment on my 2008 post tipping me off about where the inside shots were lensed.

The historic residence was originally built in 1921 for William Ziegler, Jr., heir to the Royal Baking Powder Company fortune.

Designed by architect Frederick Sterner, the ornate 4-story, 75-foot wide pad is laid out with all of the rooms surrounding a central brick courtyard with a fountain. Along with said courtyard, the property boasts a grand entrance hall, two rear gardens, a library, a 25-foot by 40-foot living room, a formal dining room, a servants’ dining room, a massive kitchen that almost looks to be commercial-grade, two master suites (each with its own dressing room), and fireplaces galore. You can see some interior photos of the place here.

For whatever reason, Ziegler and his then wife, Gladys, only lived in the home for a year before moving out and putting it up for sale in 1925. The dwelling finally sold in 1929 to Norman Bailey Woolworth, of Woolworth five-and-dime fame. He owned the property for the next two decades before donating it to The New York Academy of Sciences, a scientific society that was originally founded in 1817.

NYAS put the house on the market in 2001 and it sold four years later to billionaire financier Leonard Blavatnik for $31.25 million. Blavatnik never moved in, though. Instead, the site, which today goes by the name “Academy Mansion,” is mainly used as a special events venue and for filming. While I really wish I could have taken a peek at the property’s stunning interior, I have to admit that the exterior is nothing to shake a stick at.

Seriously, the photo below looks like a postcard!

The Ziegler House popped up twice in Sex and the City. It first appeared in the beginning of the movie in the scene in which Carrie and Big go apartment-hunting with their real estate agent at 1010 Fifth. Sadly, the wrought iron and glass doors that Carrie and Big walk through in the scene cannot be seen from outside. You can check out a photo of them here, though.

The doors are actually located inside the home, behind the massive wooden entry doors pictured below.

In the scene, the Ziegler House’s palatial entrance hall masked as the lobby of 1010 Fifth. You can see a photo of what the entry hall looks like in real life here.

The elevator situated at the rear of the lobby was faked for the movie. In actuality, there is a doorway located in that area, as you can see here and here.

That doorway leads to the Ziegler House’s stunning living room, which actually looks more like a grand ballroom. It is that room that Carrie first sees upon entering the penthouse, causing her to exclaim, “Oh my God, I have died and gone to real estate heaven!” You can check out some pictures of the living room here, here, and here.

Carrie is next shown the penthouse’s rooftop terrace. In actuality, that space is the Ziegler House’s central courtyard and it is located on the ground floor of the property, not on the roof. You can see an image of it here.

The penthouse’s master bedroom was just a set built on a soundstage at Silvercup Studios in Queens, where much of the movie – and the television series – was lensed. You can check out images of the real Ziegler House bedrooms here, here, here, and here.

The Ziegler House was also utilized in the scene at the end of the movie in which Carrie returns to the penthouse to retrieve her never-been-worn $525 Manolos.

Though Carrie and Big have sold the penthouse by that point and broken up, when she sees him standing in the closet he built for her, all is forgiven, the two embrace, and Big gets down on one knee to propose. Heartbreakingly, Carrie’s spectacular custom closet was just a set. You can see what the Ziegler House’s dressing rooms look like here, here, and here. They’re not too shabby, either!

On a side-note – I actually have a version of the Timmy Woods Eiffel Tower purse that Carrie, ahem, carried in the scene in which she and Big first toured the penthouse! A dear and incredibly thoughtful friend named Marie gifted it to me for my birthday last year. I didn’t have it at the time I stalked the Ziegler House, sadly, otherwise I so would have posed with it outside!

The Ziegler House has been utilized in a couple of other productions besides Sex and the City. In the Season 2 episode of White Collar titled “Point Blank,” which aired in 2010, the property masqueraded as the Russian Heritage Museum.

For the shoot, the Ziegler House’s living room, aka Carrie’s piece of real estate heaven, was dressed as a gallery and looked considerably different than it did in SATC.

“Point Blank” also gave us a great view of the property’s terrace.

In the Season 2 episode of Person of Interest titled “Masquerade,” which aired in 2012, the Ziegler House portrayed New York’s Brazilian Consulate.

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 exterior of Carrie and Big’s penthouse from the Sex and the City movie is located at 1010 Fifth Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side. The film featured the building’s canopied main entrance, which can be found around the corner on East 82nd Street. The interior of Carrie and Big’s penthouse, aka the Ziegler House, aka Academy Mansion, is located at 2 East 63rd Street, also on New York’s Upper East Side.

July 31, 2017
Chasen’s Restaurant from “Enemy of the State”

I grew up about as far removed from Hollywood and the world of show business as you can get. But somehow I was familiar with Chasen’s, the West Hollywood restaurant that played stomping ground to the Tinseltown elite for close to six decades. I’m not sure where my knowledge of the famed eatery came from, but it is likely due to the countless celebrity biographies and magazines I read as a child and/or the fact that my mom has long been something of a chili connoisseur. For those not in the know, Chasen’s was noted as much for its legendary chili as it was for its acclaimed clientele. Sadly, neither my mom nor I ever got to dine at the restaurant. It was shuttered in 1995, long before we moved to Los Angeles. A portion of its Neo-colonial façade still stands, though (it’s now part of a Bristol Farms market), and I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk it way back in May 2013. Then I promptly forgot about it. Flash forward to last week. While researching Baltimore’s Hollywood Diner, I came across a mention that Enemy of the State had done some filming at the Charm City site. As it turns out, that information was incorrect, but I was thrilled to learn while looking into the matter that the 1998 thriller had actually shot a few scenes at Chasen’s. So I figured it was high time I blog about the place.

