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.
Category: Movie Locations
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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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The California Bank Building from “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
Since we’re on the subject of Girls Just Want to Have Fun, I thought I would blog about another locale from the movie that I recently hit up – downtown L.A.’s California Bank Building, which masked as the Dance TV (aka DTV) studio in the 1985 flick. A couple of years back, Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, managed to track down the location via a helpful crewmember, but because nothing about the structure matched up to what was shown onscreen, I was never sold on it being the right place. So a couple of weeks ago, I set out to verify or invalidate the information. When I told Mike, from MovieShotsLA, of my query, his response was, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun? I thought we were done with that movie!” Oh, Mike, we will never be done with that movie! So I quickly got started on the hunt and, though it was quite a lengthy process, wound up discovering that the California Bank Building was, indeed, the right spot.
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The California Bank Building was designed in 1960 by architect Claud Beelman, who was also responsible for The Historic Mayfair Hotel from The Office and The Standard, Downtown L.A. from Fracture. The 300,000-square-foot structure originally served as the headquarters of California Bank. Standing at 18 stories and 267 feet tall, the property was the tallest commercial building in Los Angeles at the time of its inception. This was due in large part to the fact that a 1904 law limiting the height of buildings in Los Angeles to 13 stories or 150 feet was repealed in 1956, shortly before the ground was broken on the new structure.
In its original state, the California Bank Building featured a large, box-like three-story granite base. You can see some photographs of what it looked like in its early days here and here. Sadly, in 2008 the site underwent an extensive renovation that rendered it virtually unrecognizable from its former self. The straight vertical lines that once encased the façade giving it a sleek, towering aesthetic are now broken up by balconies. The edifice of the structure, which was renamed SB Tower, was also painted white and green.
Most jarring of all, though, is the fact that windows were cut into the granite base and a large mural painted over the exterior.
Those portions of the building did not appear in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, though. In actuality, only the entrance area and lobby were shown. But those, too, were rendered unrecognizable during the renovation. In the scene pictured below, Drew Boreman (Jonathan Silverman), best friend of Jeff Malene (Lee Montgomery), is shown selling DTV memorabilia while standing outside of the property, in an alcove that formerly led to the lobby area.
As you can see in my recent photograph of the building’s entrance pictured below, that alcove has been completely removed. So when I first viewed the location via Google Street View, I was convinced it was the wrong place. Never in my wildest dreams did I think the renovation would have included such a major restructuring of the ground floor! As it turns out, I was wrong.
Thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, I learned that Google recently made it possible to view Street View renderings from years past, so I toggled back to 2007 and 2008 and, as you can see below, the alcove was once, in fact, there and does resemble what appeared onscreen. Because the imaging is so grainy, though, I was still not 100% convinced. I needed more proof.
I was able to match a few things up to this historic image of the California Bank Building, though it still was not enough for me to write off on the location. In the image, you can see that a sign was posted on the wall of the alcove in the same place that a placard was situated in the movie (denoted with a pink circle below). The image also shows that the building had some sort of corner detailing on the outside portion of the alcove, which matches what appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (denoted with a pink arrow below).
Another detail that matched up to what appeared onscreen was the SB Tower’s address number. The number “600” was visible behind Drew in the movie and the SB Tower is located at 600 South Spring Street . Still though, I wanted more.
Finally, came the clue I was looking for. While re-watching the movie for the umpteenth time, I was able to make out a sign located across the street from the DTV studio that read “Mi Tierra Restaurant.”
I searched the July 1987 Pacific Bell Street Address Telephone Directory for an eatery by that name and only two listings came up. The first was for “Mi Tierra Restaurant No. Two” located at 1903 West Olympic Boulevard in Westlake. The second was for simply “Mi Tierra Restaurant” at 611 South Spring Street. 611 South Spring Street is located directly across the street from the California Bank Building! Further proof – at 613 South Spring, right next to Mi Tierra, is a listing for Golden Eagle Dry Cleaning Shop.
What was pictured next to Mi Tierra in Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Yep – a dry cleaning shop!
