I am heading to L.A. today to spend the next week with my friends Kim and Katie who are visiting from Kentucky (that’s Kim above during a visit last November). We have a ton of fun stalking activities planned (you can follow along on Instagram) that will not leave any time for blogging, so I will be taking the upcoming week off. I will be back next Tuesday or Wednesday with a whole new post, though. I hope all of my fellow stalkers have a fabulous week.
Don’t forget to read this week’s post for L.A.mag.com today, about The Donut Hole from Moving Violations. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Be sure to check out my latest Discover L.A. post – about locations from movies and television that treat L.A. as a character.
While I primarily love stalking filming locations of the residential variety, restaurants come in at a close second. So when my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Blog, recently told me about Dinah’s Family Restaurant, a historic Westchester eatery that was featured in a Season 3 episode of Modern Family, I ran right out to stalk it – and grab a bite to eat.
[ad]
Dinah’s Family Restaurant was originally established in 1959 by the Ernst family.
It is still owned by the same family today. Mario Ernst and his wife, Teri, took over operations of the restaurant in 1989.
The couple gave both the interior and the menu an upgrade shortly thereafter. Thankfully though, the place still has a fabulous retro feel.
The eatery is most famous for its Secret Recipe Chicken. According to Gayot, over 1,500,000 pieces of it have been sold since Dinah’s opening! I decided to forgo the fried chicken while there and opted for my usual order of chicken strips. They were fabulous, as were the mashed potatoes and gravy that they came with. The Grim Cheaper opted for a turkey sandwich and it was uh-ma-zing, too! The turkey looked and tasted like it had literally just been carved. I actually ended up liking his sandwich more than my chicken strips. Sacrilege, I know!
According to a fabulous Eater L.A. article, Dinah’s bucket-shaped signage served as the inspiration for the famous Kentucky Fried Chicken signs. Apparently, a former Dinah’s server went to work for KFC in the 1960s, told them about the bucket sign, they copied it and the rest is history!
Thanks to its retro aesthetic, Dinah’s has been featured numerous times onscreen. In the Season 3 episode of Modern Family titled “The Last Walt,” the eatery masked as the Moonbeam Diner where Phil Dunphy (Ty Burrell), in the hopes of creating a special memory, took his daughter Alex (Ariel Winter) to sample the “World’s Greatest Milkshake.” As Phil says, “You can’t expect me to see a sign that says ‘World’s Greatest Milkshake – 50 miles’ and not drive to it!” Unfortunately, after driving said 50 miles and arriving at the diner, they discover that the milkshake machine is broken. Phil then makes Alex try everything labeled “World’s Greatest” on the Moonbeam’s menu, eventually causing her to throw up all over their booth.
The exterior of Dinah’s also appears in the episode in a very heartwarming scene in which Phil writes Alex’s initials on the restaurant’s sign, imitating a gesture that Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan made for his daughter during a moon landing.
Dinah’s Family Restaurant masqueraded as Stacks House of Pancakes, where the German nihilists dined on lingonberry pancakes, in the 1998 Coen Brothers comedy The Big Lebowski.
Wilson (Terence Stamp) and Elaine (Lesley Ann Warren) have dinner at Dinah’s in the ultra-weird 1999 crime drama The Limey.
While Little Miss Sunshine was not actually filmed at Dinah’s, a bucket of the restaurant’s famous fried chicken did make an appearance in the 2006 comedy. In one of the movie’s early scenes, Sheryl Hoover (Toni Collete) brings Dinah’s home for dinner, which is amusing considering the fact that the Hoover family supposedly lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Grandpa Edwin Hoover (Alan Arkin) is not happy with Sheryl’s take-out choice and says, “What’s that? Chicken? Every night it’s the f*cking chicken! Holy God almighty! Is it possible, just once, we could get something to eat for dinner around here that’s not the goddamn f*cking chicken?“
Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) interviews Rick (Riz Ahmed) to be his new intern at Dinah’s in the 2014 thriller Nightcrawler.
In the Season 2 episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. titled “Love in the Time of Hydra,” which aired this past March, Agent 33 (Ming-Na Wen) and Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) kidnap Selwyn (Landall Goolsby) from Dinah’s.
Dinah’s Family Restaurant also appeared in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, though I am unsure of which episode.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for telling me about this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Dinah’s Family Restaurant, aka the Moonbeam Diner from Modern Family, is located at 6521 South Sepulveda Boulevard in Westchester. You can visit Dinah’s official website here.
