TV Locations – Page 53 – IAMNOTASTALKER

November 3, 2010November 2, 2010

The Gas Station from the “Palm Springs Weekend” Episode of “Beverly Hills, 90210”

One location that I have wanted to stalk for what seems like forever now is the gas station where Brenda Walsh (aka Shannen Doherty), Kelly Taylor (aka Jennie Garth), Donna Martin (aka Tori Spelling), Steve Sanders (aka Ian Ziering) and David Silver (aka Brian Austin Green) fueled up their cars in the Season 1 episode of fave show Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Palm Springs Weekend” (aka “A Fling in Palm Springs”). Because “Palm Springs Weekend” was one of my all-time favorite episodes of the entire series, and was also coincidentally the very first episode of the show that I ever saw, it holds an extremely special place in my heart and I was absolutely dying to stalk all of the locations featured in it. And while I had found most of the other “Palm Springs Weekend” filming sites a while back, for whatever reason, try as I might, I just couldn’t seem to track that gas station down. So, I recently enlisted the help of fellow stalker Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, who contacted one of the show’s former crewmembers, who happened to remember that the gas station was located on Thousand Oaks Boulevard just a few blocks west of Hampshire Road in Thousand Oaks. As soon as Chas gave me that detailed information, I immediately dragged the Grim Cheaper out to the Valley to look for the place. Amazingly enough, though, even with the crew member’s detailed directions, I just could not seem to find it. So, after returning home I emailed fellow stalker Owen and asked if he might be able to lend a hand. Magically, Owen found the gas station almost immediately! As it turns out, the GC and I had relegated our search to too small of an area and had only stalked the short stretch of Thousand Oaks Boulevard located immediately to the west of Hampshire Road. Had we ventured just one more block west, though, we would have found the station right there on the corner of Thousand Oaks Boulevard and Live Oak Street. UGH! So, this past weekend, while on our way to Santa Barbara, I made the GC take a little detour off the 101 so that I could finally, finally stalk the “Palm Springs Weekend” gas station!

In the “Palm Springs Weekend” episode, which originally aired almost twenty years ago on February 21, 1991, Brenda and the gang stop by the gas station while on their way to Palm Springs, where they are all spending President’s Day weekend. Quite a lengthy scene takes place at the station, at one point during which Steve informs David that if he wants to hang out with him and pick up girls he needs to “at least attempt to be cool”, to which David says, “Oh, OK, so you think I should, like, hold off and give ‘em, like, a Johnny Depp-type attitude thing?” That line absolutely amazes me every time I hear it being that it still holds true to this day, almost two full decades later, as Johnny Depp is still considered the epitome of cool in Hollywood! Talk about a star having staying power!

[ad]

Today, the 90210 gas station, which at the time of the filming was operated by Shell Gas Company, is now an auto repair shop named Steve’s Automotive. I had the pleasure of speaking with Steve, the super-nice owner, while I was stalking the place and he was pretty excited to learn that his shop had once appeared on the iconic series. He also informed me that it had been used a few times in car commercials in more recent years.

Amazingly enough, even though the property has since changed ownership and is no longer a gas station, it still looks much the same today as it did nineteen years ago when filming took place. I was most excited to see that the bathroom area, where David met Tuesday (aka Shana Furlow), was still there and that it still looks EXACTLY the same as it did in the episode! So incredibly cool!!!!

And, of course, I just had to take a picture in the spot where Kelly had parked her car in the episode. 🙂

Big THANK YOU to both Chas from It’sFilmedThere and fellow stalker Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Steve’s Automotive, aka the gas station from the “Palm Springs Weekend” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, is located at 2658 East Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Thousand Oaks. The bathroom where David met Tuesday, which is denoted with the pink arrow in the above aerial view, can be found just to the left of and around the corner from the front of the auto shop. The area where Kelly was parked is located under the carport, directly in front of the entrance to the office portion of Steve’s Automotive and is denoted with a blue “X” in the above aerial image.

November 1, 2010October 29, 2010

Helen Bernstein High School – The New William McKinley High from “Glee”

A little birdie recently told me that fave show Glee was no longer filming on location at Juan Cabrillo High School in Long Beach – a locale which I blogged about back in January of this year – and that producers had found a new school to stand in for the fictional William McKinley High, one that is located a bit closer to Paramount Studios where the series is lensed. So, I immediately started digging around the internet to find out exactly which school was now being used and fairly quickly came across this YouTube video which an anonymous person had taken of the cast while they were filming the Season 2 episode of the show titled “Audition”. In the comments section, the video’s author explained that the segment had been taped at Helen Bernstein High School in Hollywood. So, I immediately put the location high up on my “To Stalk” list and after embarking on the Paramount Tour with fellow stalker Lavonna and her friends Beth, Debbie, and Connie, who were in town visiting from Ohio a few weeks back, we all set out to stalk the new William McKinley High.

Helen Bernstein High School, which was named after the former president of the Los Angeles teachers’ union who passed away in 1997, just recently opened in the fall of 2008. The school was constructed by the award-winning Chicago-based architecture firm of Perkins+Will in order to help ease the overcrowding at both John Marshall High School in Los Feliz and Hollywood High School in Hollywood. The four-story school, which boasts 2,000 students, sits on 12. 4 acres of land, and measures a whopping 238,492 square feet of learning space, is easily one of the largest educational institutions that I’ve ever come across in my entire life! The place is absolutely massive, and in an interesting historical note, was built on the former site of Fox Television Center/KTTV Studios, where such iconic shows as Saved by the Bell, Maude, One Day at a Time, Diff’rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, In Living Color, The Jeffersons and the pilot episode of Family Ties were filmed. The studio, which later changed its name to Metromedia Square, was sold to the the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2000 and just three years later it was demolished entirely to make way for the new high school. You can read more about the construction of Helen Bernstein High here.

