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Shakey’s Pizza Parlor from “License to Drive”

After reading my January 13th post about Mercedes’ friend’s house from fave movie License to Drive, fellow stalker Chas, of the It’s Filmed There blog, texted to let me know that he had managed to track down the Shakey’s Pizza Parlor from the 1988 flick. As fate would have it, the storefront next door to Shakey’s had appeared in 1976’s The Bad News Bears, a movie Chas had covered on his site. The bad news (pun intended) was that the shopping center where it was once located is no longer standing. The structure was torn down sometime in the ‘90s and a new center subsequently built in its place. Because I had been itching to find it for so long, though, I figured it was still blog-worthy.

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The location pops up once in License to Drive, in the scene in which Les Anderson (Corey Haim) accidentally drives off of an embankment before crash-landing in front of a random Shakey’s Pizza Parlor.

A sporting goods store was visible in the background of the scene and it was that shop that Chas recognized from The Bad News Bears. As you can see below, the sign, logo and roofline of the store from The Bad News Bears (second screen capture below) are an exact match to those of the storefront that appeared next door to Shakey’s in License to Drive (first screen capture below).

You can even make out the word “parlor” on the building next door to the sporting goods shop in The Bad News Bears scene.

While watching The Bad News Bears, Chas had spotted an address number of “19321” on the space next door to the sporting goods store. A quick Google search showed him that there was only shopping plaza in Los Angeles with shops boasting address numbers in 19300 range – The Village in Reseda. When he looked at aerial images of The Village, though, he realized that it was most-definitely not the same spot that had been featured in The Bad News Bears.

Enter the Historic Aerials website, from which we learned that there was once a different shopping center located on the property, one which had been demolished and rebuilt sometime prior to 2003. In the 1980 aerial view pictured below, Shakey’s former location is denoted with a pink arrow. Today, that area is partially comprised of a Chase bank and The Village’s parking lot

A current aerial view of The Village is pictured below with the former Shakey’s location denoted with a pink “X.”

According to this Valley News article, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Reseda Shakey’s took place in December 1964. Because the shopping center where it formerly stood was torn down sometime between 1988 and 2003, I am guessing that the demolition occurred due to damage resulting from the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. That is just a guess, though.

Sick Sam’s Rent-a-Car, which played a role in the movie’s original ending, but is only visible briefly in the background of the final cut, has also since been torn down.

Its former location is denoted with a pink circle below.

Today, a large apartment building stands in that spot.

On a License to Drive side-note – I’ve been searching for photographs of the Cabriolet I drove as a teenager ever since I wrote my post about the License to Drive hospital. As I mentioned in the post, even though I was a mere 11 years old at the time, as soon as I first laid eyes on the white VW convertible Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham) drove at the end of the movie, I became completely obsessed with it. I made it known that it was the only car I wanted to drive upon turning 16 and my amazing parents gifted me one on my 16th birthday! I finally found photographs of it yesterday. That’s me (big hair, don’t care!) with one of my best friends Natalie just a few days after I received it. Seriously, Best. Car. Ever.

It should come as no surprise that my fellow celeb-obsessed friend Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, also drove a white VW Cabriolet in her teens, for the very same reason I did. I couldn’t believe it when I found out! We are so kindred spirits!

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 Chas, from It’s Filmed There, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Shakey’s Pizza Parlor from License to Drive was formerly located at 19341 Saticoy Street in Reseda. It was torn down and no part of the structure currently remains.

February 4, 2014
Chuck E. Cheese’s from “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead”

I have been on the hunt for the Chuck E. Cheese’s featured in fave movie Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead for what seems like ages. Despite having an inside connection – my girl Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, is married to none other than Kenny Crandell, aka Keith Coogan, himself – I had a tough time tracking the place down. All Keith could remember about the eatery was that it was located somewhere in the Valley near a large cement watershed. So, feeling inspired a couple of weeks back, I decided to look at aerial views of every San Fernando Valley-area Chuck E. Cheese’s to see if any matched the one that appeared in Don’t Tell Mom. Sure enough, the one in Sun Valley’s Canyon Plaza shopping center did. Well, sort of – but more on that later.

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The Sun Valley Chuck E. Cheese’s shows up towards the beginning of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, in the scene (which was one of Keith’s favorites) in which Sue Ellen Crandell (Christina Applegate) takes her siblings – Kenny, Melissa (Danielle Harris), Zach (Christopher Pettiet) and Walter (Robert Hy Gorman) – out for dinner after landing an executive administrative assistant job at General Apparel West. Oddly enough, at some point after Don’t Tell Mom was filmed in 1991, Chuck E. Cheese’s moved from the storefront pictured below (which is currently vacant) to one a few doors north in the same center. Despite the move and some other alterations, though, the restaurant’s former site is still recognizable from its onscreen appearance.

