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Brand Library from “Scorpion”

I am probably the only person you will ever hear say this, but I absolutely loved working as a background actor in Hollywood. Sure, the hours were long and unpredictable and the work tedious and repetitive, but the opportunities I was afforded to be up-close-and-personal with the inner workings of movie and television production were unparalleled. I reveled in observing everything from the rehearsal process to the stars’ make-up application to the Steadicam operators’ choreographed movements. I also got to learn about and was granted access to some fabulous and unique locales, one of which was the Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale. Though I lived in nearby Pasadena at the time, until I was hired as an extra for the movie Loaded in October 2006, I had never heard of the place, and was struck by its beauty and extraordinary architecture as soon as I arrived on set. For the shoot, the library was transformed into a college campus and my job was to mill about the property’s entrance and sprawling front lawn for a couple of scenes. While Loaded turned out to be an undeniable flop (even just scanning through it to make screen captures for this post was painful), Brand Library left an indelible impression on me. So when I spotted it while watching new fave show Scorpion recently, I figured it was high time I blog about the site.

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Brand Library was originally built as a private residence for Glendale developer Leslie Coombs Brand and his wife, Mary Louise, in 1904.

Known as El Miradero (Spanish for “the lookout”), the property was designed by Brand’s brother-in-law Nathaniel Dryden.

Modeled after the East Indian Pavilion from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (which you can see a photograph of here), Dryden employed Saracenic, Moorish and Indo-Islamic elements in his design.

Constructed at a cost of $60,000 (and we’re talking 1904 money!), the lavish 13-room, 5,000-square-foot property boasted towering scalloped archways, intricate beveled glass windows, shaded loggias, a pool, a tennis court, orange groves, a miniature lake, ponds and fountains, kennels for the family’s dogs, an airstrip, a conservatory, a sprawling palm tree-lined drive (pictured below), and even a private clubhouse complete with a bar and pool tables that was open to the local elite.

El Miradero was so opulent and palatial that locals began referring to it as “Brand’s Castle.”

When Leslie passed away in 1925, he deeded the manse, as well as the 488 acres surrounding it, to the city of Glendale with the decree that it should be turned into a library and public park. His one stipulation was that the city could not take over ownership of the property until his wife’s death.

Mary Louise continued to live on the premises for the next 20 years, until eventually passing away in a car accident on October 13th, 1945 while on vacation in Arizona. She was 74. The city of Glendale subsequently began transforming the Brand estate into a library. Not just any library, though. El Miradero was instead turned into a specialty art library, housing a collection of over 110,000 LPs, DVDs, art prints, books, and CDs. It opened to the public in 1956. Sadly, during the transformation, much of the residence’s original interior design, which was Victorian in style, was covered over or removed in order to make the site more functional as a municipal space.

A large gallery and 100-seat recital hall were added to the grounds in 1969, though they bear a much more modern look than El Miradero. (You can see the gallery and recital hall spaces to the left in both of my photos below.)

Thankfully, in 1998, a plan was approved to renovate the library and restore much of its original interior detailing. The project did not get underway until 2012, though, at which time the site closed for 2 years and underwent $10-million worth of work.

The results of the renovation are nothing short of spectacular. Though the exterior of Brand Library is striking, the restored interior is absolutely jaw-dropping. Visitors to the site now enter through the property’s former solarium, reportedly Leslie and Mary Louise’s favorite area of the home. All of El Miradero’s rooms are centered around the bright space, which during the Brands’ tenure was decorated with dark wood, a myriad of foliage, a fountain, and bird cages. You can see photographs of it from that time period here and here.

Just off the solarium is the couple’s former dining room. Painted in a rich blue, the space boasts a magnificent window seat with a carved wood frame. You can check out images of the room in its original form here and here.

El Miradero’s former library room is just as impressive, with an intricately painted ceiling and leaded glass windows. Pictures of it during the Brands’ day can be seen here and here.

From the library room, visitors step into what was originally the home’s reception hall, a grand space boasting a stone, brick and wood fireplace. You can check out photos of what it formerly looked like here and here.

Off the reception hall sits the Brands’ drawing room, which is decorated in soft blue tones and features a hand-painted ceiling. You can view an image of the room in its original state here.

As you can see in comparing the historic photos to my recent images, the restorers did an amazing job of bringing the property back to its original splendor. It honestly looks as if no time has passed since the Brands lived on the premises!

El Miradero’s impressive and unique architecture lends itself quite well to the screen.

In the Season 2 episode of Scorpion titled “Sun of a Gun,” the library played the role of President Desta Rahal’s (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) home in Bahari, North Africa.

Only the exterior of the building was used in the shoot. The interior of Desta’s palace was a mash-up of two different spots – a studio-built set . . .

. . . and the Moroccan Room at The Hollywood Athletic Club in Hollywood.

Scorpion is hardly the first production to feature the library. In fact, during the days that Brand lived on the premises, he rented the home out to film companies regularly, figuring the publicity generated by doing so was good for Glendale, the city he was in the process of developing. As such, El Miradero appeared in numerous silent movies including 1915’s Under the Crescent, 1920’s An Arabian Knight, 1925’s Webs of Steel, and 1919’s The Man Beneath (pictured below).

The site’s popularity as a filming locale only increased after it was turned into a library. In the Season 4 episode of The Six Million Dollar Man titled “The Thunderbird Connection,” which aired in 1976, the property masked as Price Hassad’s (Barry Miller) Burdabi palace.

Brand Library portrayed the Love Truth Temple, aka the headquarters of the cult that Page Connally (Heather Locklear) belonged to, in the Season 2 episode of The Fall Guy titled “Just a Small Circle of Friends,” which aired in 1983.

At the beginning of the 1988 comedy The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, the library masqueraded as the Beirut palace where terrorists plotted to take down the U.S.

As I mentioned earlier, Brand Library was transformed into a college campus for Loaded. It popped up twice in the 2008 movie – first in the scene in which pre-law student Tristan Price (Jesse Metcalfe) and his friends hang out between class.

It then was featured in the scene in which drug dealer Sebastian (Corey Large) tries to befriend Tristan’s girlfriend, Brooke (Monica Keena).

I was an extra in both scenes, though you can only see me in the latter. There I am denoted with a yellow arrow in the screen cap below.

Brand Library also appeared in The Other Side of Midnight, but I could not find a copy of the 1977 flick anywhere to make screen captures for this post.

From what I have read online, the site also popped up in episodes of The X-Files, Alias, and Mission: Impossible, though I am unsure of which episodes specifically. If anyone happens to know, please fill me in.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Brand Library & Art Center, from the “Sun of a Gun” episode of Scorpion, is located at 1601 West Mountain Street in Glendale. The site is open to the public, but closed on Mondays, so plan accordingly.

