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The “License to Drive” Party House

Another License to Drive location that I was finally able to cross off my To-Stalk list while visiting L.A. a couple of weeks ago was the house where Les Anderson (Corey Haim), Dean (Corey Feldman) and Charles (Michael Manasseri) attended a birthday party in the 1988 flick, which was one of my all-time favorites. Mike, from MovieShotsLA, actually tracked this spot down ages ago (way back in 2008, shortly after finding Les’ house from the movie, which I blogged about here), but, for whatever reason, it took me over four years to make it out there. Better late than never, though, right?

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Mike found the residence thanks to both an address number of “340” . . .

. . . and a blurry sign from a neighboring street reading “Delfern Drive” that were visible in the background of the party scene.

The residence was only featured once, towards the beginning of License to Drive, in the scene in which Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham) talks to Les for the first time and winds up (sort of) asking him out on a date. In the movie’s DVD commentary, writer Neil Tolkin states that he often drives his kids by the house “to tell them how great things were at one point.” I am unsure of what he means by that exactly, but I absolutely love that he takes his children to stalk the place on a regular basis.

Sadly, the dwelling is a lot less visible from the road now than it was when the movie was filmed. As you can see below, while a tall wall currently surrounds the property, at the time that License to Drive was shot, there was only a small hedge lining the perimeter. Boo!

And while the circular driveway used to be open to the street, it is now secured by a gate at both ends. Again, boo!

You can still catch a small glimpse of the roofline, though, so at least there’s that.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the house was also used in the production. According to the DVD commentary, the party scene actually had to be re-shot at one point because Fox executives thought the extras used in the initial filming looked too old to be high school students.

In real life, the residence, which was built in 1937, boasts seven bedrooms, ten baths, 8,532 square feet of living space, and a 0.95-acre corner plot of land. It last sold in June 1994 for $2,750,000 and, according to the BlockShopper website, once belonged to prolific film and television producer David L. Wolper.

As you can see in the below aerial views, the place is absolutely massive!

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 finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The License to Drive party house is located at 340 North Faring Road in Bel-Air.

January 10, 2014
The “License to Drive” Hospital

A couple of weeks ago, the Grim Cheaper and I headed to L.A. for a brief visit and just happened to book a hotel on the west side of town for our stay. The location turned out to be quite fortuitous, too, as it allowed me to stalk a few nearby spots that had been on my To-Stalk list for ages – one of which was Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, the Westwood synagogue that masqueraded as the hospital where Mrs. Anderson (Carol Kane) gave birth in 1988’s License to Drive, one of my all-time favorite movies.

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The Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, which was modeled after the prayer houses in Old Spain, was dedicated on September 5th, 1981. Sephardic Jews originally hailed from Spain (Sepharad means “Spain” in Hebrew), but were expelled from the country in 1492. Many wound up in America, by way of Turkey, but kept their Spanish roots. In 1987, Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia attended services at the Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, or The Sephardic Temple as it is also known. Of the event, Spain’s then consul general in Los Angeles Pedro Tamboury said, “As we are now approaching the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, we are also going to commemorate this historic event because we want to make what we call the reencuentro with the Jews from Spain, who were expelled in 1492 but left behind a tremendous heritage of culture and traditions.”

Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel only showed up once in License to Drive, towards the end of the movie, in the scene in which non-licensed driver Les Anderson (Corey Haim) drove (backwards, I might add) his pregnant mom, Mrs. Anderson – as well as his father, Mr. Anderson (Richard Masur), and brother, Rudy (Christopher Burton) – to Elmdale Memorial Hospital after she went into labor. I found this locale thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, who has an entire page dedicated to License to Drive on his site.

While fake “Elmdale Memorial Hospital” signage was added for the shoot and the exterior hand railings have since been changed, the structure is still very recognizable from its onscreen appearance 26 years ago. (How in the heck has it been 26 years since License to Drive premiered?!?!)

The area used for the scene was not actually the front of the synagogue, but its north side entrance on Warner Avenue.

