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My Latest Interview with US Modernist Radio

Last month, I headed out to the Skylark Hotel in Palm Springs to meet with George Smart, of the US Modernist website, and record a bit for his popular podcast, US Modernist Radio. While sitting by the pool in the Skylark’s fabulously retro courtyard (which could not have felt more appropriate), George and I discussed all manner of stalking-related topics including modernist homes onscreen, how to be a polite stalker, and my most-wanted locations (one of which – Tal Weaver’s house from Beverly Hills, 90210 – I am happy to report has since been found!). You can give the episode a listen here. It’s #54/Modernism Week 1.

March 30, 2018
Tal Weaver’s House from “Beverly Hills, 90210”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

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

March 28, 2018
The “Lady Bird” House

I know I am in the minority when I say I did not like Lady Bird. Besides confusion over the name (up until I actually popped in the DVD and started watching, I thought the movie was a biopic about Lady Bird Johnson) and a storyline that seemed lacking, I found the main character, Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), utterly bratty. She complains constantly about her hometown and claims she will do anything to go to college far away, yet she doesn’t take action to improve her grades, she cheats (on both a test and by lying to her teacher), lets her recently-out-of-work dad mortgage the family home (behind her mom’s back) in order to pay her out-of-state tuition, and throws tantrums on the reg. I honestly could not find one redeemable thing about her. Without a protagonist to root for or at least to sympathize with on some level, my investment in the movie felt like a waste of time. I was intrigued by the locations, though. While set and partially shot in Sacramento, I knew upon watching and recognizing the café where Lady Bird worked as Kaldi Coffee and Tea in South Pasadena that some filming took place in Los Angeles, as well. I was fairly certain that the house where Lady Bird lived with her family – parents Marion (Laurie Metcalf) and Larry (Tracy Letts), brother Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues), and his girlfriend Shelly Yuhan (Marielle Scott) – could also be found in L.A. So I set out to find it.

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One quick stroke of the keypad led me to an Architectural Digest article that stated the McPherson family home was located in Van Nuys. An address number of “6701” was also visible behind Lady Bird in a scene, so I began searching blocks numbered 6700 in Van Nuys and came across the right spot within minutes. Said to be on “the wrong side of the tracks” in SacTown in the movie, Lady Bird’s home can actually be found at 6701 Orion Avenue, just east of the 405.

According to the AD article, Lady Bird’s production team scouted no less than fifty different properties before settling on the traditional 2-bedroom, 2-bath, 1952 ranch-style pad pictured below.

Not much of the residence was altered for the shoot, as you can see below.

Even the interior, which was utilized extensively, was a perfect fit for the production. As director/writer Greta Gerwig said to The Sacramento Bee, “I was looking for very specific things and it’s so hard to find a home that’s not been renovated. I had this vision of the kind of California home I wanted, like specific wide colorful tiles in the bathroom and kitchen.”

Prior to securing locales, Gerwig took the production team to her childhood home to give them an idea of the look she was going for. In a lucky and rather eerie twist, the Van Nuys house boasted that aesthetic naturally – and in spades. As production designer Chris Jones explained to Architectural Digest, “It was really bizarre because the kitchen looks almost exactly like Greta’s kitchen growing up. It’s an almost exact match, down to the yellow tiles on the wall.” The space actually reminds me quite a bit of the Arnolds’ kitchen from the pilot episode of The Wonder Years.

Per AD, while most of the furniture seen onscreen was brought in for the shoot, the faux wood paneling was another of the home’s authentic features.

Jones calls the house “a great find” saying it became a “character in the movie.”

The 1,607 square feet of living space did prove rather cramped for cast and crew, though. Jones told Deadline, “Working in the house was tight. Everyone was crammed in this small, square footage house. Fortunately, that house had a back area, which actually ended up being the dorm rooms for when she goes to New York. The whole yard was taken over by the film shoot for a week and a half.” Lady Bird’s dorm is pictured below. From Jones’ words, I am unclear if an actual room in the Van Nuys residence was utilized for the segment (with a New York cityscape splayed across the window) or if the space was a set constructed in the backyard or some other rear portion of the property.

The Lady Bird house also popped up in the Season 6 episode of Californication titled “Blind Faith” as the residence belonging to Faith’s (Maggie Grace) parents.

Quite a bit of the interior was also shown in the episode . . .

. . . including Faith’s childhood bedroom, which was the same room utilized as Lady Bird’s.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The McPherson family home from Lady Bird is located at 6701 Orion Avenue in Van Nuys.

March 21, 2018
30th Street Station from “Trading Places”

If you’re a filming location buff, you really shouldn’t travel to Philadelphia without first seeing Trading Places, the 1983 Dan Aykroyd/Eddie Murphy comedy set in the City of Brotherly Love. And filming location buff or not, you really shouldn’t leave Philly without a visit to 30th Street Station, the city’s main railroad depot which had a brief, but memorable role in the flick. I had never actually watched the movie until just prior to our trip back east in September 2016, but it has always been one of the Grim Cheaper’s favorites, so I knew I had to give it a go. And even though he is not at all into locations, I made sure to add a few of its sites to our stalking itinerary. 30th Street Station was at the top of that list thanks to some photos I had seen of its grandly dramatic interior online. In person, it did not disappoint.

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30th Street Station was originally built by the Pennsylvania Railroad between 1929 and 1934.

Designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, the imposing structure was erected out of steel, limestone, granite, and sandstone.

Technologically advanced for its time with a pneumatic tube system, a reinforced roof that allowed for small aircraft landings, and a progressive intercom schematic, the site became the headquarters of the Pennsylvania Railroad shortly after opening.

To say that 30th Street Station is grand would be a vast understatement. From the towering front portico . . .

. . . to the striking main concourse – the depot makes quite an impression.