August 21, 2017
Mawby’s Bar from “Flashdance”

While I am definitely a child of the ‘80s, there are some classic films from that era that I have never been a fan of. Pretty in Pink, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Flashdance come to mind. Being that there’s pretty much nothing I love more than movies with musical and dance montages, the latter should be right up my alley, but, for whatever reason, it never struck a chord. There is one spot from it that I have been asked about regularly over the years, though – Mawby’s Bar, the club where welder-by-day/exotic-dancer-by-night Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals) worked in the 1983 flick. Filming websites had long documented that the Mawby’s exterior could be found in downtown L.A., though it’s exact address was never specified. Then in September 2014, The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations published some more detailed information. According to a tip from location manager Charles Newirth, Mawby’s was a mocked-up vacant warehouse at the corner of Boyd and Wall Streets that had been demolished at some point since filming took place. Because the building was said to be gone, I did not put any further thought into it. So imagine my surprise when this past December, fellow stalker Chas, of It’s Filmed There, posted a page about Flashdance locales, along with the address of the still-intact Mawby’s warehouse!

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I immediately headed over to Google Street View to check out the building, which, as Chas explained, looks considerably different in reality. Not only was the structure, located at 229 Boyd Street, heavily dressed for the filming of Flashdance (with a neon, glass brick and black metal façade added to the exterior, as well as letters spelling out “hotel” written across the second level), but it was also altered in the years following the shoot. Most noticeably, the five rounded second story windows were filled in at some point.

Amazingly though, the outlines of those windows are still discernible today, which I was absolutely floored to see!

I was also floored to see that the utility access cover visible in the sidewalk directly outside of Mawby’s front door is still there today! (I know, I know – it doesn’t take much to excite me.)

Mawby’s, which was loosely based upon a real Toronto-area strip club named Gimlets, was featured numerous times throughout Flashdance.

Though I cannot say for certain, from the way the film was shot and a few blurbs I have read online, it seems that the actual interior of the warehouse was also utilized in the filming. Ron Karabatsos, who played Mawby’s Bar owner Jake Mawby in the movie, even wrote in to the Fast Rewind website explaining that the club was built from scratch in an empty storefront in downtown Los Angeles. (Though he states that said storefront was on 5th and Los Angeles Streets, that intersection is only a hop, skip and a jump away from the Boyd warehouse, so I believe he was just a bit off in his recollection. It is also possible that a different vacant site was utilized for interior shots of Mawby’s, but I do not think that was the case.)

I was really hoping to find some additional onscreen appearances of the warehouse from the same time period so that I could further verify the location (you know me – I don’t like to leave any stone unturned when it comes to this stuff). While I did come across a couple, neither provided a great view of the building. We catch a very brief glimpse of the side of it in the 1984 Sci-Fi horror flick Night of the Comet. In the screen captures below, the Mawby’s warehouse, located just beyond the stop sign, is denoted with a yellow arrow.

A much better view of the warehouse is shown in 1988’s Miracle Mile, in the scene in which Harry Washello (Anthony Edwards) and Wilson (Mykelti Williamson) attempt to get gas at a downtown gas station. Unfortunately, I did not take any photographs of that side of the structure while I was stalking the place, so please bear with the Google Street View images pictured below.

Oddly, the second floor windows that I was so excited to see the outlines of appear to have been replaced by long rectangular windows by the time Miracle Mile was shot, which makes no sense whatsoever. If the rounded windows were actually swapped out, how are vestiges of them still apparent today?

Miracle Mile also provides a quick glimpse of the parking lot that was formerly situated across the street from the warehouse and was visible in Flashdance. Today, a one-story building stands on that site.

Thanks to a commenter named Sam I learned that an establishing shot of Mawby’s from Flashdance was re-used in the 1990 made-for-television movie Perry Mason: The Case of the Poisoned Pen. No actual filming took place at 229 Boyd Street, though.

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

Big THANK YOU to The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations and Chas, from the It’s Filmed There website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The warehouse that masked as Mawby’s Bar in Flashdance can be found at 229 Boyd Street in downtown Los Angeles. The neighborhood where it is located is not the greatest, so please exercise caution when visiting.

August 16, 2017
Happy Trails Catering from “Big Little Lies”

UPDATE – Sadly, Happy Trails Catering is no longer open. The restaurant closed in 2018 and its beautiful garden currently sits vacant.

As you probably noticed, I was unexpectedly MIA for most of last week. My dad had an experimental five-day procedure done at a hospital in Orange County, so my family and I spent the week by his side. I fully intended to write new content while there, but the hospital Wi-Fi wasn’t really amenable to that. (What is it with hospital Wi-Fi, by the way? I’ve literally never encountered one even halfway decent!) But I am finally home and ready to get back to my regularly scheduled programming. So, on with the post! As someone who routinely plays tourist in my own town (wherever that happens to be), I counted myself an expert on Pasadena, the Southern California city I called home for more than 15 years. One spot that remained a secret to me for almost a decade, though, was Happy Trails Catering, a bucolic special events site/café/garden located in Old Town. My mom learned about the place while looking for L.A.-area wedding venues shortly after I got engaged in 2008 and, upon seeing photos of it online, told me we had to head out there pronto for a tour. I was dazzled at what awaited us! Situated just steps from the bustling sidewalk lining Fair Oaks Avenue, virtually hidden behind wooden entrance gates, is an absolutely charming garden positioned around a massive camphor tree. While I did not wind up choosing to tie the knot on the premises (the Grim Cheaper and I instead got married at our good friends’ house), Happy Trails made a definite impression. So it is quite surprising that I did not recognize the place upon sight when it popped up on Big Little Lies earlier this year. It wasn’t until the property’s third appearance on the HBO mini-series that I was actually able to identify it!

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Happy Trails Catering was originally founded in 1986.

As its name suggests, the company mainly operates as a catering business, run out of a small brick storefront.

Situated next to that storefront is the entrance to the property’s spectacular garden.

The pristine landscaped grounds serve as the company’s onsite special events venue.

Thankfully, you don’t have to be invited to a soiree on the premises to catch a glimpse of the peaceful idyll, though. Each weekday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., the Happy Trails kitchen is transformed into a walk-up café open to the public.

Patrons can grab one of the eatery’s homemade soups, sandwiches, salads, or quiches . . .

. . . and head outside to enjoy it in the garden under the canopy of the camphor tree.

While Happy Trails is no-doubt one of the prettiest venues Pasadena has to offer . . .

. . . the site is just as well-known for its fare.

Though my mom and I didn’t sample any of Happy Trails’ offerings the day we toured the place, the GC and I stopped by the café recently for lunch and were thoroughly impressed. The Sage Roasted Turkey Breast Sandwich is honestly one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had.

Happy Trails Catering, masking as the supposed Monterey-area Side Door Café, was featured three times during the first season of Big Little Lies. It first showed up in the episode titled “Serious Mothering” in the scene in which Celeste Wright (Nicole Kidman) and Madeline Martha Mackenzie (Reese Witherspoon) discuss their sex lives over cocktails, before being interrupted by their frenemy Renata Klein (Laura Dern).

