Tag: Celebrities

Riley’s House from “The Client List”

As I have mentioned many times before on this site, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, is the biggest Jennifer Love Hewitt fan this side of the Atlantic. So when the actress’ new show, The Client List, premiered in April, he, of course, immediately set about searching for locations from it. He managed to track down quite a few of them, too, including “The Rub” massage parlor (which, ironically enough, has a significant Beverly Hills, 90210-connection, but I’ll save that information for a future post) and the supposed Beaumont, Texas-area home where JLH’s character, Riley Parks, lives with her two children, Travis Parks (Tyler Champagne – um, LOVE that last name!) and Katie Parks (Cassidy Guetersloh). So while out doing some stalking with Mike, from MovieShotsLA, a few weeks back, the two of us dropped by to stalk the abode.

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Riley’s one-story, ranch-style house appears regularly each week on The Client List. Quite a few areas of the home are featured on the series, including the front exterior . . .

. . . and the backyard.

If I had to guess, I would say that the real life interior of the home was used in the pilot episode of the series, which was titled “The Rub of Sugarland”, and was then recreated on a soundstage for the episodes that followed. Unfortunately though, I could not find any interior shots of the property with which to verify that hunch.

I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Riley’s kitchen, by the way. Drool!

In real life, the abode, which was built in 1946, boasts two bedrooms, two baths, 1,836 square feet, and 0.36 acres of land. And, as you can see below, it looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it does onscreen – minus the Parks family’s white mailbox, which was just a prop brought in for the filming.

We happened to meet a super-nice neighbor while we were stalking the place and he told us that the white fence in the home’s front yard was installed specifically for the show to make the property appear more “Texas-like”. The owners ended up liking it, though, and decided to leave it up after filming for the season had been completed.

Before doing research for today’s post, I had no idea that The Client List was based upon a true story about an actual mom named Crystal Burchett and an actual prostitution scandal that rocked the small town of Odessa, Texas. In January 2005, Texas Monthly magazine published an expose on the scandal titled “She Had Brains, a Body, and the Ability To Make Men Love Her”, which Jennifer Love Hewitt’s production company, Fedora Films, later purchased the rights to. The article was then turned into the hit Lifetime Television Movie The Client List, which premiered in July 2010. A little over a year later, Lifetime greenlit a television series based upon that movie and the rest, as they say, is history. I highly recommend checking out the Texas Monthly article as it is an absolutely fascinating read! I tried to dig up some photographs of Crystal Burchett, whom Jennifer Love’s character is based upon, but I could not find any anywhere. And while the article describes the former homecoming-queen-turned-prostitute as not a “run-of-the-mill whore” (LOL) and having a “bubbly personality” and “girlish looks that made her irresistible” (which could very well be a description of JLH), I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the real life Crystal was nowhere near as good-looking.

I have to admit that I actually really like The Client List. It is a sweet show and Colin Egglesfield is not hard to look at, either. I do have to say, though, that JLH’s eyelashes in the series are completely distracting! She looks like she could take flight with those things! Ridic!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to take a look at my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Riley’s house from The Client List is located at 6619 Peach Avenue in Van Nuys.

July 16, 2012
Clark Magnet High School from “Our House”

Back in March, a fellow stalker named Bill contacted me to ask for some help in tracking down the high school that Kris Witherspoon (my girl Shannen Doherty) attended in the 1986 television series Our House. In his email, Bill included the links to several episodes of the series on YouTube (because it is maddeningly not yet available on DVD!), but the large brick structure did not look at all familiar to me. So I called up Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and asked if he happened to know of any large brick schools in the L.A.-area off the top of his head. He, of course, did and mentioned three of them that he thought I should check out – Grant High School in Van Nuys, Taft High School in Woodland Hills and Clark Magnet High School in La Crescenta. As luck would have it, Clark Magnet was the right one! That right there is why I love Mike – I can give him the vaguest of descriptions and, right off the bat, he knows the exact place I am talking about! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there a few days later.

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Sadly though, Clark Magnet High School – like most schools in L.A. – is gated and, aside from the front entrance, not very accessible to the public. So I called on Mike – who is now a location manager – once again, and suggested that he scout Clark the next time he was in need of a high school location – and that he should also bring me along. Which he did just a few weeks later. Yay!

Clark Magnet High School, which was named in honor of humanitarian Anderson W. Clark, was originally founded in 1961 as a middle school, serving kids in the 7th through 9th grades. In 1983, suffering from low enrollment, the property’s doors were forced to close. Thankfully though, the structure was not torn down, but instead became a community center, a teacher resource and training station and an office for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And it was also used for filming. Due to the fact that Clark was no longer a functioning school and therefore easy to film at, and had a desirable All-American look, the place became an obvious choice for location scouts. But more on that later. In 1996, a task force decided to re-open Clark, this time as a high school, to alleviate nearby overcrowding and the property subsequently underwent a 13-month, $15 million renovation and modernization project. The site was re-founded in the fall of 1998 as a magnet school with focuses on science and technology and is currently the most technologically advanced school in the entire Glendale Unified School District. In a very odd side-note – Clark has a “twin” – a virtually identical carbon copy – named Rosemont Middle School that is located about ten blocks east. Both properties were built at the same time and, in order to be cost efficient, were designed in the exact same image. So incredibly weird!

