Category: TV Locations

Riley’s House from “The Client List”

As I have mentioned many times before on this site, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, is the biggest Jennifer Love Hewitt fan this side of the Atlantic. So when the actress’ new show, The Client List, premiered in April, he, of course, immediately set about searching for locations from it. He managed to track down quite a few of them, too, including “The Rub” massage parlor (which, ironically enough, has a significant Beverly Hills, 90210-connection, but I’ll save that information for a future post) and the supposed Beaumont, Texas-area home where JLH’s character, Riley Parks, lives with her two children, Travis Parks (Tyler Champagne – um, LOVE that last name!) and Katie Parks (Cassidy Guetersloh). So while out doing some stalking with Mike, from MovieShotsLA, a few weeks back, the two of us dropped by to stalk the abode.

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Riley’s one-story, ranch-style house appears regularly each week on The Client List. Quite a few areas of the home are featured on the series, including the front exterior . . .

. . . and the backyard.

If I had to guess, I would say that the real life interior of the home was used in the pilot episode of the series, which was titled “The Rub of Sugarland”, and was then recreated on a soundstage for the episodes that followed. Unfortunately though, I could not find any interior shots of the property with which to verify that hunch.

I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Riley’s kitchen, by the way. Drool!

In real life, the abode, which was built in 1946, boasts two bedrooms, two baths, 1,836 square feet, and 0.36 acres of land. And, as you can see below, it looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it does onscreen – minus the Parks family’s white mailbox, which was just a prop brought in for the filming.

We happened to meet a super-nice neighbor while we were stalking the place and he told us that the white fence in the home’s front yard was installed specifically for the show to make the property appear more “Texas-like”. The owners ended up liking it, though, and decided to leave it up after filming for the season had been completed.

Before doing research for today’s post, I had no idea that The Client List was based upon a true story about an actual mom named Crystal Burchett and an actual prostitution scandal that rocked the small town of Odessa, Texas. In January 2005, Texas Monthly magazine published an expose on the scandal titled “She Had Brains, a Body, and the Ability To Make Men Love Her”, which Jennifer Love Hewitt’s production company, Fedora Films, later purchased the rights to. The article was then turned into the hit Lifetime Television Movie The Client List, which premiered in July 2010. A little over a year later, Lifetime greenlit a television series based upon that movie and the rest, as they say, is history. I highly recommend checking out the Texas Monthly article as it is an absolutely fascinating read! I tried to dig up some photographs of Crystal Burchett, whom Jennifer Love’s character is based upon, but I could not find any anywhere. And while the article describes the former homecoming-queen-turned-prostitute as not a “run-of-the-mill whore” (LOL) and having a “bubbly personality” and “girlish looks that made her irresistible” (which could very well be a description of JLH), I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the real life Crystal was nowhere near as good-looking.

I have to admit that I actually really like The Client List. It is a sweet show and Colin Egglesfield is not hard to look at, either. I do have to say, though, that JLH’s eyelashes in the series are completely distracting! She looks like she could take flight with those things! Ridic!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to take a look at my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Riley’s house from The Client List is located at 6619 Peach Avenue in Van Nuys.

July 16, 2012
Clark Magnet High School from “Our House”

Back in March, a fellow stalker named Bill contacted me to ask for some help in tracking down the high school that Kris Witherspoon (my girl Shannen Doherty) attended in the 1986 television series Our House. In his email, Bill included the links to several episodes of the series on YouTube (because it is maddeningly not yet available on DVD!), but the large brick structure did not look at all familiar to me. So I called up Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and asked if he happened to know of any large brick schools in the L.A.-area off the top of his head. He, of course, did and mentioned three of them that he thought I should check out – Grant High School in Van Nuys, Taft High School in Woodland Hills and Clark Magnet High School in La Crescenta. As luck would have it, Clark Magnet was the right one! That right there is why I love Mike – I can give him the vaguest of descriptions and, right off the bat, he knows the exact place I am talking about! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there a few days later.

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Sadly though, Clark Magnet High School – like most schools in L.A. – is gated and, aside from the front entrance, not very accessible to the public. So I called on Mike – who is now a location manager – once again, and suggested that he scout Clark the next time he was in need of a high school location – and that he should also bring me along. Which he did just a few weeks later. Yay!

Clark Magnet High School, which was named in honor of humanitarian Anderson W. Clark, was originally founded in 1961 as a middle school, serving kids in the 7th through 9th grades. In 1983, suffering from low enrollment, the property’s doors were forced to close. Thankfully though, the structure was not torn down, but instead became a community center, a teacher resource and training station and an office for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And it was also used for filming. Due to the fact that Clark was no longer a functioning school and therefore easy to film at, and had a desirable All-American look, the place became an obvious choice for location scouts. But more on that later. In 1996, a task force decided to re-open Clark, this time as a high school, to alleviate nearby overcrowding and the property subsequently underwent a 13-month, $15 million renovation and modernization project. The site was re-founded in the fall of 1998 as a magnet school with focuses on science and technology and is currently the most technologically advanced school in the entire Glendale Unified School District. In a very odd side-note – Clark has a “twin” – a virtually identical carbon copy – named Rosemont Middle School that is located about ten blocks east. Both properties were built at the same time and, in order to be cost efficient, were designed in the exact same image. So incredibly weird!