The site was significantly dressed for the scene, with lounge areas, fire pits and outdoor heaters spaced throughout the garden, which is why I did not recognize it.

Happy Trails then popped up twice in the episode titled “Push Comes to Shove” – first as the restaurant where Madeline and her ex-husband, Nathan Carlson (James Tupper), meet to talk about co-parenting their teenage daughter, Abigail (Kathryn Newton). Though the property’s camphor tree was visible in the scene, I am ashamed to say that I still did not recognize the place!

Later in the episode, Jane Chapman (Shailene Woodley) meets up with Ms. Barnes (Virginia Kull) at the eatery to discuss whether or not her son, Ziggy (Iain Armitage), is bullying a fellow student. While watching the scene, I spotted Happy Trails’ rear barn doors behind the two women and placed them immediately. It was definitely a facepalm moment. I cannot believe it took three scenes for me to identify the locale!

The restaurant also makes an appearance in Big Little Lies Season 2 premiere titled “What Have They Done?” as the spot where Celeste and Jane talk about their complicated relationship.

It is not hard to see why Happy Trails was chosen to appear on Big Little Lies. The site has a very Carmel-ish feel to it. Per a Monterey County Weekly article, while filming Season 1 on the Central Coast, the BLL crew frequented Restaurant 1833 (which is now closed) and hoped to locate a similar spot in L.A. to stand in for it on the show. They found exactly what they were looking for in Happy Trails. As you can see in these images of the now defunct 1833, the two spaces bear a striking resemblance to each other. To me, though, Happy Trails is even more reminiscent of Hog’s Breath Inn, the iconic Carmel restaurant that was originally founded in 1972 by none other than Clint Eastwood. Fun fact – when the actor wanted to expand the eatery in 1986, he encountered quite a bit of bureaucratic red tape. He was so frustrated by the situation that he wound up running for mayor so that he could make some policy changes. His run was successful and Eastwood served as Carmel’s mayor for the next two years. Though he sold his interest in the Hog’s Breath Inn in 1999, the restaurant is still in operation today and looks much the same as it did during Clint’s tenure.

Sadly, the other main restaurant featured on Big Little Lies is not accessible to the public. Blue Blues, the supposed Fisherman’s Wharf café where Madeline, Jane and Celeste regularly hung out, was nothing more than a studio-built set located inside of a soundstage. Quite a bit of misinformation about the location seems to floating around online, though. Several sources state that Paluca Trattoria, located at 6 Old Fisherman’s Wharf, masked as Blue Blues on the series. Heck, even Paluca Trattoria’s official website makes that claim. While the restaurant is situated in the same area of the wharf that Blue Blue’s was purported to be, no actual filming took place there. Not only is it obvious when looking at images of Paluca Trattoria in comparison to screen captures of Blue Blues that the two places are not one and the same, but production designer John Paino confirmed the matter in a February 2017 New York Post article, stating “We made the whole thing on a stage, and the background is digitally dropped in.” It is not hard to see why audiences were fooled, though. The café does look incredibly realistic, as you can see below. You can read an in-depth post I wrote about Blue Blues 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: Happy Trails Catering, aka Side Door Café from Big Little Lies, is located at 207 South Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena. You can visit the eatery’s official website here. The café and garden are only open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., so plan accordingly.

August 14, 2017
Scorpion Headquarters from “Scorpion”

The Grim Cheaper and I tend to get hooked on a new series every summer. Well, truth be told, we get hooked on new series all throughout the year (The Goldbergs, Veep, and Vanderpump Rules come to mind). But during the summer months, we typically pick out a new-to-us show and binge-watch it nightly to avoid dreaded reruns. In 2014, that show was Revenge. In 2015, Scandal. Last year, it was Suits. And this year, it’s Scorpion, the CBS procedural that focuses on a group of geniuses who aid Homeland Security in solving crimes. The series, said to be loosely based on the real life of software specialist Walter O’Brien (played by Elyes Gabel), can definitely be cheesy and the storylines completely over-the-top at times (you often have to reeeeeallllly suspend disbelief), but we love it. It is the quirky cast of characters – Toby Curtis (Eddie Kaye Thomas), Happy Quinn (Jadyn Wong), Sylvester Dodd (Ari Stidham), Paige Dineen (Katharine McPhee), Ralph Dineen (Riley B. Smith), Agent Cabe Gallo (Robert Patrick) and Walter – who keep us coming back. Not to mention, the show has got some serious heart. I tear up over pretty much every episode. So while in L.A. recently, I was all about stalking a few of its locations, namely the Team Scorpion headquarters.

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For those who haven’t watched Scorpion, I’ll let Walter explain the team and their unique dynamic via his narration from each episode’s intro – “My name is Walter O’Brien. I have the fourth highest IQ ever recorded – 197. Einstein’s was 160. When I was 11, the FBI arrested me for hacking NASA to get their blueprints for my bedroom wall. Now I run a team of geniuses tackling worldwide threats only we can solve. Toby’s our behaviorist, Sylvester’s a human calculator, Happy, a mechanical prodigy. Agent Cabe Gallo’s our government handler. And Paige? Well, Paige isn’t like us. She’s normal, and translates the world for us while we help her understand her genius son. Together we are Scorpion.” (And let’s not forget their pet ferret, Ferret Bueller, which has to be the greatest name ever!) Traditional office space would never suit such a nontraditional team, so the group instead heads to a large graffiti-covered brick warehouse for work each day.

That warehouse is located at 1935 Bay Street in downtown Los Angeles. I found the address thanks to Gary, from Seeing Stars, who has a page on his site dedicated to locations from the series’ early episodes.

As you can see below, Scorpion headquarters looks much the same in person as it does on TV.

The 13,260-square-foot warehouse was originally built in 1925.

It is not hard to see why the building was chosen to appear on Scorpion – its rich coloring, urban layout and industrial design translate extremely well to the screen.

While researching this post, I came across a quote from series creator Nick Santora about shooting in Southern California. He said, “CBS was very supportive of keeping this show in L.A. I imagined it in L.A. and wrote it in L.A., and it just stayed in L.A. I was constantly waiting for the phone call telling us, ‘Hey, let’s go scouting in Louisiana, New Mexico, and Toronto,’ but that call never came. I’m thrilled because though I’m a New Yorker through and through, there are parts of L.A. that are undershot and very interesting visually. L.A. is an old city, and there are old buildings here. There’s great architecture that gets beat down by 110 degree weather, and Santa Ana winds that have been whipping sand against it for a century now, and it just looks great on film. I wanted to try to tell a story in this town.” His quote perfectly encapsulates the warehouse. Though gritty, rough and covered in graffiti, it looks stunning through a camera lens.

I mean, look at it!

The building is just begging to be photographed.

I mean, that alley! Yaaaaaaas!

I want to frame pretty much every image I took of the place.