In Our House, Clark Magnet High School stood in for James Polk High School, which Kris attended and where her mother, Jessica ‘Jessie’ Witherspoon (Deidre Hall), taught for a time. The school can best be seen in the Season 1 episode titled “First Impressions”. As you will notice below, during the renovation, Clark’s windows were, unfortunately, changed and no longer look as they did in the series. Blah!

In the “First Impressions” episode, Kris and her friend are shown walking through Clark’s humongous interior quad and then sitting on a set of cement bleachers. It was those bleachers that I most wanted to see while we were there. And thankfully, unlike the windows, they still look pretty much exactly the same as they did onscreen.

And I, of course, just had to sit in the area where Shannen was sitting in the episode.

Clark Magnet High School was also the school attended by despondent teenager Lane Meyer (John Cusack) in the 1985 flick Better Off Dead. (My second photograph below does not exactly match the posted screen shot, but it is of the general area. I am going to re-stalk the school soon so that I can get an exact pic.)

In 2003’s Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, Clark Magnet was the school attended by Sam Finney (Scott Terra) and Sally Finney (Jenna Boyd).

The school’s gym, which we did not get to see, appeared in the movie’s pep squad tryout scene. You can see a real life photograph of the Clark gym here.

And thanks to this 1987 Los Angeles Times article, I learned that the movie Return to Horror High was also filmed at Clark.

Randomly enough, a very young George Clooney had a starring role in Return to Horror High.

As did Maureen McCormick, aka Marcia Brady.

According to IMDB, the 1986 flick Dangerously Close was also filmed at Clark Magnet High School, but I could not find a copy of the movie with which to verify that.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to take a look at my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location and taking me to stalk it!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Clark Magnet High School from Our House is located at 4747 New York Avenue in La Crescenta. You can visit the school’s official website here. Clark’s twin, Rosemont Middle School, is located at 4725 Rosemont Avenue in La Crescenta. You can visit that school’s official website here.

July 13, 2012
Johnson Lake in Pasadena from “Celebrity Rehab”

A couple of weeks ago, while trying to track down the lake house belonging to Donna Meagle (Retta) in the Season 4 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Sweet Sixteen”, I discovered that there was a lake in Pasadena and just about fell right off my chair! Having lived in the area – as a stalker, mind you! – for well over a decade now, I consider myself a virtual expert on Pasadena and its environs, so how in the world had I not previously known that there was a lake – like an actual lake! – within the city limits? Well, believe you me, I immediately added the place to my To-Stalk list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there.

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There seems to be quite a bit of discrepancy online about the origins of Johnson Lake, which was formerly known as Mirror Lake and is also sometimes referred to as Johnson’s Lake, Johnston Lake and Beaudry Lake. According to the book Images of America: Garvanza by Charles J. Fisher, the lake is a natural one that was originally located on land belonging to Prudent Beaudry, the thirteenth Mayor of Los Angeles. At the time, the property was part of an area called Garvanza, but it was later integrated into Pasadena. Some other online reports stipulate that the lake was initially part of a natural spring that was dammed to provide irrigation to the 2,200-acre San Rafael Ranch, which was then owned by the Campbell-Johnsons, the very same family who built the oft-filmed-at Church of the Angels. And then there are further reports still which state that the site was first developed by the Annandale Golf Club and/or the San Rafael Winery in the late 1890s. (You can see a picture of the lake taken during that time period on the Pasadena Adjacent website here.) Whatever the case may be, at some point the lake became part of Brookmere, a private gated community comprised of about twenty homes. The Brookmere gates are pictured below.

Because Johnson Lake is located inside of a gated community, I scoped the place out online before heading over there to make sure that it was viewable from the road. And, as you can see below, it is clearly visible via Google Street View. So I was absolutely shocked when we arrived and the lake was nowhere to be found! As the GC later explained, the Google Street View camera is elevated and therefore had a view above the large hedges which surrounded the Brookmere community. Man, I have got to get me one of those!

Have no fear, though – the GC was able to snap some pics of it by holding the camera up over his head. So while we never actually got to lay eyes on the lake ourselves, our camera got a nice view of it and, as you can see below, it is pretty darn amazing.

You can also catch a very small glimpse of the lake through Brookmere’s front gates.

Oddly enough, the house that seems to have the most lakefront land is not located inside of Brookmere at all, but is on La Loma Road, a public street, just a few blocks west of the Beaches mansion (which I blogged about here). The 5,100-square-foot Craftsman-style home, which was designed by area architect Doug Ewing in 2006, boasts four bedrooms, five baths, a .59-acre plot of land, a whopping seven patios, and a 20-foot boat dock! You can see some interior photographs of the place here and here. Have a bib handy to catch the drool, though, because the place is nothing short of breathtaking! I realize that I stated in Monday’s post (which you can read here) that Chris Traeger’s apartment from Parks and Recreation was my dream home, but I think I’d be OK with this place, too.