The area of the school that is most prominently featured on Glee is the main quad, which was the site of the New Directions’ rousing performance of “Empire State of Mind” in the “Audition” episode and the spot that I most wanted to stalk. And even though we had waited until 4 p.m. to visit Helen Bernstein, after school was already over for the day, I wasn’t sure how amenable the staff would be to letting us onto the property. When we explained that we were HUGE Glee fans, though, and that Lavonna and her friends were in town visiting all the way from Ohio, one of the super nice office administrators agreed to bring us over to the quad area and then allowed us to take all of the photographs of the place that we wanted! 🙂 YAY!

In the “Empire State of Mind” scene, the Glee kids put on a lunchtime show in order to try to entice their fellow McKinley High students to join New Directions. And I have to say that the performance has to be one of my all-time favorites of the entire series, most likely because I absolutely love that song. In fact, I think I like the Glee kids’ version of it even more than I do the original! “In Neeeeew Yoooooooork . . . “

You can watch the FABULOUS “Empire State of Mind” scene by clicking above.

While we were stalking the quad, Lavonna, Beth, and I got to act out our own little mini-versions of the scene, which I was absolutely floored about.

And I, of course, just had to take a picture in the spot where Rachel Berry (aka Lea Michele) was sitting at the very end of the scene, although, as it turns out, I ended up sitting just a bit too far to the left. Ironically enough, while we were snapping photographs, we spotted some Glee crew members who were onsite setting up for some filming which was going to be taking place the following day. They did not seem all that friendly, though, so I did not attempt to talk to any of them.

All of the William McKinley High School gym scenes – even those filmed during Season 1 – take place at Helen Bernstein, as well.

As do the cafeteria scenes, but unfortunately we were not able to stalk those two areas while we were there. You can see some fabulous interior photographs of the school here, though.

And, according to the YouTube video commenters, the scene in which Finn Hudson (aka Cory Monteith ) sang “Hello, I Love You” in the Season 1 episode titled “Hell-O” was also filmed at Helen Bernstein High School.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Helen Bernstein High School, aka the new William McKinley High School from Glee, is located at 1309 North Wilton Place in Hollywood. Please remember that Helen Bernstein is a working high school and is not actually open to the public. If you would like to visit it, I recommend doing so on off hours when children are not present and always, always get permission from a staff member in the main office before entering the school grounds. The area where the Glee kids sung “Empire State of Mind” is the main quad, which is located just due east of the school’s entrance and is denoted with the pink arrows in the above aerial view.

October 29, 2010September 29, 2017

The Fisher & Sons Funeral Home from “Six Feet Under”

One location that I stalked well over a year ago, but for whatever reason have yet to blog about, is the Victorian-style residence which stood in for the supposed North Hollywood-area Fisher & Sons (and later Fisher-Diaz) Funeral Home on the immensely popular HBO series Six Feet Under. Amazingly enough, up until yesterday morning, I had never seen even one episode of the show and, unfortunately, I have to say that after watching the pilot episode yesterday morning, I wasn’t all that impressed with it. It’s a bit of an odd series. The only part I enjoyed was one of the opening scenes in which David Fisher (aka a pre-Dexter Michael C. Hall) tells a supposedly grieving widower (played by Harper Roisman) that his wife is at peace now, to which the widower replies, “If there’s any justice in the universe, she’s shoveling sh*t in hell!” LOL LOL LOL

[ad]

But while I didn’t especially like the pilot, I did absolutely fall in love the main house featured in it. In real life, the property is known as the Auguste Marquis Residence and it was originally built in the Queen Anne/Eastlake style (much like the “Thriller” house that I blogged about yesterday) in 1904 and is Los Angeles’ 602nd historic cultural monument. The dwelling, which currently houses the Filipino Federation of America, boasts 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a whopping 6,324 square feet of living space, and sits on over half an acre of land. The home was originally built for a Swiss native named Auguste Rodolphe Marquis, who worked for Death Valley’s Johnnie Consolidated Gold Mining Company, from which he made a considerable fortune. The property was purchased shortly after the second World War by General Hilario Camino Moncado, a native of the Philippines and founder of the Filipino Federation. His heirs still own the property to this day.

The Auguste Marquis Residence was featured each week as the home where the dysfunctional Fisher Family – siblings David, Nate (aka Peter Krause), and Claire (aka Lauren Ambrose) and their mother Ruth (aka Frances Conroy) – lived and operated their mortuary business on Six Feet Under, which ran from 2001 through 2005.

In real life, the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home sign is, of course, not there.

And while the home was mostly just used for establishing shots, some occasional filming was also done onsite there throughout the series five year-run, as was the case with the pilot episode, screen captures of which are pictured above.

The interior of the Fisher home was a set that was built on a soundstage at the Columbia/Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood and, from what I’ve been able to discern online, looks nothing like the interior of the actual Auguste Marquis Residence. A short film named Good Night was also filmed on location at the Six Feet Under funeral home in September of 2009 and Don Cunanan, the set photographer, snapped some pictures of the filming, in which you can see some of the residence’s real life interior. You can take a look at those photographs here.

On a coincidental side note – I was floored to spot Mountain View Cemetery, which I just blogged about this past Tuesday, featured quite extensively in the pilot episode of Six Feet Under, as the site of the funeral of Nathaniel Samuel Fisher (aka Richard Jenkins).

