Tag: Entertainment

The “Big” Paddleball Court

Another day, another Big location. And, sadly, this is actually the last Big location that I have to blog about. 🙁 Well, from this year’s New York trip, anyway. Being that fellow stalker Owen recently tracked down both the MacMillan Toys headquarters and Tom Hank’s loft from the movie, it looks like I’ll have a few more Big locations to stalk during next year’s New York vacation. 🙂 But for now, the last and final Big locale that Owen, my fiancé, and I visited during our stalking day in Manhattan last month was the court where Josh (aka Tom Hanks) played a little game of paddleball against his MacMillan Toys co-worker Paul (aka John Heard) in the movie. In real life, that paddleball court, which Owen found thanks to fave stalking book The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations, is named Vesuvio Playground and it encompasses not only a paddleball court, but basketball courts, bocce ball courts, a sandbox, a mini pool, and a shower area, as well. When the park originally opened in 1929 it was called Thompson Playground and it consisted solely of a wading pool and a swing set and existed on a much smaller parcel of land than today’s .64 acres. In 1957, the City purchased an additional piece of land in order to expand the playground into what it is today. The park was then renamed Vesuvio Playground in honor of the nearby Vesuvio Bakery, which is owned and operated by longtime SoHo community leader Anthony Dapolito and his family.

In Big, Vesuvio Playground is the site of a very brief, but very memorable, scene in which the newly-adult Josh gets challenged to a paddleball duel by his douchebag of a co-worker, Paul. Because Paul is extremely jealous of his girlfriend Susan’s growing affection for Josh, he brings him to the paddleball court thinking he’ll teach him a lesson.

But Josh, who is a paddleball novice, ends up calling Paul out for cheating during the game which leads to a very juvenile – and absolutely hilarious – playground fist fight between the two. LOL LOL LOL



Unfortunately, even though it was mid-day, the paddleball court was absolutely JAM PACKED with children while we were stalking it, so we weren’t able to venture inside to take photographs. I mean, hello, shouldn’t kids be attending school during the middle of the day??? 😉 LOL I am happy to report, though, that the same pizza place which was visible in the background of the Big paddleball scene is still in business to this day, as you can see in the above screen captures and photographs. 🙂 So cool!!

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According to fave stalking book Manhattan on Film: Walking Tours of Hollywood’s Fabled Front Lot, Frankie (aka Nick Scotti) and Joey (aka Domenick Lombardozzi) play handball on the very same paddleball court in the 1997 movie Kiss Me Guido.   And the playground was also featured in an episode of the NBC series Third Watch.

On a very sad side – During our stalking day, Owen, my fiancé, and I also tried to stalk Asti, the Italian eatery where Billy takes Josh for his birthday in Big. Unfortunately, though, that restaurant closed its doors on New Year’s Eve 1999, after 75 long years in operation. 🙁 Such a bummer! Asti, which was named after a town in Italy famous for its sparkling wine (LOVE IT!), was a New York institution ever since it first opened in 1925. Apparently, not only did such luminaries as Babe Ruth, Luciano Pavarotti, and Noel Coward frequent the restaurant during its heyday, but there was even an autographed photograph of Tom Hanks from the filming of Big displayed in the front window.   Also LOVE IT! 🙂 Even the building which once housed Asti is famous – former President Chester A. Arthur once lived there! I can’t even begin to tell you how sad I am that this landmark restaurant is now gone. 🙁 Currently, in its place is another eatery – a steak restaurant named Strip House (pictured above). You can read more about Asti and its history here.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for loaning me his Big paddleball court pics to post here, as, for some reason, I did not take that many photographs of it.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Vesuvio Playground, aka the Big paddleball court, is located at 95 Thompson Street in New York’s SoHo area. The former Asti restaurant (now Strip House) was located at 13 East 12th Street in Greenwich Village.