In Our House, Clark Magnet High School stood in for James Polk High School, which Kris attended and where her mother, Jessica ‘Jessie’ Witherspoon (Deidre Hall), taught for a time. The school can best be seen in the Season 1 episode titled “First Impressions”. As you will notice below, during the renovation, Clark’s windows were, unfortunately, changed and no longer look as they did in the series. Blah!

In the “First Impressions” episode, Kris and her friend are shown walking through Clark’s humongous interior quad and then sitting on a set of cement bleachers. It was those bleachers that I most wanted to see while we were there. And thankfully, unlike the windows, they still look pretty much exactly the same as they did onscreen.

And I, of course, just had to sit in the area where Shannen was sitting in the episode.

Clark Magnet High School was also the school attended by despondent teenager Lane Meyer (John Cusack) in the 1985 flick Better Off Dead. (My second photograph below does not exactly match the posted screen shot, but it is of the general area. I am going to re-stalk the school soon so that I can get an exact pic.)

In 2003’s Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, Clark Magnet was the school attended by Sam Finney (Scott Terra) and Sally Finney (Jenna Boyd).

The school’s gym, which we did not get to see, appeared in the movie’s pep squad tryout scene. You can see a real life photograph of the Clark gym here.

And thanks to this 1987 Los Angeles Times article, I learned that the movie Return to Horror High was also filmed at Clark.

Randomly enough, a very young George Clooney had a starring role in Return to Horror High.

As did Maureen McCormick, aka Marcia Brady.

According to IMDB, the 1986 flick Dangerously Close was also filmed at Clark Magnet High School, but I could not find a copy of the movie with which to verify that.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to take a look at my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location and taking me to stalk it!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Clark Magnet High School from Our House is located at 4747 New York Avenue in La Crescenta. You can visit the school’s official website here. Clark’s twin, Rosemont Middle School, is located at 4725 Rosemont Avenue in La Crescenta. You can visit that school’s official website here.

July 13, 2012
Johnson Lake in Pasadena from “Celebrity Rehab”

A couple of weeks ago, while trying to track down the lake house belonging to Donna Meagle (Retta) in the Season 4 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Sweet Sixteen”, I discovered that there was a lake in Pasadena and just about fell right off my chair! Having lived in the area – as a stalker, mind you! – for well over a decade now, I consider myself a virtual expert on Pasadena and its environs, so how in the world had I not previously known that there was a lake – like an actual lake! – within the city limits? Well, believe you me, I immediately added the place to my To-Stalk list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there.

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There seems to be quite a bit of discrepancy online about the origins of Johnson Lake, which was formerly known as Mirror Lake and is also sometimes referred to as Johnson’s Lake, Johnston Lake and Beaudry Lake. According to the book Images of America: Garvanza by Charles J. Fisher, the lake is a natural one that was originally located on land belonging to Prudent Beaudry, the thirteenth Mayor of Los Angeles. At the time, the property was part of an area called Garvanza, but it was later integrated into Pasadena. Some other online reports stipulate that the lake was initially part of a natural spring that was dammed to provide irrigation to the 2,200-acre San Rafael Ranch, which was then owned by the Campbell-Johnsons, the very same family who built the oft-filmed-at Church of the Angels. And then there are further reports still which state that the site was first developed by the Annandale Golf Club and/or the San Rafael Winery in the late 1890s. (You can see a picture of the lake taken during that time period on the Pasadena Adjacent website here.) Whatever the case may be, at some point the lake became part of Brookmere, a private gated community comprised of about twenty homes. The Brookmere gates are pictured below.

Because Johnson Lake is located inside of a gated community, I scoped the place out online before heading over there to make sure that it was viewable from the road. And, as you can see below, it is clearly visible via Google Street View. So I was absolutely shocked when we arrived and the lake was nowhere to be found! As the GC later explained, the Google Street View camera is elevated and therefore had a view above the large hedges which surrounded the Brookmere community. Man, I have got to get me one of those!

Have no fear, though – the GC was able to snap some pics of it by holding the camera up over his head. So while we never actually got to lay eyes on the lake ourselves, our camera got a nice view of it and, as you can see below, it is pretty darn amazing.

You can also catch a very small glimpse of the lake through Brookmere’s front gates.

Oddly enough, the house that seems to have the most lakefront land is not located inside of Brookmere at all, but is on La Loma Road, a public street, just a few blocks west of the Beaches mansion (which I blogged about here). The 5,100-square-foot Craftsman-style home, which was designed by area architect Doug Ewing in 2006, boasts four bedrooms, five baths, a .59-acre plot of land, a whopping seven patios, and a 20-foot boat dock! You can see some interior photographs of the place here and here. Have a bib handy to catch the drool, though, because the place is nothing short of breathtaking! I realize that I stated in Monday’s post (which you can read here) that Chris Traeger’s apartment from Parks and Recreation was my dream home, but I think I’d be OK with this place, too.

