Category: TV Locations

Hotel Normandie from “Vanderpump Rules”

Vanderpump Rules is like a fine wine – it just keeps getting better with age. Six seasons in and the show still hasn’t peaked! Well, in my opinion, at least. Not only do the storylines continually get more and more compelling (and ridiculous – “My boyfriend can hang a TV in under seven minutes. I timed him!”), but the series consistently provides great stalking locations. I recently visited one of its earlier locales, Hotel Normandie, which was the site of a brief, but notable moment during Season 4. I originally learned about the historic lodging back in July 2015 thanks to a Cupcakes and Cashmere blog post that featured the property. Completely taken by the gorgeous detailing visible in the background, I promptly included the place on my To-Stalk List and the Grim Cheaper and I headed out there shortly thereafter. At the time, I did not think the hotel had appeared onscreen, so I did not snap any photos and was shocked to see it pop up just a few weeks later on VR. Though I instantly re-added the site to my To-Stalk List, it was not until last week that I finally made it back out there.

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Hotel Normandie, named for its location on the corner of 6th Street and Normandie Avenue in Koreatown, was originally constructed by architects Albert R. Walker and Percy A. Eisen in 1926.

A newspaper ad from that year described the locale as “a delightful hotel for permanent and semi-permanent guests.”

Decidedly Renaissance Revival in style on the outside . . .

. . . Walker and Eisen gave the interior a Spanish Colonial Revival feel.

Hotel Normandie was popular from the start, becoming especially well-known for its $1 Sunday-night turkey dinners, homemade by culinary supervisor Mrs. H.F. Bruner.

Several notables lived on the premises during the hotel’s early days, including author Malcolm Lowry who penned portions of his 1947 novel Under the Volcano onsite. The work has since been called one of the most influential books of the 20th Century.

In 1964, the property was purchased by hoteliers Paul and Adelaide Stockhammer who completely overhauled the site with a $250,000 modernization.

Sadly, much of the hotel’s original detailing was covered over as a result of the project.

It was not long before the place fell into disrepair. In the ‘80s, the building was transformed into low-income housing and then it later had a short stint as a “pot-tel,” aka a pot-friendly hotel (whatever that is).

Thankfully, in 2011 Jingbo Lou stepped in. The Pasadena-based architect/preservationist was initially introduced to the aging hotel by a realtor relative who brought him in to advise a potential buyer on a possible renovation. The buyer was turned off by the costly rehab estimate Lou provided and stepped away from the deal, at which point Lou turned around and made an offer himself. As a 2015 article in the Commercial Observer notes, the purchase was a labor of love. Reporter Michael Kaplan states, “Why else would an ordinarily rational architect from Pasadena, Calif., buy a 1926 Renaissance-style hotel loaded with drug addicts and prostitutes and situated on a dodgy stretch of downtown Los Angeles’s pre-gentrified Koreatown? The property, after all, had been hanging in foreclosure and was ultimately bailed on by the previous owner.” As Lou explains, though, “When I first walked in and saw the ceiling height, the chandeliers, the columns, a wood-burning fireplace in the lobby, the grandness of it all, I knew it could be something special.” With Jingbo’s guidance, that is exactly what it became.

Embarking upon a massive restoration, which took 3 years to complete at a cost of $5 million, Lou saw to it that the unsightly drywall and carpeting that covered much of the building’s original design elements were removed, the myriad broken windows were replaced, and the original Mansard roof, which had been dismantled in the 1950s, was re-constructed. Stucco that had long since marred the hotel’s exterior brickwork was also extracted – well, for the most part. According to the Los Angeles Conservancy website, the southeast lower-level corner of the structure (visible on the bottom left of my photo below) was left ensconced “as a nod” to the property’s “long history of alterations.”

The reinvigorated space opened to the public in February 2014.

The 4-story property, which is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #1013, boasts 91 sleek but comfortable rooms, a large ballroom, meeting space, a gym, and countless retro details throughout.

#barcartgoals, amirite?

Hotel Normandie is also home to four onsite restaurants and lounges, including The Walker Inn, le comptoir, The Normandie Club, and Cassell’s Hamburgers.

The later is an L.A. institution that was originally established by Alvin Cassell in 1948. (Special thanks to my friend Katie for providing the photo below!)

After a change in ownership in the ‘90s, the eatery saw a decline in quality and, subsequently, patronage. The site was eventually shuttered in 2012.

Figuring the Normandie would be the perfect spot to re-establish the historic burger joint, Jingbo partnered with chef Christian Page and opened a re-invigorated version of Cassell’s on the ground floor of the hotel in December 2014.

To ensure the restaurant would be on par with the Cassell’s of Alvin’s day, Jingbo brought in many of the original furnishings, including vintage signage and Al’s former Hobart grinder. He also reverted back to the menu used during the eatery’s early years which featured homemade mayonnaise, fresh produce, and absolutely no French fries because, as Cassell explained to Oui Magazine in 1972, “The more things you do, the less chance there is of reaching perfection.”

Cassell’s Hamburgers was the site of James Kennedy and Lala Kent’s first – and last – date in the Season 4 episode of Vanderpump Rules titled “Cock of the Walk.” Both the outside of Hotel Normandie . . .

. . . and the inside of the restaurant were shown in the episode. During their early evening meal, the duo discuss James’ ex-girlfriend, Kristen Doute, and toast to “making music and babies.” (Insert major eye roll emoji here!) Though the date goes well, Lala calls it quits the very next episode after discovering that James has slept with one of her friends. (He’s such a catch!)

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Hotel Normandie, from the “Cock of the Walk” episode of Vanderpump Rules, is located at 605 Normandie Avenue in Koreatown. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

May 23, 2018
Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden from “Pure Genius”

The Grim Cheaper and I are finally getting around to landscaping the backyard of our new house, so to say I’m into gardens lately would be an understatement. If I knew how to use Pinterest (I swear I cannot figure that site out), I’d be pinning foliage design ideas left and right. Instead I’ve been visiting gardens IRL and snapping copious photos. One idyll that I only just learned about thanks to a brief mention in the March 2018 issue of Los Angeles magazine is Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, a bucolic space tucked away on a sleepy residential street in Pasadena. When I discovered upon further digging that the spot is also a filming location, I decided I had to visit it stat for both backyard inspo and blogging purposes.

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Originally commissioned by Charles Storrier Stearns and his wife, Ellamae Sheppard, on the grounds of their sprawling Pasadena manse (which you can see a photo of here) in 1935, the 2-acre glen took a whopping 7 years to complete.

The couple called upon landscape architect Kinzuchi Fujii to design the picturesque space.

Sadly, shortly before completing the project, Fujii was sent to an internment camp where he remained until the end of World War II. Though he considered the garden his crowning achievement, he never returned to see his vision finalized.

What he created is nothing short of magical, with walking paths;

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two large ponds;

a 15-foot devil’s bridge made of granite,

a teahouse that was initially constructed in Japan and then taken apart before being shipped to Pasadena, whereupon it was reassembled at the garden;

numerous footbridges;

and a plethora of plant varieties including Japanese maples, Chinese elms, and redwood trees.