As is typical with most TV shows, a different location was used as the Team Scorpion warehouse in the pilot. It can be found at 2270 Jesse Street in Boyle Heights. A full view of the exterior of the site was never shown in the episode, oddly. In the early scene in which Walter arrives at work, though he parks in front of the warehouse, due to the camera angle, we only see the building located just to the east of it, at 653 South Anderson Street. You can see a matching shot via the Google Street View image below.

The episode also provided a brief glimpse of the warehouse’s entry doors, which can be seen below via Google Street View.

The interior of the Jesse Street warehouse was also utilized in the pilot as the inside of Scorpion headquarters. As you can see in these real life photographs of the interior, not much was changed for the shoot.

When Scorpion got picked up, the production set up shop at MBS Media Campus in Manhattan Beach, where the interior of the Jesse Street warehouse was very closely re-created on a soundstage.

The warehouse rooftop, where Team Scorpion often hangs out, can also be found at MBS Media Campus.

It is actually a temporary outdoor set constructed when needed on the top level of the studio’s large parking garage, in the area denoted with a red X below.

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

Big THANK YOU to Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Scorpion Headquarters from Scorpion is located at 1935 Bay Street in downtown Los Angeles. When visiting, please exercise caution as the site is not located in the best part of town. The headquarters building from the pilot episode can be found at 2270 Jesse Street in Boyle Heights. The warehouse rooftop is a set constructed on the top level of the MBS Media Campus parking garage at 1600 Rosecrans Avenue in Manhattan Beach.

August 7, 2017
The “Mama’s Family” Houses

I have dreamed of writing this post for so long! One of the locations I get asked about the most (I literally get emails and comments about it all the time!) is the house that portrayed Thelma Harper’s (Vicki Lawrence) residence during the first two seasons of Mama’s Family. For those who aren’t familiar with the series and its locales, three different dwellings were actually used to represent the Harper family home throughout the show’s six-year run. Two of them have long been well-documented online. I even blogged about the most recognizable of the three (pictured above) back in April 2009. The third, though, which was featured in the series’ original opening credits, as well as all Season 1 and 2 establishing shots, remained elusive. While I logged quite a few hours searching for it over the years, I never had any luck pinpointing it, largely due to the fact that the only video I could find of the initial opening was an extremely poor quality YouTube clip. Then, last week, I received a tweet from @RLXREI asking about the locale and I thought I should revisit the hunt. This time, luck was on my side. (As I mentioned in Monday’s post, the stalking gods have seriously been smiling down on me as of late.)

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The first thing I did this go round was look for a high quality version of the original opening and, lo and behold, found a fairly decent upload of the pilot episode on Dailymotion. Upon initially viewing the low quality credits, I believed Mama’s house was located in Los Angeles, most likely in Hancock Park and its environs. But as soon as I watched the higher-res version and saw the lack of fencing and general openness of Mama’s front yard, as well as of the neighboring residences, I knew that the property had to be somewhere outside of California. In a fortuitous move, I headed back over to the YouTube clip to see if any comments had been posted about the home. As it turns out, there were several – and my stomach caught in my throat when I saw that a user named “Kelly Frech” had responded to a query stating that she had grown up in one of the residences shown in the intro. Kelly was even kind enough to provide some location information, stating that filming took place on West 59th Street in Kansas City, Missouri.

Not knowing anything about Kansas City or where to begin searching on West 59th (which runs for miles!), I headed over to Google Maps, randomly dropped the little yellow Street View man into a spot on the road, and my mouth dropped. There, right before my eyes, was the Harper home! Though I had picked the spot arbitrarily, fate had led me right to the Mama’s Family house, which I am thrilled to finally be able to report is located at 18 West 59th Street in Kansas City, Missouri! Thank you, Kelly Frech! Amazingly, per the Street View imagery above and below, the residence looks exactly the same today as it did when Mama’s Family originally aired in 1983!

The other houses seen in the opening credits are located just up the road to the west.

Because Mama’s Family was lensed in L.A., cast and crew could not utilize the Kansas City house for on location shots. So they found a pad closer to home – at 675 South Oakland Avenue in Pasadena, to be exact – to stand in for it when called for in an episode. That house is pictured below. Oddly, it does not resemble the Missouri dwelling in the slightest, though it was typically only featured in tight shots, so not much of it was ever shown.

The Oakland Avenue residence appeared in a handful of Season 1 and 2 episodes, including “Mama Runs for Mayor: Part 1” (pictured above) and “Mama Buys a Car” (pictured below). In the latter, we get one of the only full shots of the home shown on the series.

Due to low ratings, Mama’s Family was cancelled in 1984, after a scant two seasons. That should have been the end of the story, but in an innovative move, producer Joe Hamilton decided to try reviving the series via first-run syndication two years later. The revamped show, complete with a new opening and a new Harper residence (pictured below), premiered on September 27th, 1986. It was a resounding success and went on to air 100 episodes over the course of four seasons before ending its series run in 1990.

The residence utilized during those final four seasons can be found at 1027 Montrose Avenue in South Pasadena.

Interestingly, Mama’s Family’s original opening was replaced with the new one in all of the Season 1 and 2 episodes that aired in syndication, which is why audiences are most familiar with the Montrose Avenue house and why many do not even realize that a different home was ever utilized.

The Montrose Ave. residence also appeared – or at least a portion of it did – as Lynda’s (P.J. Soles) home in the 1978 thriller Halloween. As you can see below, very little of the property was shown in the film.

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 house featured in the first two seasons of Mama’s Family is located at 18 West 59th Street in Kansas City, Missouri. The residence used in on location filming during those seasons can be found at 675 South Oakland Avenue in Pasadena. And the property featured in Seasons 3 through 6 (as well as in all syndicated episodes) is at 1027 Montrose Avenue in South Pasadena.

August 4, 2017
The Campbell House from “Soap”

Something must be in the water, because this has been the most fortuitous week I’ve ever had when it comes to stalking. Over the course of the past few days, not only have three of my most-wanted locations been found, but I was even granted access to the interior of one and, remarkably, it still looks exactly the same despite the fact that 27 years have passed since filming took place! A post on that spot is coming soon. Today though, I’m covering the Campbell family residence from Soap, which I have been obsessively trying to track down ever since a reader named Andrew reminded me of the 1977 ABC series in early March. And this past Friday, track it down, I did!

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Thanks to the general look of the Campbell home and the exterior steps leading from the sidewalk to its front porch, I had a fairly solid hunch that it could be found in the Hancock Park/Windsor Square area. Adding to my certainty was the fact that the Tate mansion from the series is located in Hancock Park (511 South Muirfield Road to be exact) and productions often tend to stick to the same vicinity when it comes to shooting locales. So I began the search at 511 South Muirfield and worked my way outward. While I came across a lot of houses with an extremely similar look (like a ridiculous amount – 1524 South Victoria Avenue, 359 North Ridgewood Place, and 367 North Van Ness Avenue, just to name a few) none of them was an exact match to the spot that Burt Campbell (Richard Mulligan), Mary Campbell (Cathryn Damon), Chuck Campbell (Jay Johnson), Jodie Dallas (Billy Crystal), and Danny Dallas (Tedd Wass) called home.

