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Jason Priestley’s Former Apartment

I haven’t been getting much sleep the past few nights and it’s all Jason Priestley’s fault. His new book, Jason Priestley: A Memoir, has me burning the midnight oil. The chapters are brief (most only a page or two) and begging to be perused. I find myself repeatedly thinking ‘I’ll just read one more,’ and the next thing I know it’s midnight. Ah, well, the fatigue has been worth it. The tome is fabulous and enthralling. I cannot more highly recommend it – especially since JP includes the addresses of quite a few stalking locations, one of which is the apartment building where he lived shortly before landing his life-changing role on Beverly Hills, 90210. So Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I ran right out to stalk the place last week while I was in L.A.

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In the fall of 1987, 18-year-old Jason and his good friend/fellow actor Bernie Coulson moved into a two-bedroom unit at the Klump Regency apartment building located at 5050 Klump Avenue in North Hollywood. JP describes the place as “your basic Valley craphole.” During the eight months that he lived on the premises, JP would vary between traveling back and forth to his native Vancouver for small film and television roles and auditioning in L.A. where he was trying to make it big in Hollywood. On one occasion after returning home from a Canadian shoot, Priestley walked into his bedroom to find a “tall skinny” guy asleep in his bed. That lanky man turned out to be none other than a young Brad Pitt! Brad, whom JP calls “the nicest Midwestern guy imaginable,” Bernie and Jason continued to live in the apartment for the next few months, with Pitt crashing on the couch.

In mid-1988, Brad rented a two-bedroom duplex on La Jolla Avenue in West Hollywood (where he lived for several years afterwards, according to Jason) and invited JP and Bernie to move in with him. Because the Writers Guild of America strike was making roles hard to come by at the time, Jason chose instead to temporarily relocate to Vancouver. It was not long before he returned to L.A., though, and landed the role that would turn him into a household name.

Thanks to Jason’s not-so-keen description of the place, I was expecting Klump Regency to be rather dingy, but it is actually pretty nice. You can check out some interior photographs of one of the building’s two-bedroom apartments here. According to Zillow, the 50-unit complex features a swimming pool, Jacuzzi, gym and laundry facilities. Not too shabby digs for a bunch of struggling actors!

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Klump Regency, Jason Priestley’s former apartment building, is located at 5050 Klump Avenue in North Hollywood.

June 3, 2014
Chez Jay from “A Single Man”

The April issue of Los Angeles magazine (for which I wrote my very first print article ever – you can read it here) featured a Time Frame image of one of Santa Monica’s most historic restaurants, Chez Jay, reminding me that while I had stalked the watering hole ages ago, I had yet to blog about it. So here goes!

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Chez Jay was originally founded by a Connecticut-born struggling actor named Jay Fiondella. During the 1950s, Jay was working as a bartender at Sinbad’s on the Santa Monica Pier and, before his shifts, he would often grab a bite to eat at a nearby coffee shop named Dawn’s Cafe. He learned through his regular visits that Dawn’s was struggling financially and one fateful day the owner offered to sell the place to him for the bargain price of $1. Fiondella laid down the bill and the eatery became his. He named the place “Chez Jay,” in honor of Chez Joey, the restaurant owned by Frank Sinatra in the 1957 movie Pal Joey. (In a fateful twist, Sinatra would later become a Chez Jay regular.) The new eatery opened for business on July 4th, 1959. For the grand opening fete, Jay brought in showgirls and an elephant. Yes, an elephant! (You can see a photograph of it here.) Legend has it that the animal slammed its trunk on the bar at one point in the evening, denting it, and that that dent it still visible to this day.