And I’d like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a VERY happy Halloween! Hope your holiday is fun and candy-filled!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Filipino Federation of America – aka Fisher & Sons funeral home from Six Feet Under – is located at 2302 West 25th Street in the West Adams District of Los Angeles.

October 27, 2010September 29, 2017

Mountain View Cemetery from “The Office”

Since my favorite holiday, Halloween, is fast approaching, I thought it would only be appropriate to devote the next few blog posts to some filming locations of a spookier nature. So, this past Sunday morning, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, the Grim Cheaper, and I went on a joint stalking venture up to Altadena to stalk Mountain View Cemetery which appeared in the Season 4 episode of The Office titled “The Chair Model”, among countless other productions. I first found out about this locale from my parents’ neighbor, Julie, who owns The Coffee Gallery in Altadena – a location which was also used in “The Chair Model” episode and which I blogged about this past July. According to Julie, while scouting locations for the “Chair Model” episode, location managers sought out a coffee shop that was in close proximity to Mountain View Cemetery where they were also shooting scenes, which is how they came to use her cafe. Like the old saying goes, it’s all about location, location, location. 😉 Anyway, once Julie told me about the place, I started doing some research on it and discovered that Mountain View Cemetery has been featured in hundreds upon hundreds of productions over the years. Apparently, the 60-acre cemetery is used for filming an average of 150 days out of EACH AND EVERY year, which is absolutely incredible to me! Upon finding out that fact, I promptly informed both Mike and the GC that Mountain View Cemetery was the ONLY place I wanted to be buried. Spending my hereafter at a site that is in use as a filming location almost half of each year sounds like absolute heaven to me (pun intended). Mike jokingly said that if I did end up being buried there, my tombstone should read, “Lindsay Blake, from IAMNOTASTALKER –Still Stalking Filming Sites From Beyond the Grave”. 🙂

Mountain View Cemetery, which is one of the oldest cemeteries in the San Gabriel Valley, was first established in 1882 when a man named Levi W. Giddings designated a plot of his family’s land to be used as a site for burials for the citizens of Pasadena. His descendants still own and operate the cemetery to this day, over 128 years later. Mountain View, which as the name implies does boast picturesque views of the San Gabriel Mountains, is an absolutely enormous and quite beautiful property, with sprawling lawns, stately trees from all over the world, an art collection, two chapels, and two mausoleums. Besides being a filming location, Mountain View is also the final resting place of several notables, including actor George Reeves, who played TV’s original Superman in the 1950s television series of the same name. George is entombed in the cemetery’s Pasadena Mausoleum. Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe, one of the original founders of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and builder of the Mount Lowe Railway, is also buried at Mountain View, in the cemetery’s Royal Oak’s section.

[ad]

The yet-to-be released show Franklin & Bash was setting up to do some filming while we were stalking the cemetery on Sunday, and as you can see in the above photographs, had fake tombstones, floodlights, a generator, and a mock funeral assembled, which was very cool to see.

There was also a fake crypt set up on the property, which none of us actually realized was a fake . . .

. . . until we got around to the back of it and saw the prop door. So, of course, I just had to get inside of it to snap a quick picture. 🙂 I am not sure if the fake crypt was a prop for Franklin & Bash or for Wicked Literature: A Halloween Theatre Festival – a Halloween-themed live theatre event which is running at the cemetery now through the end of October. But being that Franklin & Bash is a series about a law firm, I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the crypt was set up for the Wicked Literature show.

In “The Chair Model” episode of The Office, Michael Scott (aka Steve Carell) falls in love with a chair model whom he sees in an office supply catalog. He sends Dwight Schrute (aka Rainn Wilson) on a recognizance mission to track down the model and is crushed when he learns that she was recently killed in a car accident. Dwight and Michael later visit the cemetery where she is buried in order to pay their respects. While there, they break into a rousing rendition of the song “American Pie”.

While stalking Mountain View on Sunday, I was absolutely dying to find the exact spot where The Office had been filmed. Unfortunately though, I was unable to figure it out at the time. It wasn’t until after I got home and re-watched “The Chair Model” episode that I was able to discern the correct location. So, bright and early yesterday morning, I dragged my dad out to re-stalk the place so that I could get some photos of the spot where Michael and Dwight had mourned, ahem, sang. That spot can be found in the northeastern section of the cemetery.

In the Season 1 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “There Won’t Be Trumpets”, Mountain View was the site of Mama Solis’ (aka Lupe Ontiveros’) funeral. In the scene filmed at the cemetery, Gaby Solis (aka Eva Longoria Parker) flies into a rage after discovering that her destitute husband Carlos (aka Ricardo Antonio Chavira) has purchased a large crypt for his dead mother. It was during the filming of that scene that Eva Longoria Parker accidentally (and hilariously) got the heel of her stiletto stuck in the cemetery’s grass. Some paparazzi who were on hand managed to snap pictures of the event and those pictures later made their way onto the pages of US Magazine, but unfortunately I cannot find copies of those photographs anywhere online.

While watching the “There Won’t Be Trumpets” episode, I was convinced that Mama Solis’ crypt had been a prop put into place for the filming. As I discovered yesterday morning, though, her burial site is an actual crypt belonging to the Buckley family. So darn cool! I would like to let it be known here and now that, upon my death, filmmakers have my permission to use whatever it is I end up being buried in – whether it be a crypt, a mausoleum, or a simple grave – whenever and in as many productions as they so desire! 😉

The cemetery was also used in the Season 8 episode of Seinfeld titled “The Foundation” as the final resting place of Susan Ross (aka Heidi Swedberg), George Costanza’s (aka Jason Alexander’s) former fiancé, who died after ingesting toxic glue while licking the envelopes of their wedding invitations.

