The Best Buy Parking Lot Where Jim Proposed to Pam on “The Office”

Like much of the world, I have been re-watching The Office while quarantining.  There’s nothing quite like the silly shenanigans of the Dunder Mifflin gang to provide laughs during a trying time.  And it’s even inspired me to do some stalking!  In viewing Season 5’s “Weight Loss: Part 2,” I realized I had never stalked the roadside service station where Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) finally proposed to Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer).  As most fans know, the station was not real, but a set built specifically for the shoot in the rear parking lot of a Los Angeles Best Buy.  Though several sources note the Best Buy as being in Los Feliz, I quickly discerned it was actually the outpost at 2909 Los Feliz Boulevard in Atwater Village.  I headed out to stalk the lot shortly thereafter (donning a mask and gloves, of course!) and took photos of practically every square inch of it.  Per co-executive producer Gene Stupinsky, even the hills in the background were digitally replaced with trees indigenous to the East Coast for the scene, so I did not have high hopes for being able to pinpoint exactly where the set stood.  But then I received The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History by Andy Greene for my birthday last week and my prayers were answered!  There in the image section of the book was a photo of the proposal set with a backdrop of mountains visible, allowing me to ID the spot where Jim got down on one knee!  Though I only took one selfie during my stalk, it turned out to be in the perfect position!  Talk about fortuitous!

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In “Weight Loss: Part 2,” Jim spontaneously IMs Pam, telling her to meet him “halfway” for lunch (Pam was attending art school in New York at the time) at “the rest stop where that soda exploded on me.”  As soon as he arrives, he drops to one knee and proposes, saying he can’t wait any longer.  Series creator Greg Daniels chose to shoot the romantic segment at such a mundane setting because, as noted in Greene’s book, “Momentous events can happen to us in a place that we least expect it.”  Daniels was actually inspired by a real service station he patronized.  In the book, producer Randy Cordray explains,“ What he had in mind was an actual rest stop that he and his family visit when they visit his in-laws in Connecticut.  They would fly into LaGuardia and hop in their rental van and they would always stop at this one ExxonMobil station along the Merritt Parkway to use the bathroom and get a bite to eat and grab a drink.”  9/11, of all things, thwarted the show making use of the actual station thanks to a moratorium on filming the oil company implemented following the attacks.  When a similar location could not be found anywhere on the West Coast, Daniels and Cordray sent production designer Michael Gallenberg on a mission to photograph and measure the Merritt Parkway site and then subsequently re-create it back in L.A.

I’m sure you can guess what’s coming next!  As soon as I read that the famous gas station set was based upon a real locale, I, of course, set out to find it!  It proved a bit tough being that all six Merritt Parkway rest stops bear a similar aesthetic and all were remodeled in 2012/2013.  In doing some detective work via historic Google Street View imagery, though, I am fairly certain that the rest stop in question is the one located in Fairfield on the southbound side of the parkway.

Though it boasts a side wing that the set station did not have, the roofline, octagonal windows and front door positioning all match what appeared onscreen.  Not to mention The Office station was named “Fairview”, which is very similar to Fairfield.  Again, this is just a hunch, though.  I reached out to Michael Gallenberg for confirmation, but unfortunately he does not have access to his office or his files right now due to COVID-19.  He is going to get back to me as soon as that changes, though.

Once Gallenberg had his measurements in hand, the production team looked to where the set replica would be constructed.  Building it on an actual highway was given a quick veto by the California Highway Patrol, so Michael instead zeroed in on the Best Buy parking lot. In The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History, Cordray says, “There’s five acres of black asphalt behind a Best Buy store in Glendale, California.  It is completely barren, unstripped and unpainted.”  And it is well-known to location managers, having appeared in the Shibuya Square race segment of 2006’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

Using the below photo from Andy Greene’s book, I lined up the hills in the background and was able to determine that the gas station was constructed in the middle of the lot’s western edge.

The set was extensive!  The mini-mart portion of it was actually just a façade with a scant eight-foot depth, the fridges and coolers visible behind Jim and Pam merely hi-res photographs.  In front of the mart was an overhang canopying four pumps.

And in front of the pumps, a faux freeway was created!  In Greene’s book Cordray says, “We built a four-lane freeway out in front and we used colored tape to mark the lanes.  And we built a median strip with Astroturf and guardrail.  This was designed in a giant dog bone shape so that cars and trucks could pass through the shot at fifty-five miles an hour, and then go way out into the distance, arc in a big circle and come back through the shot the other direction.  I had thirty-five precision drivers.”  The set also boasted extensive rigging to supply the rain the segment required.  (That rigging is visible in the photo of the set from Andy Green’s book above.)  Of it, Cordray states, “The nearest water was a fire department hydrant in front of Best Buy, which was several hundred yards away, so we had giant construction cranes holding up water tankers over the whole set so that we could rain [on] four lanes of freeway and the whole top of the gas station.”  (As it turns out, my friend’s company, Underwood Water Trucks, was responsible for the rigging, which I was so thrilled to learn!)  While it may sound like far too large an undertaking to take place in an electronics store parking lot, the Los Feliz Best Buy lot is quite possibly the biggest I have ever encountered!

Aerial views truly do not do it justice.

Neither do my photographs!

It.is.huge.

While the lot is situated behind Best Buy, I learned from Nick Carr, of Scouting New York, that it is actually owned by the adjacent New Life Vision Church.

A portion of it, though, appears to be utilized as parking for employees of the nearby Costco, so I am guessing it is partially leased out to the wholesale company.  But, as my pictures attest, it was almost completely vacant when I stalked it mid-day on a weekday.

Amazingly, The Office gas station segment was pulled off in only nine days!  It seems like a ridiculously short amount of time, but as Gallenberg told Andy Greene, “We had nine days to scout, design, build and shoot a rest stop with a four-lane parkway.”  It’s pretty incredible – and was so well-executed that here I am, twelve years later, stalking and blogging about the vacant, wholly unrecognizable parking lot where it all occurred!  Magic definitely happened on this site!

If you want to learn more about “Weight Loss: Part 2,” as well as other Office episodes, be sure to pick up a copy of Andy Greene’s book The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History!  It is fabulous!

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 Best Buy parking lot where Jim proposed to Pam on the “Weight Loss: Part 2” episode of The Office is located at 2909 Los Feliz Boulevard in Atwater Village.  The lot is situated directly behind and to the north of Best Buy.  The exact spot where the rest stop set stood is denoted with a pink box below.