Because the residence is so incredibly unique, not to mention picturesque, it is, of course, no stranger to filming. In the Season 3 episode of Celebrity Rehab titled “Family Weekend”, Dr. Drew takes his patients, including Heidi Fleiss, Dennis Rodman, and Mackenzie Phillips, to the house for a reunion with their family members. In the episode, the home was referred to as the fictional “Johnston Lake Retreat Center”, but in reality the place is just a private home where actual (and extremely lucky) people live.

Thanks to my buddy E.J. over at The Movieland Directory website, I learned that the home also appeared as the residence belonging to Gabrielle Cafferty (Marisa Coughlan) and Joel Tiernan (Max Casella) in the Season 5 episode of Medium titled “Soul Survivor”. In the episode, quite a bit of the property was used, including the front exterior;

the interior . . .

. . . and the backyard and lake.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to take a look at my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Johnson Lake can (sort of) be viewed from the 800 block of Burleigh Drive, just south of where it meets Laguna Road, in Pasadena. The Johnson Lake Retreat Center from Celebrity Rehab is actually a private residence located at 1260 La Loma Road in Pasadena.

July 12, 2012
Betty White’s Childhood Home

While doing research on Afton Arms, the apartment building from the 1985 movie The Boys Next Door (which I blogged about here), I came across a page on the Hollywoodland website which stated that, at the age of eight, actress Betty White lived at a home located at 454 North Harper Avenue in Los Angeles. Well, let me tell you, being that this stalker absolutely LOVES, LOVES, LOVES herself some Betty White, I just about fell off my chair with excitement! How had I not previously known that Ms. White grew up in L.A.??

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I actually had the pleasure of meeting Betty at last year’s Emmy Awards, which I was a guest at thanks to my girl Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog. Prior to the show, I had told Pinky that the celeb I most wanted to meet and take a picture with that evening was Betty White, although at the time I was not even sure if she would be attending. So when I spotted her shortly after the ceremony ended, I literally almost started crying I was so excited. The expression on my face in the photograph below is absolutely priceless because it encapsulates EXACTLY how I was feeling at that moment – delirious joy, utter disbelief at who I was standing next to, and on the verge of tears over meeting someone I had idolized for so long. (I think part of the reason that I adore Betty as much as I do – aside from the myriad of obvious reasons – is that her personality is pretty much a carbon copy of my grandma’s, whom I love pretty much more than life itself. ) When I told Betty how much I loved her and what an inspiration I thought she was, she thanked me and said – and I quote – “Oh, how lovely you are to say that.” So darn cute! Sigh. I love, love, love that woman! So when I saw the address for Betty’s childhood home, I immediately added it to my To-Stalk list and finally dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there this past weekend.

Allan R. Ellenberger, who pens the Hollywoodland blog, came across Betty’s childhood home while compiling information for his 2008 book, Celebrities in the 1930 Census: Household Data of 2,265 U.S. Actors, Musicians, Scientists, Athletes, Writers, Politicians and Other Public Figures. Allan spent over three years researching the 1930 census in order to track down the early residences of some of the U.S.’ most famous notables. According to Allan, Betty lived in the home pictured below with her father, Horace L. White, who was an electrical salesman from Michigan, and her mom, Tess White, who was a homemaker from Illinois. The White family’s census information was taken on April 17th, 1930 and, at the time, the dwelling, which they owned, was worth $10,000. According to Zillow, the property is worth a whopping $1,077,200 today, although I am not sure how accurate that figure is. For some reason, the 1930 census (and it was the only to do so) featured a line item asking if each family owned a radio and, according to Allan’s research, the Whites did. You can read an interesting interview with Allan about his book on the Alt Film Guide website here.

Betty’s former one-story home, which was originally constructed in 1928, boasts 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and 1,625 square feet. Because Allan’s information was limited to the year 1930, I am not sure of when exactly the Whites purchased the property, but my hunch would be that it was in 1928, shortly after the place was built. I am also unsure of when the family sold the residence, but I am guessing it was sometime during Betty’s teenage years being that she attended Beverly Hills High School, which would not have been in this home’s district.

I cannot tell you how exciting it was to see Betty’s childhood house in person and to think that 82 years earlier she had called the place home. So incredibly cool!

On a side-note – I just discovered a new blog called Possessionista and I think I may be in love with it! Dana Weiss, the site’s founder, is a stalker herself, but instead of hunting down locations, she finds clothing that has been seen on celebs and in movies and TV shows. Um, yes please! Of her blog, Dana says “I spend hours neglecting my home, my children, even my well being in order to replicate celebrity style, and find the things I lust after within my means.” I, too, neglect my home and well being (it’s a good thing I don’t have any children!) while obsessively trying to track down locations. You have to check out this post about her hunt for a wedding dress that was featured on Pinterest. A woman after my own heart, I swear! She’s the IAMNOTASTALKER of the celebrity fashion world!