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Chasen’s was originally established in 1936 by New York-based Vaudeville performer Dave Chasen. Even the restaurant’s inception is steeped in Hollywood lore. As the story goes, Chasen came out to L.A. to act in a movie and began supplying his actor friends with his special homemade chili, just as he had done with his Vaudeville buddies back home. Depending on which version of the tale you believe, either director Frank Capra or New Yorker magazine editor Harold Ross suggested Chasen get out of show business and start a restaurant. He heeded the advice and on December 13th, 1936 opened the doors of Chasen’s Southern Pit. (Supposedly, Capra had to loan Dave his silverware from home for the opening.) The tiny BBQ joint, which consisted of a scant 6 tables and an 8-seat bar, was an instant hit with the show biz set, despite only serving spare ribs and Dave’s famous chili.

In 1942, Dave married a Sax Fifth Avenue beauty salon head named Maude Martin, whom pal Dom Amici had brought in to Chasen’s for dinner while she was in town on business. Dave was immediately smitten. Following the nuptials, Maude set about expanding both the restaurant’s menu and its square footage, employing renowned architect Paul Revere Williams to spruce up the interior with red leather booths and wood paneling. Williams was hired for a few additional expansions over the years as the restaurant’s popularity continued to grow.

For decades, Chasen’s was the place to see and be seen in Hollywood. Just a few of the legends who regularly dined on the premises include Alfred Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Walt Disney, Marilyn Monroe, Carol Burnett, Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable, and Jack Lemmon. Ronald and Nancy Reagan even got engaged there (the booth where Ronnie proposed is now on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library). And Elizabeth Taylor was so taken with Chasen’s chili that she reportedly had it flown to her regularly while she was on location in Rome filming Cleopatra. You can check out some photos of Chasen’s from its heyday here.

After Dave passed away in 1973, Maude ran the restaurant herself, greeting customers at the front door nightly. Chasen’s remained popular under Maude’s tutelage and attracted new celebrity clientele such as John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Elton John, Sharon Stone, Madonna, and Jack Nicholson. Aaron Spelling even hosted annual Christmas parties for the cast and crew of Beverly Hills, 90210 on the premises. Jason Priestley dedicated a chapter of his book, Jason Priestley: A Memoir, to one of the parties and you can see a photo of the December 18th, 1991 soiree here and the 1993 shindig here.

Sadly, Chasen’s started to see a decline in patronage during the ‘90s. Maude eventually sold the restaurant to a developer and its doors were officially closed on April 1st, 1995. Though there were plans to build a massive 2-story, 89,000-square-foot shopping center on the site, they never came to fruition largely due to neighborhood opposition. While development sat in limbo for the next few years, Chasen’s remained intact and was rented out for filming and private events. The project finally got underway in 1999 and the eatery’s interior décor, furnishings and restaurant equipment were auctioned off to the public in October of that year. The structure was razed shortly thereafter and a 29,000-square-foot Bristol Farms grocery store, which opened in 2000, was built in its place. Thankfully, the market’s owners decided to preserve a piece of the historic eatery. As I mentioned above, a portion of Chasen’s Beverly Boulevard façade was left intact during the demolition, was incorporated into the Bristol Farms exterior, and still stands today. That façade, with the restaurant’s former main entrance denoted with a pink arrow, is pictured below.

Most amazing of all, the Bristol Farms owners also re-created a section of Chasen’s interior inside the store. It serves as the market’s onsite restaurant.

Called Bristol Café, the space serves soups, salads, sandwiches, and other staples.

Oh, and Dave’s famous chili! For those who don’t live in the area, but want to know what all the fuss is about, you can make Chasen’s iconic chili at home – recipe here.

Though I never got to experience Chasen’s first-hand, Bristol Café was not a bad consolation prize thanks to the fact that the space boasts several of the original restaurant’s booths;

its knotty pine paneling and light sconces;

and doors. For anyone who hasn’t been, I highly recommend a visit.

In Enemy of the State, Chasen’s portrayed Pintero Social Club, the supposed Washington, D.C.-area Italian restaurant owned by mobster Paulie Pintero (Tom Sizemore). The eatery’s dining area was only shown briefly in the flick, though.

Most of the filming took place in Chasen’s kitchen, including the massive shoot-out at the end of the flick.

Only the interior of Chasen’s was utilized in the movie. Exterior scenes involving Pintero Social Club were filmed at a different location.

Enemy of the State is hardly the first production to feature Chasen’s. Columbo (Peter Falk) dines there – and, in a tongue-in-cheek moment, gets scoffed at by a waiter for ordering chili – in the Season 3 episode of Columbo titled “Publish or Perish,” which aired in 1974.

Simon Davenport (Henry Fonda) receives a telephone call from Harry Calder (George Segal) while he is at Chasen’s celebrating his wedding anniversary in the 1977 thriller Rollercoaster.

Bugsy Siegel (Warren Beatty) tells his wife he wants a divorce over diner at Chasen’s in the 1991 film Bugsy.

In the Season 3 episode of Melrose Place titled “Love Reeks,” which aired in 1994, Susan Madsen (Cheryl Pollak) has a job interview at Chasen’s.

Dede Truitt (Christina Ricci) and Matt Mateo (Ivan Sergei) meet up with Bill Truitt (Martin Donovan) and Lucia DeLury (Lisa Kudrow) for a highly awkward dinner at Chasen’s in the 1998 comedy The Opposite of Sex.

Even Bristol Farms is popular with location scouts. In the Season 2 episode of Six Feet Under titled “Back to the Garden,” which aired in 2002, David Fisher (Michael C. Hall) waits for Keith Charles (Mathew St. Patrick) at Bristol Café in a very brief scene.