Though the exterior of the building is Classical in style, the 562,000-square-foot interior is all Art Deco – and it is stunning.

The colossal 290-foot by 135-foot concourse features travertine walls, marble columns, 5-story windows, and gilded detailing.

It is the coffered ceiling, which soars 97 feet above the floor, though, that had me gaping.

Walking into the space, one can’t help but simply marvel.

Situated adjacent to the concourse is the North Waiting Room, another gleaming chamber of travertine and marble.

The room is best known for the massive bas-relief that sits on its rear wall.

Named “Spirit of Transportation,” the 1895 piece was sculpted by Karl Bitter and details evolving modes of transit. Originally displayed at the now defunct Broad Street Station formerly located just a few miles away, the installation was moved to its current home in January 1933.

From 1988 to 1991, 30th Street Station, which according to The Architects Newspaper accommodates 11 million commuters each year, underwent a $100-million revitalization. The area surrounding it is currently set to undergo a massive renovation of its own.

In order to expand the city’s commercial district, 30-million square feet of new space consisting of office and apartment buildings, hotels, parks, shops, and restaurants will be constructed around the depot along the banks of the Schuylkill River. Considering the views are already pretty stellar, I can only imagine how beautiful it is going to be.

30th Street Station pops up at the end of Trading Places in the scene in which Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) and Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) catch a train to New York.

It is there, in the main concourse, that Coleman (Denholm Elliott) and Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis) hand over their life savings in order to help Louis and Billy Ray get revenge on scheming brothers Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche, respectively). On a Trading Places side-note – while researching for this post, I came across a fabulous oral history of the movie. Those interested can check it out here.

Considering its dramatic architecture, it should come as no surprise that the station has been featured in a plethora of productions over the years.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1964 thriller Marnie, Marnie Edgar (Tippi Hedren) arrives in Philadelphia via 30th Street Station. I am fairly certain that no actual filming took place on the premises, though, and that the depot was solely utilized in an establishing shot.

The station that Marnie is shown exiting from in the movie looks to be nothing more than a studio-built set.

In the 1981 thriller Blow Out, Burke (John Lithgow) stalks a prostitute in 30th Street Station’s North Waiting Room and then kills her in one of the depot’s bathrooms before heading to the concourse to meet up with Sally (Nancy Allen).

Samuel (Lukas Haas) witnesses a murder at 30th Street Station in the 1985 drama Witness.

Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg), Alma Moore (Zooey Deschanel) and Julian (John Leguizamo) flee Philadelphia via a train at 30th Street Station in the 2008 thriller The Happening.

At the beginning of 2015’s The Visit, Mom (Kathryn Hahn) drops off her kids, Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), at 30th Street Station.

In the 2017 thriller Split, Kevin Wendall Crumb (James McAvoy) buys flowers at 30th Street Station, though not much of the site can be seen in the scene.

The site also pops up each week in the opening credits of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which started airing in 2005.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: 30th Street Station, from Trading Places, is located at 2955 Market Street in Philadelphia.

March 19, 2018
The “What Women Want” Coffee Shop

“If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard.” So says Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I should have heeded her advice because for years I have been searching for the coffee shop from the 2000 comedy What Women Want and as it turns out the answer to my query has been in a box in my closet since before filming even took place. Let me back up a bit and explain.

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A few nights after my parents and I moved to Pasadena in late February 2000, we grabbed dinner at the Il Fornaio restaurant in Old Town. Upon arriving, my mom spotted a notice on the front door stating that the Italian eatery was going to be closed the following day for a film shoot. We, of course, asked our server for further details and he explained that the shoot was for a Mel Gibson movie named What Women Want. So bright and early the next morning, my mom and I headed back over to the restaurant in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the goings-on. To our delight, we were allowed to sit on a bench right outside of Il Fornaio’s entrance (the very same bench the Grim Cheaper and I took our engagement photos on almost ten years later!) and observe pretty much everything. It was my very first experience being on a working set and I couldn’t believe my luck that it was happening within 72 hours of moving to L.A. The crew could not have been nicer to us, letting us hang out for hours. One even gifted me with the day’s call sheet which I’ve kept in a memento box ever since. Flash forward to last month. While helping me unpack after our recent move, my mom noticed how many celebrity autographs I have and suggested I frame them and display them via a gallery wall in my new office. (You can see the finished result here.) So, I promptly began digging all of my autographs out of my plethora of memento boxes and, while doing so, was shocked to come across the What Women Want call sheet. I had completely forgotten I had it! I didn’t think much about it and didn’t even unfold it to take a closer look, in fact, until a lightbulb went off in my head a few minutes later. Though a call sheet chronicles all of the information for a particular day of shooting (location details, call times, scheduling information, key phone numbers, parking maps, etc.), sometimes data for future filming is also noted. Knowing the odds were incredibly slim but with fingers crossed, I opened up the paper to see if the coffee shop scenes happened to be listed and, lo and behold, they were – along with an address, spelled out in black and white! The information I had been seeking for years had been right in my own backyard – or closet, in this case – the whole time! As the call sheet informed me, the What Women Want coffee shop scenes were lensed at 400 South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. (Though the sheet notes the address as “400 Main St” with no north or south designation, being that there is no structure at 400 North Main, it was easy to discern that filming took place at 400 South.)

I just about fell off my chair when I did a Google Street View search for the address and imagery of the San Fernando Building, a very popular filming location, came into focus on my screen. Not only had I stalked the historic site before, but I’d covered it on two separate occasions in articles for other media outlets. More on that in a bit.

The Italian Renaissance Revival-style structure was commissioned by wealthy wheat farmer/landowner James B. Lankershim in 1907 and originally consisted of 6 floors.