According to License to Drive’s DVD commentary with director Greg Beeman and writer Neil Tolkin, the original ending of the movie was to have taken place at the hospital. As it was originally shot, the final scene showed Grandpa Anderson’s (Parley Baer) beloved Cadillac being crushed by a large construction beam . . .

. . . and then a freeze frame of Les and Mr. Anderson’s shocked faces. Test audiences found it too much of a downer, though, so some additional footage was shot and tacked onto the original ending.

And thank God it was, because the new ending – in which Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham) pulls up to Les’ house, causing him to utter his famous line, “I don’t need the BMW anymore – I already have a Mercedes.” (Cue Billy Ocean’s hit song “Get Outta my Dreams, Get Into My Car.”) – was not only my favorite part of the entire movie, but it quite considerably affected my life. I was only 11 years old at the time and a far cry from getting my driver’s license, but when I laid eyes on Mercedes white Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible, I was a goner. I knew there was no other car I wanted when I turned 16. And on my 16th birthday, my parents surprised me with one. I’ve actually owned three over the years (two Cabriolets and one Cabrio) and if VW currently made them, I would probably still be driving one to this day. Best. Car. Ever.

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: Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, aka Elmdale Memorial Hospital from License to Drive, is located at 10500 Wilshire Blvd in Westwood. The northern side of the synagogue, on Warner Avenue, was the area that appeared in the movie. You can visit the temple’s official website here.

January 9, 2014
Colony 29 from “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”

After watching the Season 4 episodes of fave show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills titled “Palm Spring Breakers” and “Escape to Bitch Mountain,” I became just a wee-bit obsessed with tracking down Colony 29, the sprawling enclave where the Housewives stayed during their brief desert visit. Fortunately, it wasn’t a tough find thanks to the Greater Palm Springs website which listed the address. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there on our way home from L.A. two weekends ago. (On a Bravo TV side note – the GC and I are now completely hooked on Vanderpump Rules. It is hands down THE BEST reality show since The Hills. I love, love, LOVE Stassi and have informed the GC that all I want for my birthday in June is dinner at Sur and a picture with Ms. Schroeder. He better be making reservations far in advance. )

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Colony 29 was designed by Pasadena resident John Burnham, who built the property’s 4,500-square-foot main dwelling as his winter retreat in 1929 (hence the name). He later added a two-bedroom guest home and three smaller bungalows to the site between 1929 and 1937 to be used as retreats for his many visiting artist friends such as Maynard Dixon, Carl Eytel, John W. Hilton, Victor Clyde Forsyth, Jimmy Swinterton, Nicolai Fechin and Alson S. Clark. The place soon became a haven for artists and, according to Forbes magazine, was Palm Springs first gated community.

Sometime during the 1950s, Burnham sold the main house and two of the bungalows to Francis Crocker, the electrical engineer who conceived the oft-filmed-at Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. The Crocker family held onto the three dwellings until 1997 at which point they were purchased by a builder named Dave Johnston and his wife, Trudy. Dave and Trudy later purchased the guest home, third bungalow and remainder of the land that originally belonged to the property and, in 2002, moved into the main house with their three children. By that point, most of the site had fallen into a state of disrepair and the family spent the next ten years and millions of dollars restoring it. The landscaping alone cost $1 million to execute! The project was completed in 2012 and, while the original intention was to turn the place into a bed and breakfast, today, Colony 29 serves as a vacation rental and special events venue.

Today, Colony 29 boasts over 10,000 square feet of space, 6.5 acres of lands, thirteen bedrooms, two pools, three spas, six kitchens, an adult-sized tree house (love it!), a meditation garden, an outdoor massage area, an outdoor kitchen, covered patios, open-air showers, a fire pit terrace, a natural stream, a pond, a built-in stage, parking for 85 cars, two large outdoor event spaces, six outdoor “fire elements” and a grotto.