The tiny space, which boasts a scant 10 tables, 12 bar stools and a 150-square-foot kitchen, quickly became popular with everyone from locals to the Hollywood set. Just a few of the luminaries who have dined there over the years include Ava Gardner, Vivien Leigh, Peter Sellers, Angie Dickinson, Chris Penn, Bronson Pinchot, Warren Beatty, Hugh Hefner, Robert Mitchum, my girl Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, Marlon Brando, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Jim Morrison, Michael Caine, Fred Astaire, John Belushi, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Dennis Hopper, Steve McQueen, Natalie Wood, Henry Kissinger, Leonard Nimoy, Cher, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger, Kiefer Sutherland, Mick Jagger, Tony Bennett, Joan Baez, Lee Marvin (legend has it that he once rode his motorcycle right up to the bar and ordered a drink), Julia Roberts, Sean Penn, Quentin Tarantino, Drew Barrymore, and Kevin Bacon. Frank Sinatra and other members of the Rat Pack would dine there weekly before their regular poker game. David E. Kelley and Michelle Pfeiffer even met there for the first time during a dinner party. And Matt Damon and Ben Affleck worked on their Oscar-winning screenplay for Good Will Hunting in the establishment’s back room. Not too shabby of a clientele!

Legend has it that Chez Jay was also the inspiration for the Regal Beagle, local Santa Monica hangout of Jack Tripper (John Ritter) and the gang, on Three’s Company.

Jay Fiondella passed away in 2008 at the age of 82 and the iconic restaurant is now run by his son, Chaz, daughter, Anita, and longtime business partner, Michael Anderson. The eatery’s future became uncertain shortly after Jay’s death when the City of Santa Monica began demolishing an adjoining parking lot to build what is now Tongva Park. During construction, city officials decided that Chez Jay did not fit in with their vision and hoped to demolish the place to make room for an open-air, family-friendly establishment. Thankfully, preservationists stepped in and the historic watering hole was given landmark status in late 2012. Chez Jay’s future is still somewhat uncertain, though, as the restaurant may be forced to undergo a remodel or an add-on. You can read a more in-depth history of the site here and here.

Despite having stalked Chez Jay on more than one occasion, the Grim Cheaper and I have never actually eaten there. It’s not for lack of trying, though. The place is always packed to the gills and typically doesn’t even have any standing-room-only space.

Thanks largely to the fact that little of Chez Jay has been changed over its 55-year history, the place has been featured onscreen several times. In the 1990 film Bad Influence, the restaurant was where Alex (Rob Lowe) took Michael Boll (James Spader) for a beer shortly after meeting him.

The interior of Chez Jay was also shown briefly in the scene.

In the 2009 drama A Single Man, Chez Jay popped up twice as The Starboard Side bar. It first appeared in the flashback scene in which George (Colin Firth) remembered first meeting his longtime boyfriend, Jim (The Good Wife’s Matthew Goode).

While the interior of the bar was also used briefly in the scene, not much of it was visible. The large amount of people shown packed inside it is a pretty accurate depiction of what the place is like in real life, though.

In a later scene, George runs into a student named Kenny (Nicholas Hoult) while at Chez Jay and the two have drinks.

The interior is shown in that scene, as well.

Chez Jay is also where Mark Callan (Wilson Bethel) meets with one of his father’s cronies in the Season 1 episode of All Rise titled “What the Constitution Greens to Me.”

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Chez Jay, from Bad Influence, is located at 1657 Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

June 2, 2014
New “Los Angeles” Magazine Post – The Bluth House from “Arrested Development”

Don’t forget to check out today’s Los Angeles magazine post – about the model home from Arrested Development – here. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.

May 29, 2014
The Girls United Group Home from “The Fosters”

In April, a fellow stalker named Ashley asked for some help in locating the Girls United group home from both the television show The Fosters and its web series spin-off, The Fosters: Girls United. I had never heard of either production before, but through a bit of Googling came across this Wikia article about the house. The stunning property immediately piqued my interest and I spent the next few minutes trying to track in down. It turned out to be an easy find, too, thanks to a Foursquare page that stated the dwelling was located on East Kensington Road in Angelino Heights. From there, it was only a matter of seconds before I found the unique pad via Google Street View at 766 East Kensington.

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In real life, the seven-bedroom, two-bath, 4,070-square-foot house was built in 1908 and sit on 0.28-acres of land. It last sold in October 2001 for $515,000.

The home’s fabulous detailing and double-peaked roofline are very reminiscent of the residence used in House Bunny (which I blogged about here).

Besides being architecturally stunning, the place also boasts some pretty amazing views of downtown L.A.