As Sue Ellen and her siblings leave Chuck E. Cheese’s, they witness their dead babysitter’s Buick getting stolen by three drag queens dressed as Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minnelli and Dolly Parton. The theft takes place in Canyon Plaza’s large parking lot in front of what was, at the time, a Mervyn’s, but today is a Kohl’s. While the shopping center has since been remodeled a bit, it is still very recognizable from the scene. I absolutely love that the space next to Kohl’s still houses a Subway after all these years!

The Sav-On Drugs that appeared in the movie is now a CVS Pharmacy (Southern California Sav-Ons were acquired by CVS Caremark in 2006), but, thankfully, looks much the same as it did onscreen in 1991. In fact, it was due to the structure’s jutted-out façade with decorative arched cut-outs that I was finally able to identify the Chuck E. Cheese’s location.

The space where Chuck E. Cheese’s moved to appears to have housed an AutoZone at the time that Don’t Tell Mom was filmed. You can just barely make out its red neon logo in the screen capture below.

I was most excited to see that the rounded sidewalk where the Crandell kids stood in the scene and the yellow speed bump next to it were still there in real life, looking EXACTLY the same as they did onscreen. LOVE IT! I cannot express how much fun it was to stalk such an iconic location from one of my favorite movies 23 years after it was filmed, especially since so little of it has been changed.

If only the pay phone that Sue Ellen used to call Bryan (Josh Charles) was still on the premises (if it was, in fact, real and not a prop)!

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 Keith Coogan for helping me to find this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Chuck E. Cheese’s from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead was formerly located at 8353 Laurel Canyon Boulevard in the Canyon Plaza shopping center in Sun Valley. It has since moved a few storefronts north to 8375 Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

February 3, 2014
Mr. Miyagi’s House from “The Karate Kid”

One of the greatest filming location mysteries to ever exist was that of the house where Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) lived in the 1984 classic The Karate Kid. It was common knowledge that the residence had been demolished in the late ‘80s, but no stalker had ever been able to track down its former whereabouts – until now that is. While I had long been aware of the enigma surrounding the locale, I had never actually seen The Karate Kid until two weeks ago. (Well, I saw it in the theatre when it first came out, but did not remember it at all.) The Grim Cheaper did not learn of this fact until two Saturdays ago and he was so upset when he did that I’m surprised he did not divorce me on the spot. He immediately purchased the flick on iTunes and forced me to watch it. Now that I have, I am in utter shock that the movie remained off my radar for so long. I absolutely LOVED it. And as soon as the credits started to roll, I became hell-bent on tracking down Mr. Miyagi’s house. I quickly sent out texts to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog and Chas, of It’sFilmedThere, asking them for any information they had. Those texts got everyone started on an intense search which led to the locale being found just a few days later! Woo to the hoo!

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Chas informed me that the best tip he had ever gotten regarding the location of Mr. Miyagi’s house was in June of last year when an anonymous commenter posted this on his site: “Mr. Miyagi’s house is torn down but was located on Gault St. between Independence Ave. and DeSoto in Canoga Park. My family has lived in the neighborhood forever and I remember as a kid being able to witness the filming of the movie.” While seemingly a great lead, because the area had changed so much in the ensuing years, Chas had a hard time verifying it. Then, the day after receiving my text, he managed to track down Karate Kid executive producer R.J. Lewis, who checked his files and reported back that Mr. Miyagi’s house was formerly located at 20924 Gault Street in Canoga Park. As it so happens, 20924 Gault lies smack dab between Independence and DeSoto Avenues, which fell in line with the comment on Chas’ site. Two unrelated people coming forward with the exact same information was enough to convince me, so since I was in L.A. at the time, I headed right on over there the following day.

Thankfully, the stalking gods were smiling down upon this particular venture because shortly after arriving at the location, I happened to spot a man pulling into a driveway down the street. Hoping he would be able to verify R.J.’s information, I asked how long he had lived on the premises and when he answered, “Since 1971,” I practically started salivating. Not wanting to alter or steer his memories in a certain direction, I decided to keep my questioning as vague as possible and asked if he happened to know if the movie The Karate Kid had been filmed in the area. He immediately pointed in the direction of 20924 Gault and said, “See that short palm tree there next to the three tall palm tress, that’s where Mr. Miyagi’s house used to be, but it was torn down a long time ago and a duplex has since been built in its place.” Upon hearing those words I almost passed out from excitement. The gentleman, who could NOT have been nicer, wound up speaking with me for a good twenty minutes or so filling me in on the filming. He told me that the railroad tracks and oil derricks seen in the movie were fake and that both the first and second Karate Kid movies had been shot on the premises.