Upon Ellamae’s death in 1949, the Storrier Stearns estate was sold at auction to an antiques dealer named Gamelia Haddad Poulsen. Though she subdivided the vast property into seven separate parcels and razed the massive mansion, she held onto the Japanese garden as well as an adjoining plot on which she built a modest home.

Gamelia cherished the tranquil space, caring for and maintaining its beauty until the state declared imminent domain on a 1/3-acre portion of it in 1975 as part of the Interstate 710 expansion. With the fate of the garden in flux, she left it to deteriorate. The ponds eventually dried up, the plants shriveled, and the teahouse burned down.

When Gamelia passed away in 1985, her son, Jim Haddad, and his wife, Connie, inherited the garden and the home. The 710 expansion had still yet to see fruition by that time, so the couple finally decided to restore the property. The painstaking project took 15 years to complete, but the ponds were eventually filled, the teahouse was rebuilt to exacting specifications, the foliage was replanted, and Fujii’s vision was restored.

The Haddads kept the garden, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, mainly private, opening it up to the outside world solely as a special events venue and for filming.

It was not until 2016 that the couple made the site available to tour.

Today, Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden is open to the public every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and the second and last Sunday of each month.

Thanks to the Pasadena Star-News, I learned that the pilot of Pure Genius (originally named Bunker Hill) was lensed on the premises in 2016. (Though the article misreported the location of filming as Arlington Garden, which is situated across the street, one quick scan through the episode told me that shooting had actually taken place at Storrier Stearns.)

The garden appeared throughout the episode, masking as the grounds of the supposed Palo Alto-area Bunker Hill Center for the Advancement of Medicine.

As you can see in the screen capture below, the exterior of a Bunker Hill building was digitally added to the background of one of the scenes featuring the garden.

While I know that Storrier Stearns must have been utilized in other filmings over the years, I was unable to dig up any other productions it appeared in.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, from the pilot episode of Pure Genius, is located at 270 Arlington Drive in Pasadena. The property is open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and the second and last Sunday of each month from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $10. You can visit the garden’s official website here.

May 21, 2018
Voletta Wallace’s House from “Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac & the Notorious B.I.G.”

I have never been a fan of rap. My musical tastes tend to run far more tepid (read: Michael Bublé, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, and ‘80s pop). The Grim Cheaper likes to joke that my iPod song list hasn’t been updated since I first got the device back in 2001. Regardless, when I heard about Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac & the Notorious B.I.G., the recent USA series that chronicles the respective 1996 and 1997 killings of rappers Tupac Shakur (Marcc Rose) and Christopher ‘Biggie’ Wallace (Wavyy Jonez), I was completely enticed. Granted, anything having to do with true crime is pretty much guaranteed to pique my interest, but when I learned that the show was shot in Los Angeles and starred Josh Duhamel, I was all in! Thankfully, it did not disappoint. The GC and I were hooked from episode 1. Presented via a sequence of ever-switching timelines, Unsolved is both thoroughly dynamic and a marvel of historical accuracy. I knew little of either murder case prior to watching, but fell down a rabbit hole of research after each episode aired and was thrilled at the level of precision and veracity displayed. I was also thrilled to recognize the supposed Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania home where Biggie’s mom, Voletta Wallace (Aisha Hinds), lived as the very same dwelling featured in the infamous opening sequence of the 1955 classic Rebel Without a Cause, which I had stalked back in 2012, but never blogged about.

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The residence only appears once on Unsolved in a particularly heart-wrenching scene at the end of the final episode in which Detective Greg Kading (Duhamel) visits Voletta at her home in the Keystone State to explain in person why police are no longer looking into her son’s case.

As soon as Kading walked into Voletta’s yellow-hued kitchen, I immediately recognized it as the kitchen from the Rebel Without a Cause house. As fate would have it, the pad recently hit the market as a fully-furnished rental and I had come across the listing, which mentioned its 1955 cameo, a few weeks prior and, of course, perused photos of the interior. For whatever reason, the images of the kitchen stuck with me. (What can I say, ingraining film locations into my memory is my super power.) More particularly, the home’s huge hood situated above the center island stuck with me, as did the woven bamboo shades hanging in the window. (The GC was on a kick to purchase very similar window coverings for our new house, but I found them a bit too tiki-inspired for my taste and finally convinced him to go with more neutral-colored blinds. Thanks to our many back-and-forth debates on the subject, shades are definitely something I take notice of lately.) Certain Voletta’s kitchen was the very same one I had seen in the MLS photos, I quickly pulled up the Rebel Without a Cause pad’s listing and was floored to see that they were, indeed, a match – right down to the wall clock, bar stools, and mounted television set!

The exterior of Voletta’s residence has proved harder to track down. I did discover that the imagery shown of it is actually stock footage from Shutterstock of “a slow aerial approach and flyover of a Pennsylvania farm house in the Autumn.” The home is apparently very popular in the stock footage world as I found a second reel featuring it, this one titled “A high angle flyover of a typical snow-covered farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania in the winter.”

In real life, the Rebel Without a Cause dwelling, which was originally built in 1912, features 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, 4,398 square feet, a formal dining room, a sun room, a large veranda, multiple decks, a pool, a barbeque area, a detached gym with a steam shower, and a 0.24-acre lot.

According to my buddy E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle called the place home for a time in the 1920s.

Though the Southern Colonial-style residence is often counted among Los Angeles’ most iconic film locations due to its appearance in Rebel Without a Cause, not much of it can actually be seen in the movie. The lower portion of the pad is just barely visible in the beginning scene in which Jim Stark (James Dean) lays down in the street while playing with a toy monkey shortly before being arrested for “plain drunkenness.”

The property has a couple of other cameos under its belt, as well. In the 1959 sci-fi film Teenagers from Outer Space, it portrays the home of Alice Woodward (Sonia Torgeson).

I am 99.9% certain that the scenes taking place in and around Alice’s pool were shot at a different location altogether.

Not only do building permits show that no pool existed at the property until 1993, as you can see in the screen captures as compared to the MLS photos above and below, the pool that was eventually built is much smaller than the one that appeared in Teenagers from Outer Space. It is also situated in a different position with regards to the residence than what was shown onscreen.

The dwelling also pops up as the Kappa Omega Psi fraternity house where Michael Ryan (C. Thomas Howell) and his friends crash a party in the 1985 comedy Secret Admirer.

The interior of the home also appeared in the movie.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Voletta Wallace’s house from Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac & the Notorious B.I.G. is located at 7529 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood Hills West.

May 9, 2018
Big and Carrie’s Apartment from “Sex and the City 2”

Apparently I did a lot of stalking during my April 2016 New York vacation because there are some places I do not even remember visiting. Case in point – while organizing my photos from the trip a couple of days ago, I came across several images of the stately building above which I had no recollection whatsoever of taking – nor did I have any clue what production the structure was from. Thankfully “1030 5th Avenue” was painted on the awning, otherwise I might never have figured it out! Address in hand, I scanned through my NYC stalking list and was shocked to discover that the locale was actually where Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big (Chris Noth) lived in the 2010 flick Sex and the City 2. How I did not recognize it right off the bat is beyond me! I guess I have to chalk it up to some major stalking overload.