While I am distressed that the structure has changed so drastically and that I never got to see it in its original state, I am thrilled to now be able to say with absolute certainty that the California Bank Building was indeed DTV studio from Girls Just Want to Have Fun.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to Chas, from It’sFilmedThere, for finding this location. 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: SB Tower, aka the California Bank Building from Girls Just Want to Have Fun, is located at 600 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the property’s official website here.
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The “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” Park
Today’s post was a true labor of love – one that required stalking a location three separate times and a massive amount of help from a fellow stalker named Michael. While most of the locales from the 1985 movie Girls Just Want to Have Fun (one of my all-time faves) have been tracked down and detailed on this blog, one that I have long wondered about is the park where portions of the dance practice montage sequence took place. As luck would have it, I happened to meet the flick’s leading man, Lee Montgomery who played hunky Jeff Malene, at the Hollywood Show back in April and got the information straight from the horse’s mouth.
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When I heard that Lee would be making an appearance at the Hollywood Show, I just about flipped my lid from excitement and informed the Grim Cheaper that I would be attending come hell or high water. And I am so glad that I did. Lee truly could NOT have been nicer! He spent quite a bit of time chatting with me and filled me in on several behind-the-scenes tidbits, including the fact that he and Sarah Jessica Parker, who played Janey Glenn, underwent extensive dance training for weeks before filming began and that much of the onscreen dancing, including the lifts, was actually performed by them. At one point, I mentioned that there was a missing GJWHF locale that I was interested in tracking down. Now, in no way, shape or form did I expect Lee to remember a location from over 30 years ago, but I decided to broach the subject anyway and was shocked when he recalled it immediately! When I asked him where the dance montage in the park had taken place, without skipping a beat, he replied, “Oh, the row of trees? That was in Griffith Park, near the merry-go-round.” Um, THANK YOU, Lee!
For those not familiar with the Girls Just Want to Have Fun dance practice montage (and if that’s the case, then for shame!), you can watch it by clicking below.
The three spots that I was interested in tracking down were the row of trees that Janey and Jeff danced between . . .
. . . the tree that Jeff flipped off of while his sister, Maggie Malene (my girl Shannen Doherty), sat nearby . . .
. . . and the hill that Janey and Jeff flipped down.
As soon as I got home from the Hollywood Show, I popped in my Girls Just Want to Have Fun DVD and was SHOCKED to discover that the area of Griffith Park featured in the dance practice montage was Park Center, the very same area that was utilized in the Full House Season 1-3 opening credits. I had detailed that exact spot in a September 2014 blog post, but until that moment had failed to recognize its appearance in GJWTHF. I figured out the location thanks to a very unusual tree that I remembered from the Full House credits.
The tree has an extremely unique shape. From the trunk it immediately bends to the side and runs almost parallel to the ground and then turns back upward, forming an almost 90-degree angle with its lower portion. Its white, speckled bark is also quiet unusual.
As it turns out, that is the very same tree that Jeff flipped off of in Girls Just Want to Have Fun. As you can see below, the curve of the tree, the speckled bark and the chopped off branch on the left-hand side match perfectly to what appeared onscreen.
Now I should mention here that the first time the GC and I stalked Park Center, we made the unfortunate decision to head out there on a Sunday and not only was the place jam-packed with picnickers, but there was a piñata tied to Jeff’s tree! Humph! So these photos were taken during our second stalk of the park. On that particular visit, I, of course, had to re-created the montage moment . . .
. . . but I did not attempt Jeff’s flip. That tree is a LOT higher off the ground than it looks! I did jump off the tree, however, but was not nearly as graceful as Jeff.
I have never been very good at pinpointing outdoor locations, so to track down the other two Girls Just Want to Have Fun montage spots I enlisted the help of a fellow stalker who I knew had an aptitude for park-like settings – Michael. He is the one who had originally made the discovery of Park Center’s appearance in the Full House opening credits. Michael was only too happy to help and was an immeasurable source of guidance with this particular hunt. He immediately noticed that the hill that Jeff and Janey flipped down was the same hill that was featured in Full House, just shot from a slightly different angle. Griffith Park’s Park Services Building, which is visible in the background of both productions, is denoted with pink arrows below.