With those three confirmations under our belt, Owen, Mike, Chas and I got to work in searching for any visual markers that might still be in existence at the site. According to The Karate Kid press kit, Mr. Miyagi’s house was “a rundown shack in a weedy yard until the construction crew descended upon it. When they were finished, the interior became a modest and beautifully austere Japanese dwelling with mats, screens and other authentic Oriental accoutrements. The yard itself was landscaped with miniature mountains, lanterns, decking, a pond complete with expensive koi (Japanese fish) and hundred-year old bonsai.” The section of the house shown most often in the film is pictured below. In real life, Mr. Miyagi’s property stretched from Gault to Vose Street. This portion of the house faced Vose Street. Knowing what I now know, I believe it was actually the rear of the residence, although it was made to look like the front in The Karate Kid.

The area shown as the backyard in the movie is pictured below. It faced Gault Street and was, I believe, the real life home’s front yard.

An unobstructed aerial view of the property circa 1980 from the Historic Aerials website is pictured below. Mr. Miyagi’s house is the residence surrounded by trees, located just south of Gault Street.

The home is circled in pink below.

In the first scene that features Mr. Miyagi’s house in The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi and Daniel Larusso (Ralph Macchio) are shown entering the property from Vose Street, not Gault. In the scene, they are initially heading east on Vose before turning north onto the vacant land located just southwest of the residence. The fake train tracks were set up in the spot denoted with two pink lines below. Daniel and Mr. Miyagi’s route is denoted with a blue arrow. The two make a right turn across the tracks, heading east, and then another left turn, heading north, towards the home. (Big THANK YOU to Chas for explaining this to me. I cannot read a map or figure out spatial directions for the life of me!)

The house seen in the background as Daniel and Miyagi first make the turn off of Vose is located at 20948 Vose Street. As you can see, it still looks much the same today as it did back in 1984 when The Karate Kid was filmed.

The garage with the pyramid-shaped roofline visible in the scene is located at 20941 Vose Street. A current aerial view of that garage as well as a 1980 aerial view are pictured below.

Mike happened to find videos of the entire movie being rehearsed on YouTube, which you can watch by clicking below. In the scene in which Miyagi and Daniel first arrive at the house, you can see that the fake railroad tracks have yet to be installed.

The Gault Street house was also used in a few scenes in the beginning of The Karate Kid, Part II.

In the movie, the house located across from Mr. Miyagi’s, at 20919 Gault Street, is visible. As you can see below, it looks much the same today as it did in 1986 when filming took place.

By the time that The Karate Kid, Part III was filmed in 1989, the Gault Street house had been torn down, so a replica of it was built for the shoot on the Warner Bros. Ranch backlot in Burbank. It was then demolished once filming was completed.

Thanks to a source Mike has at the Ranch, we now know that the house was built in the eastern portion of the lot, in the area denoted with a pink circle below. At the time, that space was vacant land. The building and parking structure visible in the current aerial view below were not constructed until later. The edifice that is visible in the upper right hand corner of the two screen captures above is denoted with a blue circle 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, huge THANK YOU to R.J. Lewis for his information about this location and to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, Owen, from When Write Is Wrong, and Chas, from It’sFilmedThere, for all of their work in helping to verify it.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Mr. Miyagi’s house from The Karate Kid was formerly located at 20924 Gault Street in Canoga Park. Sadly, it was demolished in the late ‘80s and no remnant of it remains.

January 30, 2014
The Infamous Ray Pruit Stairs

Since moving to the desert last January (I cannot believe it has been a year!), I have wanted to revisit Rancho Las Palmas, the sprawling Rancho Mirage resort where Ray Pruit (Jamie Walters) pushed girlfriend Donna Martin (Tori Spelling) down a flight of stairs in the Season 5 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “P.S. I Love You: Part II.” I originally stalked and blogged about the location back in September 2008, but, because the hotel has 120 sets of identical stairs, at the time I was unsure of which set had appeared in the episode. Thankfully, the resort’s sales manager saw my post and left a comment, informing me of exactly where the scene had been shot. And while it took me over five years to get back out there to re-stalk the place, once I did, I could NOT have been more excited!

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Rancho Las Palmas is massive. The 240-acre resort boasts a 27-hole championship golf course, four eateries, a spa, 50,000-square-feet of event/meeting space, and three pools – one of which is Splashtopia, a two-acre water feature made complete with a 425-foot lazy river, two 100-foot water slides, a man-made sand beach, a Jacuzzi, and a café. Guests also have access to 25 tennis courts at the Palm Springs tennis center located in the Rancho Las Palmas Country Club, which is adjacent to the hotel.