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The handsome 13-story property was designed in 1925 by J.E.R. Carpenter, the prolific architect/developer who was not only responsible for more than 25 buildings on the Upper East Side, but was dubbed “the father of the modern large apartment here in New York” in 1932’s The Real Estate Record & Guide.

The stunning 16-unit pre-war building is chock-full of modern amenities.

Deemed a “white-glove” property by StreetEasy, the neo-Italianate-style co-op features a fitness center, an elevator with an operator, a full-time doorman, a canopied entrance, a spacious lobby, and a laundry room.

Situated on the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 84th Street, the structure also boasts stunning views of Central Park and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Each apartment is appointed with spacious dimensions, a multitude of rooms, high ceilings, and wood-burning fireplaces.

Considering its tony location and gorgeous trappings, it is not surprising that quite a few celebrities and public figures have called the place home over the years, including Academy-Award-winning producer Wendy Finerman, actor Robert Redford, journalist Diane Sawyer, director Mike Nichols, and CoreComm CEO George S. Blumenthal.

1030 Fifth Avenue pops up twice in Sex and the City 2. It first appears in a beginning scene that shows Carrie leaving her apartment and heading out to meet the girls at Bergdorf Goodman . . .

. . . before transitioning to a flashback of Carrie’s arrival in New York in the ‘80s. As you can see in my photographs as compared to the screen captures above and below, the building’s canopy was swapped out for a striped one during the shoot.

1030 Fifth is featured again a few scenes later when Big and Carrie return home from Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony’s (Mario Cantone) wedding.

In the movie, the building is said to be the same place where the couple purchased a penthouse in the first film. As Carrie narrates, “After Big and I sold the extravagant rooftop penthouse we thought we were meant to live in, we decided that maybe we needed to come a little more down to earth. So we did. Twelve floors to be exact.” In reality, the structure featured in the first flick is located two blocks south at 1010 Fifth Avenue. I blogged about that locale last July. The two sites do bear a striking resemblance to each other, though, as you can see below.

As to why the shift in locales was made from the first to second film, I am uncertain, but producers sure did find an extremely similar replacement.

In Sex and the City 2, Carrie and Big are shown to live in unit 12B.

In reality, the interior of their apartment was just a set built inside of a soundstage at Silvercup Studios in Queens where much of the movie was lensed. You can check out some photographs of what the actual twelfth floor unit, which takes up the entire level, looks like here. The stunning 6-bedroom, 6-bath space is currently for sale for a cool $38 million.

The last time I took a tour of Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, I was thrilled to see Carrie and Big’s “good” couch on display in the Property Department.

And their ottoman . . .

. . . where Carrie is sitting when Big gives her a black diamond wedding ring, which is my favorite scene in the movie. I absolutely love when Carrie says, “It’s gonna be just us two. Are we enough?” And Big responds, “Kid, we’re too much!”

1030 Fifth Avenue also pops up in the 2010 comedy The Good Guy as the building where Tommy Fielding (Scott Porter) lives. (Please pardon the graphics on the images below – I had to snag the captures from the movie’s trailer.)

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Carrie and Big’s apartment from Sex and the City 2 is located at 1030 Fifth Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side.

May 4, 2018
Tom’s Restaurant from “Seinfeld”

Considering it is one of New York’s best-known film locations, you’d think I would have stalked Tom’s Restaurant, aka Monk’s Café from Seinfeld, ages ago. That was not the case, though. While the Morningside Heights eatery had been on my To-Stalk List ever since my first visit to Manhattan back in 2005, due to the fact that it is located all way at 112th and Broadway, it kept getting pushed to the back burner. Then, while doing research prior to my April 2016 trip to the Big Apple, I came across the following passage in the book The Best Things to Do in New York – “As a rule, comfort food gets better the father uptown you go, and the melts, shakes, and fried chicken at Tom’s are close to perfect.” Near-perfect fried chicken? Say no more! I was not going to pass that up! So straight to the top of my To-Stalk List the restaurant went and the Grim Cheaper and I headed right on over there with our friend Lavonna one of our first days in town.

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Tom’s Restaurant was originally founded way back in 1940 by Greece native Tom Glikas.

He didn’t hold onto the place for long, though. A scant six years later, Glikas sold his namesake eatery to the Zoulis family who continue to own and operate it to this day.

Still situated on the same busy corner on which it was originally established, little of the restaurant has changed throughout the course of its almost 80-year history.

The quality Greek and American offerings, massive menu, affordable prices, and late-night hours turned the diner into a neighborhood staple from the get-go and it remains such today, with locals, tourists, and students from nearby Columbia University alike all popping in for superb comfort food, most of it made from scratch.

Even celebrities have been known to drop by. Over the years such luminaries as William Hurt, John McCain, Larry David, Madeleine Albright, Christopher Reeve, Mike Tyson, Richard Dreyfuss, Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello, and Barack Obama have all been seen dining on the premises.

Considering Tom’s long history in New York, it is not surprising that the place found its way onscreen. On Seinfeld, the restaurant popped up pretty much weekly as the regular hangout of Jerry Seinfeld (played by himself), Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), George Costanza (Jason Alexander), and Kramer (Michael Richards). Though it is arguably the show’s most iconic location, its familiar exterior did not make an appearance until the Season 2 premiere titled “The Ex-Girlfriend.”

Prior to that, the outside of the gang’s favorite coffee shop was only featured on one occasion – in the pilot. For that episode, titled “The Seinfeld Chronicles,” a different exterior was utilized. Located at 208 Varick Street in the West Village, the site is currently home to a McDonald’s (pictured below via Google Street View), but it housed an independent diner at the time that the series started filming. Though the signage shown on Seinfeld reads “Pete’s Luncheonette,” I am fairly certain that was not the establishment’s actual name.

The same restaurant was also utilized in the 1984 comedy The Muppets Take Manhattan as the spot where Kermit the Frog lands a day job while trying to get his Manhattan Melodies musical onto Broadway. In looking at the imagery of Pete’s from both productions, I am fairly certain that what was shown in “The Seinfeld Chronicles” was just recycled footage from The Muppets.

Back to Tom’s. As you can see in the screen capture as compared to the photograph below, though some aspects of the eatery’s exterior, including the windows and wood framing, have changed since Seinfeld was shot, the place is still very recognizable from its onscreen stint. The interior is another story, however.

Only the outside of Tom’s Restaurant appeared on Seinfeld. As is the norm with sitcoms, which are shot in front of a live audience, all of the show’s interior filming took place on studio-built sets. In this case, the Monk’s Café scenes were lensed on a soundstage (Stage 19 during Seasons 1-3 and Stage 9 during Seasons 4-9) at CBS Studio Center, located at 4024 Radford Avenue in Studio City.

I got to see portions of the Monk’s set, including a booth and a wall, when I visited the Warner Bros. “Television: Out of the Box” exhibit at The Paley Center for Media in 2012. (Though, considering many of the items on display weren’t exactly authentic, I cannot say with certainty that the artifacts pictured below are indeed legit.)

The actual interior of Tom’s does not resemble the Monk’s set in the slightest, which made seeing the restaurant in person rather jarring.

Though the place does have a counter . . .

. . . and booth seating, it looks nothing like the spot made famous for its big salads.