Mountain View also appeared in the Season 11 episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled “Shock Waves” as the site of the funeral of Officer Franklin Clark (aka Reggie Von Watkins), during which a bomb explodes. Fave website Altadenablog was on hand during the filming of that episode and took some great photographs of the crew setting up the extensive rigging for the explosion scene.

The cemetery also popped up in the pilot episode of the HBO series Six Feet Under as the site of the funeral of Nathaniel Fisher (aka Richard Jenkins).

The cemetery was also used in Ozzy Osbourne’s video for his 2010 song “Life Won’t Wait” . . .

. . . which you can watch by clicking above.

Ironically enough, after visiting the cemetery, I had a feeling that it might have been the very cemetery used in fave movie A Lot Like Love, so after I got home I re-watched the flick and noticed the large, open-air grave-marker located in the background behind Oliver Martin (aka Ashton Kutcher) in the scene pictured above.

I could also just make out the last name “Holmes” written on the marker. So, yesterday morning, while re-stalking the cemetery with my dad, I walked around to see if I could spot that open air crypt.

And, amazingly enough, I did! As it turns out, the filming of A Lot Like Love had taken place just due west of where The Office had filmed. The grave where Emily Friehl’s (aka Amanda Peet’s) mother was buried in the movie was a fake that was put into place solely for the filming. In real life, her grave is just empty space. Ironically enough, Ashton Kutcher returned to the cemetery once again this past May to film scenes for the yet-to-be released comedy No Strings, along with co-star Natalie Portman. You can check out some photographs of them filming here. The 2007 remake of the classic horror film Halloween was also filmed at Mountain View Cemetery.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Mountain View Cemetery is located at 2400 North Fair Oaks Avenue in Altadena. The area which appeared in The Office is in the northeastern portion of the cemetery and is denoted with a pink circle and a pink “X” in the above aerial views. A Lot Like Love filmed just due west of where The Office was filmed in the area of the cemetery numbered 4474, which is denoted with a purple circle in the above aerial views. Desperate Housewives was filmed in front of the Buckley crypt, which is located in the section of the cemetery numbered 4386, directly across from the Vista Del Monte mausoleum, which is denoted with a blue circle and a blue arrow in the above aerial views.

October 21, 2010October 24, 2010

The Griffith Park Merry Go Round from “The Mentalist”

One location that I have wanted to stalk for almost two years now, ever since November of 2008 when it appeared in the Season One episode of The Mentalist titled “Seeing Red”, was the merry go round where Patrick Jane (aka Simon Baker) lured murder suspect Travis Tennant (aka Noel Fisher). The only problem was that I had absolutely NO idea whatsoever where to find it, as in my ten-plus years of living in Southern California the only merry go round that I had ever encountered was the one located on the Santa Monica Pier and it didn’t look anything like the one that had appeared in The Mentalist. So, I immediately called up Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and asked him if he knew where it was located. Sure enough, he did! As fate would have it, the merry go round is located right in the heart of L.A.’s Griffith Park and Mike used to ride it regularly when he was a kid!

[ad]

The Griffith Park Merry Go Round is actually something of a Los Angeles landmark and I am extremely shocked that, up until its appearance on The Mentalist two years ago, I didn’t even know of its existence. The Merry Go Round was first built in 1926 by the Spillman Engineering Company and is currently the only full size Spillman carousel still in operation today. It was originally commissioned by the Spreckels family, of the Spreckels Sugar Company, to be used at their San Diego theme park, the Mission Beach Amusement Center. Sadly, the amusement center was shuttered in 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression and the Merry Go Round was subsequently moved to Balboa Park to be featured in the California Pacific International Exposition. When the exposition ended in 1937, a man named Ross Davis purchased the carousel and transported it over 120 miles north to its new home in Griffith Park, where it is still in operation to this day, over seven decades later.

The Griffith Park Carousel is comprised of 68 different hand-made horses, all of which “jump” – ie. move up and down – and boast tails made of authentic horse hair.

The carousel also features a custom-built Stinson 165 Military Band Organ, which plays a library of over 1500 different songs.

And, incredibly enough, the Griffith Park Merry Go Round even served as the inspiration for one of the most famous landmarks in the entire world – Disneyland! Yes, you read that right. According to one of my very favorite stalking tomes, Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors, Griffith Park historian Mike Eberts states, “Walt Disney brought his young daughters to the carousel and this is one of the places where he began to dream up the idea that would lead to Disneyland.” So incredibly cool! The bench where Walt used to sit during those outings (which is pictured very poorly above) is still on display at the merry go round to this day. And, according to the book Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, Walt’s daughter Diane “thought the inception [of Disneyland] took place during the Sunday afternoons when Walt picked the girls up from religious services – he never attended himself – and took them to the Griffith Park merry-go-round, where they would spend hours. ‘He’d see families in the park,’ Diane would later recall, ‘and say, ‘There’s nothing for the parents to do . . . You’ve got to have a place where the whole family can have fun.’” Further adding to the carousel’s celebrity status is the fact that James Dean’s very first acting job took place there! It was a commercial for Pepsi Cola and, in it, the newbie actor was shown handing out bottles of the soft drink to teenagers who were riding the merry go round. Such incredible history!

I, of course, had to take a ride on the carousel while I was there and it was so incredibly fun! Being there brought me RIGHT BACK to my childhood when I used to ride the Edgewater Packing House Carousel on Monterey’s Cannery Row each and every weekend. In an odd coincidence, I just found out today that my childhood merry go round was also designed by the Spillman Engineering Company, but it is sadly no longer in operation publicly as it was purchased by a Vegas millionaire who had it installed in a room in his home! Not kidding! But I digress.