Considered the city’s grandest office building at the time of its inception, the luxe John F. Blee-designed property boasted a marble lobby with 22-foot ceilings, a Turkish bath, a café, a billiards room, and a penthouse which Lankershim called home.

In 1911, two additional stories were added to the top of the building by architect R. B Young.

Sadly, by the ‘90s, the property – and the neighborhood surrounding it – had fallen into disrepair. Enter Tom Gilmore of Gilmore Associates. In 1998, the visionary developer purchased the San Fernando, as well as three additional area buildings, and began rehabilitating them. Killefer Flammang Architects was hired for the extensive transformation process, during which the San Fernando office units were converted into 70 modern loft rentals with concrete flooring, open floorplans, tile bathrooms, and high-end kitchens.

The building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Historic-Cultural Monument, began leasing out units in August 2000 and by March of the following year was 93% occupied.

The San Fernando’s ground floor also garnered new tenants, in the form of high-end restaurants, cafés, studios, and shops . It is one of those spaces that was utilized in What Women Want.

The site pops up a couple of times in the movie as the spot where cocky ad exec Nick Marshall (Gibson) grabs his daily cup of joe – and regularly hits on barista Lola (Marisa Tomei).

Purported to be a Dietrich Coffee outpost in the flick (I am unsure of why the call sheet refers to it as a “Starbucks”), the coffee shop was not a real café at all, but a fabrication constructed inside of a vacant storefront for the shoot – a tidbit I learned years ago from the movie’s DVD commentary with director Nancy Meyers and production designer Jon Hutman.

Yep, you read that right! The What Women Want coffee shop was just a set, albeit an extensive one.

As noted in the commentary, the entire coffee shop was a build-out, even the lobby seen in the background. (Another interesting tidbit that I learned from Meyers’ commentary is that Frank Sinatra greatly influenced both the character of Nick and the movie as a whole. Not only was Nick’s apartment based on Sinatra’s apartment in Come Blow Your Horn, but Hutman incorporated orange, Sinatra’s favorite color, as an accent hue in all of the sets. One example is the directory sign visible below, which boasts an orange stripe across the top.)

So, if the whole What Women Want coffee shop was just a set, one that was completely dismantled after shooting wrapped, why was I so fixated on identifying it? I cannot really answer that question. Though I was fully aware that no part of the locale would be recognizable from the flick, I was still obsessed with tracking it down – and spent years trying to do so. I think possibly my intrigue was not in spite of the café being a set, but because of it. Uncovering the reality of the space’s aesthetic as compared to the fantasy that was shown onscreen piqued my interest. What can I say? The magic of Hollywood captivates me.

Today, the storefront where the What Women Want coffee shop was set up houses a Spanish/Mediterranean eatery named Bäco Mercat. (The space is denoted with a pink bracket below.) Founded by Josef Centeno in 2011, the popular restaurant is named for the baco-style bread that is utilized in its sandwiches.

Though Bäco Mercat occupies the entire southern half of the San Fernando Building’s ground level (as was the case with the What Women Want coffee shop), prior to that the space was divided into two separate units with a café named Banquette inhabiting the more northern storefront, as you’ll see in some screen captures to come.

The entrance doors Nick utilizes in the movie are situated on the northern side of Bäco Mercat.

Ironically, while re-stalking the San Fernando Building recently, I was so excited to finally be seeing the What Women Want café site in person that I failed to snap photos of the buildings across the street (the Hellman Building and the Farmers and Merchants Bank), which were visible in one of the coffee shop scenes and are the only recognizable elements that still exists from the film. Thank goodness for Google Street View! As you can see in the collage below, while the windows of the Hellman Building have changed a bit, the column of the Farmers and Merchants Bank pictured behind Nick is easily identifiable.

As is the decorative lip that runs across the top of the Hellman Building. (You can check out a historic image of the Hellman which shows the street level windows in their original form and as they appeared in What Women Want – before they were altered to run all the way down to the sidewalk – here.)

As I mentioned earlier, the San Fernando Building has a prolific film resume. In the Season 1 episode of Police Story titled “Fingerprint,” which aired in 1974, Allen Rich (Tim Matheson) attempts to evade the police by ducking into the structure.

The episode grants us a great glimpse of what the property’s interior looked like at the time.

In 1977, the San Fernando Building popped up in the Season 2 episode of Starsky and Hutch titled “Huggy Bear and the Turkey” as the site of The Pits bar, where Foxy Baker (Emily Yancy) seeks out Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas) and J.D. Turquet ‘Turkey’ (Dale Robinette) to help her find her missing husband.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve written about the San Fernando on two other occasions. I briefly covered the site and its appearance in the 1983 “Beat It” music video in this Discover Los Angeles article about Michael Jackson’s L.A. that I penned in 2016. While I originally thought that the video’s pool hall segments had been lensed at the Hard Rock Cafe where the bar scenes were shot, back in August 2013 set designer/builder Michael Scaglione, who worked on “Beat It,” was kind enough to give me copies of his original location sheets. As they detailed, filming of the pool hall bits actually occurred at Brunswick Billiard Academy, formerly located in the basement of the San Fernando. Though not much of the space can be seen in the video (which you can watch here) . . .

. . . you can catch some additional glimpses of it in this clip about the making of “Beat It” from Entertainment Tonight’s The Jacksons Exposed! special.

Brunswick Billiard Academy is also where Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) plays pool in 1988’s Bull Durham.

The movie provides us with much wider views of the pool hall than those featured in “Beat It.”

In the 1992 comedy Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Joe Bomowski (Sylvester Stallone) responds to a call about a jumper at the San Fernando, which is said to be located at 486 South Main Street.

The building’s actual interior was also utilized in the scene.