In the “Palm Spring Breakers” and “Escape to Bitch Mountain” episodes of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, new Housewife Jacqueline, ahem, Joyce Giraud de Ohoven (whom I canNOT stand, by the way) invites fellow cast members Lisa Vanderpump, Kyle Richards, Kim Richards, Yolanda Foster, Carlton Gebbia (whom I also canNOT stand) and my girl Brandi Glanville to the desert for a “relaxing” two-night getaway.

The trip does not turn out to be very relaxing for anyone, though (obvs), despite the idyllic setting. For some inexplicable reason, the episode was shot in June, when temperatures in Palm Springs average about 105 degrees, which I’m sure only added to the tension.

The real life interior of the estate was also shown in the episodes.

Besides the Housewives, interior designer Nate Berkus and actress Diane Keaton have also visited the property, and the Canadian reality show Operation Double did some filming there in 2012.

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: Colony 29, from the “Palm Spring Breakers” and “Escape to Bitch Mountain” episodes of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, is located at 147 South Tahquitz Drive in Palm Springs’ Historic Tennis Club neighborhood. You can visit the property’s official website here.

January 8, 2014
Regency Inn & Suites from “Mad Men”

On my many trips back and forth from Palm Springs to L.A., I often pass by a red-roofed, A-frame Regency Inn & Suites situated alongside the Interstate 10 freeway. I knew from doing research for my post about Rod’s Grill in Arcadia that the Regency Inn & Suites in Baldwin Park was used as the exterior of the supposed Plattsburg, New York Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in the Season 5 episode of Mad Men titled “Far Away Places.” And while the motel near the 10 was pretty much an identical match to the motel I had seen in the episode, because I am so horrifically bad with direction, I was unsure if the two were one and the same. In fact, at the time I had no idea where in the heck Baldwin Park actually was. Then, two weekends ago, while the Grim Cheaper and I were making the trek from L.A. back to the desert, I once again spotted the lodging and immediately pulled out my trusty iPhone to see if it was the one that had appeared in Mad Men. Sure enough, it was, so I had the GC head right on over there so that I could finally do some stalking of the place. (As it turns out, Baldwin Park is located in between El Monte and West Covina.)

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According to the Highway Host website, the 69-room Regency Inn & Suites was originally constructed in the fall of 1967 as a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge. It continued to operate as an HoJo until 1995. Thankfully, aside from the name, little else has been changed since the place’s early days, as you can see in this 1960 image as compared to the photographs below.

Even the vintage Howard Johnson “Motor Lodge” signage is still located onsite. LOVE IT!

I originally found this location thanks to a Zap2it post that chronicled the October 2011 Mad Men shoot.

In the “Far Away Places” episode, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and his new wife, Megan Draper (Jessica Pare), head to upstate New York for the weekend in order to meet with clients from the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge company about a new advertising campaign. While eating at the Howard Johnson restaurant (the interior of which was actually Rod’s Grill in Arcadia, which I blogged about here), the couple gets into a huge fight and Don storms outside to the parking lot. He winds up abandoning Megan by driving off, but has a change of heart a few minutes later. When he returns for her, though, Megan is nowhere to be found and Don spends the rest of the day and night searching for her.

The area used in the episode was the motel’s east entrance, which I could not get a good photograph of due to the positioning of the sun.

At one point in “Far Away Places,” Don is informed by the management that the Howard Johnson pool is off limits due to the fact that a non-potty-trained child had an “accident” in it. Taking advantage of the plug, shortly after the episode aired the Howard Johnson chain offered a free one-night stay at one of eight locations to anyone legally bearing the name Don Draper. The promotion featured a letter written by Brand Sr. Vice President Rui Barros and stated, “Dear Mr. Draper, It has recently come to my attention through the general manager at our Plattsburg Howard Johnson that there may have been an issue with the pool during your recent stay. At Howard Johnson hotels, our owners strive to give each and every guest a great stay, one that creates the same happy-filled memories that the brand’s legacy is built upon. Unfortunately, sometimes things happen that are beyond our control. That’s why, on behalf of the brand, I would like to offer you an apology and welcome you back for another stay, this time on us.” How incredibly cool is that?