Because the residence is so incredibly unique, not to mention picturesque, it is, of course, no stranger to filming. In the Season 3 episode of Celebrity Rehab titled “Family Weekend”, Dr. Drew takes his patients, including Heidi Fleiss, Dennis Rodman, and Mackenzie Phillips, to the house for a reunion with their family members. In the episode, the home was referred to as the fictional “Johnston Lake Retreat Center”, but in reality the place is just a private home where actual (and extremely lucky) people live.

Thanks to my buddy E.J. over at The Movieland Directory website, I learned that the home also appeared as the residence belonging to Gabrielle Cafferty (Marisa Coughlan) and Joel Tiernan (Max Casella) in the Season 5 episode of Medium titled “Soul Survivor”. In the episode, quite a bit of the property was used, including the front exterior;

the interior . . .

. . . and the backyard and lake.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to take a look at my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Johnson Lake can (sort of) be viewed from the 800 block of Burleigh Drive, just south of where it meets Laguna Road, in Pasadena. The Johnson Lake Retreat Center from Celebrity Rehab is actually a private residence located at 1260 La Loma Road in Pasadena.

July 12, 2012
Chris’ Apartment from “Parks and Recreation”

I realize that I am on serious Parks and Recreation overload here, but today’s location is one that I could not not blog about being that I am absolutely OBSESSED with it! What is the location you ask? The supposed Indianapolis-area ultra-modern loft that Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe) owns on the series. I became just a wee bit consumed with the pad the first time it popped up during Season 3 of P&R. One look at its high ceilings, open floor plan and towering staircase and I literally went weak in the knees and started drooling. Oddly enough, though, I did not recognize the place even though I had once previously stalked it. There I go having yet another blonde moment!

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Way back in December of 2008, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I went on a quest to track down the liquor store from L.A. Confidential, which we had heard was located on Larchmont Boulevard. (As it turns out, it wasn’t – the L.A. Confidential liquor store is actually on South Cochran Avenue. You can read my post on it here.) During the hunt, we spent hours driving back and forth down Larchmont looking for the store’s facade and also stopping in to speak with several different area shop owners, trying to gather some intel. And while no one had any information on the liquor store, one helpful person informed us that the movie Funny People had recently spent several weeks filming at the Larchmont Lofts on the corner of Larchmont Boulevard and Melrose Avenue. So Mike and I, of course, went to take a look at the building and snap some pics. We did not venture inside, though, nor did I ever see Funny People, so I had no idea what the interior of the actual apartment units looked like.

Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago when fellow stalker Justin asked me to track down some Parks and Recreation locales, one of which was Chris Traeger’s apartment building. At the time, I was not even sure if the location was a real one. Chris’s loft is so darn sleek and shiny that I figured it might just be a set. But I started to do some digging anyway and eventually discovered (thanks to fave website OnLocationVacations) that Chris’ pad was real and that it was located in none other than the Funny People building! Talk about a small world! Once I found out that information, I, of course, immediately began searching for rental rates being that Chris’ apartment is pretty much my dream home.

The three-story, ultra-modern Larchmont Lofts building was first completed in 2008. Its 21 loft-style units were originally slated to be sold as condominiums for $750,000 to $1.25 million a piece. Not a’ one of ‘em was purchased, though, according to fave website CurbedLA, and the spaces were eventually leased out as apartments. Rates currently start at a whopping $3,000 a month for a 1-bedroom, 1-bath, 1,200-square-foot flat. Um yeah, like the Grim Cheaper would ever go for that! What I wouldn’t give to live there, though! Sigh!

Chris Traeger’s apartment first popped up in the Season 3 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Indianapolis”. Interestingly enough, though, while the front entrance and interior of one of the units were used in the episode, the exterior establishing shot was of a different location altogether, one that is no stranger to the screen. The exterior of Chris’ building is actually the exterior of the residence where Mitch Hiller (Billy Campbell) lived in the 2002 movie Enough, which Mike, from MovieShotsLA, stalked a while back. You can take a look at his photos of the property here.

In the “Indianapolis” episode, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) travel from Pawnee to Indianapolis to accept a special commendation on behalf of the Parks Department. While there, they meet up with Chris, who, at that point in the show, lived in the area. A brief scene from the episode was filmed in the Larchmont Lofts lobby, which you can see behind me in the photograph below.

In “Indianapolis”, Chris is shown to live in Unit #207, which is one of the Larchmont Lofts’ three-story townhomes.

As you can see below, the interior of his apartment is nothing short of STUNNING! Love, love, LOVE it!

Especially the large, open-air staircase. Sigh!

Chris’ apartment also appeared in the Season 3 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Road Trip”, in the scene in which Chris hosts Leslie and Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) on an overnight at his home. You can check out some interior photographs of the Larchmont Lofts building – including a three-story townhouse unit like Chris’ – on Curbed LA here.

And I, of course, just had to pretend to buzz Chris from the intercom while I was there.