And in the Season 3 episode of The Osbournes titled “Pain in the Neck,” which aired in 2004, Ozzy Osbourne shops at Bristol Farms with his assistant.

Chasen’s also appeared in the second episode of the 1989 television series Nightingales, but, unfortunately, I could not find a copy of the episode with which to make screen captures for this post.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Chasen’s restaurant, aka Pintero Social Club from Enemy of the State, was formerly located at 9039 Beverly Boulevard in West Hollywood. The site is now home to a Bristol Farms grocery store.

July 28, 2017
Patapsco Valley State Park from “Serial”

Patapsco State Park. Those three words, the name of a popular Baltimore-area recreation spot, shouldn’t be part of the lexicon of this California native. But in October 2014, the first season of the investigative podcast Serial was released and instantly became a worldwide phenomenon. Detailing the 1999 killing of high school student Hae Min Lee and the subsequent conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for the murder, the true crime tale elevated several local Charm City sites like Woodlawn High School, The Crab Crib, Leakin Park, the I-70 Park & Ride, and the Best Buy on Security Boulevard into pop culture landmarks. And yes, Patapsco State Park. Say the words and pretty much anyone at all interested in true crime will know exactly what you’re talking about. The Grim Cheaper and I were – and still are – obsessed with the Hae Min Lee case. So when we visited Maryland last fall, we, of course, hit up all of the locations mentioned in the podcast, which I found thanks to this extensive Google map. And when I say all of the locations, I do mean all of them – our Serial stalk was pretty much a two-day adventure. The locale that surprised me the most was Patapsco State Park, or Patapsco Valley State Park, which, for a time, figured prominently in the narrative of the state’s star witness in the case, Syed’s friend Jay Wilds.

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Patapsco Valley State Park was originally established in 1907 thanks to a local named John Glenn who donated 43 acres of his Catonsville land to the Maryland State Board of Forestry.

The site, which has the distinction of being Maryland’s first state park, was soon transformed into a public recreation area.

Expanded over the years, Patapsco State Park now boasts 16,043 acres of land spanning a 32-mile stretch of the Patapsco River.

The site features 8 different recreation areas, 200 miles of trails, waterfalls, a dam, bridges, and sweeping vistas, and plays host to such diverse activities as hiking, fishing, camping, canoeing, horseback riding, mountain biking, picnicking, and disc golfing (yeah, I had to look that last one up, too).

During the investigation of Hae Min Lee’s murder, detectives questioned Jay Wilds, aka “the criminal element of Woodlawn,” on several occasions. In his initial interviews, he recounted a timeline of the day Hae was killed. That timeline, though never really believable, has since been completely debunked by countless sources (including Jay himself), so in the end many locations thought to be significant to the case, including Patapsco State Park, don’t actually figure into it at all. But in Serial’s early episodes, the sites were mentioned and detailed so relentlessly that they will forever be tied to the story and, despite their current insignificance, remain popular places for listeners of the podcast to visit. As Jay originally told it, shortly after school got out on the afternoon of January 13th, 1999, Adnan had Hae drive him to the southeast parking lot of the Best Buy on Security Boulevard (the store’s actual address is 1701 Belmont Avenue), where he then strangled her. That parking lot is pictured below. Though it is located on the side of the store and is less populated than the front parking lot, it is completely ridiculous to think that anyone would choose it as a good spot to strangle someone, in broad daylight no less.

According to Jay, Syed then called him from the lot’s payphone (don’t even get me started on that damn payphone!) and asked him to come by the store to assist him in disposing of Hae’s car and body. Jay does so and the two then drive in tandem to the I-70 Park & Ride (that’s it below), where they temporarily dump Hae’s car.

After picking up some marijuana in the Forest Park area, per Jay’s story (which again, has been debunked), Jay and Adnan then ventured to Patapsco State Park to smoke and debrief about the murder.

I was absolutely shocked as we entered the park and I saw how beautiful it is. Being that Jay and Adnan supposedly discussed possibly burying Hae’s body on the premises, I was expecting something sinister, dark and deserted. Instead, what we found was lush, green, and picturesque. It’s idyllic. Not to mention populated. Despite the fact that the GC and I showed up shortly before dusk, Patapsco was chock full of people enjoying the great outdoors.

After seeing the park in person, I find it totally ludicrous that Jay claimed he and Adnan were actually considering burying a body there in broad daylight.

Though we hadn’t planned on it, the GC and I were so taken with Patapsco that we wound up spending quite a bit of time there, walking around exploring its beauty. I highly recommend a visit if you’re in the area. And bonus – the park is also a filming location!

At the end of the 2000 thriller The Blair Witch Project, Heather Donahue and Mike Williams (who both played characters named after themselves) sought shelter in a dilapidated old residence. That residence, known as the Griggs House in real life, was an actual home once located in Patapsco State Park, just west of Hernwood Road. Sadly, due to its decaying condition and the fact that it upset neighbors by regularly attracting throngs of both vandals and movie fans, the structure was demolished in the early 2000s.

The interior of the home also appeared in The Blair Witch Project. You can check out some photos of what the place looked like shortly after filming took place here. Oh, how I wish I could have seen it in person!

In the Season 2 episode of House of Cards titled “Chapter 18,” which aired in 2014, Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) attends a Civil War battle reenactment at Patapsco State Park. Specifically, filming took place near the McKeldin Recreation area.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Patapsco State Park, from Serial, is located at 8020 Baltimore National Pike in Ellicott City, Maryland.