In The Fosters, Callie Jacob (Maia Mitchell) is sent to live at the Girls United group home, which is operated by Rita Hendricks (Rosie O’Donnell), after she is caught running away from her foster family in the Season 1 episode titled “House and Home.” The residence also appeared in the Season 1 episodes titled “Things Unsaid,” “Family Day” and “Us Against the World.”

The property’s actual address number of 766 was shown in the “House and Home” episode.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the residence was also used in the filming, but I was not able to find any interior photographs of the place to prove that hunch.

The house also appeared in the five-part web series spin-off of The Fosters titled The Fosters: Girls United.

You can watch the first The Fosters: Girls United web series episode, titled “Run Baby Run,” by clicking below.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Ashley for challenging me to find this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Girls United group home from The Fosters and The Fosters: Girls United is located at 766 East Kensington Road in Arlington Heights.

May 27, 2014
Happy Memorial Day!

I would like to wish my fellow stalkers a very happy Memorial Day! I hope you are all enjoying a fun and safe three-day weekend and taking at least a moment to remember what today is really about – America’s fallen heroes.

May 26, 2014
Viva Cantina from “The Girls Next Door”

Each May, my girl Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, and I have a standing lunch date to celebrate her birthday. We usually hit up Sizzler (‘cause we’re fancy like that!), but this year she requested to dine at Viva Cantina in Burbank – a place I had long wanted to stalk thanks to its appearance in a Season 3 episode of The Girls Next Door. So I, of course, happily obliged.

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Viva Cantina, also known as Viva Fresh, has been around since 1962. Surprisingly though, I could find no information whatsoever about its history online or in any of my books about Los Angeles (and believe me, my collection is extensive).

What I can report on, thanks to my experience dining there earlier this week, is that the food is delish! Pinky and her husband, Mr. Keith Coogan from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead fame, love the place so much that they eat there almost weekly, in fact.

In the Season 3 episode of The Girls Next Door titled “May the Horse Be with You,” Holly Madison, Kendra Wilkinson, Bridget Marquardt, and a few of their Playmate friends visited Sunset Ranch and took part in their famous Dinner Tour horseback ride (something the Grim Cheaper and I have always wanted to do).

The Dinner Tour, which costs $100 per person, is comprised of a four-hour, five-mile evening ride through Griffith Park with a mid-way meal stop at Viva Cantina. Um, count me in!

During their visit, Holly, Kendra, Bridget and the girls ate in Viva’s red-leathered back room.

Pinky and I also ate in the back room, which is pictured below.

And while I could have sworn that an episode of Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica was also lensed at Viva Cantina, I scanned through my DVDs of the series while researching this post and did not see the eatery pop up anywhere.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Viva Cantina, from the “May the Horse Be with You” episode of The Girls Next Door, is located at 900 West Riverside Drive in Burbank. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. The Los Angeles Equestrian Center, from Beverly Hills, 90210 and Pretty Woman (which I blogged about here), is located right next door at 480 West Riverside Drive. You can visit the Equestrian Center’s website here. And Pickwick Bowl, from Parks and Recreation (which I blogged about here), is located across the street at 1001 West Riverside Drive. You can visit the Pickwick Bowl website here.

May 23, 2014
Today’s “L.A.” Mag Post – Walley World from “National Lampoon’s Vacation”

Be sure to check out my latest blog post for Los Angeles magazine today – about the Walley World entrance from National Lampoon’s Vacation – at LAMag.com. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.

May 22, 2014
Leo’s Apartment Building from “Relativity”

During my recent Relativity location-finding fest, I also managed to track down the apartment building where Leo Roth (David Conrad) lived with his quirky roommate, Doug (Adam Goldberg) – who was actually my favorite character – on the show. I really could kick myself over this one, though, because I began searching for the property while watching the third episode of the series, which was titled “First Impressions”, and did not have many clues to help with the hunt. Had I waited until the fifth episode, “Moving,” in which Leo’s address was literally spelled out, it would have been a much quicker find. Instead, I spent a ridiculous amount of time scanning the background of “First Impressions,” looking for readable signage on storefronts near Leo’s place and then Googling to see if said businesses were still in existence. Thankfully, after numerous searches, I finally found one that was.