In Funny People, Larchmont Lofts is the building where Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), Leo Koenig (Jonah Hill), Mark Taylor Jackson (Jason Schwartzman), and Daisy Danby (Aubrey Plaza, who, ironically enough, plays April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation) live. The exterior of the building shows up quite a few times in the flick.

As does the interior of one of the building’s two-bedroom flats. As you can see below, the inside of Ira, Leo and Mark’s apartment in the flick closely resembles that of Chris’ apartment on Parks and Recreation – minus the awesome staircase, which is only a feature of the building’s three-story townhomes.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And you can check out my latest post – about low-carb tacos – on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Chris Traeger’s apartment building from Parks and Recreation is actually the Larchmont Lofts, which is located at 5700 Melrose Avenue in the Larchmont Village area of Los Angeles. You can visit the complex’s official website here. And to contribute to the Lindsay-Wants-to-Live-at-the-Larchmont-Lofts fund, you can click here. Ha ha, just kidding.

July 10, 2012
The Smallest Park from “Parks and Recreation”

I just recently finished watching Season 4 of fave new show Parks and Recreation (and yes, I was devastated when I came to the end of the last episode being that I now have to wait until September to watch a new one!) and can honestly say that the episode titled “Smallest Park” had to be one of the best of the entire series. I found myself in tears when (spoiler alert!) Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) finally got back together. So when fellow stalker Owen gave me the address of the eponymous Smallest Park, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to Studio City to stalk the place. Well, truth be told, that’s not exactly how things happened.

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Earlier this year, before I had ever even seen an episode of the show, Owen had given me a list of several Parks and Recreation locales, one of which was the Smallest Park. I did not stalk any of them, though, until I finally started watching the series back in May. Flash forward to early June, when I was stalking April and Andy’s house (which I blogged about here), and realized that the abode was located just a short distance from the “Smallest Park”. So, even though I had yet to begin watching Season 4 at the time, since we were in the area, I decided to drop by and snap some pics. Because the Smallest Park is in actuality just a parking lot, Owen had only given me an approximate address for it. Well, as fate would have it, when we pulled up to that address, I noticed a vacant plot of land (pictured below) across the street and immediately assumed it was the right place. And while I did say to the GC, “It really doesn’t look all that small to me!” (LOL), I did not realize my mistake until a few weeks later when I watched the “Smallest Park” episode. I am SUCH a blonde sometimes! That’ll teach me to stalk a location prior to seeing the production in which it was featured!

It wasn’t until last weekend that I was finally able to get back out to Studio City to stalk the correct location – which, as you can see below, is the rear parking lot of a strip mall and does not look anything like a park, hence my original confusion.

In the “Smallest Park” episode of Parks and Recreation, Pawnee’s last remaining telephone booths are torn down, leaving a 0.000003-square-mile patch of concrete, on which Leslie and Ben (aka the “Dream Team”) decide to build the city’s “newest tourist attraction – the smallest park in Indiana”.

As you can see below, the Smallest Park was actually just a square plot of cement that producers placed at the western-most edge of the parking lot, covering up the first spot.

And while just a vacant parking lot, I could NOT have been more excited to stalk this location, most likely because the Smallest Park and the episode in which it was featured were both so incredibly memorable. It is at the park that, in what had to be one of the series’ cutest moments EVER, Leslie tells Ben how much she misses him and the two seal their reunion with a kiss. Sigh! I’m tearing up just looking at the screen capture below.

And I, of course, just had to stand where Leslie stood while she was picketing the park in the episode (and announcing its nightly midnight fireworks show) – although I was having another blonde moment at the time and accidentally had the GC snap a pic from the opposite direction of what was shown onscreen.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to check out my new blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Smallest Park from Parks and Recreation was built in the northwesternmost parking space of the Valley Stores Shopping Center’s rear parking lot in Studio City. The lot can be found next to the property located at 4378 Kraft Avenue in Studio City.

July 9, 2012
The Bulge from “Parks and Recreation”

Another day, another location from fave show Parks and Recreation! Seriously, I hope you guys aren’t getting sick of P&R locales yet. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I hit up the Oxford Inn in Van Nuys, aka the bar that stands in for the Bulge – Pawnee, Indiana’s local gay bar. I learned of this location, as always, from fellow stalker Owen of the When Write Is Wrong blog.

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While watching the Season 3 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Go Big or Go Home”, Owen had noticed an address number of 13713 written above the Bulge’s front door. One quick Google search of “13713”, “bar” and “Van Nuys” (because the show typically films in that area), led him to the Oxford Inn at 13713 Oxnard Street, directly across from Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant from The Office, which I blogged about here. And, voila, the Inn turned out to be the right place. Yay! Come to find out, though, our search would not end there. But more on that later.

While the interior of the Bulge has been featured in two episodes of Parks and Recreation (Season 2’s “Pawnee Zoo” and Season’s 3 “Go Big or Go Home”), the exterior has only popped up once – in “Go Big or Go Home”. In the episode, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) crash Ann Perkin’s (Rashida Jones’) first date with Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe) and then convince the two of them to go dancing at the Bulge. As you can see below, aside from the fake neon “the Bulge” sign, the Oxwood Inn looks much the same in person as it did onscreen. And, in a synchronistic twist of fate, the Oxwood Inn is actually a gay bar in real life, too!