July 26, 2017
Hollywood Diner from “Sleepless in Seattle”

Another day, another diner from a Meg Ryan movie! Unlike the Port Café, the Wilmington, California eatery that portrayed East Coast establishments in both When Harry Met Sally . . . and A Few Good Men, today’s locale can actually be found close to the Atlantic – though its name would have you believe otherwise. I’m talking about the Hollywood Diner in downtown Baltimore, which played the Capital Diner in the 1993 romcom Sleepless in Seattle. To discuss the restaurant’s history, though, we have to go back to the filming of a much earlier movie, 1982’s Diner.

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When writer/director Barry Levinson started pre-production on his semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama Diner, set in 1959 Baltimore, he sought out to find a coffee shop similar to the one he hung out in during his youth for the shoot. His former stomping ground, the Hilltop Diner, which largely inspired his story, had been turned into a liquor store years prior, so filming there was not a possibility. After failed negotiations with the owners of the Double T Diner in Catonsville, Maryland, Levinson wound up coming across a vacant plot of land in Charm City’s Canton neighborhood that overlooked the famed Domino Sugars sign and thought it would make the perfect setting for his movie. All he needed was a diner. So he headed to a diner graveyard in New Jersey and quickly set his sights on a streamlined silver structure that formerly served as Long Island’s Westbury Grill. He leased the 1954 café from the graveyard, transported it to the plot of land in Canton, and proceeded to shoot Diner there, dubbing the fictional eatery “Fells Point Diner.”

Both the interior and exterior of the diner were used extensively in the shoot. (And yes, that’s a very young Kevin Bacon in the second screen capture below. <3)

Though some sources claim that Bendix Diner in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey was used for the filming of Diner’s interior scenes, that information is incorrect. The establishment does bear a considerable resemblance to the café where Eddie Simmons (Steve Guttenberg), Shrevie Schreiber (Daniel Stern), Boogie Sheftell (Mickey Rourke), Timothy Fenwick Jr. (Bacon), and Modell (Paul Reiser) hung out in the flick, but upon close inspection, it is obvious that the two are not one and the same.

When filming on Diner wrapped, the 48-foot by 17-foot restaurant was shipped back to the diner graveyard in New Jersey, which would have been the end of the story had then Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaefer not stepped in. Shortly after the movie premiered in early 1982, Schaefer implored local citizens to help return the structure to Charm City, putting purchase and transport of the eatery on his civil “wish list.” WBAL Radio heeded his cry, bought the restaurant from the graveyard and gifted it to Baltimore. It was transferred to its new home at 400 East Saratoga Street in the heart of downtown in January 1984. At the time, the diner lacked a bathroom and a kitchen, but locals donated time and money to spruce up the structure and transform it back into a functional restaurant. It opened later that year as The Kids’ Diner. Run by city schools and the mayor’s office, the site served as both an eatery and a vocational training center for area students.

Plagued by financial woes from the start, the restaurant was taken over by the Chesapeake Foundation for Human Development in 1991 and renamed “Hollywood Diner.”

The foundation couldn’t quell the café’s money problems, though, and, after undergoing a series of different management organizations and restaurant iterations, the site finally shuttered in 2012. Though there were plans to turn the property into a food truck park, using the interior of the diner for seating, it does not appear that the project ever took of.

Despite the longtime closure, the diner still stands intact today, thankfully.

I was floored when I walked up to the structure and saw that the interior was visible through the front windows!

At the beginning of Sleepless in Seattle, Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) stops for tea at the diner while on a Christmas Eve road trip to her fiancé’s parents’ house.

It is amazing to me how little the restaurant has changed since filming took place over 24 years ago.

Hollywood Diner has appeared in several productions over the years. In fact, Barry Levinson has quite a soft spot for the place, having utilized it in two of his other movies. In 1987’s Tin Men, the restaurant serves as Ernest Tilley’s (Danny DeVito) regular breakfast joint.

And Van Kurtzman (Adrien Brody) also hangs out there in Levinson’s 1999 drama Liberty Heights.

The director even named the eatery “Fells Point Diner” in the movie, as a nod to his 1982 film.

Though some websites state that the diner also appears in the 1990 Levinson-directed drama Avalon, in the scene in which Michael Kaye (Elijah Wood) watches as a restaurant is dropped into place on a vacant lot, that information is incorrect. As you can see below, the eatery in Avalon looks nothing like the Hollywood Diner (not only do the windows not match, but neither does the general shape of the structure). Not to mention that by the time Avalon was shot, The Kids’ Diner had already been installed at its downtown location and in full operation for over six years.

In the Season 2 episode of The Wire titled “Duck and Cover,” which aired in 2003, a drunken Detective James “Jimmy” McNulty (Dominic West) heads to the Hollywood Diner for coffee and winds up going home with his waitress.

Hollywood Diner provided the setting for the 2017 short film The Dark of Night, directed by Robin Wright.

The restaurant also reportedly appeared in an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, though I am unsure of which episode.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Hollywood Diner, aka Capital Diner from Sleepless in Seattle, is located at 400 East Saratoga Street in Baltimore. The restaurant is currently closed.

July 24, 2017
The Site of the “A Few Good Men” Crab Restaurant

To paraphrase Dorothy (Judy Garland) in The Wizard of Oz, our heart’s desires can often be found right in our own backyard. Even though I’ve seen the 1939 film about a gazillion times, I failed to heed Dorothy’s advice while searching for the crab restaurant Lt. Cdr. JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore) took Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) to in fave movie A Few Good Men. The eatery had long been at the top of my Must-Find List, but because I always assumed it was located in the D.C. area where the 1992 courtroom drama was partially shot, I never put much energy into tracking it down. When I found out that the Grim Cheaper and I would be journeying to the East Coast last fall, though, I immediately sprang into action – and was shocked to discover that the locale was right in my own backyard the whole time. Or at least, it was. The restaurant has, sadly, since been razed, hence the odd photo above which shows roughly where it once stood.