Dick Harper (Jim Carrey), Jane Harper (Téa Leoni) and Frank Bascombe (Richard Jenkins) discuss how to rob Jack McCallister (Alex Baldwin) while sitting in front of Pete’s Cafe and Bar, which formerly occupied the northern half of the San Fernando Building’s lower level, in the 2005 comedy Fun with Dick and Jane. Today that space houses PYT.

Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) hides out – and almost gets arrested – in the San Fernando’s entrance while spying on Sarah Fenn’s (Kate Mara) meeting with Nick Memphis (Michael Pena) at the Barclay Hotel across the street in the 2007 action flick Shooter.

In 2009’s (500) Days of Summer, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel) shop twice at Old Bank DVD, which was formerly located next to Banquette on the San Fernando’s lower level.

You can just see the edge of Banquette in the second screen capture below.

In the Season 5 Rear-Window-inspired episode of Castle titled “The Lives of Others,” which aired in 2013, Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) spies on his across-the-street neighbors in the San Fernando Building via a pair of binoculars while holed up in his apartment due to a skiing accident.

A couple of scenes also took place on the sidewalk out of in front the building. (Why an address number of 500 was posted on the San Fernando for the shoot, I am unsure.)

That same year, Anton Zevlos (Jeff Griggs) dined with his family at Pete’s Cafe & Bar in the Season 5 episode of NCIS: Los Angeles titled “Iron Curtain Rising.” You can check out a photo of the eatery’s interior that matches what is shown below here.

As I detailed in this post for Los Angeles magazine, Kate King (Leslie Mann) calls her husband, Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), to remind him about a dinner engagement while standing in front of Bäco Mercat in the 2014 movie The Other Woman.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The coffee shop from What Women Want was created inside of a vacant storefront at the San Fernando Building, which is located at 400 South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. The storefront now houses the restaurant Bäco Mercat. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

March 16, 2018
Hop Louie from “I Love You, Man”

Los Angeles suffered numerous iconic restaurant closures in 2017 – Auntie Em’s Kitchen in Eagle Rock, Happy Trails Catering in Pasadena (I was particularly heartbroken over that one), and the Formosa Cafe in West Hollywood (though it is set to re-open this summer), just to name a few. 2017 also saw the final shuttering of historic Chinatown eatery Hop Louie. Though the kitchen and main dining room of the area landmark and onscreen stalwart shut down in August 2016, the lower level bar had remained in operation – and left Angelinos hopeful over the restaurant’s future. That all changed when the locale closed its doors for good last July. What is to become of the legendary site is anyone’s guess. I stalked Hop Louie way back in 2012 after becoming obsessed with it thanks to its appearance in I Love You, Man, but, sadly, never got to actually dine on the premises (more on that in a bit) and somehow failed to dedicate a blog post to the place. Then, last week, while doing some downtown L.A. stalking, the Grim Cheaper and I happened to drive through Chinatown and when my gaze caught sight of Hop Louie’s unique pagoda-shaped exterior, I decided it was high time I rectify that.

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Hop Louie’s eye-catching edifice, which towers over Chinatown, was originally constructed in 1941 to house a Cantonese eatery named Golden Pagoda Restaurant.

How it became Hop Louie is not really well-documented online, but from what I can gather the site was taken over in 1985 by restauranteurs Hop Louie Woo and Bill Ng, who met while working together at Latitude 20 in Torrance. The duo transformed the locale into a Cantonese/Mandarin eatery named after Woo. Though the fare was never especially noteworthy, the place quickly became a neighborhood staple due largely to its kitschy décor, generous servings, and reasonable prices. The cocktail lounge, situated on the lower level and known for serving stiff, inexpensive libations, was also a big part of Hop Louie’s draw.

Very little of the restaurant was changed throughout its thirty-year history, leaving patrons and online commenters to commonly refer to it as being “frozen in time.” The assessment was not at all far off – the place was a relic! A cigarette vending machine could even still be found on the premises as late as 2007.

Sadly, Hop Louie suffered from lingering profits in recent years, leading the owners to shut down the kitchen in August 2016. Though the bar was left open, everyone in the city, it seemed, mourned the restaurant’s demise, with Eater LA, LA Weekly, LAist, NBC Los Angeles, and TimeOut all lamenting the news.

Oddly, when the cocktail lounge shuttered a little less than a year later and the final nail was essentially put in Hop Louie’s coffin, the lights seemed to go out with no fanfare whatsoever. In fact, had it not been for a couple of mentions on Yelp and Instagram, I would not have even realized that the bar had closed and the historic restaurant was no longer.

When the GC and I visited Hop Louie in 2012, our experience left a bit to be desired. Upon entering, we headed upstairs to the dining area and I snapped the photos below along the way.

As we reached the second level and stood waiting to be seated, I took a picture of the dining room which apparently was a huge no-no because a man immediately ran over to us screaming and yelling that photos were not allowed. It was not the best way to be greeted, so, needless to say, we did not stay for a meal and the images above and below are the only ones I got of Hop Louie’s interior. You can check out some great shots of the inside of the place here, though.

You can also catch a glimpse of the restaurant via its myriad onscreen roles. In the 2009 comedy I Love You, Man, Zooey Rice (Rashida Jones) and Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) host their engagement party at Hop Louie.

In an interesting twist, though, one that I did not realize up until writing this post, only the exterior of Hop Louie was utilized in the engagement party scene. Though the eatery is referred to by name in the movie and said to be Peter’s favorite spot to bring dates, it solely appeared in a brief establishing shot. All interior filming took place at the Great Wall Chinese Restaurant located at 18331 Sherman Way in Reseda. You can see some photographs of that site here.

Back in 1978, when the locale still housed the Golden Pagoda, it portrayed the restaurant owned by Miss Choy (France Nuyen) in the Season 7 episode of Columbo titled “Murder Under Glass.”

Once again, only the exterior was utilized in the shoot. Interiors were shot elsewhere.