November 6, 2009
The “Big” School

Located just around the corner from the two main houses used in the movie Big is Cliffside Park Elementary School #6 – the elementary school attended by Josh Baskin (aka Tom Hanks) and his best friend Billy (aka Jared Rushton) in the 1988 flick. So, since we were already in the area, Owen, my fiancé, and I just had to stalk the place. 🙂 I am always a little bit leery of stalking schools while they are in session, though, as teachers and administrators tend not to like it when random adults start taking pictures of their campus while children are present. Why are there so many bad people out there who have to ruin things for us harmless movie-stalkers??? Anyway, because most of the students of Cliffside Park Elementary were outside playing on the playground while we were stalking the place, I wasn’t able to snap the greatest of pictures, nor were we able to venture inside for a closer look. 🙁

Cliffside Park Elementary School #6, which despite what its name would lead you to believe, is actually comprised of both an elementary school and a middle school and houses about 630 students in grades one through eight. The reason for the misnomer, you ask? Originally, the school was solely an elementary school facility. It wasn’t until about eight years ago that the middle school portion was added. Cliffside Park #6 was featured twice in Big. It first shows up at the very beginning of the movie, when young Josh rides his bike down the side of the school on his way to play stickball with Billy.

Owen and I couldn’t seem to locate the actual stickball court the boys play on while we were stalking the place, though. But, according to this former Cliffside student, apparently there did used to be an empty lot located behind the school where children would actually play stickball. That lot got covered over a few years back, though, when an addition was added to the school building. So sad! 🙁 I am guessing that addition was built to house the new middle school.

Cliffside Park #6 also shows up towards the end of the movie, during the montage sequence in which adult Josh returns to his hometown and watches a group of children take their class picture at his alma mater.

In that same montage, Josh also watches some boys play baseball in the school’s baseball field. Random site note – as Owen and I discovered, the “grass” on the baseball field is not real- it’s actually Astroturf! LOL

I am very happy to report that Cliffside Park Elementary School #6 looks very much the same today as it did back in 1988 when Big was filmed. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how cool I think it is that the school is located so close to the two homes used in the movie, because if there actually were a real Josh and a real Billy who lived in those houses, then Cliffside Park #6 would really be the school they would attend! 🙂 LOVE IT! And, while I highly recommend stalking Cliffside Park #6, I suggest doing so during non-school hours when no children are present. It’s a lot easier to take photographs that way. 🙂

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Big THANK YOU to Owen for “loaning” me his photographs of the Big baseball field and allowing me to post them here, as, for some odd reason, I didn’t take any pictures of the field while we were stalking the school.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Big school, aka Cliffside Park Elementary School #6, is located at 440 Oakdene Avenue in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. The Big houses are located just around the corner at 435 and 437 Greenmount Avenue. The Heffernan house from The King of Queens is also located right around the corner at 519 Longview Avenue. Unfortunately there is no easy way to get to these locations from Manhattan. A taxi ride is your quickest, easiest bet, but be prepared as the trip will cost you $45 each way! Riding the bus is a much cheaper option, but be prepared for a long travel time, as the bus ride to Cliffside Park takes upwards of an hour.

November 4, 2009
Gossip Girl’s Constance Billard School for Girls and St. Jude’s School for Boys

Another Upper East Side location that I set out to stalk while in New York two weeks ago was the building used to portray Constance Billard School for Girls and St. Jude’s School for Boys on my new favorite show, Gossip Girl. So, you can imagine my surprise when, while doing some location research before my trip, I discovered that not one, but FOUR different spots have actually been used to stand in for Nate, Chuck, and the gang’s elite prep school throughout the series two and half year run. And let me just take a moment here to say that using several different locales to represent just one place is one of my biggest filming location pet peeves for the mere fact that it makes tracking down sites all the more difficult for us stalkers. UGH! Why do producers do this to us??? I mean, just pick one location and stick with it, already!!! LOL Anyway, due to time constraints, I was unfortunately only able to visit one of the Gossip Girl school sites during this year’s trip to the Big Apple – the Museum of the City of New York.

Ironically enough, during one of our past trips to the Big Apple just about three years ago, long before Gossip Girl had ever premiered on TV, my fiancé had actually dragged me out to the Museum of the City of New York as a sort of cultural diversion. So, when we finally started watching the series this past summer, the two of us immediately recognized the building used as the gang’s school. And I have to say that my fiancé was more than just a little bit smug about the fact that I had whined and complained about being dragged to the museum all those years ago, when, in fact, the place had turned out to be a filming location – on one of my favorite shows, no less! 🙂 LOL Anyway, since I had failed to take any photographs of the museum while there three years ago, I, of course, had to make a quick stop there during this trip.

The Museum of the City of New York is the most recognizable out of all of the Gossip Girl school locations, as it is the place most often used for establishing shots of Constance Billard and St. Jude on the show. In fact, the Museum has shown up in pretty much every single episode of the series since the show first began.