While it was hard to pinpoint the exact angle from which the hill scene was shot (as I said, outdoor places are not my forte), I believe my photograph below was taken from pretty much the right spot. I believe the pine tree to the right of the frame is now gone, but the split-branched tree in the middle of my photograph appears to match was was pictured onscreen, as does the shaping of the hill itself.
The one spot that Michael was unsure about was the row of trees that Janey and Jeff danced between. So during our first trek out to the park (on picnic day!), the GC and I walked around all of Park Center to see if we could find the right place and he fairly quickly zeroed in on the trees pictured below. In my recollection of the scene, Janey and Jeff had danced between two parallel rows of trees, while the trees that the GC had found were situated in one row, with a lone tree situated parallel to it. I was certain it was the wrong spot.
When I got home and compared my photographs to the montage scene, though, I saw that he was spot on! Nicely done, GC!
As fate would have it, during our second venture out to Griffith Park, a man happened to be sleeping next to the row of trees, in the exact spot where we wanted to take photographs. I did end up posing for a pic, but because of Sleeping Beauty, we could not match the angle of the photo to the angle shown in the movie – which meant (you guessed it!) another trip out there. I swear, if the GC never sees Griffith Park again it’ll be too soon.
During our third trip to the park, we managed to take photographs from the right spot. Well, almost.
We should have moved one tree farther back. As you can see below, the tree that is in the foreground of our photograph is the second tree visible in Girls Just Want to Have Fun. That is as good as it is going to get, though, because there is no way the GC is ever setting foot in Park Center again.
And I am pretty sure that if I ever ventured out there on my own and asked a stranger to take my photograph posing like I am below, they’d probably try to have me committed.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Michael for all of his help in finding these locations!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Girls Just Want to Have Fun dance montage was shot in the Park Center area of Griffith Park, which is located at 4730 Crystal Springs Drive in Los Feliz. A detailed aerial view denoting where the montage’s three park segments were filmed in relation to the merry-go-round is pictured below.
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Caesars Palace from “The Hangover”
My recent trip to Las Vegas with the Grim Cheaper was magical, due in large part to the fact that we stayed at Caesars Palace. Neither the GC nor I had ever stayed there before and, while planning our trip, I decided to see what the rates were. I happened to find a remarkably inexpensive one and booked it immediately. It was a fortuitous decision because the four nights we spent there were spectacular.
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As luck would have it, when we checked in we were given an upgraded room in the Palace Tower. It was absolutely gorgeous – and huge.
The bathroom was massive as well and featured a huge Jacuzzi tub and stand-alone shower.
We also had a pretty stunning view of the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis area.
Construction on Caesars Palace began in 1962. The property was the brainchild of hotelier Jay Sarno, who also owned the popular Cabana Motel chain. According to this article, Sarno purposely left off the apostrophe in the resort’s name because having it “’would mean that it was the place of only one Caesar.’ He wanted to create the feeling that everybody in the hotel was a Caesar.” The site opened to the public on August 5th, 1966. You can read an extremely extensive history on the hotel here.
At the time of its inception, Caesars Palace consisted of a single 14-story tower with 680 rooms.
Today, the site is comprised of six towers, 3,960 hotel rooms, a 300,000-square-foot convention center, a 4,296-seat circular theatre modeled after the Colosseum in Rome, and a 636,000-square-foot shopping center known as The Forum Shops at Caesars. In short, the property is massive!
The front of Caesars Palace is marked by a 135-foot driveway flanked by 18 fountains.
In 1967, daredevil Evel Knievel tried to jump across the 141-foot long fountain situated directly in front of the hotel, but failed and wound up in a coma for the next 29 days.
You can watch that failed jump below.
In 1989, Evel’s son Robbie attempted the jump and was successful. You can watch a video of Robbie’s jump below.
Caesars’ humongous Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis was modeled after the Pompeii baths of ancient Rome.