In the “Seeing Red” episode of The Mentalist, Patrick Jane hypnotizes a young murder suspect named Travis in order to lead him to a supposed Sacramento-area merry go round so that he can be captured by the CBI.

Mike clued me into the fact that the Merry Go Round was also featured at the very end of the 1988 comedy Twins, in the scene in which Julius and Vincent Benedict (aka Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, respectively) meet up with their wives, Marnie and Linda Mason (aka Kelly Preston and Chloe Webb, respectively), and their new twin children at a carousel in a park.

Once Mike told me about the Merry Go Round, I started noticing it popping up in all sorts of movies and television shows, including the Season 2 episode of CSI: New York titled “Zoo York”, in which the body of a teenage debutante is found on the supposed Central Park carousel.

The Griffith Park Merry Go Round also showed up in the 1992 flick Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as the spot where Amylin (aka Paul Reubens) turned Grueller (aka Sasha Jensen) into a vampire.

And it also appeared briefly in the Season 1 episode of MacGyver titled “Every Time She Smiles” as a supposed Bulgaria-area merry go round.

And thank you to fellow stalker Eileen, who informed me that the carousel also appeared in the video for the Jessica Simpson/Nick Lachey song “Where You Are”.

The Merry Go Round was also featured in the Sally Field-directed movie Beautiful, but I don’t own that movie, so I was not able to make screen captures.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Griffith Park Merry Go Round is located at 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, inside of Griffith Park, in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles. The Merry Go Round is open each Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. During the summer months, it is also open on weekdays. The Merry Go Round can be a bit tricky to find and is not entirely visible from the road. The easiest way to get there is to take Los Feliz Boulevard to Crystal Springs Drive and head north. Make a left onto Fire Road and park in the first lot that you come to. The Merry Go Round is located just north of that lot.

October 14, 2010October 14, 2010

Elliott Bay Cafe – The Inspiration for Cafe Nervosa on “Frasier”

Another location that I stalked while visiting the Pacific Northwest this past May was Elliott Bay Cafe – the Seattle-area coffee shop that was the inspiration for Cafe Nervosa on the hit television series Frasier. I first learned about this location from my good friend Nat, who in turn learned about it a few years earlier while taking Bill Speidel’s “World Famous” Underground Tour of Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square District during a vacation in Washington State. And even though I was never a huge fan of Frasier (I watched the show occasionally, but it wasn’t a part of my weekly must-see-TV lineup), when I found out that I was going to Seattle I decided I just had to stalk the place – mostly because of how much I love me some coffee! So, just a few hours after stalking the very first Starbucks store, I dragged the Grim Cheaper, my good friend and fellow stalker, Kerry, and her husband, Jim, out to Elliott Bay Cafe for my second latte of the day.

[ad]

As it turns out, Elliott Bay Cafe is a SUPER cool little spot. In fact, I think I would have liked the place even had it not been a (sort-of) filming location. The cafe is located in Pioneer Square’s Globe Building, which dates back to 1891, and is actually most famous for the legendary bookstore, Elliott Bay Book Co., which up until earlier this year was located upstairs from it. The huge store, which carried over 150,000 different titles, originally opened in 1973 and had been patronized by everyone from former-President Bill Clinton to authors Barbara Kingsolver, Norman Mailer, and George Saunders. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I think there is absolutely nothing cooler than a combination coffee bar/bookstore. When Elliott Bay Book Co. was open, shoppers could buy a cup of espresso and then venture upstairs to loiter among the shelves or, consequently, grab a few books to peruse while sitting downstairs sipping on a latte. So darn cool! Sadly, the Elliott Bay Book Co. moved to a new location on Capital Hill in early 2010, but thankfully the Frasier cafe, which is actually located underground, remained behind. And yes, you read that right – Elliott Bay Cafe is located underground. Most of Seattle was situated “underground” at one point in time actually. The Pioneer Square District, which was established in 1852 and is considered the birthplace of Seattle, was originally built on tidal flats that, in the early years, would flood horribly each and every time it rained – which was quite often. So, after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 destroyed most of the city, it was decided that the new streets would be raised a full story higher than their predecessors. To accomplish this feat, retaining walls were constructed on each side of the district’s former roads. The area between them was then filled in with dirt and subsequently cemented over, which raised the entire city one full level. During the street raising, storeowners had built temporary street-level shops, so as not to lose out on business during the interim. When construction on the new roads was finally completed, the storeowners simply vacated their former shops and moved up to the second level to sell their goods. The street level spaces were then left abandoned and forgotten for the next seven decades.

Until 1965, when, in an attempt to restore the Pioneer Square District, a Seattle preservationist named Bill Speidel decided to start giving tours of the underground area. The tours became a huge hit with residents and tourists alike and has been going strong ever since. So, on the recommendation of my good friend Nat and because I wanted to learn more about the Frasier coffee shop, the Grim Cheaper and I purchased tickets for Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour. Sadly though, while I thought Elliott Bay Cafe was absolutely awesome, I can’t say the same for the tour. While the whole thing sounds very exciting, as you can see in the above photographs there just isn’t a whole lot to see. And the tour guides seemed to be more interested in telling lame jokes than they were in teaching us about Seattle’s unique history. From what I’ve read on the Yahoo! Travel reviews, the tour used to be fabulous, but has deteriorated greatly since Bill’s death in 1988. Whether or not it was ever good, I can’t say for sure, but I do know that the tour the Grim Cheaper and I embarked on was HORRIBLE. Like really, really horrible. So bad, in fact, that at one point while we were underground, the GC grabbed my arm and said, “I think I’ve found an exit door! I am pretty sure we can escape from this thing unnoticed!” LOL But I digress.