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: Regency Inn & Suites, from the “Far Away Places” episode of Mad Men, is located at 14624 Dalewood Street in Baldwin Park.

January 7, 2014
The Possible Interior of O’Hara’s Pub from “Bad Santa”

As I mentioned in last Tuesday’s post, thanks to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, I am fairly certain that I have managed to find the bar that was used as the interior of O’Hara’s Pub in the 2003 comedy Bad Santa. When Owen heard about my quest to track down the location a couple of weeks ago, he contacted a few of the movie’s crew members in the hopes that they could provide some assistance. One did, informing him that the interior was a bar on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica “near the beach.” Once I heard that, my thoughts immediately went to Scarboni New York Lobster & Steak House – a now defunct restaurant formerly located at 312 Wilshire that I had visited for a brief moment a few years prior. Sadly, the place has since been completely remodeled, which is why I cannot be certain that it was the spot used in Bad Santa. I still ran right out to stalk it, though, while the GC and I were in L.A. two weekends ago.

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The structure that once housed Scarboni was designed by legendary architect Paul Revere Williams in 1928. The two-story, Spanish Colonial Revival-style edifice, which features Plateresque detailing and is known as the Edwin Building, was constructed by the H.W. Baum Company at a cost of $100,000. At the time of its inception, it housed three lower-level retail storefronts (which have since been combined into one large space) and eleven upstairs offices. In 2008, the Edwin Building was declared a Santa Monica Historic Landmark, protecting the exterior from any future alteration. The interior, though, boasts no such protection, unfortunately.

In the ’80s, the first floor of the Baldwin Building was occupied by a restaurant named the Darwin. It closed in 1988 and was subsequently taken over in 1992 by new owners, who established Italian eatery Pentola Taverna at the site. (While The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations states that the building’s lower level housed a restaurant named Vesuvio’s Ristorante in the early ’90s, I believe that information is incorrect. I am fairly certain that from 1988 through 1992 the space remained vacant.) Little of the interior was changed upon Pentola’s opening because, as Taverna owner Blaine Ivy stated of the Darwin, “They cut down half the rain forest for the wood in that place, so that will remain largely intact. We just want to lighten it up.” LOL A March 1993 Los Angeles Times article described Taverna as such: Part trendy pasta joint and part classic chop house, Pentola looks like a remake of the wood-paneled restaurants of the ’40s–a ’90s version of Musso and Frank or Chicago’s bustling Berghoff. According to that same article, the property boasted two bars – “the main one seemingly a mile long, the other tucked into a corner of the restaurant. Both are ornate, old-fashioned and crammed on a Saturday night.” It is the main, seemingly-mile-long bar that I believe was featured in Bad Santa. You can see a photograph of Pentola’s interior here. Sadly, the main bar is not shown in the image, though – nor anywhere else online, maddeningly enough. It is due to that fact that I cannot say for certain that the property was where Bad Santa was filmed.

Sometime in 2006, after Pentola Taverna closed its doors, Scarboni New York Steak & Lobster House opened in its place. The new tenants remodeled the site a bit and Chowhound commenter robertholtz had this to say, “The booths are a little tight and the decor has yet to be broken in. This style needs the grit of time to earn its charm; right now it sometimes feels like you’re on a movie set instead of a real location. Ironic, considering that was how Pentola was often used.” Love it! You can see some photographs of the old Scarboni interior here. Once again, the main bar is, unfortunately, not shown. The Grim Cheaper and I actually ventured into Scarboni back in 2006 to grab a drink, but he took one look at the prices and nixed the idea. Sadly, because of the way the restaurant was set up, I only caught a glimpse of the smaller bar – not the bar that I believe was used in Bad Santa.

Scarboni was shuttered after a scant 11 months and when new tenants took over, they gutted the interior to make room for a restaurant named Riva. Along with the complete dismantling, the space was also made smaller in order to add a second, rear dining room. Riva didn’t last long, either, though (I swear, the space is cursed), and shortly after its closing, the Riva owners opened a place named Fraiche at the site. Fraiche subsequently closed in December 2012 and the site has remained vacant ever since. The current state of the interior is pictured below. As you can see, it is a sad shadow of its former self. You can check out some photographs of Fraiche’s interior from the time that it was still in operation here.