The interior, however, is another story entirely. As you can see below, the interior of the Oxwood Inn has a very definite blue hue to it. And while I did not remember that blue hue from the series, I figured that producers had changed the lighting for the filming. Oh, how wrong I was.

When I got home and re-watched “Pawnee Zoo” and “Go Big or Go Home”, I realized that a completely different bar had been used for all of the interior scenes – which meant that I had another hunt on my hands.

Because I am like a pit bull when it comes to stalking (once I latch on to a search, I have a very hard time letting go), I immediately started looking online for “divey” bars located in the San Fernando Valley. And while it took me a looooooooong time to track the place down, I am very happy to report that I finally did! As it turns out, the interior of the Bulge is Serra’s Dine & Dance in Studio City. I, of course, dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to grab some lunch just a few days later, but unfortunately the eatery is only open at night, so we were unable to go inside. I will be definitely be heading back there for a re-stalk in the near future, though. In the meantime, you can check out some interior photographs of Serra’s here and here. As you can see, it looks much the same in person as it does onscreen.

I am guessing that the reason two different bars were used as the Bulge’s interior and exterior is because the exterior of Serra’s Dine & Dance does not look very much like a small-town dive bar, while the Oxwood Inn does, as you can see below.

Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to check out my new blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Oxwood Inn, aka the exterior of The Bulge from the “Go Big or Go Home” episode of Parks and Recreation, is located at 13713 Oxnard Street in Van Nuys. You can visit the bar’s official website here. Right across the street from the Oxwood Inn at 13726 Oxnard Street is Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant from The Office, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Bad News Bears, which I blogged about here. You can visit the Barone’s website here. Serra’s Dine & Dance, aka the interior of The Bulge from Parks and Recreation, is located at 12449 Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. You can visit Serra’s official website here.

July 5, 2012
April and Andy’s House from “Parks and Recreation”

I hope y’all are not getting tired of my many Parks and Recreation posts, ‘cause here I am yet again with yet another locale from the series that was provided to me, per usual, by fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog – this time the supposed Pawnee, Indiana-area residence where Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) and April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza), and later Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott), live on the show. And I am very sad to say that I am currently about halfway through Season 4 and only have about ten new episodes left to watch before I am all caught up on the series. I honestly have no idea what I am going to do with myself when that time comes. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, while doing some stalking in the Studio City area, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk April and Andy’s home – before I had even begun to watch Season 3 actually, the season in which the property was first featured.

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April and Andy’s house first shows up in the Season 3 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Fancy Party” (which actually made me cry), in the scene in which the young couple throws a dinner party for their friends – a dinner party that turns out to be (spoiler alert!) their surprise wedding. Shortly thereafter, in the episode titled “Jerry’s Painting”, April and Andy’s roommate moves out and Ben, in turn, moves in and teaches the duo “how to be adults”. (As you can see below, a dang car was parked directly in front of the house when we showed up to stalk the place, so I was unable to get photographs to match the exact angles shown on the series.)

For the filming, producers had the address number of the house changed from “12718” to “1271” in what I am guessing was an attempt to thrwart the efforts of us stalkers. But, thankfully, it takes more than a simple address change to throw off Owen and his mad stalking skills!

I absolutely LOVE the screen capture pictured below in which there is snow in the home’s front yard! So wish I could have been there to see that in person! You can check out an article written by someone who did get to witness some P&R filming at the property in October 2010 on the Studio City Patch website here. According to the write-up, April and Andy’s house has been used in countless productions over the years (although I am unsure of which productions exactly) and, to attract even more crews, the owner has made the place very film-friendly by placing the kitchen island and most of the furniture on casters for easy movement or removal. So incredibly cool! If I was a homeowner, I would so do the exact same thing!

In real life, the Studio City residence, which was originally built in 1938, boasts four bedrooms, two baths, and 2,831 square feet, and looks exactly the same in person as it does onscreen.

Despite what was reported in the Studio City Patch article, only the exterior of the property is used in Parks and Recreation – and the place most definitely does NOT belong to Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) on the show, as was also reported. (You can read my post on the Altadena residence that is used as Leslie’s here.) As you can see in these images of the real life interior of the home here and here, it does not match what appears onscreen.

Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong site, for finding this location!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here. And you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: April and Andy’s house from Parks and Recreation is located at 12718 Valley Spring Lane in Studio City.

June 22, 2012
Four ‘N 20 – aka JJ’s Diner from “Parks and Recreation”

A couple of weeks ago, fellow stalker Brandon (the very same stalker who told me about the Skyline Residence from fave movie Crazy, Stupid, Love., which I blogged about here) emailed me a list of over twenty Parks and Recreation locations that he had managed to track down. The one locale on the list that intrigued me the most was the exterior of JJ’s Diner – the local Pawnee-area hangout, known for its superior waffles, that is featured regularly on the show.