And while the Museum has most often been used solely for establishing shots on the show, there have been a few instances where the filming of actual scenes has taken place there, as well, such as in the scene pictured above which is from the Season Two episode entitled “In The Realm of the Basses”.

But don’t go looking around the Museum for the exterior stairway where the gang sometimes hung out during Season One. Those steps, which are pictured above, can actually be found about twenty blocks South of the Museum at a Russian Orthodox Church named the Synod of Bishops.

And to confuse matters even further, during the second season of the show, producers stopped filming the Constance Billard/St. Jude scenes on location at the Synod of Bishops and moved to another location entirely – this one not even on the island of Manhattan! For whatever reason, it seems that during Season Two all location shooting for the school scenes took place at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn.

And where is the Constance Billard/St. Jude school’s small interior courtyard that shows up in pretty much every episode, you ask? Not at any of the three aforementioned locales, actually. No, this location, unfortunately, can only be found inside of a soundstage at Silvercup Studios, where the show is filmed. 🙁

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Because I was only able to stalk the Museum of the City of New York on this trip, it looks I am going to have to hit up both the Synod of Bishops and Packer Collegiate Institute next year. I’d also just LOVE to stalk Silvercup Studios, but somehow I don’t think they’d let me past the guard shack there. LOL

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: On Gossip Girl, the four locations which stand in for Constance Billard School for Girls and St. Jude’s School for Boys are as follows: the site used for most exterior shots is the Museum of the City of New York, which is located at 1220 Fifth Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side; the school stairway from Season One can be found at the Synod of Bishops Russian Orthodox Church, which is located at 75 East 93rd Street, also on New York’s Upper East Side; the school campus used in Season Two can be found at Packer Collegiate Institute, which is located at 170 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn, and, finally, the school’s courtyard is located at Silvercup Studios, which is located at 42-22 22nd Avenue in Long Island City. Sadly, the studio is closed to the public. 🙁

October 23, 2009
Blair Waldorf’s Gossip Girl Apartment Building

Well, it must be Gossip Girl week here at Iamnotastalker.com because here I am once again blogging about yet another location from the ubiquitous CW series. While in New York two weeks ago, one of the locales at the very top of my stalking list was the Upper East Side building where Queen Bee Blair Waldorf lives on my new favorite show. I found this location, once again, thanks to FanPop’s awesome Gossip Girl page and, because I love me some BW, I just simply wasn’t leaving New York until I had stalked her place. So, after dropping my best friend, his girlfriend, and his mother off at the Guggenheim Museum – because as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t do museums 🙂 – I dragged my fiancé just a few blocks North to do some stalking of Blair’s pad. On a side note: While doing research on Blair’s apartment building for today’s post, I came across this ABSOLUTELY AMAZING website, which lists pretty much EVERY SINGLE location ever featured on Gossip Girl! And, let me tell you, I almost fell off my chair while looking at it! HOW IN THE HECK DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS SITE BEFORE I LEFT FOR NEW YORK! UGH! 🙁 I could have spent my entire trip stalking Gossip Girl!!!!! LOL Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to set that as my goal for next year’s trip! 🙂

On Gossip Girl, Blair Waldorf lives in the Penthouse apartment of the ultra-exclusive Fifth Avenue building pictured above. The 15-story building, which houses 43 different apartments, was built in 1925 by architect George F. Pelham, Jr., who also designed the Castle Village apartment complex in Hudson Heights and the residential building located at 1120 Park Avenue. A two-bedroom unit in Blair’s building, which you can take a look at here, is currently for sale for the bargain price of $2,695,000! Besides views of Central Park, the building also boasts a full-time, white-gloved doorman AND a full-time, white-gloved elevator operator. That’s just so Blair Waldorf, isn’t it? 🙂 So love it!

Blair’s building has been featured regularly in establishing shots throughout the series’ two and a half year run. Filming also took place there for the Season One episode entitled “Victor, Victrola”, in which Nate Archibald and his father get into a fistfight on the sidewalk out in front of the building (pictured above).

In the Season Two episode entitled “In the Realm of the Basses”, Blair receives an invitation from the elite Colony Club in which the actual address of the real apartment building used for the filming is displayed. Love it!