While not a big restaurant by any means, Tom’s is also significantly larger than Monk’s. Regardless of the disparities, it was still a huge thrill to finally see the site in person.

And I am happy to report that the assertion made in The Best Things to Do in New York was not wrong. While I opted for chicken strips instead of the fried chicken meal (I never pass up chicken strips when I see them on a menu), they were outstanding – as was the ranch dressing they were served with!

For those wondering how the name “Monk’s Café” came to be, per an article Jerry Seinfeld wrote for New York magazine, the moniker was rather uninspired. He says, “We called the coffee shop Monk’s because there was a Thelonious Monk poster in the office where Larry [David] and I were writing, and we just needed a name.”

Tom’s Restaurant also appeared in the Season 3 episode of The Bionic Woman titled “Long Live the King,” which aired in 1978.

Because The Bionic Woman was filmed in Los Angeles, the eatery was only utilized for establishing shots in the episode. The scene taking place inside the restaurant was lensed elsewhere – either at a actual L.A.-area café or a studio-built set.

Italian director Gian Franco Morini made the eatery the subject of his 2014 film, Tom’s Restaurant – A Documentary About Everything.

That same year, Jerry Seinfeld paid homage to his former series by shooting a Season 3 episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee at Tom’s along with fellow alums Jason Alexander and Wayne Knight.

The episode, titled “The Over-Cheer,” finally gave us a shot of George and Jerry sitting inside the actual Tom’s.

Not only is the eatery a filming location, but it also inspired a popular song – Suzanne Vega’s 1987 ditty “Tom’s Diner.” As the singer explained to The Guardian in a 2016 article, “When I was at college in Manhattan in the early 1980s, I used to go to Tom’s Restaurant on 112th and Broadway for coffee. I liked its ordinariness: it was the kind of place you’d find on any corner. One day, I was in there mulling over a conversation I’d had with a photographer friend, Brian Rose, about romantic alienation. He told me he saw his life as if through a pane of glass. I came out of Tom’s with the idea of writing a song about an alienated character who just sees things happening around him. I was walking down Broadway and the melody popped into my head. The line about the actor ‘who had died while he was drinking’ was true: William Holden’s obituary had been in that morning’s paper. The ‘bells of the cathedral’ were those of St. John the Divine up the street, though I made up the bit about the woman ‘fixing her stockings’ and changed ‘restaurant’ to ‘diner’ to make it rhyme.” A fan named David Hammar did a deep dive into figuring out the exact day Vega penned the song (a man after my own heart!) and posted the results of his quest on Suzanne’s official website. Parsing through old newspaper archives and weather reports, Hammar pinpoints the date as November 18th, 1981. Well, sort of. The article makes for a fabulous read. You can check it out here. (For whatever reason, the photo below was not actually taken at Tom’s Restaurant, but at a different establishment.)

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Tom’s Restaurant, aka Monk’s Café from Seinfeld, is located at 2880 Broadway in New York’s Morningside Heights neighborhood. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

May 2, 2018
Saddle Peak Lodge from “Bones”

There is no shortage of historic restaurants in Los Angeles that have appeared onscreen. Despite their abundance, I thought I was well-versed on pretty much all of them. One I went completely unaware of for years, though, was Saddle Peak Lodge in Calabasas. I only learned of the 100-plus-year-old eatery in March 2013 while searching for the general store featured in the Season 2 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Camping Trip.” During my hunt, I came across screen captures of a 1960 Perry Mason episode lensed at Saddle Peak Lodge and the structure shown looked quite a bit like the market I was trying to track down, so I did some further digging. Come to find out, the restaurant was expanded and remodeled significantly in the years following the Perry Mason shoot and most definitely was not the spot I had been searching for, but I was intrigued nonetheless – especially when I found out it had appeared in countless productions. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to see it shortly thereafter. (Though I am happy to report that the location of the 90210 general store was eventually unearthed as 34813 Bouquet Canyon Road in Santa Clarita, the structure was sadly torn down in 2003.)

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Saddle Peak Lodge was originally established as a rustic one-room general store/roadhouse at the turn of the 19th Century. Situated along a well-traveled road in the Santa Monica Mountains, visitors would pop in for a quick bite to eat or to pick up basic sundries while en route to their respective destinations.

Named in honor of a peak located nearby, the small market (which you can see an early photograph of here) stocked little besides sandwiches, drinks and basic goods.

It did not take long for the place to become a popular respite for the Hollywood set thanks to the many movie ranches located nearby. Such stars as Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Milton Berle were all known to pop in when filming in the area. In later years, Richard Burton, Ernest Borgnine, and members of the Rat Pack were frequent guests.

In the 1960s, Saddle Peak Lodge was purchased by Bud and Jean Simmert who transformed the establishment into a larger, more upscale restaurant. It went through further renovations and expansions in 1985 after being acquired by Grand American Fare Inc., the enterprise that also founded the Oar House Bar & Buffalo Chips Restaurant in Santa Monica (which later became O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Restaurant, made famous in The Truth About Cats & Dogs). The company’s owner Al Ehringer was responsible for creating the lodge-inspired aesthetic that still graces the eatery today.

The stone and wood space is both decidedly rustic and elegant at the same time.

And its patio is one of the most gorgeous in all of L.A.

As such, Saddle Peak Lodge has become one of the area’s most popular wedding and event venues.

Owned by Al’s ex-wife Ann Ehringer since 1992, the restaurant boasts countless warm, homey touches that make dining there feel more like being in a friend’s home than a public space.

Antique books . . .

. . . unique lamps . . .

. . . and other curiosities can be found at every turn.

Saddle Peak Lodge, which can host 225 hungry patrons at a time, has won countless accolades and awards over the years including the AAA Four Diamond Award, Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence, and a Michelin star.

And the restaurant is even more popular with celebrities than ever. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted there in recent years include Molly Ringwald, Selena Gomez, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, and Titus Welliver. Bruce Jenner even proposed to Kris Kardashian at Saddle Peak Lodge in 1991.

The hostess that the GC and I encountered upon entering Saddle Peak Lodge could not have been nicer and invited me to take all the photos of the place that I wanted even though we were not dining on the premises. She was also kind enough to fill us in on some of the site’s filming history. I was most excited to hear about the restaurant’s appearance on my grandma’s favorite show, Bones. In the Season 6 episode titled “The Truth in the Myth,” which aired in 2011, the eatery portrays the Pine Tree Manor hotel where Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) investigate the suspicious death of television host Lee Coleman (Leigh McCloskey). Both the exterior . . .

. . . and interior of the restaurant were featured in the episode.

In the 1955 drama The Fast and the Furious, Connie Adair (Dorothy Malone) stops for lunch at Saddle Peak Lodge and winds up getting kidnapped by escaped fugitive Frank Webster (John Ireland).

I am unsure if the interior shown in the movie was Saddle Peak’s actual interior or a set.

As I mentioned earlier, the restaurant was featured in a 1960 episode of Perry Mason. In Season 3’s “The Case of the Prudent Prosecutor,” Jefferson Pike (J. Pat O’Malley) fakes being shot outside of Saddle Peak Lodge.

Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland) and his family stop at Saddle Peak to use the phone and grab some provisions after learning that the city of Los Angeles has been destroyed in a nuclear attack in the 1962 thriller Panic in Year Zero!

As was the case with The Fast and the Furious, I am unsure if the interior shown onscreen was the restaurant’s actual interior or a set.

In the Season 6 episode of Dynasty titled “The Decision,” which aired in 1985, Miles Colby (Maxwell Caulfield) dines with Fallon Carrington Colby (Emma Samms) at Saddle Peak Lodge.

Thanks to fellow stalker Colette, I learned that Saddle Peak Lodge masked as Sable Mountain Ski Resort, where Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) found herself snowed in with an Olympic ski team in the Season 5 episode of Murder, She Wrote titled “Snow White, Blood Red,” which aired in 1988.

Larry David (playing himself) discusses basketball with friends over dinner at Saddle Creek in the Season 2 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm titled “Shaq,” which aired in 2001.

In the Season 3 episode of Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica titled “Newlyweds Two Year Anniversary,” which aired in 2005, Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson celebrate their anniversary at Saddle Creek Lodge.

Saddle Peak pops up in the “Dinner with Rush” segment of the 2010 documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, which you can watch here.

In the Season 4 episodes of Awkward. titled “Snow Job: Part 1” and “Snow Job: Part 2″,” which aired in 2014, the restaurant portrays the hotel where the Palos Hills High School gang stays while on the senior ski trip.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Saddle Peak Lodge, from “The Truth in the Myth” episode of Bones, is located at 419 Cold Canyon Road in Calabasas. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

April 25, 2018
Moorten Botanical Garden

If you follow any lifestyle, fashion or beauty blogger, chances are you’ve seen some variation of the photo above. For those who don’t keep up with influencers, the image is of the cactarium – aka cacti terrarium – at Moorten Botanical Garden in Palm Springs. The structure has been documented on social media so frequently as of late that The Telegraph recently dubbed it “the most Instagrammed greenhouse in the world.” I first learned about the garden in December 2015 while reading this article about the desert in Sunset magazine. In the days that followed, I spotted pictures of the place pop up in the IG feeds of no less than three bloggers I follow. Moorten it seemed was everywhere! Considering I had called the Coachella Valley home for three years by that point, I thought it was a bit sacrilegious that I had never seen the idyll in person myself. So I promptly dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there a few weeks later – and was thrilled to learn upon doing so that the site is a filming location!

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Moorten Botanical Garden was established by railroad-worker-turned-actor Chester Moorten, who was best known for appearing in the Keystone Cops silent films. Upon being diagnosed with Tuberculosis in the ‘30s, Chester left Los Angeles and headed east to Palm Springs with the hope that the desert air would provide him some relief. A longtime green thumb, Moorten started cultivating and selling cacti and other desert foliage at a downtown Palm Springs shop/nursery that he opened in 1938 and quickly earned himself the nickname “Cactus Slim.” Everyone from area locals to the actor’s celebrity friends were customers.

In 1940, Moorten married botanist Patricia Haliday. Together the couple expanded Chester’s business to include landscape design and were soon hired by such luminaries as Walt Disney, Red Skelton, Jimmy Van Heusen, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Lily Pons to create backyards at their desert homes. Walt even tapped the duo to curate the foliage for Frontierland at his soon-to-be-built Disneyland Resort.

The couple also expanded their nursery into a cactus museum of sorts, using it as a showcase for their growing landscape business.

Cultivated from plants gathered during the couple’s many world travels, the site soon evolved into an area attraction.

In its early days, such luminaries as Dwight Eisenhower, Mamie Eisenhower, and Ginger Rogers were all known to pop in.

In 1955, Chester and Patricia moved the garden to its current home, a 1.5-acre plot of land at 1701 South Palm Canyon Drive complete with a sprawling Mediterranean-style estate that became their residence.

Dubbed “Cactus Castle,” the 1929 dwelling was originally commissioned by nature photographer Stephen Willard and his wife, Beatrice, who lived on the premises until 1947.

When Slim passed away in 1980, Patricia continued to live at the estate, but handed over the daily operation of the garden to the couple’s son, Clark, who shared his parents’ deep love of horticulture.

Clark then moved into Cactus Castle with his family upon Patricia’s passing in 2010. He continues to run the garden to this day, carrying on his parents’ legacy with gusto.

Currently, Moorten Botanical Garden, which is also known as Desertland, is comprised of 3,000 different varieties of plants organized into 9 geographical regions including California, Texas, Arizona, Baja California, Colorado, the Mojave Desert, the Sonoran Desert, South Africa, and South America.

Woven landscapes greet visitors at every turn . . .

. . . as do unique relics like the loveseat created from a cedar burl pictured below . . .

. . . and vegetative curiosities such as the extraordinary S-shaped tree situated just outside of Cactus Castle’s front door, which was moved to the garden from Palm Canyon after being struck by lightning.

The bolt caused the tree to burn and collapse to the side, but it survived and continued to grow in a curved position.

The Moortens propped it up on rocks after re-locating it and subsequently created a waterfall underneath (which was not turned on the day we were there).

Moorten Botanical Garden also boasts an array of crystals, rocks, fossils, antique mining tools, a gift shop/nursery, and a menagerie of desert animals.

Its biggest draw, though, is the cactarium. An invention of Chester’s, the shutter-worthy structure was erected one day when Patricia happened to be out of town.

As Clark explained to The Telegraph, “Originally the cactarium had a wooden frame, and it was covered with double thickness window screen for shade. My father wanted a more greenhouse-type of structure, so he bent all the pipes while mother was away for a week in around 1976 or 1977.” Patricia was reportedly not at all happy with the result. Little did she know the rounded shed would become one of the desert’s biggest draws some forty years later. Though not much to look at from the outside . . .

. . . the cactarium’s interior is pretty spectacular.

Filled with rare specimens of plants . . .

. . . the structure is literally dripping with greenery.

Looking around Moorten Botanical Garden, it is not hard to see why so many are enchanted with the place and how Instagram has served to make it even more popular.

The site is just that picturesque.

True to form, I ran into a popular blogger, iPhone camera in hand and photographer husband trailing closely behind, while I was there.

Moorten Botanical Garden is not just an Instagram star, though. The site has also popped up a couple of times onscreen.

Back in 1995, the garden was featured in the 18th episode of the 6th season of Rescue 911 in the segment titled “Chance Encounter,” which covers the true tale of two young hikers both named Jennifer who were rescued after falling off a cliff in Palm Springs in 1994. At the end of the bit, the real life Jennifers stroll through Moorten with their rescuers. You can watch the segment here.

In the Season 13 episode of Visiting . . . with Huell Howser titled “Moorten Botanical Garden,” which aired in 2005, the convivial host visits the site and conducts an extensive interview with Clark. You can watch the full episode here.

Moorten also makes an appearance in the 2017 horror film Valentine DayZ in a scene that is featured in the trailer, which is where the stills below came from. I couldn’t actually find the flick available to stream anywhere, which the GC said is incredibly telling.

If you happen to find yourself in the desert, I highly recommend a visit to Moorten Botanical Garden.