In 1984, the Golden Pagoda popped up in the Season 2 episode of The A-Team titled “The Maltese Cow.”

As was the case with the previous two productions mentioned, only the exterior of the building appeared onscreen. Interiors were shot, I believe, on a set.

We finally catch a glimpse of Hop Louie’s interior in the 1990 comedy Sibling Rivalry, in the scene in which Marjorie Turner (Kirstie Alley) and her sister Jeanine (Jami Gertz) discuss Jeanine’s new love interest over lunch.

A fight between two rival kick-boxing gangs breaks out near Hop Louie’s entrance in the 1991 action flick Ring of Fire.

Haru (Chris Farley) goes undercover as a teppan chef at Hop Louie in order to spy on Martin Tanley (Nathaniel Parker) in the 1997 comedy Beverly Hills Ninja.

Once again, though, only the exterior of the site was utilized. Interiors were shot on what I believe was a set.

In 1998’s Lethal Weapon 4, Detective Lee Butters (Chris Rock) chases a waiter (Philip Tan) whom he mistakenly thinks is a bad guy through Hop Louie’s dining room.

The waiter winds up jumping out of Hop Louie’s second-story window onto the street below, where he is promptly arrested.

Furious (Ben Stiller) and his team head to Hop Louie to celebrate their first victory in 1999’s Mystery Men. Only the exterior of the site appeared in the movie. (Are you sensing a pattern here?)

Interior filming took place at The Prince, one of my favorite L.A. restaurants.

Hop Louie portrays three different spots in the 2007 comedy Big Stan. The exterior of the restaurant pops up in a couple of scenes as the outside of Master Cho’s Karate studio.

The main dining room is the spot where Big Stan (Rob Schneider) has dinner with The Master (David Carradine) and Lew Popper (M. Emmet Walsh).

And the lower level bar is where Lew meets Madame Foreman (Sally Kirkland).

In the Season 1 episode of Chuck titled “Chuck Versus the Sizzling Shrimp,” which aired in 2007, Hop Louie masks as Bamboo Dragon restaurant where Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) encounters international spy Mei-Ling Cho (Gwendoline Yeo).

G. Callen (Chris O’Donnell) parks on the side of Hop Louie while chasing a criminal in the Season 1 episode of NCIS: Los Angeles titled “Chinatown,” which aired in 2010.

In the pilot episode of Stitchers titled “A Stitch in Time,” which aired in 2015, Hop Louie masks as the Chinese restaurant that stands as a cover for the secret headquarters of the Stitchers agency.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Hop Louie, from I Love You, Man, is located at 950 Mei Ling Way in downtown L.A.’s Chinatown. The restaurant and bar are both currently closed.

March 14, 2018
The Royal Laundry Complex from the “As Long As You Love Me” Music Video

Friends often refer to me as a “foamer,” i.e. a person who foams at the mouth over all things Disney. Apparently, I am not a very good one, though, because up until just recently I had no clue that for the past thirteen years the Disney Store has been headquartered at the Royal Laundry Complex, a historic former laundry plant in Pasadena. I was only made aware of the locale and its Disney connection a couple of weeks ago when, while perusing Instagram, I came across an image of an incredible Minnie-Mouse-shaped topiary on fellow stalker Julie’s page. I immediately clicked on the location link at the top of the photo and just about fell over when the map came into view with a pin dropped at 443 South Raymond Avenue in Pasadena. I was further intrigued when I read Julie’s caption, which stated that the site had been featured in the Backstreet Boys’ “As Long As You Love Me” music video. How in the heck did I not know about this place – especially considering I lived in Pasadena for almost two decades and count myself an expert on the city? I, of course, promptly added the location to my To-Stalk list and headed right on over there last weekend while visiting Crown City. Thank you, Julie!

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The Royal Laundry Complex was originally constructed for the Royal Laundry Company in 1927. Designed by Gordon Kaufmann, the prolific architect who also gave us the La Quinta Resort & Club, Santa Anita Park and Greystone Mansion, the property was initially composed of a single Spanish Colonial Revival building (pictured below) situated on the southwest corner of East Bellevue Drive and South Raymond Avenue.

At some point before 1931, the company needed additional space and a large one-story annex was installed along the building’s south side.

While originally designed in a utilitarian style, the structure was remodeled to be more Streamline Moderne in 1939.

That same year, Royal Laundry added a third, drive-up facility in order to accommodate its growing customer base.

It, too, was designed in a Streamline Moderne style.

The marquee signage, which originally boasted neon lettering that spelled out “DRIVE-IN & SAVE,” was added in 1955.

Though the neon has long since been removed and the background lettering painted over, you can still sort of see the wording in my photo below.

After the Royal Laundry Company closed its doors in the 1980s, the complex was left vacant for many years.

It was finally sold to Lee Group Inc. in 1995 and underwent an extensive $8-million renovation that was completed in 2005. The Disney Store leased the complex that same year and transformed it into their worldwide headquarters.

The company hired Clive Wilkinson Architects to redesign the interior of the sprawling 72,500-square-foot facility prior to moving in.

Of the highly innovative and unique space, the Clive Wilkinson website says, “The existing brick-walled structure inspired the creation of brick-like elements for the interior, which allude to the playful building block habits of children. A 20-person ‘Block Conference Room’ is formed on two sides by foam block walls. When the foam modules are disassembled, they become the seating system for 200-person company meetings. A modular honeycomb structure, conceived as a flexible means of managing Disney sample product display, forms a second conference room.” You can check out some interior photographs of the 260-person facility here.

In September 2014, the Royal Laundry Complex, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, was sold to the Swig Co. for $26.1 million. At the time, the Disney Store still had a little over 3 years left on its 13-year lease, so the company remained in place. The lease did just expire at the beginning of this month, though, and, from what I’ve read, it does not appear that it was renewed. I am unsure of what that means for the future of the complex – or its Minnie Mouse topiary.