Rancho Las Palmas has quite an interesting history. The property was originally the site of the Desert Air Hotel & Resort, a 320-acre compound that was founded by architect H.L. Gogerty in 1946. The resort consisted of an airstrip for private planes, World War II army barracks that pilots and travelers could rent for the night, and a bar and a pool that were added in 1951. You can see a picture of what the property looked like at that time here. Luminaries like Edgar Bergen, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Robert Taylor flocked to the place and The Bob Cummings Show was even filmed onsite for a time. The resort was sadly shuttered in 1976 and then demolished a year later to make way for a new Marriott hotel. According to the Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields website, one former Desert Air patron had this to say of the new lodging, “I visited the site several years ago – nothing left, except that the main fairway of the golf course seems to be aligned with the old northwest/southeast runway, and there’s a Desert Air Drive in the condos by the hotel. Very ritzy, very posh, but it will never have the understated chill-out class of the old place, with guest cottages made from recycled WW2 barracks huts. I think the difference speaks volumes about the way this country has changed.” I have to admit, it would have been pretty darn cool to vacation in authentic World War II barracks.

At the time that 90210 was filmed, the hotel was known as Marriott’s Rancho Las Palmas. After being taken over by KLM in 2006, the site underwent a massive renovation and the “Marriott” dropped from its name. Today, the property is operated by Omni Hotels & Resorts.

In “P.S. I Love You: Part I” and “P.S. I Love You: Part II,” Rancho Las Palmas was where Steve Sanders (Ian Ziering), Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley) and the rest of the C.U. gang attended a national KEG/ALPHA convention. Several areas of the resort were shown in the episodes, including the front entrance;

the Azure Adult Pool (where Ray had a fit over Donna’s choice of swimwear);

and, of course, the infamous stairs that Ray pushed Donna down.

The stair scene was shot on the northwest side of Building #5.

In real life, the stairwell leads up to Room 520.

You can watch the stair scene by clicking below. I love when Valerie says, “Ray, go get the hotel doctor! Go!” LOL Hotel doctor??? How about, “Let’s get her to a hospital,” Val!

And you know I just had to do it!

While re-watching the “P.S. I Love You” episodes (big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for loaning me his Season 5 DVDs), I was shocked to see that the interior scenes had not been filmed inside Rancho Las Palmas (the Rancho lobby is pictured below), but at another location that I was familiar with – Hyatt Westlake Plaza in Westlake Village, which also appeared as a Coachella Valley-resort in the Season 1 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Palm Springs Weekend.” I stalked Hyatt Westlake Plaza in February 2010 (you can read that post here) and recognized it immediately when it popped up in “P.S. I Love You.” I guess the Hyatt was 90210’s go-to Palm Springs hotel stand-in.

The first thing that clued me in to the fact that Hyatt Westlake Plaza had been used in “P.S. I Love You: Part I” and “Part II” was the large fountain that was seen in the center of the lobby in the episodes. That same fountain is pictured below in a 2010 photograph that I took of the Hyatt lobby. While no longer tiled, the shape of the Hyatt fountain is an exact match to the shape of the 90210 fountain.

The general layout of the Hyatt lobby also matches the lobby that appeared on 90210. Sadly, the Hyatt was remodeled sometime after the episodes were filmed, so the décor and flooring look quite a bit different today.

In “P.S. I Love You: Part II,” Brandon is shown walking through the Hyatt lobby, past a side table. That same side table (as well as the lamps on it and the painting behind it) is a direct match to a side table that Brenda Walsh (my girl Shannen Doherty) walked by in “Palm Springs Weekend.” Love it!

The recessed hotel room doors and positioning of the room signage that appeared in the “P.S. I Love You” episodes also match those of Hyatt Westlake Plaza.

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: The “P.S. I Love You” episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 were filmed at Rancho Las Palmas, which is located at 41000 Bob Hope Drive in Rancho Mirage. You can visit the resort’s official website here. Ray Pruit’s infamous stairs can be found on the south side of the property, just off Avenue Las Palmas, in Building #5, which is denoted with a pink arrow below. The stairs are on the north side of the building and lead up to Room 520. The pool that appeared in the episode is the Azure Adult Pool, which is located just outside of the hotel’s main lobby and is denoted with a blue arrow below. The interior scenes from the “P.S. I Love You” episodes were shot at the Hyatt Westlake Plaza, which is located at 880 South Westlake Boulevard in Thousand Oaks. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

January 28, 2014
Villapiano’s from “That Thing You Do!”

One That Thing You Do! location that I had been trying to track down for what seemed like ages was the red-boothed Italian restaurant that stood in for Villapiano’s, the “spaghetti place out by the airport,” in the 1996 flick. Thankfully, a couple of months ago, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, tracked down and put me in touch with one of the movie’s crew members who informed me that the eatery I was searching for was the now-defunct Palomino Club in North Hollywood. While the hot spot closed almost two full decades ago and is currently operating as a special events venue, a quick gander at Google Street View showed me that the exterior was still recognizable from That Thing You Do!, so I ran right out to stalk it while visiting L.A. a few weeks back.