The site can easily be traversed in about an hour and admittance is only $5.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Moorten Botanical Garden is located at 1701 South Palm Canyon Drive in The Mesa neighborhood of Palm Springs. You can visit the garden’s official website here.

April 20, 2018
Gray’s Papaya from “Sex and the City”

You will never catch anyone calling me a “foodie.” My palate leans much more toward comfort than epicurean with meals of choice consisting of chicken strips and ranch dressing, turkey and mashed potatoes, and hot dogs. I am a hot dog fanatic. My favorite spot to grab a ‘furter is Gray’s Papaya in New York. Their franks are simply sublime! I’ve sung the chain’s praises a couple of time on this blog – first in 2007 and then again in 2009. I got a bit of my reporting wrong in the later, though, when I stated that a scene from the Season 5 episode of Sex and the City titled “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number” had been lensed at the company’s Upper West Side outpost. A reader named Sabrina corrected me, commenting that SATC had actually been shot at the Greenwich Village Gray’s. As she explained, “You can see the phone box right next to the exit Carrie uses.” So I took a closer look at the episode and Sabrina was indeed correct! In “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number,” Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) grabs a dog at the GP located at 402 Sixth Avenue. So I immediately added the address to my New York To-Stalk List. Sadly, by the time I finally made it there in 2016, the eatery had closed and a Liquiteria juice bar had taken its place. I still figured it was worth blogging about, though.

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For those who have never had the pleasure of downing a Gray’s Papaya frank, it truly is an experience. The no-frills, walk-up hot dog stand was originally founded in 1973 by Paul Gray – a former employee of rival chain Papaya King – on the corner of Broadway and West 72nd Street on NYC’s Upper West Side. The eatery quickly became a hit with New Yorkers who loved the quality of the dogs and the bargain prices. It wasn’t long before additional outposts popped up around Manhattan, including the one at 402 Sixth Avenue which opened its doors in 1986. Though I never visited it, you can check out what it looked like when it was still in operation thanks to the archived Google Street View images from June 2011 below.

Sadly, though still insanely popular (you’d be hard-pressed to find any Gray’s location that is not crammed with people 24/7), the Greenwich Village outpost shuttered in January 2014 due to a rent hike. It followed the closing of another Gray’s at 539 8th Avenue in Midtown in February 2011 for the same reason, leaving the UWS eatery as the chain’s sole locale.

Things appear to be on the upswing, though. Not only is the flagship UWS outpost still flourishing 45 years after its inception, but a new Gray’s was opened in 2016 at 612 Eighth Avenue in Midtown. Customers have been lining up for the popular Recession Special – two dogs and a papaya juice drink or soda for $4.95 – ever since.

In “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number,” which aired in 2002, a “palpably lonely” Carrie attends the party for her book release sans a significant other. While heading home from the soiree, Carrie’s limo driver (Dena Atlantic) learns that Carrie has just written a book and insists on taking her somewhere to celebrate. The two hit up Gray’s Papaya (long known for being open 24 hours) and when the driver informs the man taking their order about Carrie’s new book, he insists on giving them the dogs for free. The scene was inspired by SATC writer Cindy Chupack’s first Emmy win. Of the experience, she is quoted in Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell as saying, “I didn’t have a date for the Emmys the year we won, and I lost our Sex and the City people at one point during the night, so I felt very ‘minus one’ until my driver said, ‘You won an Emmy? We have to celebrate this!’ and took me through a McDonald’s drive-through and told the guys in the window, ‘She won an Emmy!’ They gave me a free chocolate shake. The limo driver we cast in the episode was very much like the driver I had – although in the episode, Carrie goes to Gray’s Papaya, which is more New York and is actually a favorite place of Sarah Jessica’s.”

Though very little of Gray’s exterior is visible in the scene and what is shown is only via a blurry camera pan, as you can see in the screen captures below as compared to the Google Street View images, the restaurant’s red trim . . .

. . . as well as the location and configuration of the side doors are a match to what appeared onscreen.

And, sure enough, there’s that phone box that Sabrina mentioned.

The Greenwich Village Gray’s has popped up in a couple of other productions, as well. In the 2008 comedy Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Thom (Aaron Yoo) calls Nick (Michael Cera) while standing outside of the eatery to let him know that he has lost Caroline (Ari Graynor).

And Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) takes Stan (Alex O’Loughlin) to grab take-out there in the 2010 romcom The Back-up Plan.

The other Gray’s outposts are popular filming locales, as well. In the Season 3 episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations titled “New York City,” which aired in 2007, Bourdain heads to the now defunct Gray’s at 539 8th Avenue (which you can see a photo of here), his “favorite local eatery,” for a late-night Recession Special. While there he extols the restaurant, saying, “But man, when I start missing New York, you know, this is one of the things I miss. Ah, come on! A good Gray’s dog!”

It is the original Gray’s Papaya on the Upper West Side (pictured below) that is the most popular with location scouts, though.

The Warriors encounter members of rival street gang The Baseball Furies outside of the Upper West Side Gray’s in the 1979 crime drama The Warriors.

Doug Ireland (Michael J. Fox) brings Andy Hart (Gabrielle Anwar) there for a quick bite in the 1993 romcom For Love or Money.

In 1995’s Die Hard with a Vengeance, John McClane (Bruce Willis) and Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) take a phone call from Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons) at the payphone across the street from the UWS Gray’s.

Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) briefly dines with Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) there shortly before heading out to meet NY152 at the end of 1998’s You’ve Got Mail.

The last time I visited New York, my friends Kim, Katie, Lavonna and I tried to pose for a photo a la Kathleen and Joe in Gray’s front window, but the reflection wreaked havoc with the image. If you look closely at the screen captures above, it actually appears that the restaurant’s window was removed for the filming of the You’ve Got Mail scene.

Lance Barton (Chris Rock) takes Sontee Jenkins (Regina King) for a meal at the UWS Gray’s in the 2001 comedy Down to Earth.

The eatery was shown in an establishing shot in the Season 1 episode of How I Met Your Mother titled “The Limo,” which aired in 2005, though no actual filming took place there.

Michael J. Fox returned to Gray’s in 2013 to shoot a scene for the pilot episode of his self-titled series The Michael J. Fox Show, in which Mike Henry (Fox) and Harris Green (Wendell Pierce) discuss the possibility of Mike returning to work while standing across the street from the restaurant.

The restaurant chain was also mentioned in the Season 4 episode of Glee titled “Makeover” and was a pivotal plot element in the 1997 romcom Fools Rush In, though neither production did any filming on the premises. And while several websites claim that the Season 3 episode of Louie titled “Telling Jokes/Set Up” and the 1998 romance Crossing Delancey were filmed at Gray’s, both were actually lensed at Papaya King outposts.