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Ironically enough, the exterior of JJ’s Diner is not located in Los Angeles at all, but in Atlanta, Georgia of all places! The restaurant used for the establishing shots of Pawnee’s most-famous breakfast joint is actually the Landmark Diner located at 2277 Cheshire Bridge Road NE. I have no idea how producers came to use an out-of-state eatery on the series, but as you can see below, the (craptastic) Google Street View image of the restaurant matches perfectly to what appears onscreen.

Once I found out that the exterior of JJ’s was located in Georgia, I became just a wee-bit obsessed with tracking down the restaurant used for the interior. I ended up finding it thanks to the unique botanical pattern visible on the booths in the background of the many JJ’s scenes. I had a hunch that the eatery was located in or around Van Nuys, where the series seems to do most of its filming, so I began searching through images of cafes in that area on Yelp (which is such a fabulous stalking tool, by the way!) looking for booths with that pattern. Sure enough, it was not long before I came across one on the Yelp page for Four ‘N 20 restaurant in Sherman Oaks. Yay! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place a few days later.

Once I saw the outside of Four ‘N 20 in person, I found it even more odd that producers had opted to use the Landmark Diner for JJ’s exterior because, as you can see below, Four ‘N 20 definitely has a Midwestern feel to it.

The interior also has a Midwestern feel and it is not too hard to see how it came to be used on Parks and Recreation. According to a commenter named Kiwi on the Chowhound website, when Four ‘N 20 first opened in 1969, it was located a few blocks north of where it is now. When that spot was demolished to make way for a car dealership sometime during the ‘90s, Four ‘N 20 moved to its current location, which had formerly been the site of “Chicken, Steak and Chocolate Cake” – a buffet-style restaurant where guests were charged based on their weight! Not kidding! Apparently there was a large scale that diners would have to step on before being rung up! Now if that doesn’t scream “Pawnee” – a city’s whose slogan is “First in Friendship, Fourth in Obesity” – than I don’t know what does! A CS&CC-style restaurant so needs to be added to a future storyline! P&R writers, are you listening?

At the time that Four ‘N 20 first opened, it mainly served pies – hence the name, which the GC did not understand. I am not sure who his nursery school teacher was, but he/she obviously did not do a very good job! For those not in the know, the Four ‘N 20 name comes from the “Sing a Song of Sixpence” nursery rhyme, which goes like this: “Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye; Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing; Was that not a dainty dish, To set before the king?” Over the years, Four ‘N 20 expanded its menu choices and also opened up a sister restaurant in nearby Valley Village, but the place is still best-known for its pies. CBSLosAngeles even named the diner’s pumpkin pie one of the “Best of L.A.”

The Four ‘N 20 menu is wide and diverse with many comfort food offerings, as well as vegetarian and vegan options – and there’s even a “Fitness Menu” for the Chris Traegers in your life. Glaringly missing from the Four ‘N 20 menu, though, were waffles! I almost fell out of the booth when I realized that the restaurant did not serve them and just had to make a suggestion to the manager that he add them to the menu – stat! Heck, he could even create a whole “Pawnee Specials” section! Man, why do I always have to be the one to think of everything?!? For my lunch, I opted for the Crispy Chicken salad which, as you can see below, was amazeballs! I literally do not think there was one scrap left on my plate by the time I was done with that thing!

The GC and I had a fabulous time at Four ‘N 20 and the staff could not have been more friendly, although I think a few of them found it odd that we were only dining there because of the place’s many Parks and Recreation appearances. (Check out the super-nice cop we met during our lunch who couldn’t stop photo-bombing me! LOL)

Four ‘N 20 has appeared in numerous episodes of Parks and Recreation, including Season 2’s “The Master Plan” and Season 3’s “Flu Season” and “Ron and Tammy: Part Two”, just to name a few. On the show, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) describes JJ’s, which is owned by JJ Lipscomb (Brent Briscoe), as “the unofficial meeting place of Pawnee’s political elite”.

JJ’s Diner and its waffles are also mentioned regularly on the series. In the Season 3 episode titled “Time Capsule”, Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) puts one of JJ’s menus in the Pawnee time capsule because, as he says, the restaurant is a “Pawnee institution” and “home of the world’s best breakfast dish, ‘the Four Horsemeals of the Eggsporkalypse.’” Just another item that Four ‘N 20 could add to its “Pawnee Specials” menu section!

Oddly enough, though, a different restaurant – Kountry Folks at 8501 Sepulveda Boulevard in North Hills, which I have yet to stalk – was used as JJ’s during the show’s first season. As you can see below, it looks nothing like Four ‘N 20.

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Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Brandon for finding the location of JJ’s exterior.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The interior of JJ’s Diner on Parks and Recreation is actually Four ‘N 20 located at 5530 Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. The exterior of JJ’s is the Landmark Diner, which is located at 2277 Cheshire Bridge Road NE in Atlanta, Georgia. You can check out the Landmark’s official website here.