Sadly, because the GC and I were in Las Vegas for a working trip and were busy most of each day, we were not able to partake of the pool facilities.
Caesars Palace has been featured onscreen countless times over the years – far more times than I could ever chronicle here, but I will name a few of its more notable appearances. The hotel’s most famous role was in The Hangover. It was there that Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) threw an epic bachelor party for Doug (Justin Bartha) in the 2009 breakout hit. The movie made extensive use of the Caesars property, including the front entrance;
lobby;
check-in desk;
(love the shot of the Wolf Pack below);
a hallway, which (according to Hannah Allen, the Director of TV and Film Production for Caesars Entertainment, who was nice enough to fill me in on the shoot) was a hallway on the 24th floor of the Augustus Tower;
the Augustus Tower’s 24th floor elevator bay (again, thank you, Hannah!);
an Augustus Tower elevator (once again, thanks to Hannah);
the roof;
and the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis.
For the scene in which Stu, Phil and Alan take note of Doug’s mattress on the hotel’s roof, a fake statue was installed in the area noted with a pink arrow in my photograph below.
The hotel’s actual roofline is pictured below.
“Some guys just can’t handle Vegas!”
Sadly, the guys’ spectacular villa was not an actual Caesars room, but a set created inside of a soundstage at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank. The set was modeled, in part, after the hotel’s lux Emperors Suite.
The casino where the Wolf Pack gambled in The Hangover was not located at Caesars Palace, but at the since closed Riviera, which, sadly, is set to be demolished in the near future.
Stu, Alan and Phil returned to Caesars Palace for 2013’s The Hangover Part III.
Thanks to Hannah, I learned that an actual Caesars suite was used in Part III – the Constantine Villa in the Octavius Tower –
which Stu and Alan climbed down to from Caesars’ roof.
The Constantine Villa also appeared in Think Like a Man Too.
The 2014 comedy gave audiences a much better view of the suite.
Think Like a Man Too was filmed almost exclusively at Caesars Palace.
Caesars also made an appearance in Rain Man. It was there that Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman) counted cards for his brother Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) in the 1988 classic (as Alan said in The Hangover, “He practically bankrupt a casino and he was a re-tard.”). The casino floor looks much different today, though, and is virtually unrecognizable from its appearance in Rain Man.
Hannah informed me that the escalator that Charlie and Raymond famously rode down in the movie was removed when Caesars’ convention center was remodeled in 2009. Such a shame!
Rain Man’s escalator scene was re-created in The Hangover, complete with “Iko Iko” playing in the background. Because the re-creation was shot at the Riviera, sadly, that escalator will soon be gone, too.
The suite where Charlie and Raymond stayed in Rain Man is an actual Caesars room, the Emperors Suite (which, as I mentioned earlier, served as the inspiration for the Wolf Pack’s room in The Hangover). It looks quite a bit different today, though. You can check out some current photos of it here.
The room, which is located in the Forum Tower, was numbered 7416 in Rain Man, but looks to be numbered 6316 today. It is an extremely popular room thanks to its appearance in the movie and is still referred to as “the Rain Man suite,” 27 years after the film originally premiered!
The scene in which Charlie lets Raymond drive took place in front of Caesars’ main entrance.
Isabel Fuentes Whitman (Salma Hayek) worked at Caesars Palace in the 1997 romcom Fools Rush In.
After getting married, she and her new husband, Alex Whitman (Matthew Perry), spend the night in the Rain Man suite.
Caesars Palace was also featured in the Coen Brothers’ 2003 dark romantic comedy Intolerable Cruelty.
Miles (George Clooney) and Marilyn (Catherine Zeta-Jones) also spend their wedding night in the Rain Man suite in the movie.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) gambles at Caesars Palace in the beginning of Iron Man.
In Ocean’s Eleven, Elliot Gould describes “the three most successful robberies in the history of Vegas,” one of which took place at Caesars in 1987.
Joyce Brewster (Barbra Streisand) and Andrew Brewster (Seth Rogen) spend a night at the hotel in the 2012 comedy The Guilt Trip.