Be sure to check out my latest post for L.A.mag.com today, about the Orpheum Theatre from Pretty Little Liars. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Since we’re on the subject of Girls Just Want to Have Fun, I thought I would blog about another locale from the movie that I recently hit up – downtown L.A.’s California Bank Building, which masked as the Dance TV (aka DTV) studio in the 1985 flick. A couple of years back, Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, managed to track down the location via a helpful crewmember, but because nothing about the structure matched up to what was shown onscreen, I was never sold on it being the right place. So a couple of weeks ago, I set out to verify or invalidate the information. When I told Mike, from MovieShotsLA, of my query, his response was, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun? I thought we were done with that movie!” Oh, Mike, we will never be done with that movie! So I quickly got started on the hunt and, though it was quite a lengthy process, wound up discovering that the California Bank Building was, indeed, the right spot.
[ad]
The California Bank Building was designed in 1960 by architect Claud Beelman, who was also responsible for The Historic Mayfair Hotel from The Office and The Standard, Downtown L.A. from Fracture. The 300,000-square-foot structure originally served as the headquarters of California Bank. Standing at 18 stories and 267 feet tall, the property was the tallest commercial building in Los Angeles at the time of its inception. This was due in large part to the fact that a 1904 law limiting the height of buildings in Los Angeles to 13 stories or 150 feet was repealed in 1956, shortly before the ground was broken on the new structure.
In its original state, the California Bank Building featured a large, box-like three-story granite base. You can see some photographs of what it looked like in its early days here and here. Sadly, in 2008 the site underwent an extensive renovation that rendered it virtually unrecognizable from its former self. The straight vertical lines that once encased the façade giving it a sleek, towering aesthetic are now broken up by balconies. The edifice of the structure, which was renamed SB Tower, was also painted white and green.
Most jarring of all, though, is the fact that windows were cut into the granite base and a large mural painted over the exterior.
Those portions of the building did not appear in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, though. In actuality, only the entrance area and lobby were shown. But those, too, were rendered unrecognizable during the renovation. In the scene pictured below, Drew Boreman (Jonathan Silverman), best friend of Jeff Malene (Lee Montgomery), is shown selling DTV memorabilia while standing outside of the property, in an alcove that formerly led to the lobby area.
As you can see in my recent photograph of the building’s entrance pictured below, that alcove has been completely removed. So when I first viewed the location via Google Street View, I was convinced it was the wrong place. Never in my wildest dreams did I think the renovation would have included such a major restructuring of the ground floor! As it turns out, I was wrong.
Thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, I learned that Google recently made it possible to view Street View renderings from years past, so I toggled back to 2007 and 2008 and, as you can see below, the alcove was once, in fact, there and does resemble what appeared onscreen. Because the imaging is so grainy, though, I was still not 100% convinced. I needed more proof.
I was able to match a few things up to this historic image of the California Bank Building, though it still was not enough for me to write off on the location. In the image, you can see that a sign was posted on the wall of the alcove in the same place that a placard was situated in the movie (denoted with a pink circle below). The image also shows that the building had some sort of corner detailing on the outside portion of the alcove, which matches what appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (denoted with a pink arrow below).
Another detail that matched up to what appeared onscreen was the SB Tower’s address number. The number “600” was visible behind Drew in the movie and the SB Tower is located at 600 South Spring Street . Still though, I wanted more.
Finally, came the clue I was looking for. While re-watching the movie for the umpteenth time, I was able to make out a sign located across the street from the DTV studio that read “Mi Tierra Restaurant.”
I searched the July 1987 Pacific Bell Street Address Telephone Directory for an eatery by that name and only two listings came up. The first was for “Mi Tierra Restaurant No. Two” located at 1903 West Olympic Boulevard in Westlake. The second was for simply “Mi Tierra Restaurant” at 611 South Spring Street. 611 South Spring Street is located directly across the street from the California Bank Building! Further proof – at 613 South Spring, right next to Mi Tierra, is a listing for Golden Eagle Dry Cleaning Shop.
What was pictured next to Mi Tierra in Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Yep – a dry cleaning shop!
While I am distressed that the structure has changed so drastically and that I never got to see it in its original state, I am thrilled to now be able to say with absolute certainty that the California Bank Building was indeed DTV studio from Girls Just Want to Have Fun.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to Chas, from It’sFilmedThere, for finding this location. 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: SB Tower, aka the California Bank Building from Girls Just Want to Have Fun, is located at 600 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the property’s official website here.
Today’s post was a true labor of love – one that required stalking a location three separate times and a massive amount of help from a fellow stalker named Michael. While most of the locales from the 1985 movie Girls Just Want to Have Fun (one of my all-time faves) have been tracked down and detailed on this blog, one that I have long wondered about is the park where portions of the dance practice montage sequence took place. As luck would have it, I happened to meet the flick’s leading man, Lee Montgomery who played hunky Jeff Malene, at the Hollywood Show back in April and got the information straight from the horse’s mouth.