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For those who don’t remember the scene (or perhaps have never seen the movie, which I can’t imagine is possible!), toward the middle of A Few Good Men, JoAnne shows up unexpectedly at Danny’s apartment and asks if she can take him out for dinner (it’s not a date, though!) at a good seafood place she knows. After razzing her quite a bit, Danny accepts the invite and the two head to a very East Coast-looking spot, where they proceed to eat crab off of a paper-covered table, with mallets as their only utensils.

The scene absolutely mesmerized me. Though I grew up in San Francisco, home to fish restaurants galore, until watching A Few Good Men, I had never seen crab eaten in such a way and wanted nothing more than to visit a place like that myself. So, on one of my first visits to D.C., back in 2001, I told my friends who lived in the area that I was not leaving town without going to a similar spot. (This was before I became a master stalker, so it never even occurred to me to try to track down the actual A Few Good Men restaurant during that trip.) My friends happily obliged and that meal is one of my fondest memories of the whole vacation. A page from my D.C. photo album is pictured below, showing us enjoying crab in all of our messy-handed glory.

For this trip, I decided I had to track down the real spot. Most sources I came across online claimed that the A Few Good Men scene was lensed at The Dancing Crab, a D.C. institution that had been around for more than 40 years, but was, sadly, shuttered in 2014. At the time of its closure, the restaurant was located at 4615 Wisconsin Avenue NW in the District’s Tenleytown neighborhood. The photos of the site posted on Yelp did not look anything like what appeared in AFGM, though. So I did some digging and learned that the eatery had moved locations in recent years. It was originally situated one storefront to the south at 4611 Wisconsin Avenue NW. Though I could not find any images of The Dancing Crab from its time at that spot, I could tell from looking at the outside of the building via Google Street View that it was not the right place. Two large windows are visible in the background of the AFGM scene, but the original Dancing Crab site (pictured below) has no such windows. So it was back to the drawing board. (Come to find out, The Dancing Crab does have an A Few Good Men connection, but more on that in a bit.)

I decided to start contacting crew members and got lucky when one responded right away. His reply to my query absolutely blew my mind. He informed me that the AFGM crab restaurant could not be found in Washington, D.C., but much closer to home, about 20 miles south of Los Angeles. As he explained, the eatery was a diner in the San Pedro area that had been redressed to look like a seafood restaurant for the shoot. Then he shocked me even further when he mentioned that the same site had also been used in When Harry Met Sally . . .! At the time, I was unaware that the 1989 romcom had done any filming in the L.A. area. My crew member friend did not remember the name or address of the diner, so I started looking into things and fairly quickly came across its whereabouts thanks to the book Shot On This Site, which stated that a scene from When Harry Met Sally . . . had been lensed at the Port Café in Wilmington. I was devastated to learn upon reading further that the eatery, once located at 955 South Neptune Avenue, just steps from the Port of Los Angeles, had since been demolished.

Scant information about the Port Café is available online, other than a few building permits and the short blurb below which was featured in the book Wilmington (Images of America). Originally built in 1941, the diner was mainly patronized by people who worked on the docks nearby. Aside from moving about 100 feet to the north in 1956 in order to accommodate the enlargement of a nearby terminal, little of the restaurant was changed over the years. Sadly, I could not locate any photos of the interior of the space to compare to screen shots from A Few Good Men.

So I popped in my When Harry Met Sally . . . DVD and was dismayed to see that the café, featured in the beginning of the movie in the scene in which Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) and Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) stop for a roadside meal during their drive from Chicago to Manhattan, did not look anything like the A Few Good Men crab restaurant. I started to think that maybe my crew member friend had gotten it wrong. Even though I knew that the space had been completely redressed for AFGM, I thought that some small detail at the very least would be recognizable from WHMS. I could not find a single matching element, though. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Enter my friend/fellow stalker Michael (you know him from his many fabulous guest posts). Michael’s eye is much keener than mine, so I asked him to take a look at the AFGM crab restaurant scene and compare it to the WHMS diner scene to see if I was missing anything. Sure enough, I was! As he noticed, a post and lintel (denoted with a purple circle below) and a beam (denoted with a green arrow) that match each other perfectly are visible in the respective scenes.

Upon taking another look at the two movies, I also spotted the post and lintel (albeit the opposite side of it) in an exterior shot in When Harry Met Sally . . .

And I noticed that the stainless steel/green/pink wall schematic (denoted with a purple bracket below) was the same in both flicks. (Love that the Port Café’s 955 address number is visible just to the right of Billy Crystal in the WHMS cap.)

The two movies (which were both coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, directed by Rob Reiner) really showcase different sections of the Port Café, which, along with the re-dressing of the space for A Few Good Men, makes it appear to be two totally distinct places. Helping with the visual manipulation is the fact that the restaurant seems to have had two counters (denoted with purple arrows below) and two kitchens (denoted with green arrows below) – one of each in the center of the space and one of each on the side.

Though the side counter is mainly featured in When Harry Met Sally . . . , Michael pointed out that we get brief views of the central counter, as well, when Harry and Sally enter and exit the restaurant.

The diagonal edge (denoted with purple arrows below) of the counter in A Few Good Men, the wood material, the metal piece running parallel to the floor (denoted with green arrows below) and the foot rest (denoted with yellow arrows below) all correlate to the center counter briefly seen in When Harry Met Sally . . . The green flooring visible in both movies is also a match.

Because I was having trouble envisioning how the Port Café was laid out (the two counters/kitchens really threw me), Michael was kind enough to draw up a diagram, which I transformed into the graphic below. The areas of the eatery utilized and visible in A Few Good Men are denoted in red (the initials TC and DM stand for Tom Cruise and Demi Moore, respectively), those utilized and visible in When Harry Met Sally . . . are blue (BC and MR stand for Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan), and those utilized and visible in both movies are teal.