Dana put in some serious elbow grease yesterday trying to help me track down the “love” ring that Emily Maynard has been sporting the past couple of weeks on The Bachelorette. After re-watching Monday’s night episode, though, I finally figured out that it is the Sydney Evan Gold & Pave Diamond Love Ring, although, for some reason, on TV it is very hard to tell that Emily’s ring has diamonds, as you can see below. Too bad the thing retails for $860, because I am absolutely dying for it and my second wedding anniversary with the GC is coming up. Hint, hint, honey!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to read my latest post – about low-carb tacos – on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Betty White’s childhood home is located at 454 North Harper Avenue in Los Angeles, just east of West Hollywood.

July 11, 2012
Chris’ Apartment from “Parks and Recreation”

I realize that I am on serious Parks and Recreation overload here, but today’s location is one that I could not not blog about being that I am absolutely OBSESSED with it! What is the location you ask? The supposed Indianapolis-area ultra-modern loft that Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe) owns on the series. I became just a wee bit consumed with the pad the first time it popped up during Season 3 of P&R. One look at its high ceilings, open floor plan and towering staircase and I literally went weak in the knees and started drooling. Oddly enough, though, I did not recognize the place even though I had once previously stalked it. There I go having yet another blonde moment!

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Way back in December of 2008, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I went on a quest to track down the liquor store from L.A. Confidential, which we had heard was located on Larchmont Boulevard. (As it turns out, it wasn’t – the L.A. Confidential liquor store is actually on South Cochran Avenue. You can read my post on it here.) During the hunt, we spent hours driving back and forth down Larchmont looking for the store’s facade and also stopping in to speak with several different area shop owners, trying to gather some intel. And while no one had any information on the liquor store, one helpful person informed us that the movie Funny People had recently spent several weeks filming at the Larchmont Lofts on the corner of Larchmont Boulevard and Melrose Avenue. So Mike and I, of course, went to take a look at the building and snap some pics. We did not venture inside, though, nor did I ever see Funny People, so I had no idea what the interior of the actual apartment units looked like.

Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago when fellow stalker Justin asked me to track down some Parks and Recreation locales, one of which was Chris Traeger’s apartment building. At the time, I was not even sure if the location was a real one. Chris’s loft is so darn sleek and shiny that I figured it might just be a set. But I started to do some digging anyway and eventually discovered (thanks to fave website OnLocationVacations) that Chris’ pad was real and that it was located in none other than the Funny People building! Talk about a small world! Once I found out that information, I, of course, immediately began searching for rental rates being that Chris’ apartment is pretty much my dream home.

The three-story, ultra-modern Larchmont Lofts building was first completed in 2008. Its 21 loft-style units were originally slated to be sold as condominiums for $750,000 to $1.25 million a piece. Not a’ one of ‘em was purchased, though, according to fave website CurbedLA, and the spaces were eventually leased out as apartments. Rates currently start at a whopping $3,000 a month for a 1-bedroom, 1-bath, 1,200-square-foot flat. Um yeah, like the Grim Cheaper would ever go for that! What I wouldn’t give to live there, though! Sigh!

Chris Traeger’s apartment first popped up in the Season 3 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Indianapolis”. Interestingly enough, though, while the front entrance and interior of one of the units were used in the episode, the exterior establishing shot was of a different location altogether, one that is no stranger to the screen. The exterior of Chris’ building is actually the exterior of the residence where Mitch Hiller (Billy Campbell) lived in the 2002 movie Enough, which Mike, from MovieShotsLA, stalked a while back. You can take a look at his photos of the property here.

In the “Indianapolis” episode, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) travel from Pawnee to Indianapolis to accept a special commendation on behalf of the Parks Department. While there, they meet up with Chris, who, at that point in the show, lived in the area. A brief scene from the episode was filmed in the Larchmont Lofts lobby, which you can see behind me in the photograph below.

In “Indianapolis”, Chris is shown to live in Unit #207, which is one of the Larchmont Lofts’ three-story townhomes.

As you can see below, the interior of his apartment is nothing short of STUNNING! Love, love, LOVE it!

Especially the large, open-air staircase. Sigh!

Chris’ apartment also appeared in the Season 3 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Road Trip”, in the scene in which Chris hosts Leslie and Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) on an overnight at his home. You can check out some interior photographs of the Larchmont Lofts building – including a three-story townhouse unit like Chris’ – on Curbed LA here.

And I, of course, just had to pretend to buzz Chris from the intercom while I was there.

In Funny People, Larchmont Lofts is the building where Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), Leo Koenig (Jonah Hill), Mark Taylor Jackson (Jason Schwartzman), and Daisy Danby (Aubrey Plaza, who, ironically enough, plays April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation) live. The exterior of the building shows up quite a few times in the flick.

As does the interior of one of the building’s two-bedroom flats. As you can see below, the inside of Ira, Leo and Mark’s apartment in the flick closely resembles that of Chris’ apartment on Parks and Recreation – minus the awesome staircase, which is only a feature of the building’s three-story townhomes.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And you can check out my latest post – about low-carb tacos – on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Chris Traeger’s apartment building from Parks and Recreation is actually the Larchmont Lofts, which is located at 5700 Melrose Avenue in the Larchmont Village area of Los Angeles. You can visit the complex’s official website here. And to contribute to the Lindsay-Wants-to-Live-at-the-Larchmont-Lofts fund, you can click here. Ha ha, just kidding.