Sadly, not much of the topiary can be seen from the street.

You can just make out the top of Minnie’s shrubberied ears in my images above and below.

Those who want a better view can check out some close-up images of the statuary here. Man, what I wouldn’t give to pose in front of it!

The Backstreet Boys descended upon the Royal Laundry Complex on June 15th, 1997 to shoot their “As Long As You Love Me” music video. Though AJ, Nick, Kevin, Brian, and Howie D. had already taken Europe by storm by that time, the group was just on the cusp of becoming famous stateside and Tiger Beat magazine was on hand to report on the shoot. Prior to coming across Julie’s Instagram post, I had never actually seen the “As Long As You Love Me” video (while I am familiar with their music, the Backstreet Boys hit just a little bit after my time) and I wound up absolutely loving it! And slightly obsessing! I’ve literally seen it like thirty times now. I cannot stop watching. It is such a great video (that chair dance!), especially considering the fact that it was made over two decades ago! The song is fabulous, too. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head for like three weeks straight.

“As Long As You Love Me” mainly makes use of Royal Laundry’s interior, but the exterior is shown for a brief moment at the very end.

Interestingly, Backstreet Boy Brian Littrell met his future wife, Leighanne Wallace, during the filming. She played model “Donna” in the video. (That’s her below.) The two apparently hit it off while on set, started dating, and eventually tied the knot on September 2nd, 2000. They are still married today. The “As Long As You Love Me” video shoot took place relatively early on in Brian’s career, before he hit superstardom, so the fact that they are still together is incredible – and incredibly cute.

You can watch the full “As Long As You Love Me” video by clicking below. (Be prepared to have the song stuck in your head for the foreseeable future!)

The Royal Laundry Complex can also be seen in the Backstreet Boys – All Access DVD, which documented the making of the “As Long As You Love Me” video, as well as several others. You can can watch a segment of it here.

The Royal Laundry Complex also pops up a couple of times as Donatelli’s Royal Laundry & Dry Cleaning in An Innocent Man. Both the exterior . . .

. . . and interior of the facility are shown in the 1989 drama.

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

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Julie for alerting me to this locale!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Royal Laundry Complex, from the Backstreet Boys’ “As Long As You Love Me” music video, is located at 443 South Raymond Avenue in Pasadena.

March 9, 2018
Hilton Pasadena from “The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training”

I always love it when a filming location sneaks up on me. This past weekend, the Grim Cheaper and I headed to Pasadena to attend the closing party for my favorite store, Lula Mae. (Yes, you read that right – Lula Mae, my happy place, is, sadly, shuttering later this month. While I am devastated over the closure and will miss the shop and its owner, Marci, more than words can say, I couldn’t be happier for Marc as she embarks upon a new adventure in the Pacific Northwest.) After checking in to the Hilton Pasadena upon arriving in Crown City, I decided to do some Googling to see if anything had been filmed on the premises and was thrilled to come across a Wikipedia mention of the hotel’s appearance in the 1977 comedy The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training. Some further digging revealed that the property had played host to a couple of other productions, as well, throughout the years. While I typically try to only book lodgings that have been featured onscreen for all of my travels, in this case, staying at a filming location was a happy accident! So I decided I just had to blog about the place.

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The Hilton Pasadena originally opened its doors in December 1970.

Since that time, the 13-story property has undergone numerous renovations, the most recent of which was completed in fall 2017.

So it goes without saying that the site looks quite a bit different today than it did in its early years, when it boasted 264 rooms, a 26,000-square-foot shopping arcade, a top-floor restaurant, a two-story lobby, and a dark wood and deep red color palate.

Currently the lodging features 296 rooms and suites, 28,494 square feet of meeting space (including downtown Pasadena’s largest ballroom!), an outdoor pool and hot tub, a health club, a business center, a pantry market, and a bright, open lobby.

The hotel also boasts an onsite restaurant, The Corner Craft Kitchen + Bar.

Hilton Pasadena is a gorgeous property and the GC and I thoroughly enjoyed our time there.

In The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, the site masquerades as The Houston Hilton, where the Bears are put up while in town to play a charity game at the Astrodome. The exterior of the property is only shown once in the movie and very briefly at that.

I am fairly certain that one of the hotel’s actual hallways and a couple of the rooms were also utilized in the film.

Thanks to the Remington Steele Shrine website, I discovered that the Hilton masks as the Brinkley Hotel, where Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) spies on her sister’s husband in order to determine if he’s having an affair during a dental convention, in the Season 2 episode of Remington Steele titled “Steele Sweet on You,” which aired in 1984. Both the exterior . . .

. . . and interior of the site are used extensively in the episode.

Watching it, you really get a sense of how different the property looked during its early days.

It looks so different, in fact, that at first I wasn’t sure if Remington Steele had made use of the Hilton’s interior for the shoot or if the production had utilized another hotel. Thankfully though, after scrutinizing the episode, I am able to say with certainty that it was, indeed, filmed inside the property. As you can see below, in one scene, Remington Steele (Pierce Brosnan) walks by a lobby directory and a listing for “Harry Kamp Clothiers” is visible. Some Googling led me to this 2009 Pasadena Now article which states that the clothing boutique was initially located in the lobby of the Pasadena Hilton. Eureka!

The rooms . . .

. . . and hallway that appeared in the episode were not actual parts of the Hilton, but sets built at CBS Studio Center where the series was lensed.

Thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, I learned that in the Season 8 episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia titled “Frank’s Back in Business,” which aired in 2012, a Pasadena Hilton meeting room is the site of the Atwater Capital shareholders’ meeting. Though the hotel’s ballrooms have since been remodeled, you can check out an old photograph of one of the event spaces in which the carpet matches what appeared in the episode here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Hilton Pasadena, from The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, is located at 168 South Los Robles Avenue in Pasadena. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

March 7, 2018
Skylark Hotel from “Palm Swings”

One of the best parts of starting this blog is the many connections I’ve been able to make with people who share this unique predilection of mine. I recently had the pleasure of meeting up with mid-century-modern-house-stalker George Smart, of the USModernist website, who was in town for Palm Springs’ annual Modernism Week. He had some ideas about a couple of future collaborations between our two sites and also invited me to appear on his podcast USModernist Radio (aka the “Car Talk” of design podcasts). We recorded the bit at the Skylark Hotel, a fabulous mid-century lodging at 1466 North Palm Canyon Drive that George and his team had taken over for the duration of their visit. I was unfamiliar with the locale prior to showing up for my interview and was enthralled by the property’s sleek lines, bright colors, and retro touches. I was even more intrigued when George informed me that the place is a filming location! As he explained, Skylark Hotel appeared in the 2017 movie Palm Swings, which I had never heard of. I, of course, streamed it the second I got home. Sadly, the flick was not good. At all. Thanks to its gorgeous architecture, though, I figured the Skylark was still worthy of a blog post.

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Surprisingly, I was not able to dig up much of the hotel’s history online or elsewhere. In fact, there was not a single mention of the place – past or present – in any of my Palm Springs history or tourism books.

From what I was able to glean, the property was originally established in 1955. I believe it initially operated under its current moniker, Skylark Hotel.

Though I haven’t been able to verify it, according to several blurbs I came across online (here and here), the site was a major celeb hot spot in its early days with such stars as Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Peter Lawford, Jayne Mansfield, and Marlon Brando all frolicking in the 9-foot-deep central swimming pool.

Per an article in the San Bernardino Sun, by 1988 the hotel was being operated as the Palm Springs Canyon Inn.

That same year, it was purchased by Fran and Bill Flesher, the owners of Treehouse Fun Ranch, a nudist camp in San Bernardino. The couple renamed the site “Treehouse Too Hotel” and transformed it into a clothing-optional lodging.

They also added a clover-leaf-shaped spa to the grounds.

As some point, the hotel was again transformed, this time into the clothing-optional gay resort Camp Palm Springs. It was then that it began to fall into disrepair.

By the time that hotelier Jesse Rhodes got his hands on the lodging in 2013, many of the original mid-century modern touches had vanished. As he told Palm Springs Life, “Everything was covered up and painted very dark. But when I walked into the property, I knew that under all that stuff they had covered up the original architecture would be there – and it was.” So he set about rehabilitating the structure, which required a virtual gutting of each of the site’s 29 rooms.

The result is nothing short of retro-fabulous, though that doesn’t come as much of a surprise being that restoring old hotels is old hat for Rhodes, who has also worked on such storied properties as New York’s Plaza Hotel and San Diego’s Hotel Del Coronado.

Of the renovation process, he said, “I didn’t remodel the hotel, I restored it back to what it was. There’s a book called Palm Springs Holiday and it has a photograph of the hotel from 1955 with a caption that says, ‘The long-vanished Skylark Hotel.’ Well guess what? It didn’t vanish. It’s reappeared exactly the way it was except for the fact that it has Egyptian cotton sheets, flat screen televisions, Wi-Fi, and dual-pane glass windows. But if you look at that photo from 1955 and compare it to now, it looks the same.”

One notable difference is the AstroTurf chaise lounge that now graces the hotel’s entrance. While initially displayed at the Pepper Tree Inn (now Alcazar Palm Springs), the Blue McRight-designed piece, titled “Lawn Chair,” was relocated to the Skylark in 2013.

Other modern amenities include Danish mahogany and walnut furnishings, custom-made pillow-top mattresses, and mountain and pool views.

Clothing is also no longer optional, which means children are now welcome. As Rhodes says of the resort, “Instead of it being straight-friendly or gay-friendly, we’re just friendly.”

Back to Palm Swings. The racy flick (which plays much like a Lifetime Original Movie) revolves around Allison Hughes (Sugar Lyn Beard) and her husband, Mark Hughes (Jackson Davis), a young couple who have just moved to the desert. As they quickly discern, their neighbors (and pretty much everyone else in the area) are swingers. (Talk about a cliché.) So the two decide to test the waters. (When in Rome, I guess.) Skylark Hotel shows up twice in the flick. It first pops up very briefly in the movie’s opening montage in which Allison and Mark are shown driving their U-Haul into town.

Skylark Hotel is later the site of the raucous annual “Palm Swings Weekend” swingers party, hosted by Ms. Cherry Bomb (Tia Carrere). (See what I mean? Come aawwwwnnnn! Could the premise be any more ridiculous?)

The Palm Swings Weekend party takes place mainly around Skylark’s pool.

According to the Desert Sun, not only did Palm Swings utilize the hotel as a filming location, but the cast and crew stayed there during the three-week shoot, which took place in the summer of 2014. (The fact that the movie was not released until over three years later, and then only digitally, is quite telling.)

A rendering of the hotel also appeared on the flick’s poster.

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

Big THANK YOU to George Smart, of the USModernist website, for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Skylark Hotel, from Palm Swings, is located at 1466 North Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs’ Uptown Design District. You can visit the property’s official website here.