When Harry Met Sally . . . provides us with some great views of the exterior of the Port Café.

I thought those views, along with the Historic Aerials image pictured below, would help me discern the Port Café’s exact former location when I went out to stalk it last week.

When I got to the area, though, I could not make heads or tails of anything and failed to take photos of the precise place. The picture below is the closest I got to the correct location. The Port Café was formerly located pretty much in the spot where the purple arrow is pointing.

Had I panned just a bit to the north, I would have captured its exact former site. Thank God for Street View!

The purple box outlines where the eatery was formerly situated.

In When Harry Met Sally . . ., Sally’s car travels north on Neptune Avenue before turning left (west) onto East Pier A Place and then into the Port Café parking lot. A very crude graphic showing her route is pictured below. The pink line depicts the path of Sally’s car.

Many of the tanks visible when she drives to the restaurant have been razed, as you can see from my photograph below (which, believe it or not, is pretty much a matching angle to the screen capture), though the tall white one on the left-most side still stands.

The tank situated on the side of the Port Café also still stands. It is pictured below, albeit from a different angle.

As I mentioned earlier, A Few Good Men does have a connection to the now defunct Dancing Crab restaurant. In his DVD commentary, Rob Reiner states that while filming in the D.C.-area, he took the cast and crew out for dinner at The Dancing Crab. The ambiance of paper-covered tables and mallet utensils made such an impression on him that he was inspired to place an AFGM scene in a similar setting. So when they got back to L.A., he did just that. And the rest, as they say, is history.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to my friend Michael for helping me to identify this spot! You can check out Michael’s many fabulous guest posts here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Port Café, aka the crab restaurant from A Few Good Men, was formerly located at 955 South Neptune Avenue in Wilmington. The spot where it once stood is denoted with a pink box below.

July 21, 2017
Frank and Claire’s Townhouse from “House of Cards”

It is a rare occasion for me to lay eyes on a Hollywood-designed set and not immediately want to move in. But such was the case with the townhouse belonging to Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) and his wife, Claire (Robin Wright), on the Netflix series House of Cards. While I love the handsome brick exterior of the politico couple’s pad (who wouldn’t?), the inside is just a bit too cold and a bit too stark for my tastes. Though undeniably beautiful, Frank and Claire’s décor and furnishings look like something straight out of a magazine – not lived in, very impersonal, and all sleek, shiny and straight lines. The aura the home gives off is a huge testament to the talent of the House of Cards set designers because cold, stark, sleek and shiny are characteristics that perfectly describe Claire and Frank. The townhouse is an exacting reflection of its occupants and, as such, is one of the series’ most notable locations, despite only being featured in two out of five seasons. So it was, of course, on my list of spots to stalk while I was in Baltimore, where House of Cards is mainly lensed, last fall.

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Said to be located at 1609 Far Street NW in Washington, D.C. on the series, in real life, Frank and Claire’s townhouse can be found at 1609 Park Avenue in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill neighborhood.

The 4,600-square-foot, 4-level dwelling features 4 bedrooms, 5 fireplaces (though this article mentions 6 bedrooms and 7 fireplaces, so I am unsure which figures are correct), 3 baths, 12-foot-high ceilings, pine flooring, a rear patio, a 2-car garage with a rooftop deck, a 3-story lightwell, and dual staircases.

Originally built in 1880, the 20-foot-wide townhouse had not only been transformed into a 3-unit apartment building, but had also fallen into serious disrepair by the time Jeff and Norma Epstein purchased it in 1995. The couple spent the next two years restoring it back to its original grandeur, with Jeff, a licensed contractor, doing most of the work himself.

Though the remodel was a labor of love for the couple, they recently decided to move out of state and put the residence up for auction last month with a starting price of $500,000. There do not appear to have been any takers, though, and it looks like the home is now on the market for $824,900.

The townhouse is located in a gorgeous neighborhood . . .

. . . situated directly across from a median that has been fashioned into a park, complete with a sparkling fountain.

The scenery looks like it was taken straight out of the opening credits of Friends.

It took all I had not to jump in the fountain and start dancing.

The townhouse was only utilized during the first and second seasons of House of Cards. By the end of Season 2, Frank and Claire had upgraded their digs by (spoiler alert!) moving into the White House upon Frank taking over the presidency. (When Season 3 began airing, HotPads humorously ran a fictional article about the Underwood residence being available for rent.) Surprisingly, the townhouse’s exterior was rarely shown on the series . . .

. . . and when it was, it was typically in dark, nighttime shots, so not much of it was ever seen onscreen.

The interior, however, which was just a set located at the Joppa, Maryland warehouse where the series is lensed, was featured regularly. Production designers are said to have modeled the set after the actual inside of the Bolton Hill townhome, but as the property’s MLS photos attest to, said interior is staggeringly different from its onscreen counterpart. Most notably, the inside of the actual home is much smaller and much less ornate than Frank and Claire’s residence. For this post, I thought it would be fun to do a little set vs. real life house tour, so here goes! We’ll start with the entrance hall. Though both boast wood embellishments, the Underwood’s hallway is more grand and quite a bit wider than the hallway of the actual home.

A view of the respective entrance halls from the opposite direction is pictured below.

Aside from similar fireplaces, the two living rooms don’t resemble each other at all.

As you can see below, the Underwood living room is much wider than that of the actual townhome.

The same is true of the dining rooms – the set dining room is much wider than the real life residence’s dining room.

Though both boast a white color scheme, the Underwoods’ kitchen is much larger and much more modern than that of the actual townhome.