[ad]
When I heard that Lee would be making an appearance at the Hollywood Show, I just about flipped my lid from excitement and informed the Grim Cheaper that I would be attending come hell or high water. And I am so glad that I did. Lee truly could NOT have been nicer! He spent quite a bit of time chatting with me and filled me in on several behind-the-scenes tidbits, including the fact that he and Sarah Jessica Parker, who played Janey Glenn, underwent extensive dance training for weeks before filming began and that much of the onscreen dancing, including the lifts, was actually performed by them. At one point, I mentioned that there was a missing GJWHF locale that I was interested in tracking down. Now, in no way, shape or form did I expect Lee to remember a location from over 30 years ago, but I decided to broach the subject anyway and was shocked when he recalled it immediately! When I asked him where the dance montage in the park had taken place, without skipping a beat, he replied, “Oh, the row of trees? That was in Griffith Park, near the merry-go-round.” Um, THANK YOU, Lee!
For those not familiar with the Girls Just Want to Have Fun dance practice montage (and if that’s the case, then for shame!), you can watch it by clicking below.
The three spots that I was interested in tracking down were the row of trees that Janey and Jeff danced between . . .
. . . the tree that Jeff flipped off of while his sister, Maggie Malene (my girl Shannen Doherty), sat nearby . . .
. . . and the hill that Janey and Jeff flipped down.
As soon as I got home from the Hollywood Show, I popped in my Girls Just Want to Have Fun DVD and was SHOCKED to discover that the area of Griffith Park featured in the dance practice montage was Park Center, the very same area that was utilized in the Full House Season 1-3 opening credits. I had detailed that exact spot in a September 2014 blog post, but until that moment had failed to recognize its appearance in GJWTHF. I figured out the location thanks to a very unusual tree that I remembered from the Full House credits.
The tree has an extremely unique shape. From the trunk it immediately bends to the side and runs almost parallel to the ground and then turns back upward, forming an almost 90-degree angle with its lower portion. Its white, speckled bark is also quiet unusual.
As it turns out, that is the very same tree that Jeff flipped off of in Girls Just Want to Have Fun. As you can see below, the curve of the tree, the speckled bark and the chopped off branch on the left-hand side match perfectly to what appeared onscreen.
Now I should mention here that the first time the GC and I stalked Park Center, we made the unfortunate decision to head out there on a Sunday and not only was the place jam-packed with picnickers, but there was a piñata tied to Jeff’s tree! Humph! So these photos were taken during our second stalk of the park. On that particular visit, I, of course, had to re-created the montage moment . . .
. . . but I did not attempt Jeff’s flip. That tree is a LOT higher off the ground than it looks! I did jump off the tree, however, but was not nearly as graceful as Jeff.
I have never been very good at pinpointing outdoor locations, so to track down the other two Girls Just Want to Have Fun montage spots I enlisted the help of a fellow stalker who I knew had an aptitude for park-like settings – Michael. He is the one who had originally made the discovery of Park Center’s appearance in the Full House opening credits. Michael was only too happy to help and was an immeasurable source of guidance with this particular hunt. He immediately noticed that the hill that Jeff and Janey flipped down was the same hill that was featured in Full House, just shot from a slightly different angle. Griffith Park’s Park Services Building, which is visible in the background of both productions, is denoted with pink arrows below.
While it was hard to pinpoint the exact angle from which the hill scene was shot (as I said, outdoor places are not my forte), I believe my photograph below was taken from pretty much the right spot. I believe the pine tree to the right of the frame is now gone, but the split-branched tree in the middle of my photograph appears to match was was pictured onscreen, as does the shaping of the hill itself.
The one spot that Michael was unsure about was the row of trees that Janey and Jeff danced between. So during our first trek out to the park (on picnic day!), the GC and I walked around all of Park Center to see if we could find the right place and he fairly quickly zeroed in on the trees pictured below. In my recollection of the scene, Janey and Jeff had danced between two parallel rows of trees, while the trees that the GC had found were situated in one row, with a lone tree situated parallel to it. I was certain it was the wrong spot.
When I got home and compared my photographs to the montage scene, though, I saw that he was spot on! Nicely done, GC!
As fate would have it, during our second venture out to Griffith Park, a man happened to be sleeping next to the row of trees, in the exact spot where we wanted to take photographs. I did end up posing for a pic, but because of Sleeping Beauty, we could not match the angle of the photo to the angle shown in the movie – which meant (you guessed it!) another trip out there. I swear, if the GC never sees Griffith Park again it’ll be too soon.