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The Palomino Club was originally founded in 1949 by country music singer Hank Penny. At the time, the space located at 6907 Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood was a rundown, vacant former saloon named the Mulekick that Hank described looking like “death warmed over.” After driving by the abandoned site one day, he decided it would be the perfect spot to open a western bar/music venue. The name Palomino Club was inspired from the tag in a shirt Penny had recently purchased. The establishment took off and soon became far too popular for Hank, who was still a working musician, to manage, so he sold it to Bill and Tom Thomas in 1952. The brothers continued to grow the business and it wasn’t long before it became what the Los Angeles Times referred to as “country music’s most important West Coast club.” Just a few of the luminaries who played there over the years include Barbara Mandrell, Patsy Cline, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Linda Ronstadt, Dwight Yoakum, the Red Hot Chili Peppers (police had to shut the place down during that concert!), Elton John, Neil Young, Merle Haggard, Elvis Costello and Glenn Campbell.

After the passing of Bill in 1979 and Tom in 1985, the Palomino Club started to decline and it was finally shuttered in September 1995. At some point thereafter it became Le Monge Banquet Hall, an events venue specializing in continental, Mexican, Russian, Armenian and Persian foods.

The Palomino Club popped up twice as Villapiano’s, the spot where The Wonders played their first two paid gigs, in That Thing You Do!

The exterior of the site has changed a bit in the years since the movie was filmed, as you can see in the screen captures and photographs pictured above and below.

Although the shape of the signage remains the same, thankfully. (Nice graffiti! )

As depicted in That Thing You Do!, the Palomino Club originally had two front doors, one of which has since been covered over. That door’s former location is denoted with a pink arrow below. You can almost still see the outline of it.

The interior of the Palomino Club was also shown in That Thing You Do! Unfortunately, the woman working at Le Monge Banquet Hall at the time that I showed up to stalk the place would not let me take any photographs of the inside. You can check out what it currently looks like here, though. As you can see, the interior is not at all recognizable from its silver screen appearance.

That Thing You Do! was hardly the Palomino Club’s first brush with Hollywood. The property has been featured onscreen countless times over the years. In the 1971 film Minnie and Moskowitz, the establishment’s parking lot was where a reluctant Minnie Moore (Gena Rowlands) danced with her new paramour, Seymour Moskowitz (Seymour Cassel).

In the classic 1978 comedy Every Which Way But Loose, the Palomino Club was featured repeatedly as trucker/prize fighter Philo Beddoe’s (Clint Eastwood) regular hangout.

The interior was also shown throughout the movie.

The Palomino Club also popped up in Every Which Way But Loose’s 1980 sequel, Any Which Way You Can.

The interior of the bar was used in the sequel, as well. And yes, that is a chimpanzee drinking beer in the second screen capture below.

In 1978’s The Other Side of the Mountain: Part II, the Palomino Club played the local Bishop, California hangout of John Boothe (Timothy Bottoms).

The interior of the club was featured in the movie, as well.

The Palomino was where Jake Hanson (Grant Show) rescued Sydney Andrews (Laura Leighton) from some rowdy bar patrons in the Season 3 episode of Melrose Place titled “And the Winner Is,” which aired in 1995.

The bar’s interior was also used in the episode.

In the 1996 comedy Sgt. Bilko, the Palomino Club stood in for the Rusty Spur where Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko (Steve Martin) took Rita Robbins (Gleanne Headly) dancing.

The interior of the club also appeared in the movie.

The Palomino Club was apparently featured in 1969’s From Nashville with Music and 1978’s Hooper, as well, but I could not find a copy of either production with which to make screen captures for this post.

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 Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for helping me to find this locale!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Villapiano’s (by the airport) from That Thing You Do! was actually the now-defunct Palomino Club, formerly located at 6907 Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood. The site is now a special events venue named Le Monge Banquet Hall. You can visit its official website here.

January 27, 2014
My Latest Interview

This week is going to be rather hectic for me – I am traveling to L.A. for a brief visit, buying a new car and my dad is having surgery – so I most likely will not be able to do any blogging. I will be back next Monday, though, with a whole new location. In the meantime, you can check out this fun interview I did with Pop Speaking last week.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

January 20, 2014
The Former Site of the “Charles in Charge” House

In November, a fellow stalker named Fatri posted a comment on my site asking if I had any information on the Pembroke/Powell house from the 1980’s television series Charles in Charge. I had actually always wondered about the location, but had yet to do any research on it, so I sat right down to start. I quickly came across an IMDB thread in which it was said that the Pembroke/Powell residence was formerly located on an unnamed side street across from Universal Studios, but was demolished years ago to make way for the parking lot of the Universal City Red Line Station. The thread also mentioned that the house had been used in the Season 4 episode of Knight Rider titled “KITTnap.” It was thanks to that episode that I found the home’s exact former address. Come to find out, though, the location was not actually a home at all, but a condominium complex. But more on that later.