July 10, 2012
The Smallest Park from “Parks and Recreation”

I just recently finished watching Season 4 of fave new show Parks and Recreation (and yes, I was devastated when I came to the end of the last episode being that I now have to wait until September to watch a new one!) and can honestly say that the episode titled “Smallest Park” had to be one of the best of the entire series. I found myself in tears when (spoiler alert!) Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) finally got back together. So when fellow stalker Owen gave me the address of the eponymous Smallest Park, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to Studio City to stalk the place. Well, truth be told, that’s not exactly how things happened.

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Earlier this year, before I had ever even seen an episode of the show, Owen had given me a list of several Parks and Recreation locales, one of which was the Smallest Park. I did not stalk any of them, though, until I finally started watching the series back in May. Flash forward to early June, when I was stalking April and Andy’s house (which I blogged about here), and realized that the abode was located just a short distance from the “Smallest Park”. So, even though I had yet to begin watching Season 4 at the time, since we were in the area, I decided to drop by and snap some pics. Because the Smallest Park is in actuality just a parking lot, Owen had only given me an approximate address for it. Well, as fate would have it, when we pulled up to that address, I noticed a vacant plot of land (pictured below) across the street and immediately assumed it was the right place. And while I did say to the GC, “It really doesn’t look all that small to me!” (LOL), I did not realize my mistake until a few weeks later when I watched the “Smallest Park” episode. I am SUCH a blonde sometimes! That’ll teach me to stalk a location prior to seeing the production in which it was featured!

It wasn’t until last weekend that I was finally able to get back out to Studio City to stalk the correct location – which, as you can see below, is the rear parking lot of a strip mall and does not look anything like a park, hence my original confusion.

In the “Smallest Park” episode of Parks and Recreation, Pawnee’s last remaining telephone booths are torn down, leaving a 0.000003-square-mile patch of concrete, on which Leslie and Ben (aka the “Dream Team”) decide to build the city’s “newest tourist attraction – the smallest park in Indiana”.

As you can see below, the Smallest Park was actually just a square plot of cement that producers placed at the western-most edge of the parking lot, covering up the first spot.

And while just a vacant parking lot, I could NOT have been more excited to stalk this location, most likely because the Smallest Park and the episode in which it was featured were both so incredibly memorable. It is at the park that, in what had to be one of the series’ cutest moments EVER, Leslie tells Ben how much she misses him and the two seal their reunion with a kiss. Sigh! I’m tearing up just looking at the screen capture below.

And I, of course, just had to stand where Leslie stood while she was picketing the park in the episode (and announcing its nightly midnight fireworks show) – although I was having another blonde moment at the time and accidentally had the GC snap a pic from the opposite direction of what was shown onscreen.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to check out my new 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: The Smallest Park from Parks and Recreation was built in the northwesternmost parking space of the Valley Stores Shopping Center’s rear parking lot in Studio City. The lot can be found next to the property located at 4378 Kraft Avenue in Studio City.

July 9, 2012
Elijah Wood’s Former House

As I have mentioned many times before on my site, this stalker absolutely loves herself some L.A. Magazine – especially “L.A. Story”, one of the publication’s newer columns in which, each month, a different SoCal-bred celeb shares his or her experiences growing up in La La Land. This month’s column was written by The Lord of the Rings actor Elijah Wood, who moved to Southern California from Iowa when he was just seven. In the article, Elijah wrote, “For five or six years we lived on Hesby Street, and it was the first house of ours that felt truly like home. When we were buying it, I was shooting a movie called North with director Rob Reiner. He overheard a conversation about the house and said, ‘I used to live on Hesby.’ Turns out he and Penny Marshall had lived in the same house—our house!—back in the ’70s.” Well, believe you me, once I read those words, I became just a wee bit obsessed with tracking the place down (I mean, hello, Elijah Wood, Penny Marshall AND Rob Reiner???), which, thankfully was not too hard to do.

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In a definite stalker maneuver, I looked up the name of Elijah’s father (Warren) and then inputted “Warren Wood” and “Hesby Street” into a Google search and was directed right to this page on the BlockShopper website which stated that Warren Wood had once owned a residence at 12247 Hesby Street in Valley Village. Voila! And, not ten minutes later, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk the place. Sadly though, as you can see below, not much of it can be seen from the street. The one-story abode, which was originally built in 1936, boasts three bedrooms, two baths, and 1,937 square feet. The Woods purchased the dwelling in April of 1993, after Elijah had already become quite famous from his roles in Radio Flyer, Avalon and Forever Young. While living there, his career further skyrocketed and he starred in such hits as The Good Son, Flipper, The Ice Storm, Deep Impact, and The Faculty. In his “L.A. Story”, Elijah also said of the home, “For me it’s where I became a teenager. I learned to drive at that house, and with that I learned Laurel Canyon was the gateway, the connective tissue, between the Valley and basically the rest of L.A.” Elijah’s mom, Debra, who had since divorced Warren, sold the property in October of 1999, a little over six years after purchasing it.