In Bad Santa, I believe that Pentola Taverna was the bar where Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) lamented over his hatred for Christmas. And I should mention here that I was not a fan of Bad Santa – not even remotely. I was a fan of that gorgeous wood-paneled bar, though, and so badly wanted to see it in person. I cannot express how heartbroken I am that it is now gone. Why on earth would someone gut such a gorgeous interior? Who purchases something like that and thinks, yeah, let’s get rid of it and start fresh?

As luck would have it, the GC and I randomly decided to watch the 2000 flick Coyote Ugly a couple of nights before Christmas and I just about fell over when I spotted what I am fairly certain was the Bad Santa bar in the scene in which Lil (Maria Bello) tried to offer Violet (Piper Perabo) her old job back. The white tile flooring and slatted wooden chairs at the Coyote Ugly bar match up to those of the bar from Bad Santa.

As do the cabinets and drawers behind the bar;

as well as the antique cash register, wooden beams flanking it, and mirrored shelving.

At the time that we watched Coyote Ugly, I was not at all certain that Pentola Taverna was the spot used in Bad Santa, so I was floored when I spotted a backwards view of a restaurant name in the window of the Coyote Ugly bar. Using Picasa, I flipped one of the screen captures I had made and, sure enough, the loopily-written “P” visible in the window was a perfect match to the “P” in Pentola Taverna’s former logo. Woot woot! (I got the below photograph of the Taverna exterior from the Edwin Building’s City Landmark Assessment Report.)

Thanks to a commenter named Stewart on the Santa Monica Mirror website, I learned that the Pentola Taverna space (while it was vacant, I’m assuming) was where Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) told Capt. Jack Ross (Kevin Bacon) that he had managed to find Lt. Col. Matthew Andrew Markinson (J.T. Walsh) in the 1992 flick A Few Good Men (one of my all-time favorites). The main bar is visible in the scene, but too little of it is shown to be able to say with complete certainty that it is the same bar from Bad Santa.

Pentola Taverna was also featured in the opening scene of 1995’s Get Shorty, in which Ray ‘Bones’ Barboni (Dennis Farina) stole Chili Palmer’s (John Travolta) $379 black leather jacket. The western portion of the restaurant, where the smaller bar was located, was the main area used in the scene.

At one point, Chili does wander over to the eatery’s eastern side and a limited view of the main bar is shown. Unfortunately, yet again, not enough of it is visible to be able to determine with 100% certainty that it was the same spot that appeared in Bad Santa. If anyone out there ever visited the Darwin, Pentola Taverna or Scarboni and can give me a definite answer either way, please let me know.

The Art Deco-style buildings across the street from the Pentola Taverna space were also shown in the scene.

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 interior of the Bad Santa bar was most likely the now defunct Pentola Taverna, which was formerly located at 312 Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. The space is currently vacant, but most recently housed a restaurant named Fraiche.

January 6, 2014
Abbot’s Habit from “The Truth About Cats & Dog”

Last Saturday, after stalking the Venice exterior of O’Hara’s Pub from Bad Santa (which I blogged about here), the Grim Cheaper and I decided to walk around Abbot Kinney Boulevard for a bit. At one point during our stroll, we passed by a corner coffee shop named Abbot’s Habit and I recognized it immediately as a location from the 1996 romantic comedy The Truth About Cats & Dogs. So I dragged the GC right on over to do some stalking of it. And that right there is what I love about L.A. – you never know what adventure is waiting around the corner. It turned out to be quite a fortuitous stalk, too, because it led to me meeting my very favorite blogger and style icon, Emily Schuman from Cupcakes and Cashmere. But more on that later.

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Abbot’s Habit, which was founded in 1991, is actually Abbot Kinney Boulevard’s oldest coffee shop. Aside from that small tidbit, though, I could find no information whatsoever about the eatery’s history online.