During our third trip to the park, we managed to take photographs from the right spot. Well, almost.
We should have moved one tree farther back. As you can see below, the tree that is in the foreground of our photograph is the second tree visible in Girls Just Want to Have Fun. That is as good as it is going to get, though, because there is no way the GC is ever setting foot in Park Center again. 
And I am pretty sure that if I ever ventured out there on my own and asked a stranger to take my photograph posing like I am below, they’d probably try to have me committed.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Michael for all of his help in finding these locations! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Girls Just Want to Have Fun dance montage was shot in the Park Center area of Griffith Park, which is located at 4730 Crystal Springs Drive in Los Feliz. A detailed aerial view denoting where the montage’s three park segments were filmed in relation to the merry-go-round is pictured below.
My recent trip to Las Vegas with the Grim Cheaper was magical, due in large part to the fact that we stayed at Caesars Palace. Neither the GC nor I had ever stayed there before and, while planning our trip, I decided to see what the rates were. I happened to find a remarkably inexpensive one and booked it immediately. It was a fortuitous decision because the four nights we spent there were spectacular.
[ad]
As luck would have it, when we checked in we were given an upgraded room in the Palace Tower. It was absolutely gorgeous – and huge.
The bathroom was massive as well and featured a huge Jacuzzi tub and stand-alone shower.
We also had a pretty stunning view of the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis area.
Construction on Caesars Palace began in 1962. The property was the brainchild of hotelier Jay Sarno, who also owned the popular Cabana Motel chain. According to this article, Sarno purposely left off the apostrophe in the resort’s name because having it “’would mean that it was the place of only one Caesar.’ He wanted to create the feeling that everybody in the hotel was a Caesar.” The site opened to the public on August 5th, 1966. You can read an extremely extensive history on the hotel here.
At the time of its inception, Caesars Palace consisted of a single 14-story tower with 680 rooms.
Today, the site is comprised of six towers, 3,960 hotel rooms, a 300,000-square-foot convention center, a 4,296-seat circular theatre modeled after the Colosseum in Rome, and a 636,000-square-foot shopping center known as The Forum Shops at Caesars. In short, the property is massive!
The front of Caesars Palace is marked by a 135-foot driveway flanked by 18 fountains.
In 1967, daredevil Evel Knievel tried to jump across the 141-foot long fountain situated directly in front of the hotel, but failed and wound up in a coma for the next 29 days.
You can watch that failed jump below.
In 1989, Evel’s son Robbie attempted the jump and was successful. You can watch a video of Robbie’s jump below.
Caesars’ humongous Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis was modeled after the Pompeii baths of ancient Rome.
Sadly, because the GC and I were in Las Vegas for a working trip and were busy most of each day, we were not able to partake of the pool facilities.
Caesars Palace has been featured onscreen countless times over the years – far more times than I could ever chronicle here, but I will name a few of its more notable appearances. The hotel’s most famous role was in The Hangover. It was there that Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) threw an epic bachelor party for Doug (Justin Bartha) in the 2009 breakout hit. The movie made extensive use of the Caesars property, including the front entrance;
lobby;
check-in desk;
(love the shot of the Wolf Pack below);
a hallway, which (according to Hannah Allen, the Director of TV and Film Production for Caesars Entertainment, who was nice enough to fill me in on the shoot) was a hallway on the 24th floor of the Augustus Tower;
the Augustus Tower’s 24th floor elevator bay (again, thank you, Hannah!);
an Augustus Tower elevator (once again, thanks to Hannah);
the roof;
and the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis.
For the scene in which Stu, Phil and Alan take note of Doug’s mattress on the hotel’s roof, a fake statue was installed in the area noted with a pink arrow in my photograph below.
The hotel’s actual roofline is pictured below.
“Some guys just can’t handle Vegas!”
Sadly, the guys’ spectacular villa was not an actual Caesars room, but a set created inside of a soundstage at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank. The set was modeled, in part, after the hotel’s lux Emperors Suite.
The casino where the Wolf Pack gambled in The Hangover was not located at Caesars Palace, but at the since closed Riviera, which, sadly, is set to be demolished in the near future.
Stu, Alan and Phil returned to Caesars Palace for 2013’s The Hangover Part III.
Thanks to Hannah, I learned that an actual Caesars suite was used in Part III – the Constantine Villa in the Octavius Tower –
which Stu and Alan climbed down to from Caesars’ roof.
The Constantine Villa also appeared in Think Like a Man Too.
The 2014 comedy gave audiences a much better view of the suite.