One of the hotel’s real life rooms – one that looked very much like ours – was used in the filming.
Caesars Palace also made appearances in Godzilla, The Electric Horseman, Rocky III, Oh, God! You Devil, History of the World: Part I, The Sopranos, 21, Showgirls, My Giant, The Only Game in Town, 2012, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Emma for putting me in touch with Hannah so that I could get all of my filming questions answered!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Caesars Palace (not the real one – Caesar never actually lived there), from The Hangover, is located at 3570 South Las Vegas Boulevard in Las Vegas. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.
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The Last Bookstore from “Gone Girl”
I love bookstores – and books. Actual books, not the digitized versions. You will never catch me reading on a Kindle. I like the feel of a book in my hands, the physical act of turning the pages and the smell. I love, love, love the smell of books. The Grim Cheaper always makes fun of the fact that I am constantly smelling my reading materials and when we watched the Sex and the City movie for the first time, he turned to me laughing at Carrie’s “I love the smell” line (video here). So me! So when I discovered The Last Bookstore in downtown L.A. a couple of years ago, it was love at first sight. Not only is the shop a virtual work of art, with interesting details looming around each and every corner, but it carries unique and intriguing tomes (new and used) that you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Oh, and the place is also a filming location. Yep, right up my alley!
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The Last Bookstore was originally founded by Josh Spencer in 2005 as an online emporium that he ran out of his downtown loft. The young entrepreneur had an extensive background in selling books, furniture, records, clothes and cars via eBay, but had decided to focus solely on literary sales. He dubbed his new endeavor “The Last Bookstore.” The name was chosen ironically. As Spencer explained in a Southern California Public Radio interview, “I’ve always been into science fiction and post-apocalyptic things, so I always wondered what a cool ‘last bookstore’ would look like for some future civilization.”
The shop’s website further states, “The name was chosen with irony, but seems more appropriate with each passing day as physical bookstores die out like dinosaurs from the meteoric impact of Amazon and e-books.” Thankfully, The Last Bookstore seems immune to such a fate. By late 2009, Spencer had outgrown his loft and decided to lease a small brick and mortar site on Main Street. By June 2011 (the very same year that the Borders chain filed for bankruptcy), Spencer had outgrown that location, as well, and moved to the much larger, 10,000-square-foot lobby space of the Spring Arts Tower. It was only months before he needed to expand yet again and in February 2012 he began leasing the building’s second floor. Today, The Last Bookstore encompasses over 16,000 square feet – and every last inch of it is spectacular.
The 12-story Spring Arts Tower was originally designed as the Citizens National Bank Building in 1914 by John Parkinson, the same architect who, along with his son, was responsible for Union Station, Bullocks Wilshire, Los Angeles City Hall, and the Security Trust and Savings Bank (now The Federal Bar).
The building’s grand former lobby features mosaic tiled flooring, sweeping 25-foot-tall ceilings, and towering pillars throughout. The Art Nouveau-style space would be beautiful on its own, but Spencer decided to treat it like a blank canvas onto which he could create a work of art. The result is nothing short of incredible.
The Last Bookstore, which is California’s largest independent bookshop, houses an inventory of 250,000 new and used books, with stacks as far and as high as the eye can see.
Thanks to its whimsical displays, though, it is easy to forget the space is a store. The site seems more like a museum or a movie set or a scene from Alice in Wonderland come to life.
Unique design elements can be found everywhere you turn.
Even the bank’s old vault is utilized as display space.
My favorite décor element, though, has to be is what is called the “Labyrinth Above the Last Bookstore.”
The Labyrinth is absolutely overwhelming in person!
The best part is that The Last Bookstore employees won’t tell you where to find it – you have to go on a hunt to track it down yourself, which the GC and I had a blast doing.
Despite its incredibly unique interior, The Last Bookstore has not popped up very often onscreen, though it was utilized in a rather illicit flashback scene in Gone Girl.
The scene was filmed in the shop’s main room, in the northwestern-most aisle as you first enter the store (though the photograph below was taken from the opposite angle from which the movie was shot).