I already had a Starbucks in hand (duh!) at the time that we stalked Abbot’s Habit, but the GC did not, so I encouraged him to try some of the place’s java. He didn’t end up to be a fan, but he did really enjoy their “bacon, egg & cheese” breakfast sandwich.

While the GC was eating his sandwich, I happened to check Instagram and almost had a heart attack when I saw that Emily Schuman had just posted a photograph of herself dining at Gjelina. I had heard of Gjelina before via Emily’s site and from my mom’s hairstylist in Palm Springs who had told me a few months prior that the place was his favorite restaurant in all of L.A. And while I knew that the establishment was located on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, I was unsure of exactly where. So imagine my elation when I saw that it was about three doors down from Abbot’s Habit! I mean what are the odds? Barely containing my excitement, I grabbed the GC and marched right on over there to ask Emily for a picture. And I am thrilled to report that she could NOT have been nicer, even though I was interrupting her during a meal. She didn’t even seem at all put off by the fact that I had totally Instagram-stalked her. Emily is an absolute doll and meeting her was one of the highlights of 2013 for me – particularly when she told me she “loved” my “ensemble.” The GC had been making fun of my outfit all day (especially the boots), so to hear my style guru compliment it was major validation.

In The Truth About Cats & Dogs, Abbot’s Habit is where Noelle (Uma Thurman) and Abby (Janeane Garofalo) grab coffee shortly after becoming friends. While there, a fellow patron very humorously tries to protect Noelle from a bee that has flown into the café.

That scene took place in front of the window in Abbot’s Habit’s main room.

The café was also the site of Becca Moody’s (Madeleine Martin) poetry reading in the Season 6 episode of Californication titled “Hell Bent for Leather.” Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of Abbot’s Habit were shown in the episode.

Becca’s poetry reading took place towards the back of the café’s rear room.

And while the Venice California History Site states that Abbot’s Habit was featured in the 1997 comedy Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, I scanned through the flick yesterday and did not see it 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: Abbot’s Habit, from The Truth About Cats & Dogs, is located at 1401 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

January 3, 2014
Happy New Year!

I would like to wish my fellow stalkers a very happy New Year! I hope you are all enjoying the holiday with loved ones and several glasses of bubbly!

January 1, 2014
O’Hara’s Pub from “Bad Santa”

I realize that Christmas has passed, but I have one more holiday locale to write about before bidding adieu to the Yuletide season. Two Fridays ago, after reading my post on Footsies bar from Bad Santa, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, miraculously managed to track down the exterior of O’Hara’s Pub from the 2003 comedy. Being that I had been trying to find that darn bar for what seemed like eons, I could NOT have been more excited to learn the news. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it while the two of us were in Los Angeles this past weekend. (And yes, I do realize that my outfit in the above photograph is slightly ridiculous, being that the weather was a sunny 75 degrees at the time. I had been dying for a pair of red Hunter rain boots for ages, though, and finally received them from the GC this Christmas. I don’t care that I live in the desert where it never rains, I am in love with the boots and am determined to wear them as often as possible – rain or shine. So !)

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During his search for the Bad Santa bar, Owen managed to contact a couple of the flick’s crew members, one of whom told him, “The exterior front was a built and dressed empty storefront in Venice.” With that information in hand, Owen did a Google image search for “Venice California store,” as he said, “hoping that by some minor miracle I’d recognize a building.” Thankfully, fate took hold. He went on to say, “Well, a minor miracle occurred. In the fifth row of images, I saw this picture. It was brick and had that white brick trim, so I opened the page and learned it was an antique store on Abbot Kinney. I figured perhaps the building you were after, because it shared similar elements, would be nearby. I went to Google Maps, put in ‘Abbot Kinney Blvd., Los Angeles’ and — GET THIS! — I grabbed the little yellow/orange ‘street view’ man and the very first place I dropped him on Abbot Kinney was literally right in front of the bar. And the camera was even facing the right way. Talk about luck! It must be a Christmas miracle.” Not only was it a Christmas miracle, but it was one of the best gifts I received this year! Thank you, Owen!