June 21, 2012
The Levitt Pavilion MacArthur Park Bandshell from “New Girl”

Brace yourselves, my fellow stalkers, because today’s post is going to be a long one! Another New Girl location that my good friend/fellow stalker Lavonna asked me to track down recently was the park where Jess (Zooey Deschanel) held a recital for her “Ensembell” bell choir in the Season 1 episode titled “Bells”. This actually turned out to be a rather fun hunt for me because, in an unprecedented turn of events, the Grim Cheaper became a bit fixated with helping in the search. When the two of us first watched the “Bells” episode a few weeks after Lavonna’s challenge, he thought the park and its unique bandshell looked familiar, but he could not place where he had seen them. So he immediately started doing research on local parks, yet, sadly, came up empty-handed. Then, a few days later while we were out and about stalking, anytime we would happen to drive by a park, he would pull over to see if the New Girl bandshell was there. As luck would have it, he ended up spotting it that same afternoon at MacArthur Park in the Wilshire District of Los Angeles. Whoo-hoo! Thank you, GC! So we pulled right on over to snap some pics.

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The land where MacArthur Park now sits was first developed by the City of Los Angeles as a drinking water reservoir in the 1880s. When the area’s piping systems were later changed around 1890, the reservoir was no longer needed and the site was transformed into a public park known as Westlake Park. The locale, which featured a picturesque lake, a boathouse, and manicured gardens, quickly became a popular recreational destination for the wealthy citizens who lived nearby and the wealthy tourists who vacationed at the many luxury hotels in the neighborhood. During that era, the 32-acre property was known as the “Champs-Elysees of Los Angeles”. Oh, how times have changed! In 1934, it was decided that Wilshire Boulevard, which formerly dead-ended at Westlake’s western border, would be extended and connected to Orange Street in order to run through to downtown Los Angeles. A berm was built which bisected Westlake, and its large lake, into two halves, with the northern portion of the lake eventually being drained, leaving a smaller, 8-acre, 23-million-gallon, 15-foot deep pond on the property’s southern side.

Sadly, during the ‘80s, the site, which in 1942 was renamed General Douglas MacArthur Park in honor of the famed WWII general, became a haven of drug, gang and criminal activity. Despite an attempted revitalization in 2002, the property is still pretty dangerous. Even though we stalked the park during daylight hours, I was still extremely uncomfortable being there. While we were snapping pictures of the Levitt Pavilion bandshell, which was completely renovated in 2007 and now offers over 50 free concerts each summer, some loon jumped onto the stage armed with a huge generator, microphone and boom box and proceeded to put on his very own rap concert. I cannot even imagine what the place is like at night! It sure is picturesque, though!

MacArthur Park is full of shady characters and we also witnessed a few drug sales in the short ten minutes we were there. To quote the Wikipedia page on the location, “Public urination in the park is illegal but commonplace.” Yep, that pretty much sums it up! As you can see below, though, the site does boast some pretty incredible views of the downtown L.A. skyline.

Because the park, which in 1972 was designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #100, is so picturesque, it is not hard to understand why it has been the site of countless filmings over the years. The place also inspired the Richard Harris-penned 1968 song for Jimmy Webb titled “MacArthur Park” and Donna Summer’s 1970 remake of it, and it also quite possibly might have been the location of the eponymous bridge in the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 1992 hit “Under the Bridge”.

In the “Bells” episode of New Girl, MacArthur Park stood in for the fictional “Pershing Park” where Ensembell held their first recital. (The homeless guy fist-fighting the air in the first screen capture pictured below is pretty much a true-to-life description of the types of people one will encounter at the park.)

In the Season 1 episode of Dragnet 1967 titled “The Bank Examiner Swindle”, MacArthur Park was where Sgt. Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) interviewed Fred Gregory (Burt Mustin), one of the victims of a financial scam against the elderly.

In the Season 1 episode of Starsky and Hutch titled “Lady Blue”, MacArthur Park stood in for the fictional “Lincoln Gardens” where Detective Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (David Soul) and Detective Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) investigated the murder of Starsky’s ex-girlfriend Helen.

And in the Season 2 episode of Starsky and Hutch titled “Vendetta”, the park was where the duo picnicked with their girlfriends before getting interrupted by a “1040” call.

In the Season 5 episode of The A-Team titled “The Grey Team”, MacArthur Park was where Templeton ‘Faceman’ Peck (Dirk Benedict) and John ‘Hannibal’ Smith (George Peppard) spied on a Soviet agent named Saroff (Tony Steedman).

In 1993’s Falling Down, MacArthur Park was the spot where William ‘D-Fens’ Foster (Michael Douglas) got into an altercation with a homeless man. At the time of the filming, the lake had been drained and the park was undergoing major construction for the Metro Rail Rail Line addition, so it looked considerably different than it does today.

In 1997’s Volcano, MacArthur Park was the site where seven public works employees were steamed to death while working on a storm drain.

The location was used extensively in 2001’s aptly-titled MacArthur Park.

In 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan) saves her friend Gay Perry (Val Kilmer) from being killed at MacArthur Park.

The music video for Gym Class Heroes’ 2005 song “Cupid’s Chokehold/Breakfast in America”, which starred Katy Perry, was shot extensively at MacArthur Park.

You can watch that video by clicking below.