Another major difference – while the Underwoods’ kitchen is located on the main level of their house, the kitchen of the real life property is, oddly, situated in the basement.

Though the Underwoods do have a basement, it is only semi-finished and, as you can see, looks nothing like the townhome’s actual basement.

Claire and Frank’s master bedroom is much more subdued than its real life counterpart, though, once again, the fireplaces are very similar.

The Underwoods’ patio, one of my favorite aspects of the property, is covered with picturesque foliage and enclosed by a large stucco wall. The actual patio is much less lush and is instead enclosed by a wooden fence, giving it a very different look, though the window and door are similar to those of the set.

Sadly, Frank and Claire’s dining room “smoking window,” which was situated next to the fireplace in the set’s dining room, is nowhere to be found in real life.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Frank and Claire’s townhouse from House of Cards is located at 1609 Park Avenue in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill neighborhood.

July 19, 2017
Freddy’s BBQ Joint from “House of Cards”

I have never been a fan of dark TV shows or movies. Surprising, I know, considering my love for true crime and all podcasts, documentaries and news stories related to the subject. But when it comes to fictional TV and movie watching, I prefer a much lighter fare. One exception to this rule is House of Cards, which the Grim Cheaper and I got really into a couple of summers ago. The Netflix original series is undeniably dark and exceptionally heavy, but the smart writing, incredible acting, and biting political storylines sucked us right in. Another draw is the myriad of dynamic characters, my favorite of which [aside from Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) – his Southern drawl is fabulous, and that ring knock!] is easily Freddy Hayes (Reg E. Cathey), proprietor of Freddy’s BBQ Joint, the hole-in-the-wall rib restaurant Frank regularly frequents. Not only is Freddy’s advice uniquely sage and storytelling top-notch, but his friendship with Frank is just so endearing. So, last summer, when I found out we were heading to Baltimore, where House of Cards is largely lensed, I told the Grim Cheaper there was no way we were leaving town without stalking Freddy’s – or the storefront used to represent it, I should say.

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Though I knew that Freddy’s BBQ Joint was obviously not a real spot, I figured that the production utilized an actual restaurant of some sort to shoot the scenes taking place there. Sadly, that is not the case. Freddy’s is a completely fictional eatery created by the House of Cards crew at a vacant space on Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore’s Better Waverly neighborhood – a fact I gleaned from this Mix 106.5 article while preparing for my trip. Despite my disappointment over learning the news, I was still absolutely thrilled to see the site in person.

Freddy’s BBQ Joint first popped up in the House of Cards pilot, titled “Chapter 1.” In the episode, Frank makes an early pit stop at the restaurant and, in one of his superb asides, explains, “My one guilty pleasure is a good rack of ribs, even at 7:30 in the morning. I have the whole place to myself. Freddy sometimes opens up just for me. Where I come from in South Carolina, people didn’t have two pennies to rub together. A rack of ribs is a luxury, like Christmas in July.”

Freddy’s goes on to appear regularly on the series, becoming one of its most notable locations.

Well, throughout the first two years, anyway. Towards the end of Season 2, in the episode titled “Chapter 22,” Freddy is (spoiler alert!) caught in the middle of Frank’s political schemings and is forced to sell his restaurant.

In person, the rundown storefront used to portray Freddy’s BBQ Joint looks much the same as it does onscreen.

The Freddy’s signage is missing, of course, but otherwise the site appears as if it jumped right off of the television screen.

I absolutely love that the place’s weathered look is authentic and not a design element fabricated by the House of Cards crew.

I was especially obsessed with the storefront’s tarnished roof eave.

In the House of Cards pilot, Frank does not venture inside Freddy’s, but instead chooses to eat on the restaurant’s side patio.

He mainly dines indoors in the episodes that follow, though.

Mahmut Nazli, owner of the Greenmount Avenue storefront, told the Independent in 2014 that the House of Cards crew re-designed his shop in preparation for filming, installing walls and shelving, which alludes to the fact that the interior was used in the production. Several other articles I’ve come across, though (like this one and this one), stipulate that the inside of Freddy’s BBQ Joint was a set built at the 300,000-square-foot Joppa, Maryland warehouse-turned-soundstage where the series is lensed.

Of the crew’s re-design, Nazli went on to say, “They were supposed to change it back, but I asked them not to,” which leads me to wonder if maybe a couple of House of Cards’ early episodes were shot on location inside of the actual Greenmount storefront and then a set modeled after the site’s interior was eventually built at the Joppa warehouse. I scanned through all of the episodes featuring Freddy’s, though, and never noticed any changes or discernable differences to the interior that would point to a change in filming venues. So I am unsure on this one.

Per the Independent article, the Greenmount Avenue space has previously served as a fried chicken restaurant, a book store, and a community center over the years, though Google Street View shows it as being vacant since at least 2007.

Nazli put the storefront up for sale in 2014 for $119,000, but, despite the locale’s onscreen fame, it does not appear as if there were any takers.

In this fabulous 2014 TODAY article, Reg. E Cathey talks about House of Cards and the Freddy’s BBQ Joint site, stating, “I’ve shot three projects in that same neighborhood, even that same corner.” Though he mentions Homicide: Life on the Street, The Corner and The Wire, because I have never seen any of those productions, I am unsure which of the three were lensed in the vicinity of Freddy’s, nor could I find any information online about filming on that same block of Greenmount Avenue, unfortunately.

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 vacant storefront that masks as Freddy’s BBQ Joint on House of Cards is located at 2601 Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore.