As the crew member had mentioned, the storefront was dressed heavily for the shoot, with an “O’Hara’s Pub” neon sign added to the exterior and a fake green façade constructed over the space’s windows and doors. Even with the changes, though, the place is still very recognizable.

I accidentally took my photos from a slightly wrong angle, so the street light in front of the bar exterior appears to be a bit farther east than it did in Bad Santa. If you take a look at Google Street View, though, you can see a correctly-angled view of the space.

Today, the O’Hara’s Pub storefront houses a clothing boutique named Heist. As the crew member told Owen, the space was vacant at the time that Bad Santa was filmed in 2003.

As I mentioned in my Footsies bar post, I am also dying to locate the interior of O’Hara’s Pub. I may have found it, too, but I need to do some more research to be sure, so stay tuned!

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 finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Heist boutique, aka the exterior of O’Hara’s Pub from Bad Santa, is located at 1100 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice.

December 31, 2013
Alvarado Street School from “Beverly Hills, 90210”

For my final holiday post of 2013, I thought I would blog about a locale from my favorite television series of all time, Beverly Hills, 90210. Last September, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to Culver City to stalk Playa del Rey Elementary School, which masqueraded as Alvarado Street School, where Brenda Walsh (my girl Shannen Doherty), Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth), Dylan McKay (Luke Perry), and the rest of the West Beverly gang handed out gifts to needy children in the Season 3 Yuletide-themed episode “It’s a Totally Happening Life.” Because I do not own the series’ third season on DVD, though, and because the episodes are maddeningly not available to stream on iTunes, Netflix or Amazon, I was not able to blog about the site last Christmas. So this year, I enlisted my good friend Mike, from MovieShotsLA, to provide me with a recap and screen captures so that I could finally do so. Thank you, Mike!

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In real life, Playa del Rey Elementary School, which is known as the “Jewel of the Westside,” is an SAS (School for Advanced Studies) establishment for gifted and high-achieving students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Besides traditional courses, such subjects as theatre arts, dance and choral music are also offered.

Playa del Rey Elementary School was featured prominently in “It’s a Totally Happening Life,” in which, in an homage to the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life, two guardian angels, Clarence and Miriam, watch over the 90210 gang. And, in what turns out to be a Christmas miracle, the angels even manage to save the group from a fatal bus accident at the end of the show.

In the episode, Brenda and Kelly give Dylan an ultimatum, telling him that he must choose between the two of them by New Year’s Day. (He makes the wrong choice, incidentally, and the show never recovered, at least in my never-to-be humble opinion. I’ve shared my thoughts about the Dylan-Kelly-Brenda love triangle ad nauseam over the years, though, so I will spare y’all from digressing further. )

While the school still does look very similar to how it appeared when filming took place back in 1992 (has it seriously been 21 years?!?), sadly the area that was featured in the episode is now covered over with blue-paneled fencing and is no longer visible from the street. Ironically enough, that is the only portion of the school’s fencing that is covered in such a manner. The paneling must have been installed to ward off the many stalkers who drop by.

You can see areas of the school that were not featured on Beverly Hills, 90210, but are visible from the street in the photographs below.

Sadly, the gate that the gang walked through in “It’s a Totally Happening Life” has also since been removed. It was formerly located at the front of Playa del Rey Elementary, just east of the main entrance, in the area where Santa is standing in the photograph below. Oh, how I wanted to pose for a photograph next to that gate!

I will be taking the rest of the week (and possibly next Monday) off from blogging in order to celebrate Christmas with my family and for a quick trip to L.A. I hope all of my fellow stalkers have a fabulous holiday!

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 making the screen captures that appear in this post.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Playa del Rey Elementary School, aka Alvarado Street School from the “It’s a Totally Happening Life” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, is located at 12221 Juniette Street in Culver City. The southeast corner of the school, near the intersection of Juniette and Randall Streets, was the area that appeared in the episode.