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On Charles in Charge, the “home” where college student Charles (Scott Baio) worked as a live-in babysitter for first the Pembroke family and then the Powell family was said to be located at 10 Barrington Court in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The establishing shots pictured below were used in the beginning of the opening credits throughout the series’ five-year run. And now that I really look at them, I am surprised it never occurred to me that the place was not a house. As you can see, the structure is very obviously an apartment/condominium building. In my defense, though, the images of the building were shown very, very briefly each week and because Charles in Charge aired in the pre-DVR days, it was tough to do much pausing. I find it very odd that producers chose to use the location to represent what was supposed to be the Pembroke and Powell’s large, upscale residence. Regardless, I cannot tell you how heartbroken I was to learn that the complex had been demolished, especially after wondering about its location for so long.

In “KITTnap”, the Charles in Charge “house” was the apartment building where Karen Forester (Janine Turner), Michael Knight’s (David Hasselhoff) latest flame, lived.

In the episode, a street sign reading “10700 Bluffside Drive” was visible.

As was a very blurry image of the building’s name, Universal Park. From there, it was not hard to discern that the Charles in Charge “house” was formerly located at 10711 Bluffside Drive in Studio City.

A view of the NBCUniversal building, the Sheraton Universal and the Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City were also visible in the background of “KITTnap.”

A matching view taken from the Universal City Red Line Station parking lot is pictured below.

Thanks to Knight Rider Online, I learned that the Season 2 episode titled “Diamonds Aren’t a Girl’s Best Friend” was also filmed at the Universal Park building. In the episode, the site was again home to another of Michael’s flames. The guy seems to have had a new girlfriend in every single show!

A much clearer view of the Universal Park signage was visible in “Diamonds Aren’t a Girl’s Best Friend.”

As was an address number of “10711.”

According to a 1996 Daily News article, when the final location was chosen for the new Universal City Red Line Station, Universal Park homeowners “sought condemnation” for the building in order to “avoid living” directly across from an MTA parking lot. By February of 1996, all of the units in the building had been vacated and Universal Park was demolished shortly thereafter. A 1980 view of the site from Historic Aerials is pictured below. Universal Park is denoted with a pink arrow.

Pictured below is that same 1980 aerial view with an overlay of the current street layout on top of it. As you can see, during the course of the MTA construction, Bluffside Drive was moved quite a bit to make room for the Red Station parking lot.

A current view of that same spot is pictured below with Universal Park’s former location denoted with a pink “X.”

When looking at my photographs of the site, I can’t help but be reminded of the “Big Yellow Taxi” lyrics – “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

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: The Universal Park condominium building, aka the Charles in Charge “house,” was formerly located at 10711 Bluffside Drive in Studio City. The site is now part of the Universal City Red Line Station parking lot.

January 17, 2014
El Cabrillo from “L.A. Story”

Last April, in the midst of my slightly-obsessive L.A. Story location-finding mission, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, tracked down a couple of the movie’s crew members for me, one of whom was extremely helpful. After he assisted us in the finding the crash intersection from the flick, I inquired about the garden where Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) and Sara McDowel (Victoria Tennant) turned into children in one of the movie’s more fanciful scenes. I was actually under the assumption that the locale was most likely a set, but the crew member advised me otherwise and responded that the scene was shot in “a famous old Hollywood courtyard building.” Well as soon as I read those words, I knew exactly where filming had taken place. It was a spot I had even stalked and blogged about before! As it turns out, Harris and Sara’s garden is the courtyard of El Cabrillo, the condominium complex from both the television series Chuck and the 1997 romantic comedy ‘Til There Was You.

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El Cabrillo, which was constructed in 1928, was designed by prolific husband-and-wife architecture team Arthur and Nina Zwebell. (The couple also designed Villa Primavera from In a Lonely Place and the Chaplin Court apartment complex.) Legend has it that Cecil B. DeMille commissioned the structure as housing for travelling actors. The two-story, ten-unit building features a central courtyard, a tiered Moorish fountain, wrought-iron detailing, carved fireplaces, Catalina tiling, and wood-beamed ceilings. Luminaries such as singer Stevie Wonder, director Lowell Sherman, actress Ann Harding, costume designer Kent Warner, makeup artist Perc Westmore, and playwright John Willard all called the property home at one time or another. In 2005, the building was renovated by designer Xorin Balbes and turned into condos. A gorgeous, albeit small (if my calculations are correct, it measures 462 square feet) one-bedroom, one-bath unit (with no parking!) sold for $430,000 ($41,000 over asking price!) last June. You can check out some pictures of it here. The place may be tiny, but it is absolutely idyllic.