So I decided to revisit my Soap DVDs to see if any episodes provided additional clues and was thrilled to discover some shots of the Campbell house which offered a glimpse of the neighboring property, along with its gambrel-style roof – a design element that is not very common in Los Angeles. Optimistic it was the key to pinpointing the locale, I started scouring aerial views in the Hancock Park area for a gambrel roofline and it was not long before I came across one at 344 North Van Ness Avenue in Larchmont. When I dropped Google’s little yellow man down into Street View, I saw what I was fairly certain was the Campbell house next door at 338 North Van Ness! As it turns out, the place is located just 1.6 miles from the Tate mansion.

Besides the obvious matching facades and gambrel-roofed neighbor, I pinpointed a few additional elements of the Campbell home that lined up with the Van Ness dwelling. Both properties have seven steps leading from the sidewalk to the front porch. Also, the driveway of the Campbell house is located on its left hand side, while its neighbor’s driveway is located just to its right. The driveway schematic is the same at the Van Ness pad.

Though it is just barely visible in the screen capture below, the front porch portico of the Campbell home has crisscrossing woodwork on its lower half. The portico of the Van Ness residence also bears the same design.

And on the frame of the Campbell pad’s front door, a three-digit address number is visible. While the numbers are too blurry to make out, the fact that there are three digits parallels the address of the Van Ness home.

Though many elements of the property line up, there was no smoking gun, no definitive feature that told me it was definitely the right spot. And because there are SO many similar homes in the area, I was not 100% sure of my find – especially considering the fact that the neighboring residence with the gambrel roof was not at all visible on Street View due to a massive amount of foliage, so I could not compare it to my screen shots. Also casting doubt on my find was the driveway of the Van Ness home. On Soap, the Campbell driveway was flush with the front lawn, but the driveway of the Van Ness residence is graded. So I called on my friends/fellow stalkers Michael (you may remember him from his many guest posts) and Owen (from the When Write Is Wrong blog) for their opinions. They both wrote back telling me they thought I had the right spot. As Michael pointed out, not only do the trees that flank both homes’ front yards greatly resemble each other . . .

. . . but the angled lawn lining the curb of the driveway of the Campbells’ neighbor’s home matches that of the neighboring home on Van Ness.

Owen mentioned the front yard trees, as well, and also brought up the matching crenelated roof eaves and notches located at the top of the portico posts, all of which gave me 99.9% certainty that we had the correct locale.

Then, while stalking the home this past Sunday afternoon, I found my smoking gun! During my Soap scanning earlier in the week, I had noticed some sort of metal bar situated at the bottom of the windowpane next to the Campbells’ front door. I wasn’t sure what the bar was, but thought it looked a lot like a mail slot (though it seemed to be a rather odd place for one being so close to the ground). Well, I just about fell over when I arrived at the Van Ness residence and my eyes zeroed in on a metal bar in the exact same spot! As it turns out, it is a mail slot! Bingo!

I was also able to catch a glimpse of the neighboring home with the gambrel roof. Unfortunately, short of actually walking up the driveway, the photograph below is the best shot I could take of the the property’s side. As you can see, the roofline, the half-circle window just below it, the two rectangular windows on the second floor, the first floor overhang, and the lower level windows all match what was seen on Soap. Again, bingo!

A more close-up view of the house next door is pictured below.

I also noticed that the driveway of the Van Ness home had been completely redone since filming took place – it is now comprised of stone instead of cement – which makes the grading of it all the more plausible.

In real life, the Campbell home was originally built in 1920 and boasts 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, and 2,636 square feet of living space.

Only the exterior of it was utilized on Soap. The interior of the Campbell residence was a set built on a soundstage at Sunset Gower Studios, where the series was lensed.

I cannot express how exciting it was to finally be standing in front of the Campbell house and to see a place so ingrained in my childhood memories come to life.

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

Big THANK YOU to my friends/fellow stalkers Michael (aka guest poster extraordinaire) and Owen (from the When Write Is Wrong blog) for their help in verifying this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Campbell family home from Soap is located at 338 North Van Ness Avenue in Larchmont.

August 2, 2017
Carrie and Big’s Penthouse from the “Sex and the City” Movie

I know I am in the minority when I say that I like the 2008 Sex and the City movie. Was it the greatest flick ever? No. But I did enjoy it. Seeing it was like being with old friends again, friends I’d missed ever since the HBO television series went off the air in early 2004. The more I watch it, the more it grows on me. Though, again, I know I am in the minority. One aspect of the movie that audiences did pretty much unanimously adore was the exquisite penthouse apartment that Mr. Big (Chris Noth) purchased for longtime girlfriend Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). So last April, while visiting New York, I, of course, was all about stalking the Ziegler House, which was used for interior shots of the penthouse. And, oh, what an interior it was!

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Before I get to the Ziegler House, though, I thought I should mention 1010 Fifth Avenue, the Upper East Side building that served as the exterior of Carrie and Big’s penthouse. I covered the property in a brief post back in 2008, but, in the interest of being thorough, figured it would be appropriate to detail it once again here.

The 15-story prewar building was designed by real estate developer Frederick Fillmore French in 1928.

The Italian Renaissance-style property, which was converted to a co-op in 1979, looks much the same in person as it did onscreen.

Located across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the tony site is just the type of place I’d picture Mr. Big calling home. You can check out what a unit in the building looks like here.

1010 Fifth Avenue is also where Chuck Rhoades, Sr. (Jeffrey DeMunn) lives on the Showtime series Billions, though, as you can see below, the address is changed to “10101 Fifth Avenue” for filming.

Now back to the penthouse interior! As soon as Carrie and Big step over the threshold of 1010 Fifth, they are standing in the Ziegler House, located about 20 blocks south at 2 East 63rd Street. I first learned of the locale thanks to a reader named Allie, who wrote a comment on my 2008 post tipping me off about where the inside shots were lensed.

The historic residence was originally built in 1921 for William Ziegler, Jr., heir to the Royal Baking Powder Company fortune.

Designed by architect Frederick Sterner, the ornate 4-story, 75-foot wide pad is laid out with all of the rooms surrounding a central brick courtyard with a fountain. Along with said courtyard, the property boasts a grand entrance hall, two rear gardens, a library, a 25-foot by 40-foot living room, a formal dining room, a servants’ dining room, a massive kitchen that almost looks to be commercial-grade, two master suites (each with its own dressing room), and fireplaces galore. You can see some interior photos of the place here.

For whatever reason, Ziegler and his then wife, Gladys, only lived in the home for a year before moving out and putting it up for sale in 1925. The dwelling finally sold in 1929 to Norman Bailey Woolworth, of Woolworth five-and-dime fame. He owned the property for the next two decades before donating it to The New York Academy of Sciences, a scientific society that was originally founded in 1817.