While searching for the exact location of the home, I came across a tweet from @Praeriedikter which said, in response to @MovieElijahWood sending out a link to Elijah’s “L.A. Story”, “Thanks for sharing! Wonderful article. Wonder how many fangirls will be cruising Hesby Street looking for his old house? LOL” And here I thought I was the only one.

According to my buddy E.J., over at The Movieland Directory website, Rob Reiner and Penny Marshall owned the residence in 1973. While researching the place, I happened to find a 1992 Los Angeles Times article about Rob Reiner in which his Castle Rock Entertainment partner Andy Scheinman, who spent six or seven nights a week at the property, had this to say, “It was almost like a fraternity house. Albert Brooks was there every day. Jim Brooks was there a lot. And you didn’t even call or knock on the door. You just opened the door. Sometimes Rob and Penny weren’t there. I’d come in there and Albert would have his head in the refrigerator and someone else would be watching TV. But we were all in our 20s. We all went to college in the ’60s, so it was a very free and open kind of approach to things.” Amazingly enough, up until reading Garry Marshall’s new book, My Happy Days in Hollywood: A Memoir (which was fabulous, by the way), a couple of weeks ago, I had no idea whatsoever that Rob and Penny had once been married! And I call myself a stalker!

In “L.A. Story”, Elijah also mentioned living at the famous Oakwood Toluca Hills Apartments, which is a place that I have long been dying to stalk. Countless celebrities have called Oakwood home over the years, including Jennifer Love Hewitt, Michelle Williams, Kirsten Dunst, Jessica Stroup, Michael C. Hall, and Kurt Cobain. In her Revealed with Jules Asner special, Katie Holmes talked about living at the complex and running down to the WB lot every morning to try to catch a glimpse of George Clooney, who was filming ER at the time. Zac Efron once filmed a pilot at the site, while Corey Haim tragically died there in March 2010, as did Rick James in August 2004. The place is just teeming with Hollywood history and I am dying to get in! You can read a fabulous EW article about the Oakwood Toluca Hills complex here.

On an Elijah Wood side-note – while researching this post, I discovered that a seven-year-old Elijah was featured in Paula Abdul’s “Forever Your Girl” music video! How I did not previously know that information is absolutely beyond me!

You can watch the “Forever Your Girl” music video by clicking below.

Elijah Wood in “Forever Your Girl” Video

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my latest post about pedicures on my new blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Elijah Wood’s former home is located at 12247 Hesby Street in Valley Village/North Hollywood.

July 6, 2012
The Bulge from “Parks and Recreation”

Another day, another location from fave show Parks and Recreation! Seriously, I hope you guys aren’t getting sick of P&R locales yet. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I hit up the Oxford Inn in Van Nuys, aka the bar that stands in for the Bulge – Pawnee, Indiana’s local gay bar. I learned of this location, as always, from fellow stalker Owen of the When Write Is Wrong blog.

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While watching the Season 3 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Go Big or Go Home”, Owen had noticed an address number of 13713 written above the Bulge’s front door. One quick Google search of “13713”, “bar” and “Van Nuys” (because the show typically films in that area), led him to the Oxford Inn at 13713 Oxnard Street, directly across from Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant from The Office, which I blogged about here. And, voila, the Inn turned out to be the right place. Yay! Come to find out, though, our search would not end there. But more on that later.

While the interior of the Bulge has been featured in two episodes of Parks and Recreation (Season 2’s “Pawnee Zoo” and Season’s 3 “Go Big or Go Home”), the exterior has only popped up once – in “Go Big or Go Home”. In the episode, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) crash Ann Perkin’s (Rashida Jones’) first date with Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe) and then convince the two of them to go dancing at the Bulge. As you can see below, aside from the fake neon “the Bulge” sign, the Oxwood Inn looks much the same in person as it did onscreen. And, in a synchronistic twist of fate, the Oxwood Inn is actually a gay bar in real life, too!

The interior, however, is another story entirely. As you can see below, the interior of the Oxwood Inn has a very definite blue hue to it. And while I did not remember that blue hue from the series, I figured that producers had changed the lighting for the filming. Oh, how wrong I was.

When I got home and re-watched “Pawnee Zoo” and “Go Big or Go Home”, I realized that a completely different bar had been used for all of the interior scenes – which meant that I had another hunt on my hands.

Because I am like a pit bull when it comes to stalking (once I latch on to a search, I have a very hard time letting go), I immediately started looking online for “divey” bars located in the San Fernando Valley. And while it took me a looooooooong time to track the place down, I am very happy to report that I finally did! As it turns out, the interior of the Bulge is Serra’s Dine & Dance in Studio City. I, of course, dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to grab some lunch just a few days later, but unfortunately the eatery is only open at night, so we were unable to go inside. I will be definitely be heading back there for a re-stalk in the near future, though. In the meantime, you can check out some interior photographs of Serra’s here and here. As you can see, it looks much the same in person as it does onscreen.