As I mentioned in this post, the exterior of the Spring Arts Tower appeared in one of my favorite movies, 2004’s Little Black Book, though that was long before The Last Bookstore was founded.
The exterior of the building also appeared briefly in the the Season 2 episode of Castle titled “The Fifth Bullet.”
In a 2011 Los Angeles Times article, Spencer stated, “I think there’s always going to be a great market for books, but it’s definitely going to shrink to those who value and enjoy the ritual of browsing through books and holding books and turning pages. That’s gradually going to become less and less, as the generations pass. This might be the last generation, I think.” If his prediction does someday come to pass, I sincerely hope I am not around to witness it.
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 Last Bookstore, from Gone Girl, is located at 453 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the store’s official website here.
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The Cooper House from “Forever Young”
Today’s locale is a bit of a long time coming. In my early March post about the bungalow where Daniel McCormick (Mel Gibson) lived in Forever Young, I mentioned that I had stalked a different house from the 1992 movie – the one where Claire Cooper (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her son, Nat (Elijah Wood), lived – in my early stalking days. I found the location thanks to Scott’s L.A. Audio Tour of Pasadena CD, but because this was long before I had a blog, had failed to write down the address. Thankfully, the pad was rather easy to re-track down, though. In fact, the address was mentioned explicitly in a scene.
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When Nat and his friend Felix (Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead’s Robery Hy Gorman) are playing around at a military facility, they discover Daniel’s cryogenically-frozen body inside of a suspended animation chamber. Daniel immediately starts to thaw and grabs Nat’s jacket, freaking the boys out, who run away. Daniel later looks inside the jacket and discovers Nat’s address written on the tag. Though the city is listed as San Marcos, the rest of the address shown is the home’s real life address. Claire and Nat’s house is located at 1724 Oxley Street in South Pasadena. How cool is that?
The residence was used extensively in Forever Young.
It is where Daniel lives after waking up from being frozen for 53 years.
In one of the movie’s more memorable scenes, Daniel fixes Claire’s roof and gives Nat some tips on women.
Amazingly, aside from the paint color, virtually no part of the property has been changed since filming took place in 1992.
In real life, the house, which was built in 1910, boasts 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1,115 square feet of living space and a 0.17-acre plot of land.
The home’s real life backyard was used in the movie. Sadly, though, Nat’s awesome tree house hangout was just a prop and is not there in real life.
I could not find any photographs of the real life interior of the home, but am fairly certain it was also used in the filming.
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 Cooper House from Forever Young is located at 1724 Oxley Street in South Pasadena.
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Vickie’s Diner from “Lucky You”
This year is literally flying by! It seems like just yesterday that the Grim Cheaper and I headed to Las Vegas, but in actuality our mini work trip/vacay took place over two months ago! And I still have yet to post all of the stalking sites we visited while there, including today’s locale, which comes courtesy of my friend/Drew Barrymore aficionado Ashley, of The Drewseum website. A few years back, Ashley posted pictures of Tiffany’s Café, a small Sin City restaurant that was featured in Drew’s 2007 flick Lucky You. One of Ashley’s photos showed a poster prominently displayed on the restaurant’s wall that had been signed by the movie’s cast. Once I saw that, I was, of course, chomping at the bit to see the place in person, so I dragged the GC right on over there to grab lunch while we were in town.
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Tiffany’s Café was originally founded in 1955 (or 1960, depending on which website you’re reading) inside of White Cross Drugs pharmacy. The 1,200-square-foot eatery was so named for the vintage Tiffany-style lamps that dot the ceiling above its central lunch counter.
When White Cross Drugs (where Elvis Presley and members of the Rat Pat regularly had prescriptions filled in the ’50s and ’60s) was shuttered in March 2012, people assumed that Tiffany’s had closed down as well, and the restaurant suffered from a decline in patronage. When longtime owner Teddy Pappas eventually decided to retire, the place was acquired by Vickie Kelesis, a Tiffany’s waitress since 2006. She re-opened the eatery, changing its name to Vickie’s Diner, but the menu (which offers homemade, preservative-free fare), was left the same, aside from a few additions. White Cross Drugs was also re-opened as White Cross Market, an upscale grocery store, in 2013 and, when we were there, business appeared to be on an upswing.