Sadly, El Cabrillo is gated and its gorgeous interior courtyard is not visible from the road.

I did manage to snap the picture below via a crack in the gate, though.

Even from the outside, El Cabrillo is an idyllic little spot.

Check out that balcony – what an oasis!

In L.A. Story, Harris and Sara are shown walking into a neon-lit store window on Melrose Avenue (you can read about that location here). The window then turns into a magical garden, complete with flowers that bloom in an instant, statues that move, a sparkling waterfall, and the power to transform Harris and Sara into children. Very little of the garden is actually shown in the scene, which is why I believed it was a set.

In the 1997 romantic comedy ‘Til There Was You, El Cabrillo masqueraded as La Fortuna, the bucolic apartment building where Gwen Moss (Jeanne Tripplehorn) lived. And while the exterior of El Cabrillo was shown several times in the flick . . .

. . . I am fairly certain that the courtyard was a set. As you can see below as compared to these photographs, while sharing similar elements, El Cabrillo’s courtyard is significantly smaller than the one that appeared in ‘Til There Was You.

El Cabrillo’s central fountain is also more ornamental than the fountain shown in ‘Til There Was You.

El Cabrillo was also where reluctant spy/Burbank Buy More employee Chuck Bartwoski (Zachary Levi) lived in the television series Chuck. According to a 2007 The Hollywood Reporter article, Chuck producers were looking for a courtyard apartment complex “reminiscent of old Hollywood/Echo Park” for their hero to call home. They ultimately decided on El Cabrillo. Location manager Kelly Harris is quoted in The Reporter as saying that the Cabrillo “offered many interesting textures — concrete blocks, wood-spindle balconies, private balconies, an impressive interior courtyard turret and a courtyard fountain and provided an amazing background for our characters to interact.” And while the pilot was shot on location at the actual complex, a replica of the building was constructed on a soundstage at Warner Bros. Studios for the remainder of the show’s run. I got to see the set once on one of my many WB visits and it was absolutely amazing how real it looked. The screen captures pictured below are from Chuck’s pilot episode and show El Cabrillo’s real life courtyard.

These screen captures are from the second episode of Season 1, titled “Chuck Versus the Helicopter,” and show the soundstage re-creation that was used throughout the remainder of the series.

A commenter on Hooked on Houses’ fabulous post about El Cabrillo stated that the building was also where Rupert Giles (Anthony Head) lived on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I never watched the series, but fellow stalker Ashley, of the Drewseum, was a die-hard Buffy fan and had done some investigating on Giles’ apartment a few months back. She was nice enough to share her findings with me. As she discovered, the exterior of Giles’ building was actually El Pueblo in Los Feliz, the very same apartments used on Melrose Place, and the interior was just a set. Ashley also sent me several screen captures of Giles’ pad and I almost fell over when I saw how similar it was to the El Cabrillo condo that sold in June. Check out those matching arched stairways! I have a feeling that the set of Giles’ apartment was modeled after a real life El Cabrillo interior.

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 Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for helping me to find this location.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: El Cabrillo, from L.A. Story, is located at 1832-1850 North Grace Avenue in Hollywood.

January 16, 2014
Bob’s Market from “The Fast and the Furious”

As I mentioned in my December 12th post for Los Angeles magazine’s CityThink blog, I was heartbroken upon learning the news of Paul Walker’s death. I met Paul on December 1st, 2012, almost a year to the day of his passing, and couldn’t have been more impressed with his down-to-earth attitude and kindness. (You can read about my experience meeting Paul on the Mike the Fanboy website here.) For whatever reason, I had never seen what is arguably his most famous movie, The Fast and the Furious, though, so I set about to amend that the week before Christmas. I wound up absolutely loving it, especially the locations, and ran out to stalk Bob’s Market in Echo Park, which masqueraded as Toretto’s Market & Deli, the bodega owned by Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) in the flick, shortly thereafter.

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Bob’s Market, which is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #215, was constructed in 1913. Yep, the place is over one hundred years old! The one-story edifice was designed by architect George F. Colterison and built by Peter A. Holmberg for $3,500. The property, which boasts Mission Revival and Asian design elements, was commissioned by Ella J. McMillen and originally consisted of two separate storefronts – one that housed a tailor and the other, a small market.

In 1934, new owners merged the two spaces into one to house a larger grocery store and the set-up has remained that way ever since. It became “Bob’s Market” in 1965 when it was purchased by a man named Bob Nimura and his wife, Keiko, who still own the site to this day.

In The Fast and the Furious, Bob’s Market was where Walker’s Brian O’Conner character infiltrated a group of illegal street racers over “tuna on white, no crust.”