NYAS put the house on the market in 2001 and it sold four years later to billionaire financier Leonard Blavatnik for $31.25 million. Blavatnik never moved in, though. Instead, the site, which today goes by the name “Academy Mansion,” is mainly used as a special events venue and for filming. While I really wish I could have taken a peek at the property’s stunning interior, I have to admit that the exterior is nothing to shake a stick at.

Seriously, the photo below looks like a postcard!

The Ziegler House popped up twice in Sex and the City. It first appeared in the beginning of the movie in the scene in which Carrie and Big go apartment-hunting with their real estate agent at 1010 Fifth. Sadly, the wrought iron and glass doors that Carrie and Big walk through in the scene cannot be seen from outside. You can check out a photo of them here, though.

The doors are actually located inside the home, behind the massive wooden entry doors pictured below.

In the scene, the Ziegler House’s palatial entrance hall masked as the lobby of 1010 Fifth. You can see a photo of what the entry hall looks like in real life here.

The elevator situated at the rear of the lobby was faked for the movie. In actuality, there is a doorway located in that area, as you can see here and here.

That doorway leads to the Ziegler House’s stunning living room, which actually looks more like a grand ballroom. It is that room that Carrie first sees upon entering the penthouse, causing her to exclaim, “Oh my God, I have died and gone to real estate heaven!” You can check out some pictures of the living room here, here, and here.

Carrie is next shown the penthouse’s rooftop terrace. In actuality, that space is the Ziegler House’s central courtyard and it is located on the ground floor of the property, not on the roof. You can see an image of it here.

The penthouse’s master bedroom was just a set built on a soundstage at Silvercup Studios in Queens, where much of the movie – and the television series – was lensed. You can check out images of the real Ziegler House bedrooms here, here, here, and here.

The Ziegler House was also utilized in the scene at the end of the movie in which Carrie returns to the penthouse to retrieve her never-been-worn $525 Manolos.

Though Carrie and Big have sold the penthouse by that point and broken up, when she sees him standing in the closet he built for her, all is forgiven, the two embrace, and Big gets down on one knee to propose. Heartbreakingly, Carrie’s spectacular custom closet was just a set. You can see what the Ziegler House’s dressing rooms look like here, here, and here. They’re not too shabby, either!

On a side-note – I actually have a version of the Timmy Woods Eiffel Tower purse that Carrie, ahem, carried in the scene in which she and Big first toured the penthouse! A dear and incredibly thoughtful friend named Marie gifted it to me for my birthday last year. I didn’t have it at the time I stalked the Ziegler House, sadly, otherwise I so would have posed with it outside!

The Ziegler House has been utilized in a couple of other productions besides Sex and the City. In the Season 2 episode of White Collar titled “Point Blank,” which aired in 2010, the property masqueraded as the Russian Heritage Museum.

For the shoot, the Ziegler House’s living room, aka Carrie’s piece of real estate heaven, was dressed as a gallery and looked considerably different than it did in SATC.

“Point Blank” also gave us a great view of the property’s terrace.

In the Season 2 episode of Person of Interest titled “Masquerade,” which aired in 2012, the Ziegler House portrayed New York’s Brazilian Consulate.

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 exterior of Carrie and Big’s penthouse from the Sex and the City movie is located at 1010 Fifth Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side. The film featured the building’s canopied main entrance, which can be found around the corner on East 82nd Street. The interior of Carrie and Big’s penthouse, aka the Ziegler House, aka Academy Mansion, is located at 2 East 63rd Street, also on New York’s Upper East Side.

July 31, 2017
Chasen’s Restaurant from “Enemy of the State”

I grew up about as far removed from Hollywood and the world of show business as you can get. But somehow I was familiar with Chasen’s, the West Hollywood restaurant that played stomping ground to the Tinseltown elite for close to six decades. I’m not sure where my knowledge of the famed eatery came from, but it is likely due to the countless celebrity biographies and magazines I read as a child and/or the fact that my mom has long been something of a chili connoisseur. For those not in the know, Chasen’s was noted as much for its legendary chili as it was for its acclaimed clientele. Sadly, neither my mom nor I ever got to dine at the restaurant. It was shuttered in 1995, long before we moved to Los Angeles. A portion of its Neo-colonial façade still stands, though (it’s now part of a Bristol Farms market), and I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk it way back in May 2013. Then I promptly forgot about it. Flash forward to last week. While researching Baltimore’s Hollywood Diner, I came across a mention that Enemy of the State had done some filming at the Charm City site. As it turns out, that information was incorrect, but I was thrilled to learn while looking into the matter that the 1998 thriller had actually shot a few scenes at Chasen’s. So I figured it was high time I blog about the place.

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Chasen’s was originally established in 1936 by New York-based Vaudeville performer Dave Chasen. Even the restaurant’s inception is steeped in Hollywood lore. As the story goes, Chasen came out to L.A. to act in a movie and began supplying his actor friends with his special homemade chili, just as he had done with his Vaudeville buddies back home. Depending on which version of the tale you believe, either director Frank Capra or New Yorker magazine editor Harold Ross suggested Chasen get out of show business and start a restaurant. He heeded the advice and on December 13th, 1936 opened the doors of Chasen’s Southern Pit. (Supposedly, Capra had to loan Dave his silverware from home for the opening.) The tiny BBQ joint, which consisted of a scant 6 tables and an 8-seat bar, was an instant hit with the show biz set, despite only serving spare ribs and Dave’s famous chili.

In 1942, Dave married a Sax Fifth Avenue beauty salon head named Maude Martin, whom pal Dom Amici had brought in to Chasen’s for dinner while she was in town on business. Dave was immediately smitten. Following the nuptials, Maude set about expanding both the restaurant’s menu and its square footage, employing renowned architect Paul Revere Williams to spruce up the interior with red leather booths and wood paneling. Williams was hired for a few additional expansions over the years as the restaurant’s popularity continued to grow.

For decades, Chasen’s was the place to see and be seen in Hollywood. Just a few of the legends who regularly dined on the premises include Alfred Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Walt Disney, Marilyn Monroe, Carol Burnett, Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable, and Jack Lemmon. Ronald and Nancy Reagan even got engaged there (the booth where Ronnie proposed is now on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library). And Elizabeth Taylor was so taken with Chasen’s chili that she reportedly had it flown to her regularly while she was on location in Rome filming Cleopatra. You can check out some photos of Chasen’s from its heyday here.

After Dave passed away in 1973, Maude ran the restaurant herself, greeting customers at the front door nightly. Chasen’s remained popular under Maude’s tutelage and attracted new celebrity clientele such as John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Elton John, Sharon Stone, Madonna, and Jack Nicholson. Aaron Spelling even hosted annual Christmas parties for the cast and crew of Beverly Hills, 90210 on the premises. Jason Priestley dedicated a chapter of his book, Jason Priestley: A Memoir, to one of the parties and you can see a photo of the December 18th, 1991 soiree here and the 1993 shindig here.