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 Gray’s Papaya from the “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number” episode of Sex and the City was formerly located at 402 Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. Today, the site is home to a Liquiteria. The Gray’s that appeared in Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations was formerly located at 539 8th Avenue in Midtown. That spot now houses a Cohen’s Fashion Optical. The Upper West Side Gray’s, from You’ve Got Mail, is still in operation and can be found at 2090 Broadway. A second Gray’s outpost is located at 612 8th Avenue in Midtown. Gray’s Papaya restaurants are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

April 9, 2018
Pasadena Elks Lodge from “Veep”

Anyone who has visited Pasadena has likely taken note of the sprawling pillared building situated on the southeast corner of Colorado and Orange Grove Boulevards. As the many signs adorning the structure indicate, it serves as Elks Lodge #672. I passed the site regularly during the 15+ years I called Crown City home and knew of its frequent use as both a filming location and production basecamp (Star Waggons are ubiquitous in the massive parking lot out front), but because the lodge is private and only accessible to members, I never set foot on the premises. When I learned, thanks to this Instagram photo posted by Veep executive producer David Mandel, that the property had been featured extensively in the popular HBO series’ Season 6 episode “Georgia,” though, I became a wee bit obsessed with changing that. So, while in L.A. a couple of weeks ago, I decided to stop by to see if I could possibly be given a tour. Thankfully, the member who answered my knock could not have been nicer and immediately invited me in to see all the areas that appeared on Veep and to regale me with a brief history of the lodge and the Elks organization itself.

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The Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks of the United States of America (B.P.O.E.) was initially founded in 1867 by singer Charles Algernon Sidney Vivian as a drinking club for Manhattan performers, of all things. Originally dubbed the “Jolly Corks,” per the Elks official website the main function of the organization was “to circumvent a New York law that closed saloons on Sundays.” The group’s focus eventually became far more altruistic and service-oriented, leading to its name change. According to the website, the order chose their eponym based upon a “number of attributes that are deemed typical of those to be cultivated by members of the fraternity. The Elk is distinctively an American animal. It habitually lives in herds. The Elk is the largest of our native quadrupeds, it is yet fleet of foot and graceful in movement. It is quick and keen of perception; and while it is usually gentle and even timorous, it is strong and valiant in defense of its own.”

Today, the Elks organization boasts a million members with 2,000 lodges dotted across the U.S.

Lodge #672 was erected in 1911. Designed in the Colonial Revival style by architect Myron Hunt (who also gave us Thornton Gardens, Occidental College, Wattles Mansion, the Langham Huntington Hotel, and the Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens), the 31,000-square-foot structure has served as the Pasadena headquarters of the B.P.O.E. ever since.

Though a Bennett-and-Haskell-designed annex was added to the property in 1928 and a restoration took place in 2010, little of the lodge has changed over the course of its 107-year history.

You can check out some early photos of it here.

Though Lodge #672 appears quite large from the street, I was shocked at the sheer size of the place upon entering. The structure is huge with myriad meeting places, event venues and ballrooms, each of them prettier than the next.

The Main Ballroom, pictured above and below, was being dressed for an event while we were there.

Our tour guide informed us that the Veep production team altered the Main Ballroom’s bar for the “Georgia” shoot . . .

. . . adding in the mirrors and shelving you see below for a scene that ultimately wound up on the cutting room floor.

A few faux maroon pillars, like the one pictured below, were also installed for the filming of the deleted scene . . .

. . . and the walls surrounding the bar were painted with the faces of Old Hollywood stars. While the Elks chose to leave the paintings intact, I was not able to view them, unfortunately, due to the fact that they were temporarily covered over with the faux stone walls you see below by yet another production that filmed on the premises just prior to us stalking the place.

The room below, which I believe is named the Fireside Room, is situated off the lodge’s main entrance.

The formal space boasts a fireplace . . .

. . . and a perimeter of decorative columns.

It is the Lodge Room, though, that is the most impressive.

The venue, which is situated on the second floor and boasts plush seating along the two side walls, serves as the Elks’ meeting room.

Calling it grand would be an understatement.

Though the room is original to the property, the stage was added in 1945 and a remodel took place in 2000.

You can check out some more images of the lodge’s interior here.

The Pasadena Elks Lodge portrays two different locations in “Georgia.” The Lodge Room masks as Georgia’s Election Monitoring Headquarters where Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) flip-flops on which candidate she is backing (based upon which of them happens to be offering to donate the most money to her presidential library at the time) in the county’s first free and democratic election.

The lodge’s Fireside Room portrays the lobby of the Tbilisi Grand Hotel, where Selina and her team stay while in town.

A prop elevator was set up in the corner of the room for the shoot, as you can see in the background of the images below.

In reality, that area serves as a doorway to Lodge #672’s front office.

The image below is the only view we get of the Main Ballroom in the episode. It appears in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment as the Tbilisi Grand’s restaurant in the scene in which Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons) discovers that his fellow congressmen are dining without him.

Only the interior of the Pasadena Elks Lodge is featured in “Georgia.”

For exterior shots of the Tbilisi Grand, producers used a mash-up of locations both near and far. The establishing shot of the hotel is of an actual Georgian lodging – the Ambassadori Tbilisi Hotel and Casino located at 17 loane Shavteli Street. You can check out some images of it here.

All on location exterior filming took place much closer to home at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel located at 506 South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles.

The hotel was significantly roughed up for the shoot, with graffiti added to the walls and strewn furniture discarded on the sidewalk out front.

The Pasadena Elks Lodge has been host to many filmings over the years.

In the 1992 comedy The Distinguished Gentleman, the EPA oversight hearing of the Committee on Power and Industry takes place in the Lodge Room.

Senator Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss) campaigns in the Lodge Room in the 1995 comedy The American President.

Though no part of Lodge #672 can actually be seen, per the book Twilight: Director’s Notebook, Bella’s (Kristin Stewart) bedroom set was rebuilt on the premises for a reshoot of the scene in which she and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) kiss for the first time in 2008’s Twilight.

Ron Donald (Ken Marino) caters his own reunion at the Pasadena Elks Lodge in the Season 1 episode of Party Down titled “James Rolf High School Twentieth Reunion.”

As you can see, when the episode was shot in 2009, the Main Ballroom’s bar was in its original state and looked much different than it does now after the alterations made by the Veep crew.

In the 2010 comedy The Back-up Plan, Nana (Linda Lavin) marries Arthur (Tom Bosley) in the lodge’s Fireside Room.

Thanks to my buddy Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, I learned that the lodge masked as Elder & Massey Auction House, where Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon) attended a NASA inventory liquidation auction and almost won a flight-worn suit of Captain Jim Wetherbee, in the Season 8 episode of Weeds titled “Unfreeze,” which aired in 2012. Mikey was actually on set the day filming took place and got to meet and take a photo with Kevin. You can read about his experience here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Pasadena Elks Lodge, from the “Georgia” episode of Veep, is located at 400 West Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. You can visit the lodge’s official website here. Please keep in mind that the club is private and not accessible to the public.