I am guessing that the reason two different bars were used as the Bulge’s interior and exterior is because the exterior of Serra’s Dine & Dance does not look very much like a small-town dive bar, while the Oxwood Inn does, as you can see below.

Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to check out my new blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Oxwood Inn, aka the exterior of The Bulge from the “Go Big or Go Home” episode of Parks and Recreation, is located at 13713 Oxnard Street in Van Nuys. You can visit the bar’s official website here. Right across the street from the Oxwood Inn at 13726 Oxnard Street is Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant from The Office, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Bad News Bears, which I blogged about here. You can visit the Barone’s website here. Serra’s Dine & Dance, aka the interior of The Bulge from Parks and Recreation, is located at 12449 Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. You can visit Serra’s official website here.

July 5, 2012
A Free View of Universal Studio’s “War of the Worlds” Set!

Many moons ago, shortly after we first met, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, took me to a place that quickly became one of my very favorite “only in L.A.” spots – a residential street from which the Universal Studios War of the Worlds plane crash set is visible. And even though I always make it a point to take visiting friends to the site (which is located on the 3400 block of Blair Drive in the hills just south of Burbank), I somehow forgot to add it to My Los Angeles Must-Stalk List back in May. I have since corrected the problem and figured that now was as good a time as any to blog about the location. (I also just turned My Must-Stalk List into a page on my site in order to make it more accessible to my fellow stalkers. I will be adding to the list as I discover more must-stalk locations, so check back regularly. )

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When Mike first took me to the 3400 block of Blair Drive, I was absolutely aghast at both the fact that such an amazing set piece was so openly visible from a residential street and that it had not, for whatever reason, ever been written about in any of my L.A. guide books. That is the beauty of going stalking with someone born and raised in L.A., as Mike was. He knows the city – and all of its little hidden treasures – like the back of his hand. Mike had actually discovered this location back in the early ‘90s, before the War of the Worlds set even existed, while working for the radio station Power 106. When he first began his DJing job, the station moved him into a hill-top house with several other DJ’s. That house happened to be located on Blair Drive, directly across the street from what was then the site of Falls Lake – a 2.7-million-gallon water tank and green screen in the Psycho Flats area of Universal Studios. (Falls Lake was moved a few hundred feet west in 2004 to make way for the War of the Worlds set, but you can still see it in the background of the pictures below).

According to the fabulous The Studio Tour website, the War of The Worlds plane crash shoot took place on January 5th, 6th, and 7th of 2005 and the set was then left, virtually untouched, to be featured as one of Universal Studios’ backlot attractions. The only changes made to the set after the filming were the relocation of a few of the houses and the removal of some debris in order to provide a pathway for the tram to pass through during tours. Otherwise, though, the scene appears pretty much exactly the same as it did onscreen. SO INCREDIBLY COOL! On a side-note, one of my favorite movie lines ever was uttered in War of the Worlds. When Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise – and I canNOT believe that he and Katie Holmes are getting a divorce!) begins making peanut butter sandwiches for dinner, his daughter, Rachel Ferrier (Dakota Fanning), informs him, “I’m allergic to peanut butter!”, causing Ray to laugh and say, “Since when?”, to which Rachel states, “Birth!” LOL LOL LOL

The War of the Worlds plane crash set is so realistic, it is almost unbelievable! I cannot even imagine living on Blair Drive back in 2005 during the filming and getting to witness not only the construction of the massive set, but the actual shoot. How incredibly cool would that have been?!?

It is actually quite surprising that I like this location as much as I do being that I am absolutely petrified of flying, but I guess that is the magic of the movies!

As you can see below, when the Universal Studios tour tram passes through the crash set, smoke begins to rise from several of the props.

The set features an actual Boeing 747 airplane that the production team cut up and distressed. Supposedly it cost $2 million in transportation fees alone to get the aircraft to the studio.

I visited Universal Studios way back in June of 2008 (you can read my post here) and snapped the below close-up photographs of the War of the Worlds plane crash set. As you can see, it is nothing short of incredible – no matter which vantage point you view it from!

From the 3400 block of Blair Drive, you can also catch a glimpse of one of the Whoville sets from the 2000 movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas;

the back of the house where Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) lived in the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho;

the Old Mexico and Six Points Texas backlot areas;

and the Falls Lake green screen/backdrop.

Which I decided to have a little bit of fun with.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to check out my new blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The War of the Worlds plane crash set at Universal Studios can be viewed from the 3400 block of Blair Drive, just off of Barham Boulevard, in Los Angeles.

July 3, 2012
Four ‘N 20 – aka JJ’s Diner from “Parks and Recreation”

A couple of weeks ago, fellow stalker Brandon (the very same stalker who told me about the Skyline Residence from fave movie Crazy, Stupid, Love., which I blogged about here) emailed me a list of over twenty Parks and Recreation locations that he had managed to track down. The one locale on the list that intrigued me the most was the exterior of JJ’s Diner – the local Pawnee-area hangout, known for its superior waffles, that is featured regularly on the show.