Anyway, Cafe Nervosa appeared weekly throughout Frasier’s eleven season-run as the hang out of radio host Frasier Crane (aka Kelsey Grammer) and his fellow KACL employees. As you can see in the above screen captures, while Cafe Nervosa does bear a passing resemblance to the real life Elliot Bay, according to the barista I spoke to while there, the place has been remodeled numerous times since Frasier was on the air, most recently in November of 1999, and formerly looked much more similar to its TV counterpart. Boo!

The exterior of Cafe Nervosa was also shown on the series from time to time.

As you can see in the above photographs, though, besides having a green awning, the set exterior looks nothing like Elliot Bay Cafe’s real-life exterior.

Even though the coffee house doesn’t much resemble Cafe Nervosa, I still HIGHLY recommend stalking the place! It’s a far better way to experience Seattle’s Underground than embarking on the tour AND they serve up some fabulous coffee to boot! 🙂

You can watch the Season 1 episode of Frasier titled “My Coffee With Niles”, which takes place in its entirety at Cafe Nervosa, by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Elliott Bay Cafe is located at 103 South Main Street in Seattle, Washington. You can visit the Cafe’s official website here.

October 13, 2010October 12, 2010

Eagle Rock Plaza from “Glee” and Michael Buble’s “Crazy Love” Photoshoot

This past Monday morning, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, called me up to ask if I wanted to do some stalking with him in the San Gabriel Valley. As it turns out, Monday was a holiday – although I hadn’t realized it beforehand – and Mike had the day off from work. So, after first loading up on some Starbucks coffee (but of course) the two of us headed right on over to Eagle Rock, where the first item on our stalking agenda – Eagle Rock Plaza mall – was located. I had been dying to stalk the mall ever since May 18th of this year when it appeared in the Season 1 episode of Glee titled “Dream On”, in the scene in which Artie Adams (aka Kevin McHale) starts a flash mob in the middle of a supposed Ohio-area shopping center. My good friend and fellow stalker Kerry’s daughter, Jen – who is a total Gleek – had challenged me to find this location the day after the episode aired and, amazingly enough, it wasn’t too hard to track down at all. I just simply used Google Images to search through interior photographs of Los Angeles-area malls and fairly quickly came upon one of Eagle Rock Plaza, which I recognized immediately. And even though I live only a few miles outside of Eagle Rock, for whatever reason it has taken me this long to get out there to stalk the place. Oh well, better late than never, right? [And yes, I am pretending to dance like Artie in the above picture. ;)]

[ad]

In the “Dream On” episode of Glee, Artie visits a local mall with his girlfriend Tina Cohen-Chang (aka Jenna Ushkowitz), and while she is in line buying a hot pretzel, he daydreams about being able to get up out of his wheelchair and dance. He ends up starting a huge flash mob to the 80’s song “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats.

As it turns out, Eagle Rock Plaza is a very tiny mall and it wasn’t hard at all to track down the exact spot where filming had taken place. Artie’s flash mob scene was shot in the very center of the property, right in between the mall’s two main escalators and directly in front of the Seafood City Supermarket.

You can watch the “Safety Dance” number by clicking above.

While we were there, Mike and I stopped by the Eagle Rock Plaza’s management office to ask about the filming that has taken place there over the years and the woman on duty literally could NOT have been nicer! She spent quite a bit of time chatting with us and filling us in on some of the productions that have been shot on the premises, including the Season 4 episode of The Closer titled “Time Bomb”, in which Brenda Leigh Johnson (aka Kyra Sedgwick) and her fellow members of the L.A.P.D.’s Major Crimes Division investigate a bomb threat at a local mall.

Ironically enough, only the interior of Eagle Rock Plaza appeared in that episode. All of the exterior scenes were filmed at Los Angeles City College, in front of the campus’ Communications Center, which does actually look quite a bit like a mall.

Eagle Rock Plaza was also featured in Avril Lavigne’s music video for the 2002 hit song “Complicated” . . .

. . . which you can watch by clicking above.

One production that shot on location at Eagle Rock Plaza that the management didn’t know about, but that I recognized immediately was Michael Buble’s 2009 behind-the-scenes DVD titled “The Making of Crazy Love”. In the documentary, Michael is shown posing for a photo shoot outside of a Macy’s department store during which he is made to run back and forth through a large parking lot. Michael is a total goofball and EXTREMELY funny during the shoot, announcing to one passerby who drives by, “Welcome to Macy’s!” LOL I can only imagine if I had arrived at the mall on a random day to do some shopping only to find MICHAEL BUBLE standing at the entrance welcoming me! I probably would have had a heart attack right on the spot. But I digress. Anyway, for whatever reason (most likely because MB was so darn funny in the spot – at one point he says, “The next shot is of me shopping at Macy’s . . . finding discounts . . . there is a pillow set that is to die for!” LOL LOL LOL), I have been literally hell-bent on stalking that parking lot ever since watching the DVD late last year. Trouble was, I couldn’t seem to find the darn place anywhere.

Until this past Monday that is, when Mike just happened to drive through the part of the Plaza’s parking lot that is located directly behind Macy’s and I recognized it immediately. YAY! Thank you, Mike!