The food at Vickie’s is fabulous! I opted for the chicken strips (natch), which were divine.
The GC ordered a chicken pita, which I sampled and liked almost as much as the chicken strips!
In Lucky You, Billie Offer (Drew Barrymore) accompanies Huck Cheever (Eric Bana) to Tiffany’s Café for breakfast after agreeing to give him a second chance.
While there, they run into Eric’s father, L.C. Cheever (Robert Duvall).
The scene was filmed towards the front of the restaurant, in the bank of booths located near Vickie’s entrance door. The exact booth used in the movie is denoted with a pink arrow in the photograph below.
White Cross Drugs was also visible in the scene.
Vickie’s Diner looks a bit different today, but is still recognizable from its onscreen appearance.
Sadly, the poster that the cast signed during the filming has faded and Robert Duvall’s autograph is the only one still visible. You can see what the autographs originally looked like on Ashley’s site here.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to Ashley, of The Drewseum website, for finding this location!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Vickie’s Diner, aka the former Tiffany’s Café from from Lucky You, is located at 1700 South Las Vegas Boulevard in Las Vegas. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here and its Facebook page here.
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Golden Gate Fields from “Metro” – And a Special Fundraising Event for the Alzheimer’s Association
My BFF since the age of 9, Natalie, will be hosting a charity event in honor of her grandfather, Ed Lingsch, on June 14th in the San Francisco area. Ed passed away just shy of his 98th birthday on November 12th, 2011 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. Nat worked for Ed’s real estate company, eventually taking over the business, and cared for her beloved “Gramps” for the last decade of his life. During that time, she penned a blog called Laugh or Cry which chronicled the heartbreaking and sometimes funny trials and tribulations of dealing with an Alzheimer’s patient. This particular post about Gramps’ plans to run away, armed solely with a briefcase full of pilfered Starbucks gift cards, is one of my favorites. A man after my own heart! Ed was a longtime fan of horseracing and even owned several winning steeds during his lifetime. I remember attending one of his winning races with Nat and watching with glee as he stepped into the winner’s circle to pose for photographs. So when Nat decided to host a fundraising event in his honor, she figured what better place to do it than at Golden Gate Fields in Berkeley. As fate would have it, Golden Gate Fields just so happens to be a filming location! But more on that in a bit.
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The Ed Lingsch Derby Day Alzheimer’s Benefit will consist of an afternoon at the races, a buffet lunch, and a silent auction for such items as a week-long stay in Tahoe, gifts from my favorite store Lula Mae, cooking lessons, a Producer of the Day spot on the Sarah & Vinnie Morning Show on Alice 97.3, 49ers tickets, as well as many more. All proceeds will be donated to the Alzheimer’s Association. So the purpose of today’s blog post is not just to chronicle a filming location, but to inform my San Francisco-based readers about the event (tickets are $46 and can be purchased here) and to ask any fellow stalkers who feel so inclined to donate an item for the silent auction (you can find our more information on donating to the auction by emailing Nat at info@alzderbyday.com). You can also donate directly to the Alzheimer’s Association in Ed Lingsch’s name here. (That’s Nat dancing with Gramps at her wedding in 2006.)
Golden Gate Fields is Northern California’s last remaining major racetrack. [Bay Meadows (where I would often accompany Nat and her family to watch Ed’s horses race) was shuttered in May 2008.] The 140-acre site, which originally opened to the public on February 1st, 1941, boasts two tracks – a one-mile synthetic track and a 9/10-mile turf course.
The site also features an 8,000-seat grandstand, a club house, a turf club, simulcast rooms and stunning views of San Francisco Bay and and the Berkeley Hills.
Golden Gate Fields has many claims to fame. Russell Baze, the winningest jockey in the world, won 27 titles there. The location was also the home track of the celebrated horses Silky Sullivan and Lost in the Fog. Silky is now buried on the premises, beneath the yellow and white marker visible in the photograph below.