April 4, 2018
Tal Weaver’s House from “Beverly Hills, 90210”

Oh man, have I been wanting to say this for years – Tal Weaver’s house has been found! It is thanks to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, that I finally get to! For those who have no earthly idea what I am talking about, Tal Weaver – and his house – appeared in the Season 2 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Leading from the Heart.” In the episode, Tal, played by a very young and very long-haired Gabriel Macht (aka Suits’ Harvey Specter – my latest celebrity crush), throws a raving party at his sprawling Beverly Hills manse that is attended by Brenda Walsh (Shannen Doherty), her brother Brandon (Jason Priestley), and their wheelchair-bound cousin, Bobby (Gordon Currie). Though the home’s onscreen role was brief, it was extremely memorable and I have spent the past few years trying to track it down. I recently brought Mike in on the hunt and he managed to get in touch with Phil Buckman, aka the episode’s “Surfer Dude” – “Did you hear what that dude in the wheelchair said to me?” – who, thankfully, remembered where filming had taken place. Come to find out not only is Tal’s house one of L.A.’s most famous, but it’s a spot I had actually stalked and blogged about previously. As Phil informed Mike, Tal’s mansion is none other than the Cecil B. DeMille Estate located at 2000 De Mille Drive in Los Feliz. How I never realized it is beyond me! So, thank you, Mike and Phil! (When Mike gave me the good news, I told him, “You’re my hero!” to which he responded, “Some heroes don’t wear capes!” )

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Though I covered the DeMille Estate’s history in my previous post on the pad, I figure a brief recap is in order here. Built in 1914, the Beaux Arts-style dwelling was originally designed by architect B. Cooper Corbette for Homer Laughlin, co-developer of Los Feliz’ exclusive Laughlin Park community. Homer did not live at the site long, selling the massive manse to DeMille in 1916 for $27,893. Five years later, the famed director acquired the home next door – formerly occupied by Charlie Chaplin – and connected the two with an atrium-like breezeway, meshing them into one ridiculously large compound with the Chaplin portion serving as a screening room/offices/guest quarters. Cecil remained on the premises until his passing in 1959. His estate then held onto the property for the next three decades, reportedly changing nothing from the time DeMille called it home, even going so far as to put fresh flowers on his desk daily. The compound was eventually sold to attorney Terry O’Toole and his wife, Evelyn, in 1988. According to a few articles I dug up via newspapers.com (which I cannot link to as a subscription is needed to view them), the couple briefly updated the estate before selling it to a Japanese company in 1990.

In 1996, the hilltop abode was purchased by art consultant/curator Lisa Lyons and her husband, art consultant/writer Richard Grossman. Prolific rehabbers, the couple enlisted architect Brian Tichenor of Tichenor & Thorp to separate and restore the two properties, first the Chaplin home (which they subsequently sold to producer/writer John Wells) and then the DeMille Estate. The renovation of the latter took a whopping six years. You can read a great Town & Country article about the extensive restoration here.

Grossman and Lyons put the 6-bedroom, 10-bath, 7,472-square-foot pad (which also boasts a pool, a pool house/gym, a detached studio, a rose garden, arched windows, iron balconies, molded ceilings, Doric columns, a mahogany-paneled dining room, a formal library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and a whopping 2.1 acres of land) up for sale in 2008 for $26.25 million. There were no takers, though, so the listing was removed the following year. It then hit the market again in early 2017 (you can check out the MLS photos here), this time selling after just a couple of months for $24.5 million to none other than Angelina Jolie. Considering Laughlin Park’s long tenure as a celebrity enclave, the purchase was not surprising. Besides DeMille, Chaplin and Jolie, just a few of the stars to call the community home over the years include Natalie Portman, Jenna Elfman, Portia de Rossi, W.C. Fields, Carole Lombard, David Fincher, Lauren Graham, and Ellen Pompeo. Though the neighborhood is gated and not accessible to the public, the Grim Cheaper’s best friend’s parents are longtime residents and we’ve been fortunate to visit many times. During one of those visits, I did some stalking of the DeMille Estate, which is where the photos in this post come from. I am so thankful I snapped them, too, because I’m fairly certain getting any pics of the place now would be virtually impossible considering its current resident.

In “Leading from the Heart,” which originally aired in October 1991, Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth) takes a liking to Cousin Bobby, who is visiting from Minnesota, and invites him to a party at her friend Tal Weaver’s house. As Kelly tells him, “Tal throws the best parties!”

When Kelly, Bobby and the rest of their group arrive, though, trouble ensues as the only way to gain entrance to the soiree is via a massive set of exterior steps that leads to Tal’s front door.

So it’s Brandon, Steve Sanders (Ian Ziering) and Dylan McKay (Luke Perry) to the rescue! With Brenda and Kelly clearing a path, the three carry Bobby up the steps.

As you can see in the screen captures below (as well as the many above) as compared to the photographs above, when 90210 was filmed on the premises 27 years ago, the DeMille Estate was enclosed with fencing mainly consisting of wrought iron. Though the posts remain, the ironwork has since been replaced with a stucco wall and wooden gates, making the front steps much less visible – which is perhaps why I didn’t recognize the place as Tal Weaver’s pad. (Yeah, I’ll just keep telling myself that. )

Things don’t improve much for poor Cousin Bobby upon venturing inside Tal’s residence, for which the real interior of the DeMille Estate was utilized.

Not only does someone fall onto Bobby’s lap and accidentally spill a drink on him, but Tal asks Kelly to dance, which sends Bobby into an ugly downward spiral. It is not long before he begs Steve, Dylan and Brandon to carry him back down the steps so that he can call a cab and leave. While re-watching the episode, I came to the conclusion that Cousin Bobby is actually kind of a jerk. Pretty much everyone he encounters at the party is incredibly friendly, nice, and accommodating (including Tal and the girl who spilled a drink on him), but he is curt and rude (towards Brandon and Steve, too!) and seemingly does his best not to fit in, even going so far as to read Kelly the riot act when (for the first time in the history of the show!) she has not actually done anything wrong. (I cannot believe I’m defending Kelly here!) By the time the credits roll, though, all is good again in Walsh-land, Kelly and Bobby have mended fences, and the gang heads out for a drive – with Brenda behind the wheel (gasp!) – before Bobby’s flight back to the Midwest.

I would be remiss if I did not post a photo of Tal in all of his long-haired glory. The role was actually Gabriel Macht’s first television job and, of the experience, he told BuzzFeed, “I remember Jason Priestley being on his phone a lot and dropping all these F-bombs. I thought that was funny because he was like America’s apple pie golden boy. I also remember having no idea what to talk about with Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth while we were hanging around the set.” So he did what any good theatre student would do – he created a backstory. In the episode, it is said that Tal and Kelly once attended a Sting concert together, so Macht used that as a jumping-off point. As he explained to BuzzFeed, “I was coming from theater school, so I was coming up with backstory about our time at the Sting concert and she looked at me like I was crazy. It was my first TV gig and I wanted him to be this sensitive guy — but I don’t think anyone named Tal Weaver, which is the greatest name in all of television, will ever come across like the good guy.” (No surprise that Jennie doesn’t sound all that friendly in his story. )

As I mentioned in my original post on the DeMille Estate, the director is reported to have shot the Garden of Gethsemane scenes from his 1927 film The King of Kings on the grounds of the mansion, but, unfortunately, due to the passage of over ninety years time and the fact that the property and its acreage have been extensively renovated, I was unable to verify that.

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A MONUMENTAL thank you to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location and to Phil Buckman for helping him to do so!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Cecil B. DeMille Estate, aka Tal Weaver’s house from the “Leading from the Heart” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, is located at 2000 De Mille Drive in Los Feliz. The residence is located in the gated community of Laughlin Park and is, unfortunately, not accessible to the public.

March 28, 2018