And I, of course, just had to imitate MB running while I was there. 🙂

You can watch Michael’s absolutely hilarious photo shoot in the Macy’s parking lot by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to Jen for challenging me to find this location and to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for taking me there! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Eagle Rock Plaza is located at 2700 Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock. You can visit the mall’s official website here. Michael Buble posed for his running photographs in the southwestern portion of the Plaza’s parking lot, directly behind Macy’s department store, in the area depicted with the pink circle in the above aerial view. The “Dream On” episode of Glee was filmed in the center-most point of the mall, in between the property’s two main escalators and directly in front of the Seafood City Supermarket.

October 6, 2010October 5, 2010

The “Grey’s Anatomy” House

Another location that my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry took me to stalk while I was visiting the Pacific Northwest earlier this year was the Seattle-area home owned by Meredith Grey (aka Ellen Pompeo) on the long-running television series Grey’s Anatomy. I’ve only actually ever seen one episode of the show – the Season 2 episode titled “Enough is Enough” in which my friend Lukas Behnken was a guest star – but since we were in the area and since Kerry knew the address, I figured I might as well stalk the place. I have heard such amazing things about the series over the years, though, that I really do think I need to start tuning in. Especially since the main house used in the series is such a cool one! I was actually quite shocked to discover that the Grey’s residence was located in Seattle, as the show is taped for the most part right here in Los Angeles – at both Prospect Studios in Los Feliz and the Veterans Administration Sepulveda Ambulatory Care Center in North Hills. But apparently, the cast and crew make a few treks each year up to the Seattle-area to shoot some exterior and establishing shots, including all of the shots of Meredith’s home.

On the show, the house originally belonged to Meredith’s mother and while she announced in the pilot episode that she was planning on selling it, she later decides to keep it and live in it with her fellow Seattle Grace Hospital interns Izzie Stevens (aka Katherine Heigl) and George O’Malley (aka T.R. Knight). The home has been featured regularly in all six seasons of the series.

The address of the home on the series is said to be 613 Harper Lane, but in reality it is located in the Queen Anne Hill neighborhood of Seattle on Comstock Street. The home, which was originally built in 1905 and according to fave website Zillow is currently worth about $1.2 million, boasts 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, and 2,740 square feet of living space.

On a side note – I apologize for the short blog posts I’ve been publishing as of late. My parent’s recent, and what has been on-going, move – which has taken place over the past four weekends and has involved packing up a 2,000 square foot residence, staging that residence for sale, moving my parents temporarily into their friends’ currently vacant home, putting 1/3 of their possessions into a storage facility, and the other 2/3’s into two portable POD moving containers – has really taken it out of me. And it’s definitely been a group effort, too. Mike, from MovieShotsLA, even pitched in to help us out! Not many people I know would be willing to help their friends move, let alone their friend’s parents, but that’s just the kind of guy Mike is – and it is why he is one of my very best friends! Anyway, escrow on my parent’s former house closes TODAY (halleluiah!), so the move is finally over – for the time being at least – and I can now get back to my normal life, normal routine, and normal blogging. After a nice hot bubble bath and nice, tall glass of champagne, that is! Thanks for bearing with me over the past few weeks, my fellow stalkers!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Kerry for taking me to this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Grey’s Anatomy house is located at 303 Comstock Street in Seattle, Washington.

October 4, 2010October 1, 2010

Moonlight Rollerway- The Roller Skating Rink from “Glee”

One location that I have been dying to stalk for months now is Rinky Dinks, the cabaret/roller rink owned by April Rhodes (aka Kristin Chenoweth) in the Season 1 episode of Glee titled “Home”. On a quick Glee side note, I just have to say that I was not at all happy with last week’s Britney Spears-inspired episode. Besides just being disappointing as a whole, I was HIGHLY annoyed with the recreation of the “ . . . Baby One More Time” music video. That video has to be one of my all time favorites and the fact that they couldn’t even get the costumes right seriously bothered me! I mean, hello – where were the pink hair pom poms in the opening sequence???? Dressing up like “. . . Baby One More Time”-Britney without those pom poms is like dressing up as the Pope and not wearing a white robe! I had a better Britney costume when I dressed up like the singer for Halloween back in 1999 and I didn’t have a big Hollywood budget to do it with, either. Ugh, don’t even get me started! 😉 Anyway, in real life Rinky Dinks is known as Moonlight Rollerway and it is a national historic landmark. The building which houses it was first constructed in 1940 and was originally used during World War II to build and produce airplane parts. In 1950, the property was purchased by a man named Harry Dickerman, who transformed the space into a roller rink named Harry’s Roller Rink. The property was taken over by new owners in 1963, who renamed the place Moonlight Rollerway, as it is still known today. The rink is currently owned by Dominic Cangelosi, who was named the “RS Gazette Rink Operator of the Year” in 2006. And the original 1950 maple wood flooring, which measures 75 feet by 170 feet, is the same flooring that Moonlight patrons skate on to this day.

And while the Grim Cheaper and I did not have time to actually skate at Moonlight Rollerway, the employees there were nice enough to let us inside to snap some pics and take a look around. They also answered all of my silly little questions about the filming of Glee and confirmed that Matthew Morrison is very cute in person. 😉

I first found out about this location from an acting friend named Alex who had worked as an extra in several scenes of the 2002 gross-out comedy Van Wilder. One of the scenes he appeared in was the Lambda Omega Mega fraternity party, which he told me had been filmed at Moonlight Rollerway.

Since that time, I’ve recognized the rink in several other productions, most memorably in the Brett Ratner-directed video for Jessica Simpson’s hit song “A Public Affair”, which also starred Eva Longoria, Christina Applegate, Christina Milian, Maria Menounos, Ryan Seacrest, Andy Dick, and Brent Bolthouse. And even though Jessica Simpson is easily my least favorite celebrity of all time, for whatever reason I really loved that video. I am pretty sure that was mostly due to her super-cute skating outfit . . .