As I mentioned, Golden Gate Fields is also a filming location. Shortly before it opened to the public, it was utilized briefly for the 1941 comedy Shadow of a Thin Man.
It was at Golden Gate Fields that hostage negotiator Scott Roper (Eddie Murphy) taught Kevin McCall (Michael Rapaport) the intricacies of racing in the 1997 action comedy Metro.
While there, Roper explains that the reason he likes the races is, “The multitude of possibilities. Everything is here for you to see if you just know what conditions to look for, just like a hostage situation.”
A portion of Rancid’s 2009 “Last One To Die” music video was also shot at Golden Gate Fields.
Don’t forget, you can visit the Alzheimer’s Derby Day website here, purchase tickets to the event and/or donate to the Alzheimer’s Association on Eventbrite here, make a donation to the silent auction by emailing info@alzderbyday.com, and follow the event on Facebook here, Instagram here and Twitter here. Any help my fellow stalkers can give would be much appreciated!
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Golden Gate Fields, from Metro, is located at 1100 Eastshore Highway in Berkeley. You can visit the Fields’ official website here.
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Liz’s House from “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”
There are two kinds of people in this world – those who can watch movies over and over and over again and those who cannot. I am in the former category. During my teens and twenties, my parents owned a condominium in Hawaii. We would vacation there every summer, along with other families who owned units in the same community. Our condo was the kids’ hang-out spot (we had a VCR and large movie library) and, for reasons that no longer remain known to me, somehow a tradition began in which all of the youngsters would gather (usually a good four of five of us piled into the pull-out sofa bed) to watch Jumpin’ Jack Flash our first night together in Hawaii each and every year. (Our second night’s viewing was always Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.) Because of this, the film holds a very special place in my heart. So when my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, emailed me recently to let me know that one of his readers had asked for some help in tracking down the house where Liz Carlson (Annie Potts) lived in the movie, I ecstatically offered to lend a hand.
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He wound up not needing my help. While watching Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Owen spotted an address number of “515” on the curb in front of Liz’s house. Though the 1986 comedy was lensed in both New York and Los Angeles, he decided to start his hunt in L.A. and did Google Images searches for numerous permutations and combinations of “515” and “Los Angeles.” When he eventually got to “515 Dr. Los Angeles, CA,” the very first picture to pop up was of Liz’s house! The photo was attached to a Redfin page which listed the address as 515 North Bundy Drive in Brentwood. Prior to finding the dwelling, Owen had asked me if I thought it was in California or New York, and I told him that my inclination was New York. Ironically though, I kept having a nagging thought that the home looked a lot like Casa Walsh from the pilot episode of Beverly Hills, 90210. I should have listened to my gut because the two properties turned out to be located about a mile away from each other.
In real life, the 1938 home was designed by Welton Becket, the prolific L.A. architect who also gave us the Cinerama Dome, the Capital Records Building, the Los Angeles Music Center and the Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport. Becket used the property as his primary residence through the 1940s.
The property boasts 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, 3,800 square feet, a 0.28-acre lot, 4 fireplaces, beamed ceilings, wood built-ins, French doors, a bonus art studio space and a kitchen with both a dining area and an office.
The residence appears twice in Jumpin’ Jack Flash (which just so happens to be the first movie Penny Marshall ever directed). It first pops up in the scene in which Liz explains to Terri Dolittle (Whoopi Goldberg) that the man she is trying to save is being chased by the KGB.
In a later scene, Terri goes to Liz’s house to ask her for more help, only to find the place vacant.
Thanks to the photos posted on Redfin, I learned that the real life interior of the home was also used in Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Though the kitchen has since been updated, it is still recognizable from its appearance. (That’s Life Goes On’s Kellie Martin in her big screen debut pictured below.)
The living room was also featured in the movie (love those built-ins!).
The Dutch doors are also pretty amazing!
The dining room also made a brief appearance in the film.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Liz’s house from Jumpin’ Jack Flash is located at 515 North Bundy Drive in Brentwood.