July 17, 2017
The Old Place from “Scorpion”

There are some spots in L.A. that I miss more than others. The Old Place pretty much tops that list. I first stalked the rustic eatery, tucked away on a forested road in the picturesque mountain town of Cornell, in 2011 and was immediately smitten. Because the restaurant is only open Thursday through Sunday and because I don’t get out to the Cornell area very often since moving to Palm Springs, I haven’t been able to frequent it as much as I’d like. So I was thrilled when it popped up in a recent episode of my latest TV obsession, Scorpion. Though I blogged about the Old Place after my initial visit six years ago, come to find out, I missed a lot of the restaurant’s onscreen appearances in the post. As such, I figured it was definitely time for a redeux. So here goes.

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The history of the Old Place was covered pretty extensively in my 2011 write-up, but I thought I’d include a brief recap here, too. The eatery was originally founded by Tom Runyon (Los Angeles’ Runyon Canyon is named after his family) and his wife, Barbara, in a former general store/post office that dates back to either 1884 or 1914, depending on which publication you happen to be reading.

The couple purchased the site, which at the time was abandoned, in 1969 and spent the next year transforming it into a rugged restaurant.

Tom did most of the work himself, salvaging unique items to use as décor. Booth backs were created out of doors from a San Francisco hotel, columns flanking the end of each booth came from the Old Santa Barbara Mission, and the bench that runs the length of the 30-foot antique bar was fashioned out of a wooden diving board. The result of his efforts is a majestic, intimate, and one-of-a-kind spot.

The minuscule restaurant consists of five booths, three tables and a scant forty seats – and for many years had only two employees, Tom and Barbara. Tom served as the chef, cooking up the only two items on the menu, steak and clams, while Barbara manned the bar and worked as the waitress. Despite the tiny confines and limited menu offerings, the Old Place thrived – and became a celebrity hotspot, serving up the likes of Ali MacGraw, Steve McQueen, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Jack Lemmon, Dolly Parton, Emilio Estevez, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Elvis Presley even stopped by in February 1966 while in town filming Spinout. (You can see some photos of him out in front of the eatery here.) In recent years, Britney Spears has been known to pop in.

When Tom passed away in 2009, Tom and Barbara’s son, Morgan, took over the restaurant, along with Tim Skogstrom, who runs the Cornell Winery & Tasting Room next door. The duo expanded the menu and wine list and added a credit card machine, but left the rest of Tom’s creation virtually untouched. One step over the Old Place’s threshold and guests are immediately transported back in time.

The site’s low-slung ceiling, wood-paneled walls, dimly-lit sconces, and friendly servers all add to the warm, intimate atmosphere. It is hands-down one of my favorite spots in all of Los Angeles – as evidenced by its prominent placement on both My Must-Stalk List and My Guide to L.A. – Restaurants. I honestly cannot say enough good things about the restaurant.

Thanks to the eatery’s uniquely rural charm, location managers have flocked to it over the years.

Which should come as no surprise – the Old Place looks like it jumped straight out of a Western movie set.

Back in 1964, when the site still housed a general store/post office, Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen) stopped there to pick up his boss’ mail in the Season 2 episode of The Fugitive titled “Tug of War.”

Two years later, the property popped up once again on The Fugitive, this time as a sheriff’s station in Season 3’s “Stroke of Genius.”

In 1972, the Old Place was used as the exterior of Elmo’s restaurant in the Season 5 episode of The Mod Squad titled “The Thundermakers.” (Interiors were filmed elsewhere.)

Sy Rogers (Gary Sandy) worked at the Old Place in the Season 5 episode of Barnaby Jones titled “Renegade’s Child,” which aired in 1976.

In the 1977 action film Telefon, the Old Place masqueraded as The Dougout, the Halderville, Texas bar where Barbara (Lee Remick) and Major Grigori Borzov (Charles Bronson) fought spies.

Only the exterior of the site was utilized in the flick. Interior scenes were shot on a set constructed at MGM. Though the set very closely resembled the interior of the Old Place, it was built much larger than the actual restaurant.

In 1987, the Old Place portrayed Last Stop Sandwich, the roadside stop where Det. Sgt. Rick Hunter (Fred Dryer) spotted Nicki Rains (Lydia Cornell) grabbing a drink in the Season 3 episode of Hunter titled “Straight to the Heart.”

The exterior of the Old Place also popped up briefly as a Native American artifacts store in Hunter’s Season 5 episode titled “Return of the White Cloud,” which aired in 1989. (Interiors were filmed elsewhere.)

In 1990, the restaurant masked as the Bookhouse, aka the meeting place of Twin Peaks’ secret society, in the Season 1 episode of Twin Peaks titled “Episode 3” or “Rest in Pain.”

The Old Place is where Vann (Owen Wilson) met Casper (Sheryl Crowe) at the beginning of the 1999 thriller The Minus Man.

In the Season 7 episode of The X-Files titled “En Ami,” which aired in 2000, the Old Place played Cory’s Café, where Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and CGB Spender (William B. Davis) stopped for gas while in Goochland, Virginia.

Earlier this year, the Old Place masqueraded as Montana’s Jefferson Grill in the Season 13 episode of Grey’s Anatomy titled “Who Is He (And What Is He to You)?”

And, as I mentioned in my intro, the Old Place also recently popped up on Scorpion. In the Season 3 episode titled “Faux Money Maux Problems,” the restaurant portrayed the Simi Valley Saloon, where Walter O’Brien (Elyes Gabel), Sylvester Dodd (Ari Stidham) and Cabe Gallo (Robert Patrick) sought refuge after escaping their Norteguayan kidnappers.

Both the interior and exterior of the property were featured in the episode.

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 Old Place, from the “Faux Money Maux Problems” episode of Scorpion, is located at 29983 Mulholland Highway in Cornell (or Agoura Hills). The restaurant is only open Thursday through Sunday, so plan accordingly. You can visit The Old Place’s official website here.

July 12, 2017