March 2, 2018
Pico House from “My Sister Sam”

The name of my blog is (obviously) meant in jest. I always feel a pang of guilt over having chosen it, though, when I think about Rebecca Schaeffer, the young actress who was gunned down in her doorway by a deranged stalker at the tender age of 21 in 1989. My grandma and I religiously watched My Sister Sam, the CBS series she starred on, when it was on the air in the late-80s and were both considerably obsessed. We were equally devastated when it was cancelled after a scant one and a half seasons and then again when we learned of Schaeffer’s murder a little over a year later. While the show and its star have never strayed far from my mind in the years since, somehow I never though about tracking down the supposed San Francisco building where Schaeffer’s teenaged character, Patti Russell, lived with her older sister, Sam Russell (Pam Dawber). Thankfully, in 2013, a reader named Vera Charles left a comment on my 2009 post about downtown L.A.’s Pico House, which I was reporting on due to its use as “Sacramento’s” CBI headquarters on The Mentalist, alerting me to the fact that the very same spot served as the My Sister Sam apartment! I was floored over the news, but, for whatever reason, am only just now getting around to re-blogging about the historic site.

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Constructed from 1869 to 1870, Pico House has the distinction of being Los Angeles’ first three-story building.

Commissioned by Pio Pico, the last governor of California under Mexican rule, the Italianate structure originally served as an 82-room hotel. Not just any hotel, though – it was the city’s finest, featuring arched windows and doors at every turn, a grand double staircase, an aviary, 21 parlors, 2 courtyards, a French restaurant, restrooms and water closets for both sexes on each floor, a bar, and a billiards room. Designed by architect Ezra F. Kysor, the lodging cost $48,000 to construct and a whopping $34,000 to decorate and furnish. At the time of its opening, the most expensive rooms ran for $3 a night.

Though the property proved bustling throughout its first decade, Pio wasn’t the savviest when it came to finances and he wound up losing Pico House to foreclosure in 1880. The site subsequently passed through several hands, continuing to function as a hotel, before being transformed into an inexpensive boarding house named The National in 1892. It operated as such for the next three decades, growing more dilapidated as time passed. Though the original moniker was restored in 1920, the building continued to deteriorate, becoming a mere shadow of its once grand self, and was eventually condemned in 1922.

It was finally acquired by the city of L.A. in 1953 and incorporated into El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Monument. Though it has remained vacant ever since (you can check out some images of the interior taken in 2006 here), the site has undergone several renovations in the ensuing years and is both a California Historical Landmark and a National Historic Landmark. Today, it is utilized mainly as a special events venue and, of course, for filming.

Pico House has the fortunate and unique quality of boasting four rather diverse façades. As such it has proved an extremely versatile landscape for filming. The north and west edifices are both elaborately Italianate in style, with arched windows and doors and stuccoed exteriors fashioned to resemble blue granite. Though similar, the north end (pictured below) stands alone facing El Pueblo de Los Angeles’ Old Plaza and bears the look of a 19th Century courthouse or city hall . . .

. . . while the west end (pictured below), which runs along North Main Street, is much wider and is adjacent to several buildings with Victorian detailing, giving it a very San Francisco feel.

The south façade, which is situated on Arcadia Street, boasts an Old West style and has a very Sacramento-ish look.

And the east side, which runs along Sanchez Street, features fabulous red brickwork as far as the eye can see.

It is the western end that masked as Sam and Patti’s apartment building on My Sister Sam, which, as I mentioned above, was said to be located in San Francisco.

Only the exterior of the building was utilized on the series. The interior of Sam and Patti’s apartment was just a set constructed at Warner Bros. Ranch (then named The Burbank Studios Ranch), where the show was lensed.

In the Season 1 episode of Amazing Stories titled “Alamo Jobe,” which aired in 1985, the north side of Pico House masks as the site of the modern-day Alamo.

Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) work patrol in front of Pico House’s north end at the beginning of 1992’s Lethal Weapon 3.

That same year, Pico House’s southern side masqueraded as Hotel Brian in 19th Century San Francisco where Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner) tried to secure lodging in the Season 5 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation titled “Time’s Arrow: Part 1.”

The building situated adjacent to Pico House at 425 North Los Angeles Street also appeared as 19th Century San Francisco in the episode.

In real life, that structure (pictured below) houses the Chinese American Museum.

In the Season 1 episode of Criminal Minds titled “Machismo,” which aired in 2006, the south side of Pico House . . .

. . . . as well as the interior courtyard portrayed a police station in Allende Del Sol, Mexico.

Beginning in 2008, the south end of the site was utilized regularly as Sacramento’s CBI Headquarters on the television series The Mentalist. Besides appearing in weekly establishing shots . . .

. . . some location filming also took place on the premises, as was the case with Season 1’s “Bloodshot.”

The building’s east side was even used to portray a nightclub in that particular episode.

JLS shot their 2009 music video for “Everybody in Love” in Pico House’s courtyard. You can watch the video here.

That same year, the courtyard situated just outside of Pico House’s north entrance appeared in the “ . . . if he’s not marrying you” vignette in He’s Just Not That Into You. The bit contains one of my favorite lines from the movie – “The second you hear that, you just run to the store and get yourself some ribs and some ice cream, because you have been dumped!” You can watch the hilarious segment here.

The Ghost Adventures crew investigates paranormal happenings related to an 1871 race riot in which 19 people were killed at Pico House in the Season 4 episode titled “Pico House Hotel,” which aired in 2011.

In the 2016 drama Live by Night, Pico House’s courtyard appears as the hospital where Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck) recovers from a beating.

The Chinese American Museum also pops up in the movie as the spot where Joe and his crew rob card players during a high stakes poker game.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Pico House, aka Sam and Patti’s apartment from My Sister Sam, is located at 424 North Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. The site is part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Monument. Several areas of the monument have appeared onscreen, including the Old Plaza, located just north of Pico House at 1 Olvera Street, and the historic Olvera Street outdoor marketplace, the entrance to which is just beyond the Plaza. Union Station, another popular filming locale, can be found directly across the street at 800 North Alameda Street.

February 28, 2018