Think Like a Man Too was filmed almost exclusively at Caesars Palace.
Caesars also made an appearance in Rain Man. It was there that Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman) counted cards for his brother Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) in the 1988 classic (as Alan said in The Hangover, “He practically bankrupt a casino and he was a re-tard.”). The casino floor looks much different today, though, and is virtually unrecognizable from its appearance in Rain Man.
Hannah informed me that the escalator that Charlie and Raymond famously rode down in the movie was removed when Caesars’ convention center was remodeled in 2009. Such a shame!
Rain Man’s escalator scene was re-created in The Hangover, complete with “Iko Iko” playing in the background. Because the re-creation was shot at the Riviera, sadly, that escalator will soon be gone, too.
The suite where Charlie and Raymond stayed in Rain Man is an actual Caesars room, the Emperors Suite (which, as I mentioned earlier, served as the inspiration for the Wolf Pack’s room in The Hangover). It looks quite a bit different today, though. You can check out some current photos of it here.
The room, which is located in the Forum Tower, was numbered 7416 in Rain Man, but looks to be numbered 6316 today. It is an extremely popular room thanks to its appearance in the movie and is still referred to as “the Rain Man suite,” 27 years after the film originally premiered!
The scene in which Charlie lets Raymond drive took place in front of Caesars’ main entrance.
Isabel Fuentes Whitman (Salma Hayek) worked at Caesars Palace in the 1997 romcom Fools Rush In.
After getting married, she and her new husband, Alex Whitman (Matthew Perry), spend the night in the Rain Man suite.
Caesars Palace was also featured in the Coen Brothers’ 2003 dark romantic comedy Intolerable Cruelty.
Miles (George Clooney) and Marilyn (Catherine Zeta-Jones) also spend their wedding night in the Rain Man suite in the movie.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) gambles at Caesars Palace in the beginning of Iron Man.
In Ocean’s Eleven, Elliot Gould describes “the three most successful robberies in the history of Vegas,” one of which took place at Caesars in 1987.
Joyce Brewster (Barbra Streisand) and Andrew Brewster (Seth Rogen) spend a night at the hotel in the 2012 comedy The Guilt Trip.
One of the hotel’s real life rooms – one that looked very much like ours – was used in the filming.
Caesars Palace also made appearances in Godzilla, The Electric Horseman, Rocky III, Oh, God! You Devil, History of the World: Part I, The Sopranos, 21, Showgirls, My Giant, The Only Game in Town, 2012, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Emma for putting me in touch with Hannah so that I could get all of my filming questions answered! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Caesars Palace (not the real one – Caesar never actually lived there), from The Hangover, is located at 3570 South Las Vegas Boulevard in Las Vegas. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.
Be sure to check out my latest post for L.A.mag.com today, about the police station from Battle Creek and my disappointment over the series’ recent cancellation. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Though I am a tween at heart, for some reason the 1999 television series Even Stevens, which focused on the life of seventh grader Louis Stevens (Shia LaBeouf), was never on my radar. In fact, I don’t think I had ever even heard of it until a fellow stalker named Britt posted a comment on my site in early March challenging me to find Louis’ supposed Sacramento home from the show. Britt had included screen captures with her query, but, being that I was not even sure if the series had been shot in California at the time, I had no idea where to begin looking for the residence. Thankfully, both Chas, from It’sFilmedThere, and a reader named Melissa found the place for me. (Chas and Melissa found the house independently, but on the same day and within minutes of each other! Literally, at almost the exact same time that I received a text from Chas alerting to me to the home’s address, I also received an email notification that Melissa had posted the house’s address as a comment on my site. Talk about synchronicity!)
[ad]
In her challenge, Britt had given us a big clue. She mentioned – and provided a screen capture showing – that an address number of “10321” was visible on the curb in front of the Stevens’ house in an episode. Melissa and Chas each took that info and successfully ran with it. Thank you, both! And even though I still have yet to watch an episode of the series, because I thought the dwelling might be a location my fellow stalkers were interested in, I ran right out to stalk it.
In real life, the 1938 home has 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, and 3,135 square feet of living space.
As you can see below, the residence looks much the same in person as it did onscreen.
Although the surrounding foliage has grown significantly since filming originally took place 16 years ago.
Besides being shown weekly in establishing shots, a digitized version of the property was also featured in the Even Stevens opening credits.
You can watch those credits by clicking below.
The real life interior of the residence was not used on the series. The inside of the Stevens’ home was just a set.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalkers Chas, from It’s Filmed There, and Melissa for finding this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Even Stevens house is located at 10321 Cresta Drive in Cheviot Hills.