Mike, from MovieShotsLA, stalked the market a while back and was informed by Bob that the interior of the place was gutted and then completely redressed for the filming. How crazy is that? I would have guessed that a set had been used for the interior scenes.

I have heard that Bob isn’t especially friendly to stalkers, but he was nice enough to allow Mike to take some photographs inside of the store. As you can see it looks absolutely nothing like the interior of Toretto’s – no counter seating, no open back room, no tuna on white.

Mike told me that Bob even has photographs on display showing the transformation that took place for the filming. So incredibly cool! You can check out some more interior pictures of Bob’s Market here.

In The Fast and the Furious scene, Brian parked his car directly across the street from Bob’s Market.

The big fight between Brian and Vince (Matt Schulze) took place in that area, as well.

When I stalked Bob’s back in December, there was a small memorial set up for Paul in that spot.

Bob’s Market has appeared onscreen countless times over the years. In 1997, it popped up briefly in the background of L.A. Confidential in the scene in which Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) and Edmund J. Exley (Guy Pearce) interrogated boxer Leonard Bidwell (Robert Barry Fleming).

In the 2002 movie The Salton Sea, Danny Parker (Val Kilmer) stopped to buy cigarettes at Bob’s Market during a sting operation.

The interior was also shown very briefly in the film.

In 2011, the market was used in the Season 3 episode of Southland titled “Graduation Day,” as the spot where Detective Lydia Adams (Regina King) discussed her love live with Detective Josie Ochoa (Jenny Gago) while investigating a death.

That same year, Bob’s was where Kimball Cho (Tim Kang) and Wayne Rigsby (Owain Yeoman) investigated the whereabouts of a suspect named Richard Haibach (William Mapother) In the Season 4 episode of The Mentalist titled “Blinking Red Light.”

In the second episode of TNT’s new neo-noir miniseries Mob City, which was titled “Reason to Kill a Man”, Bob’s stood in for Abarrotes, where boy scout cop William Parker (Neal McDonough) successfully defused a hostage situation early in his career.

The real life interior of the store also appeared in the episode.

Bob’s pops up briefly in the 2014 thriller Nightcrawler in the background of the scene in which Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) listens to information coming across a police scanner while sitting in his car.

In the Season 4 episode of Major Crimes titled “Hindsight Part I,” the LAPD Major Crimes division investigates a shooting of a young mother and son that took place outside of Bob’s Market.

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 Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for sharing his photographs of the interior of Bob’s Market.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Bob’s Market, aka Toretto’s Market & Deli from The Fast and the Furious, is located at 1230 Bellevue Avenue in Echo Park.

January 14, 2014
Mercedes’ Friend’s House from “License to Drive”

The third – and last – License to Drive locale that I stalked while visiting L.A. a couple of weeks ago was the Colonial-style residence where Les Anderson (Corey Haim) dropped off his dream girl, Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham), in the 1988 classic. I found the abode thanks to Geoff, from 90210Locations, who, as I mentioned in last Thursday’s post about the License to Drive hospital, has an entire page dedicated to locales from the movie on his website.

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The residence was only used briefly in the flick, in the scene in which Les’ dad, Mr. Anderson (Richard Masur) – aka “Poppa” – picked Les up from school to take him for some driving practice. While they are out and about, Les spots Mercedes and begs his dad to let him “go up to her, circle around, maybe at the least say hello to her, and come right back to you.” After a bit of debate, Mr. Anderson agrees – despite the fact that Les does not, in fact, have a license – and gets out of the car, taking with him the three huge grocery bags full of Pampers diapers that he has just picked up from the store. Things do not go according to plan, though (natch), and Les ends up driving Mercedes to a friend’s house in a different city . . .

. . .leaving his father to walk home – carrying the three large bags of diapers.

It is amazing to me that Mercedes’ friend’s house still looks EXACTLY the same today as it did when License to Drive was filmed 26 years ago.

In real life, the stately home, which was originally built in 1941, boasts four bedrooms, five baths, 4,258 square feet of living space, and a 0.41-acre plot of land. According to my buddy E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, at different points in time over the years the dwelling was lived in by screenwriter Norman Panama and actor Ben Gazzara and his wife, actress Janice Rule. The property last sold in October 1993 for $1,045,000.

I am absolutely in love with the sideways-growing tree pictured in the images below.

On a License to Drive side-note – I would LOVE to track down the Shakey’s Pizza that was featured in the movie – so much so that I acquired a list of every Southern California Shakey’s still in business and viewed them all via Google Maps to compare them to screen captures from the flick. Unfortunately, none matched up. Does anyone happen to recognize the place?

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 Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Mercedes’ friend’s house from License to Drive is located at 661 Woodruff Avenue in Westwood.

January 13, 2014