Sadly, Chasen’s started to see a decline in patronage during the ‘90s. Maude eventually sold the restaurant to a developer and its doors were officially closed on April 1st, 1995. Though there were plans to build a massive 2-story, 89,000-square-foot shopping center on the site, they never came to fruition largely due to neighborhood opposition. While development sat in limbo for the next few years, Chasen’s remained intact and was rented out for filming and private events. The project finally got underway in 1999 and the eatery’s interior décor, furnishings and restaurant equipment were auctioned off to the public in October of that year. The structure was razed shortly thereafter and a 29,000-square-foot Bristol Farms grocery store, which opened in 2000, was built in its place. Thankfully, the market’s owners decided to preserve a piece of the historic eatery. As I mentioned above, a portion of Chasen’s Beverly Boulevard façade was left intact during the demolition, was incorporated into the Bristol Farms exterior, and still stands today. That façade, with the restaurant’s former main entrance denoted with a pink arrow, is pictured below.

Most amazing of all, the Bristol Farms owners also re-created a section of Chasen’s interior inside the store. It serves as the market’s onsite restaurant.

Called Bristol Café, the space serves soups, salads, sandwiches, and other staples.

Oh, and Dave’s famous chili! For those who don’t live in the area, but want to know what all the fuss is about, you can make Chasen’s iconic chili at home – recipe here.

Though I never got to experience Chasen’s first-hand, Bristol Café was not a bad consolation prize thanks to the fact that the space boasts several of the original restaurant’s booths;

its knotty pine paneling and light sconces;

and doors. For anyone who hasn’t been, I highly recommend a visit.

In Enemy of the State, Chasen’s portrayed Pintero Social Club, the supposed Washington, D.C.-area Italian restaurant owned by mobster Paulie Pintero (Tom Sizemore). The eatery’s dining area was only shown briefly in the flick, though.

Most of the filming took place in Chasen’s kitchen, including the massive shoot-out at the end of the flick.

Only the interior of Chasen’s was utilized in the movie. Exterior scenes involving Pintero Social Club were filmed at a different location.

Enemy of the State is hardly the first production to feature Chasen’s. Columbo (Peter Falk) dines there – and, in a tongue-in-cheek moment, gets scoffed at by a waiter for ordering chili – in the Season 3 episode of Columbo titled “Publish or Perish,” which aired in 1974.

Simon Davenport (Henry Fonda) receives a telephone call from Harry Calder (George Segal) while he is at Chasen’s celebrating his wedding anniversary in the 1977 thriller Rollercoaster.

Bugsy Siegel (Warren Beatty) tells his wife he wants a divorce over diner at Chasen’s in the 1991 film Bugsy.

In the Season 3 episode of Melrose Place titled “Love Reeks,” which aired in 1994, Susan Madsen (Cheryl Pollak) has a job interview at Chasen’s.

Dede Truitt (Christina Ricci) and Matt Mateo (Ivan Sergei) meet up with Bill Truitt (Martin Donovan) and Lucia DeLury (Lisa Kudrow) for a highly awkward dinner at Chasen’s in the 1998 comedy The Opposite of Sex.

Even Bristol Farms is popular with location scouts. In the Season 2 episode of Six Feet Under titled “Back to the Garden,” which aired in 2002, David Fisher (Michael C. Hall) waits for Keith Charles (Mathew St. Patrick) at Bristol Café in a very brief scene.

And in the Season 3 episode of The Osbournes titled “Pain in the Neck,” which aired in 2004, Ozzy Osbourne shops at Bristol Farms with his assistant.

Chasen’s also appeared in the second episode of the 1989 television series Nightingales, but, unfortunately, I could not find a copy of the episode with which to make screen captures for this post.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Chasen’s restaurant, aka Pintero Social Club from Enemy of the State, was formerly located at 9039 Beverly Boulevard in West Hollywood. The site is now home to a Bristol Farms grocery store.

July 28, 2017
Patapsco Valley State Park from “Serial”

Patapsco State Park. Those three words, the name of a popular Baltimore-area recreation spot, shouldn’t be part of the lexicon of this California native. But in October 2014, the first season of the investigative podcast Serial was released and instantly became a worldwide phenomenon. Detailing the 1999 killing of high school student Hae Min Lee and the subsequent conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for the murder, the true crime tale elevated several local Charm City sites like Woodlawn High School, The Crab Crib, Leakin Park, the I-70 Park & Ride, and the Best Buy on Security Boulevard into pop culture landmarks. And yes, Patapsco State Park. Say the words and pretty much anyone at all interested in true crime will know exactly what you’re talking about. The Grim Cheaper and I were – and still are – obsessed with the Hae Min Lee case. So when we visited Maryland last fall, we, of course, hit up all of the locations mentioned in the podcast, which I found thanks to this extensive Google map. And when I say all of the locations, I do mean all of them – our Serial stalk was pretty much a two-day adventure. The locale that surprised me the most was Patapsco State Park, or Patapsco Valley State Park, which, for a time, figured prominently in the narrative of the state’s star witness in the case, Syed’s friend Jay Wilds.

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Patapsco Valley State Park was originally established in 1907 thanks to a local named John Glenn who donated 43 acres of his Catonsville land to the Maryland State Board of Forestry.

The site, which has the distinction of being Maryland’s first state park, was soon transformed into a public recreation area.

Expanded over the years, Patapsco State Park now boasts 16,043 acres of land spanning a 32-mile stretch of the Patapsco River.

The site features 8 different recreation areas, 200 miles of trails, waterfalls, a dam, bridges, and sweeping vistas, and plays host to such diverse activities as hiking, fishing, camping, canoeing, horseback riding, mountain biking, picnicking, and disc golfing (yeah, I had to look that last one up, too).

During the investigation of Hae Min Lee’s murder, detectives questioned Jay Wilds, aka “the criminal element of Woodlawn,” on several occasions. In his initial interviews, he recounted a timeline of the day Hae was killed. That timeline, though never really believable, has since been completely debunked by countless sources (including Jay himself), so in the end many locations thought to be significant to the case, including Patapsco State Park, don’t actually figure into it at all. But in Serial’s early episodes, the sites were mentioned and detailed so relentlessly that they will forever be tied to the story and, despite their current insignificance, remain popular places for listeners of the podcast to visit. As Jay originally told it, shortly after school got out on the afternoon of January 13th, 1999, Adnan had Hae drive him to the southeast parking lot of the Best Buy on Security Boulevard (the store’s actual address is 1701 Belmont Avenue), where he then strangled her. That parking lot is pictured below. Though it is located on the side of the store and is less populated than the front parking lot, it is completely ridiculous to think that anyone would choose it as a good spot to strangle someone, in broad daylight no less.

According to Jay, Syed then called him from the lot’s payphone (don’t even get me started on that damn payphone!) and asked him to come by the store to assist him in disposing of Hae’s car and body. Jay does so and the two then drive in tandem to the I-70 Park & Ride (that’s it below), where they temporarily dump Hae’s car.