. . . which I tried to emulate at a friend’s roller rink birthday party just a few months after the video was released. 🙂

You can watch the “A Public Affair” video by clicking above.

In the “Home” episode of Glee, Will Schuester (aka Matthew Morrison) goes on a search for a venue that the New Directions can utilize as their daily rehearsal space after finding out that Sue Sylvester (aka Jane Lynch) has commandeered their usual spot. He winds up at Rinky Dinks roller rink, where he finds his old glee club crush April Rhodes, who now owns the place. Producers changed quite a bit of the interior for the filming of the episode, including adding quite a bit of neon decor to the walls and a stage to the middle of the rink. You can see the rink dressed for the filming on the Moonlight Rollerway Facebook page here.

The rink’s snack bar and . . .

. . . skate rental area were also used in the episode.

Moonlight Rollerway has also appeared in episodes of Cold Case, What About Brian, Gene Simmons: Family Jewels, Medium, The Millionaire Matchmaker, and What Not To Wear, and in the 2008 Will Ferrell movie Semi-Pro.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Moonlight Rollerway, the roller skating rink from the “Home” episode of Glee, is located at 5110 San Fernando Road in Glendale. You can visit the rink’s official website here.

September 29, 2010September 28, 2010

The Street Where “The Hills” Finale Was Filmed

One location that I have been on the lookout for for a couple of months now is the street where Kristin Cavallari said good-bye to on-again/off-again boyfriend Brody Jenner in the final scene of the series finale of fave show The Hills, which aired on July 13th of this year. For whatever reason, though, I was having a heck of a time pinpointing the exact spot where filming had taken place. Until this past Friday, that is. Thankfully, fellow stalker “Diggy” posted a comment on that day’s blog post in which I wrote about the home where Kristin had lived during the last season of the show. In the comment, Diggy stated that the final scene had been filmed on “Beachwood Drive, just north of Franklin”. Sadly though, even with that detailed information, I was unable to find the right spot! Enter master stalker Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, who texted me later that same night with an exact address – 2107 North Beachwood Drive. And sure enough, once I pulled up the location on Google Street View, I saw that he was right! Thank you, Chas! So, yesterday, after Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I finished our tour of Paramount Studios, we headed right on over to Beachwood Drive to do some Hills stalking.

[ad]

The Hills’ final scene centers around the premise that after suffering a broken heart thanks to Brody Jenner, series star and narrator Kristin Cavallari decides to leave Los Angeles to begin a new adventure in a foreign land because, as she says, “I feel if I’m really gonna move and do this, it needs to be a big change and I need to be completely uncomfortable and I need to be scared again and the only place I can really think about would be somewhere in Europe.” When Brody finds out she is leaving the country, he heads to her house to say good-bye and just happens to catch her right as she is walking out her door to drive to what is presumably the airport. In the scene, Brody pulls up and parks in front of the apartment building located at 2107 N. Beachwood Drive.

Kristin subsequently walks out of the house located across the street at 2117 Beachwood Terrace, which is not where the reality star was actually presumed to be living on the show. The house where Kristin lived during the series’ Sixth Season, which I blogged about last week, is located almost five miles away in West Hollywood. Thanks to the tall hedges which completely surround both properties, though, the two residences do bear a striking resemblance to each other.

Kristin then walks to her waiting limousine, which was parked in front of the home located at 2110 North Beachwood Drive.

After Kristin shares a tear-filled good-bye with Brody, her limousine proceeds to drive south on Beachwood, presumably heading to the airport.

The camera then closes in on a distraught-looking Brody for a few poignant moments before the background behind him begins to move and it is revealed that he is actually standing on the backlot of Paramount Studios in Hollywood and that Kristin’s limo had only been driven a few feet off screen. Brody then walks up to Kristin, hugs her, and says, “You outta here?” before the two nonchalantly walk off. I found the ending, which was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that many viewers believe the show to be fake, ingenious. What better way to acknowledge that some of the show was in fact “produced” than to have its final moments be shot on a soundstage? Of the finale, Brody said, “I think the show has always battled with what’s real and what’s fake, and this ending was perfect because you still don’t know what was real, what was fake and it’s kind of like L.A. in a sense.” And while the ending leaves no doubt (in mind at least) that the show wasn’t entirely “real”, some fans still swear up and down that it was. But being that Kristin never in fact moved anywhere, least of all not to Europe, and that she later tweeted “I think I shld finally let everyone know I’m not going 2 Europe. It was 4 the show.”, I think we can all rest assured that the reality series was most definitely manipulated, if not out and out scripted. Which was the exact impression I got when I watched an episode of it being filmed back in August of 2008 – yes, it’s a “reality” show, but a heavily, heavily manipulated one.

Anyway, because Mike and I were at Paramount yesterday, I just had to stalk the exact spot where the finale was filmed – which was at the corner of Avenue A and 3rd Street, just southwest of Stage 23, in front of the studio’s former film vaults.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, and fellow stalker “Diggy” for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The final scene from The Hills was filmed in front of 2110 and 2172 North Beachwood Drive in Hollywood. In the scene, Brody parked in front of the apartment building located at 2107 North Beachwood Drive, Kristin walked out of the house located at 2117 Beachwood Terrace, and the two said good-bye to each other in front of the house located at 2110 North Beachwood Drive. The scene which took place on the Paramount lot was filmed on the corner of Avenue A and 3rd Street, just southwest of Stage 23.