Gym Class Heroes: “Cupid’s Chokehold/Breakfast in America” Filmed at MacArthur Park

In the Season 6 episode of Numb3rs titled “Hangman”, Don Eppes (Rob Morrow) and his FBI team were shot at while setting up security for a political rally at MacArthur Park.

In the Season 1 episode of fave show FlashForward (I am still not over the fact that it was cancelled!) titled “Black Swan”, there is a flashback scene of the blackout experience of a man named Ned Ned (Keir O’Donnell) in which a city bus crashes into the MacArthur Park lake.

In the Season 1 episode of American Horror Story titled “Murder House”, MacArthur Park was where the ultra-creepy Larry Harvey (Denis O’Hare) approached Ben Harmon (Dylan McDermott) to ask for $1,000 to get headshots taken.

MacArthur Park has popped up on the television series Southland no less than 3 times. In the Season 2 episode titled “Butch & Sundance”, the park was where Detective Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy) chased a gang member named Orlando (Eddie Maldonado).

In the Season 4 episode titled “Identity”, Detective Bryant and Officer Ben Sherman (cutie Ben McKenzie – sigh!) arrested a teenager for drug possession at MacArthur Park.

In that same episode, MacArthur Park also appeared as the spot where Detectives Lydia Adams (Regina King) and Ruben Robinson (Dorian Missick) tracked down a suspect named Nicole (Chrissy Stokes).

And in the Season 4 episode titled “God’s Work”, Officer John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz – aka Beverly Hills, 90210’s Tony Miller ) talked to his unnamed sponsor, who was played by Lawrence Gilliard Jr., about his partner, Officer Jessica Tang (Lucy Liu), while walking around MacArthur Park’s lake.

In 2011’s Drive, “Driver” (Ryan Gosling) made a deal with Cook (James Biberi) while at MacArthur Park.

And while IMDB claims that the Season 2 episode of the original Melrose Place titled “Till Death Do Us Part” was shot at MacArthur Park, filming actually took place at the similar-looking Echo Park.

MacArthur Park was also featured in the movie Brave New World, but unfortunately I was unable to find a copy of that production with which to make screen captures for this post. And while the location supposedly appeared in 1992’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I scanned through the flick earlier today and did not spot it anywhere.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Levitt Pavilion MacArthur Park bandshell, from the “Bells” episode of New Girl, is located at 2230 West 6th Street, on the northern side of MacArthur Park, in Los Angeles. You can visit the Pavilion’s official website here. Be forewarned, MacArthur Park is not the safest place, especially at night, so please exercise caution.

June 18, 2012
Ann’s House from “Parks and Recreation”

As I mentioned in Wednesday’s post about the Sullivan Street Pit from fave new show Parks and Recreation, during our whirlwind stalking adventure last Friday, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I also hit up the house where Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones) lives on the show. Just as it is made to appear on P&R, Ann’s supposed Pawnee, Indiana-area residence is actually located directly behind the undeveloped plot of land in Van Nuys that stands in for the Pit on the series. So, after snapping some pictures of Lot 48, Mike and I walked one block east to do some stalking of the abode. I, of course, found this location thanks to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog – the very same fellow stalker who also informed me of countless other Parks and Recreation locations, including Leslie Knope’s house and the Sullivan Street Pit.

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Ann’s house first popped up in the pilot of Parks and Recreation and has subsequently been featured in pretty much every episode since. During the first season, Ann lived in the one-story residence with her slacker boyfriend, musician Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt), but she ends up kicking him out in the episode titled “Rock Show” after discovering that he had asked his doctor to keep his leg casts on for an extra two weeks because, as he explained to Ann, “I really, really like it when you serve me food.” LOL

In real life, Ann’s house, which was originally built in 1948, boasts two bedrooms, one bath and 1,407 square feet and, thankfully, looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it does onscreen in Parks and Recreation. Even the yellow fire hydrant located at the edge of the front lawn is there in real life, which was absolutely shocking to me as I had always assumed that the hydrant was a prop put in place for the show. I mean, has anyone ever seen a fire hydrant situated inside of someone’s front yard before? Will wonders never cease?

The property’s back gate area also appears quite frequently on the show.

And the home’s backyard was featured in the Season 1 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Boys’ Club”, in what was hands down one of my very favorites scenes in the entire series – the scene in which Andy takes a bath in a kiddie pool before chasing his neighbor down the street, while naked and on crutches.

And while I would have bet money on the fact that the real life interior of the home had been used in the filming of the pilot episode before later being recreated on a soundstage (which is a fairly typical scenario), I came across some interior photographs of the residence on fave website Zillow and, as you can see below, it looks NOTHING AT ALL like Ann’s house. So incredibly odd!

While doing research for today’s post, I happened to discover that the apartment complex that formerly stood on the site of the Sullivan Street Pit is actually still visible on Bing aerial maps. LOVE IT!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here. And you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Ann Perkins’ house from Parks and Recreation is located at 5655 Murietta Avenue in Van Nuys. The Sullivan Street Pit from the series is located directly behind Ann’s house at at the southeast corner of Hazeltine Avenue and Collins Street in Van Nuys.

June 8, 2012