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In “First Impressions,” a sign reading “Asia Auto Center” was visible across the street from Leo’s apartment. An internet search led me to a listing for an Asia Auto Center at 3700 West Pico Boulevard in Arlington Heights. Sure enough, when I looked at the address via Google Street View, there was Leo’s building right across the street.

In reality, Leo’s building is located at 1310 4th Avenue, just south of West Pico Boulevard. So when I watched the “Moving” episode a few nights after finding the place and heard it mentioned several times that Leo lived near “Pico and 4th Avenue,” I had a major face-palm moment. D’oh!

Pictured below are a few of the many neighborhood signs that I had tried to read and do Google searches for. As you can see, it was not the easiest of tasks.

It is said several times on the series that Leo’s neighborhood is a bit sketchy and I can attest to that fact being true in real life, as well. Just as I pulled into a parking space near the building, a man hopped over the fence of the business across the street, opened the dumpster located there and began throwing its contents onto the sidewalk. Yeah, I pretty much could not wait to get out of there, hence the limited number of photographs I have for this post.

The full exterior of Leo’s building is never actually shown on Relativity – at least not in any of the episodes I have re-watched up until this point. Typically, tight shots of the doorway and balcony are all that appear onscreen.

Thanks to that doorway, with its ornate casing, and balcony, with its wrought-iron detailing, the building has a very New Orleansy-feel.

The structure still looks very much the same today as it did when Relativity was filmed 18 years ago. As you can see below, not even the address plate has been altered since 1996! Love it!

The Arlington Heights building was only used for exterior filming on the series. The ramshackle interior of Leo and Doug’s loft existed only on a studio soundstage.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Leo’s apartment from Relativity is located at 1310 4th Avenue in Los Angeles’ Arlington Heights neighborhood.

May 19, 2014
Haskell’s Ice Cream Hut from “The Brady Bunch”

I have been a The Brady Bunch fanatic since I was about three years old. Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to be Cindy Brady (Susan Olsen) and don blonde pig tails on a daily basis. Too bad my hair was brown, curly and far too short for pig tails. As an adult, I still love the show and in recent years have stalked many of its locations. Being that the vast majority of the series was shot on the Paramount backlot, though, and that very few non-studio locales were used, I figured I had pretty much visited them all ages ago. So I was floored when a fellow stalker named Michael recently alerted me to a new one – Haskell’s Ice Cream Hut from the Season 5 episode titled “Marcia Gets Creamed.”

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In “Marcia Gets Creamed,” Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Jan (Eve Plumb) and Peter (Christopher Knight) get jobs at the local ice cream shop. A rather tight establishing shot of the parlor, in which the signage was cut off, was the only view of the exterior shown in the episode, so, try as he might, Michael could not figure out where filming had taken place.

Then fate stepped in. While randomly watching the Season 7 episode of My Three Sons titled “TV or Not TV” a few weeks back, Michael spotted the very same exterior. This time, though, the sign, which read Cherry House Ice Cream, was fully visible.

As it turns out, Cherry House was a real ice cream parlor/coffee shop located at 13701 Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. The establishment has long since been shuttered, but the building that once housed it still looks very much as it did when it appeared on The Brady Bunch in 1973. The site is currently home to an amplifier and guitar store named the Amp Shop.

Shockingly, I cannot find any information about Cherry House Ice Cream parlor online, other than the fact that it was established sometime in the 1950s. You can check out some photographs taken of the shop in 1952 here.

Only the exterior of Cherry House was used on The Brady Bunch. The pink-hued interior of Haskell’s Ice Cream Hut was a set built inside of a soundstage at Paramount. You can watch the “Marcia Gets Creamed” episode – in which Marcia fires Peter for being a “Capital G Goof Off” – here.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Michael for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Amp Shop, aka the former Cherry House Ice Cream parlor, aka Haskell’s Ice Cream Hut from The Brady Bunch, is located at 13701 Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.

May 16, 2014
My Latest L.A. Mag Post – About Casa Walsh and Jason Priestley’s New Book

Don’t forget to check out my latest Los Angeles magazine post today – about the Walsh house from Beverly Hills, 90210, Jason Priestley’s new book and how I got started stalking – on LAMag.com. (My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.)

May 15, 2014