After picking up some marijuana in the Forest Park area, per Jay’s story (which again, has been debunked), Jay and Adnan then ventured to Patapsco State Park to smoke and debrief about the murder.

I was absolutely shocked as we entered the park and I saw how beautiful it is. Being that Jay and Adnan supposedly discussed possibly burying Hae’s body on the premises, I was expecting something sinister, dark and deserted. Instead, what we found was lush, green, and picturesque. It’s idyllic. Not to mention populated. Despite the fact that the GC and I showed up shortly before dusk, Patapsco was chock full of people enjoying the great outdoors.

After seeing the park in person, I find it totally ludicrous that Jay claimed he and Adnan were actually considering burying a body there in broad daylight.

Though we hadn’t planned on it, the GC and I were so taken with Patapsco that we wound up spending quite a bit of time there, walking around exploring its beauty. I highly recommend a visit if you’re in the area. And bonus – the park is also a filming location!

At the end of the 2000 thriller The Blair Witch Project, Heather Donahue and Mike Williams (who both played characters named after themselves) sought shelter in a dilapidated old residence. That residence, known as the Griggs House in real life, was an actual home once located in Patapsco State Park, just west of Hernwood Road. Sadly, due to its decaying condition and the fact that it upset neighbors by regularly attracting throngs of both vandals and movie fans, the structure was demolished in the early 2000s.

The interior of the home also appeared in The Blair Witch Project. You can check out some photos of what the place looked like shortly after filming took place here. Oh, how I wish I could have seen it in person!

In the Season 2 episode of House of Cards titled “Chapter 18,” which aired in 2014, Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) attends a Civil War battle reenactment at Patapsco State Park. Specifically, filming took place near the McKeldin Recreation area.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Patapsco State Park, from Serial, is located at 8020 Baltimore National Pike in Ellicott City, Maryland.

July 26, 2017
Hollywood Diner from “Sleepless in Seattle”

Another day, another diner from a Meg Ryan movie! Unlike the Port Café, the Wilmington, California eatery that portrayed East Coast establishments in both When Harry Met Sally . . . and A Few Good Men, today’s locale can actually be found close to the Atlantic – though its name would have you believe otherwise. I’m talking about the Hollywood Diner in downtown Baltimore, which played the Capital Diner in the 1993 romcom Sleepless in Seattle. To discuss the restaurant’s history, though, we have to go back to the filming of a much earlier movie, 1982’s Diner.

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When writer/director Barry Levinson started pre-production on his semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama Diner, set in 1959 Baltimore, he sought out to find a coffee shop similar to the one he hung out in during his youth for the shoot. His former stomping ground, the Hilltop Diner, which largely inspired his story, had been turned into a liquor store years prior, so filming there was not a possibility. After failed negotiations with the owners of the Double T Diner in Catonsville, Maryland, Levinson wound up coming across a vacant plot of land in Charm City’s Canton neighborhood that overlooked the famed Domino Sugars sign and thought it would make the perfect setting for his movie. All he needed was a diner. So he headed to a diner graveyard in New Jersey and quickly set his sights on a streamlined silver structure that formerly served as Long Island’s Westbury Grill. He leased the 1954 café from the graveyard, transported it to the plot of land in Canton, and proceeded to shoot Diner there, dubbing the fictional eatery “Fells Point Diner.”

Both the interior and exterior of the diner were used extensively in the shoot. (And yes, that’s a very young Kevin Bacon in the second screen capture below. <3)

Though some sources claim that Bendix Diner in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey was used for the filming of Diner’s interior scenes, that information is incorrect. The establishment does bear a considerable resemblance to the café where Eddie Simmons (Steve Guttenberg), Shrevie Schreiber (Daniel Stern), Boogie Sheftell (Mickey Rourke), Timothy Fenwick Jr. (Bacon), and Modell (Paul Reiser) hung out in the flick, but upon close inspection, it is obvious that the two are not one and the same.

When filming on Diner wrapped, the 48-foot by 17-foot restaurant was shipped back to the diner graveyard in New Jersey, which would have been the end of the story had then Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaefer not stepped in. Shortly after the movie premiered in early 1982, Schaefer implored local citizens to help return the structure to Charm City, putting purchase and transport of the eatery on his civil “wish list.” WBAL Radio heeded his cry, bought the restaurant from the graveyard and gifted it to Baltimore. It was transferred to its new home at 400 East Saratoga Street in the heart of downtown in January 1984. At the time, the diner lacked a bathroom and a kitchen, but locals donated time and money to spruce up the structure and transform it back into a functional restaurant. It opened later that year as The Kids’ Diner. Run by city schools and the mayor’s office, the site served as both an eatery and a vocational training center for area students.

Plagued by financial woes from the start, the restaurant was taken over by the Chesapeake Foundation for Human Development in 1991 and renamed “Hollywood Diner.”

The foundation couldn’t quell the café’s money problems, though, and, after undergoing a series of different management organizations and restaurant iterations, the site finally shuttered in 2012. Though there were plans to turn the property into a food truck park, using the interior of the diner for seating, it does not appear that the project ever took of.

Despite the longtime closure, the diner still stands intact today, thankfully.

I was floored when I walked up to the structure and saw that the interior was visible through the front windows!

At the beginning of Sleepless in Seattle, Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) stops for tea at the diner while on a Christmas Eve road trip to her fiancé’s parents’ house.

It is amazing to me how little the restaurant has changed since filming took place over 24 years ago.

Hollywood Diner has appeared in several productions over the years. In fact, Barry Levinson has quite a soft spot for the place, having utilized it in two of his other movies. In 1987’s Tin Men, the restaurant serves as Ernest Tilley’s (Danny DeVito) regular breakfast joint.

And Van Kurtzman (Adrien Brody) also hangs out there in Levinson’s 1999 drama Liberty Heights.

The director even named the eatery “Fells Point Diner” in the movie, as a nod to his 1982 film.

Though some websites state that the diner also appears in the 1990 Levinson-directed drama Avalon, in the scene in which Michael Kaye (Elijah Wood) watches as a restaurant is dropped into place on a vacant lot, that information is incorrect. As you can see below, the eatery in Avalon looks nothing like the Hollywood Diner (not only do the windows not match, but neither does the general shape of the structure). Not to mention that by the time Avalon was shot, The Kids’ Diner had already been installed at its downtown location and in full operation for over six years.

In the Season 2 episode of The Wire titled “Duck and Cover,” which aired in 2003, a drunken Detective James “Jimmy” McNulty (Dominic West) heads to the Hollywood Diner for coffee and winds up going home with his waitress.

Hollywood Diner provided the setting for the 2017 short film The Dark of Night, directed by Robin Wright.

The restaurant also reportedly appeared in an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, though I am unsure of which episode.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Hollywood Diner, aka Capital Diner from Sleepless in Seattle, is located at 400 East Saratoga Street in Baltimore. The restaurant is currently closed.

July 24, 2017