December 24, 2013
Downey Studios from “Christmas with the Kranks”

Back in early 2011, while doing some research on filming locations from Christmas with the Kranks, I just about fell off my chair when I discovered – thanks to Google Street View – that the backlot residential street at Downey Studios, which served as the main neighborhood in the 2004 comedy, was visible from the road. And while I ran right out to stalk it shortly thereafter, for whatever reason, when the holidays rolled around that year and the following year, I somehow forgot to blog about the place. Sadly, the entire studio was leveled in late 2012, so while this post is now somewhat obsolete, I figured the site was still blog-worthy. There’s no time like the present, right?

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Before it became home to Downey Studios, the 160-acre site located on the corner of North Lakewood Boulevard and Imperial Highway was home to an aircraft manufacturing facility that produced Apollo modules and space shuttle fleets for NASA for almost 40 years. When Boeing shut the plant down in 1999, the property was purchased by the city of Downey. An 80-acre portion of it was subsequently turned into Downey Studios, one of the largest production facilities in the United States, complete with two soundstages, the biggest indoor water tank in North America, a lake the size of a football field and over 360,000 square feet of production space.

In late 2003, Christmas and the Kranks director Joe Roth and production designer Garreth Stover started scouting neighborhoods for their upcoming Chicago-set holiday-themed movie. They didn’t have much luck, though, so they did what any Hollywood executives with deep pockets would do – they built their own, in an empty portion of Downey Studios. The Coming Soon website states, “Stover actually scouted 15 neighborhoods in the Chicago area and decided on Winnetka. The problem was that shooting for 10-12 weeks in the spring, they’d have to kick families out of their homes for the Easter/Passover holiday season. They would have to defoliate all the trees to make them look like winter. The sight lines wouldn’t match. In the plot, certain neighbors would have to witness certain events, and the actual layout of the Winnetka street made that impossible. But most importantly, they could never control the snow they would have to for the film’s snowstorm climax. So, Stover built a model and pitched director Joe Roth the idea of building Hemlock Street in Los Angeles.” $5 million and 12 weeks later, Downey Studios’ residential street was born. You can read a fabulous Variety article about the construction here.

The street consisted of 16 houses, four of which were practical (meaning that the interiors could also be used for filming), and 11 facades.

When Christmas with the Kranks wrapped, the street was left intact for future productions to utilize, with Joe Roth receiving a portion of the rental revenue. Sadly though, due to runaway production and numerous health complaints, Downey Studios began to lose money and was eventually closed and then razed in 2012. A 77-acre shopping center named Tierra Luna Marketplace is currently being constructed on the vacant land.

You can see an aerial view of Downey Studios’ residential street via Google Maps below. When it was still standing, Congressman Steve Horn Way and Bellflower Boulevard provided a fabulous view of the place. It is absolutely heartbreaking to me that it is no longer there.

The street was (obviously) used extensively in Christmas with the Kranks.

Especially the two-story clapboard and stone residence where the Krank family – Luther (Tim Allen), Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Blair (Julie Gonzalo) – lived.

The Krank house was one of the street’s practical sets in which interior filming took place.

The very same residence was used four years later as Angie Anderson’s (Amber Heard) home in Pineapple Express (bottom screen shot below). A porch was added to the exterior of the dwelling for the filming, but as you can see below, the bay window, stone work and windows that flank the front door match the Krank abode (top screen capture below).

The Krank’s kitchen (top) also matches Angie’s kitchen in Pineapple Express (bottom);

as does the Krank’s study (top) and Angie’s dining room (bottom);

and the Krank’s entryway (top) and Angie’s entryway (bottom).

In 2005, one of the Downey Studios residential street homes was used as the Lawrence, Kansas-area childhood home of Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) in the pilot episode of Supernatural.

The street also popped up at the very end of the Jonas Brothers music video for their 2009 song “Paranoid.”

You can watch that video 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.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The now defunct Downey Studios, from Christmas with the Kranks, was formerly located at 12214 Lakewood Boulevard in Downey.

December 23, 2013