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Ironically enough, the exterior of JJ’s Diner is not located in Los Angeles at all, but in Atlanta, Georgia of all places! The restaurant used for the establishing shots of Pawnee’s most-famous breakfast joint is actually the Landmark Diner located at 2277 Cheshire Bridge Road NE. I have no idea how producers came to use an out-of-state eatery on the series, but as you can see below, the (craptastic) Google Street View image of the restaurant matches perfectly to what appears onscreen.

Once I found out that the exterior of JJ’s was located in Georgia, I became just a wee-bit obsessed with tracking down the restaurant used for the interior. I ended up finding it thanks to the unique botanical pattern visible on the booths in the background of the many JJ’s scenes. I had a hunch that the eatery was located in or around Van Nuys, where the series seems to do most of its filming, so I began searching through images of cafes in that area on Yelp (which is such a fabulous stalking tool, by the way!) looking for booths with that pattern. Sure enough, it was not long before I came across one on the Yelp page for Four ‘N 20 restaurant in Sherman Oaks. Yay! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place a few days later.

Once I saw the outside of Four ‘N 20 in person, I found it even more odd that producers had opted to use the Landmark Diner for JJ’s exterior because, as you can see below, Four ‘N 20 definitely has a Midwestern feel to it.

The interior also has a Midwestern feel and it is not too hard to see how it came to be used on Parks and Recreation. According to a commenter named Kiwi on the Chowhound website, when Four ‘N 20 first opened in 1969, it was located a few blocks north of where it is now. When that spot was demolished to make way for a car dealership sometime during the ‘90s, Four ‘N 20 moved to its current location, which had formerly been the site of “Chicken, Steak and Chocolate Cake” – a buffet-style restaurant where guests were charged based on their weight! Not kidding! Apparently there was a large scale that diners would have to step on before being rung up! Now if that doesn’t scream “Pawnee” – a city’s whose slogan is “First in Friendship, Fourth in Obesity” – than I don’t know what does! A CS&CC-style restaurant so needs to be added to a future storyline! P&R writers, are you listening?

At the time that Four ‘N 20 first opened, it mainly served pies – hence the name, which the GC did not understand. I am not sure who his nursery school teacher was, but he/she obviously did not do a very good job! For those not in the know, the Four ‘N 20 name comes from the “Sing a Song of Sixpence” nursery rhyme, which goes like this: “Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye; Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing; Was that not a dainty dish, To set before the king?” Over the years, Four ‘N 20 expanded its menu choices and also opened up a sister restaurant in nearby Valley Village, but the place is still best-known for its pies. CBSLosAngeles even named the diner’s pumpkin pie one of the “Best of L.A.”

The Four ‘N 20 menu is wide and diverse with many comfort food offerings, as well as vegetarian and vegan options – and there’s even a “Fitness Menu” for the Chris Traegers in your life. Glaringly missing from the Four ‘N 20 menu, though, were waffles! I almost fell out of the booth when I realized that the restaurant did not serve them and just had to make a suggestion to the manager that he add them to the menu – stat! Heck, he could even create a whole “Pawnee Specials” section! Man, why do I always have to be the one to think of everything?!? For my lunch, I opted for the Crispy Chicken salad which, as you can see below, was amazeballs! I literally do not think there was one scrap left on my plate by the time I was done with that thing!

The GC and I had a fabulous time at Four ‘N 20 and the staff could not have been more friendly, although I think a few of them found it odd that we were only dining there because of the place’s many Parks and Recreation appearances. (Check out the super-nice cop we met during our lunch who couldn’t stop photo-bombing me! LOL)

Four ‘N 20 has appeared in numerous episodes of Parks and Recreation, including Season 2’s “The Master Plan” and Season 3’s “Flu Season” and “Ron and Tammy: Part Two”, just to name a few. On the show, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) describes JJ’s, which is owned by JJ Lipscomb (Brent Briscoe), as “the unofficial meeting place of Pawnee’s political elite”.

JJ’s Diner and its waffles are also mentioned regularly on the series. In the Season 3 episode titled “Time Capsule”, Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) puts one of JJ’s menus in the Pawnee time capsule because, as he says, the restaurant is a “Pawnee institution” and “home of the world’s best breakfast dish, ‘the Four Horsemeals of the Eggsporkalypse.’” Just another item that Four ‘N 20 could add to its “Pawnee Specials” menu section!

Oddly enough, though, a different restaurant – Kountry Folks at 8501 Sepulveda Boulevard in North Hills, which I have yet to stalk – was used as JJ’s during the show’s first season. As you can see below, it looks nothing like Four ‘N 20.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here. And you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Brandon for finding the location of JJ’s exterior.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The interior of JJ’s Diner on Parks and Recreation is actually Four ‘N 20 located at 5530 Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. The exterior of JJ’s is the Landmark Diner, which is located at 2277 Cheshire Bridge Road NE in Atlanta, Georgia. You can check out the Landmark’s official website here.

June 21, 2012