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According to fave book Manhattan On Film: Walking Tours of Hollywood’s Fabled Front Lot, Blair’s building was also used in the 2001 Chris Rock movie Down to Earth, as the residence of Charles Wellington, whose body the spirit of Chris Rock inhabits after his untimely demise. The building also has a bit of celebrity history, as well. During their marriage, Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid owned a seven-room unit on the building’s 12th-floor, which they sold in March 2002, almost a year after their divorced was finalized, for a cool $6.5 million.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Blair Waldorf’s apartment from Gossip Girl is located at 1136 Fifth Avenue, on the corner of 5th Avenue and 95th Street, on New York’s Upper East Side.

October 22, 2009
Watching The Filming of Gossip Girl

Two weeks ago while in New York, thanks to fave website OnLocationVacations – who I am now seriously thinking of naming my first born after 🙂 – I was able to watch the filming of Gossip Girl live and in person no less than THREE times!!!!! Yes, you read that right – THREE TIMES! For those not familiar with the site, OnLocationVacations features a “Daily Filming Locations” page that chronicles which productions are filming where all over the U.S. – most notably on the island of Manhattan.   So, I, of course, checked that page pretty much immediately after I woke up every morning while on my New York vacation. And, as you can probably imagine, I just about died when on October 5th I read that my new fave show Gossip Girl would be filming in Central Park, just a few blocks away from the hotel where I was staying. So, I immediately dragged my fiancé, my best friend, Robin, his girlfriend, Stephanie, and his mother, who were all visiting from Switzerland at the time, out to the Conservatory Water, which is more commonly known as the Model Boat Pond, in Central Park to do some GG stalking! THANK YOU OnLocationVacations! 🙂 (On our way to the set, Stephanie and I spotted the above pictured Craft Services truck and were SO excited we just had to stop and snap a quick pic!) 🙂

Upon arriving at the Model Boat Pond, I, of course, struck up a conversation with a few crew members from the show who really could NOT have been nicer or more friendly. They chatted with me about where filming was taking place specifically and about who was on set at the time. The only cast member present when we showed up, though, was Taylor Momsen, who plays Jenny Humphrey, aka “Little J”, on the show. Taylor was very cute in person and much taller than I expected her to be, but, unfortunately, she also looked a bit under-the-weather. During breaks she pretty much just sat off to the side of the production and kept to herself. The next day, I heard that she actually collapsed from exhaustion a few hours after we left the set! Poor Taylor!

Also on set that morning was Air Bud actor Kevin Zegers who will be guest-starring as Little’s J.’s new love interest on several episodes of Gossip Girl this season.  Because I didn’t recognize him, while we were there I asked around to see if any of the crew members could tell me who he was, but no one seemed to know. LOL One crew member told me that Kevin had starred in the Spiderman movies, but that information turned out to be incorrect. LOL It wasn’t until after I got home that fellow stalker Owen was able to identify him for me. Thank you, Owen! 🙂 Anyway, after watching the filming for about thirty minutes or so, my fiancé and best friend dragged me away from the set. 🙁   Needless to say, neither one of them is very much into filming locations. LOL

But have no fear, because later that afternoon, I, of course, dragged everyone back to Central Park to see if any of the other cast members had shown up. I was hoping most of all to see Ed Westwick (aka Chuck Bass) and Leighton Meester (aka Blair Waldorf) because, as I mentioned yesterday, they are my two favorite actors on the show. I so heart Chuck Bass!!!! So, as you can imagine, I literally almost fell over when I walked up to the set and saw my two faves standing hand in hand filming a scene! YAY! I could NOT have been more excited! And it seems that I’m not the only one who reads OnLocationVacations because there were at least two hundred fans and paparazzi standing around watching the filming when we arrived. 🙂



I cannot tell you how exciting it was to watch GG being filmed right before my very eyes!!!!! The scene being shot involved Chuck and Blair taking a leisurely stroll through Central Park just East of the Model Boat Pond.



We literally took close to 500 pictures while watching the filming that afternoon, so deciding which ones to post here proved to be rather difficult. LOL I wanted to post them ALL! But that probably would have crashed my entire blog, so I had to settle for a select few. 🙂

Leighton Meester is absolutely BEAUTIFUL in person – much prettier than she appears to be on TV – and MUCH taller than I had expected!! I thought she would be teeny tiny, but in person she looked to be about 5’6”.

But I have to say that seeing Chuck Bass in person was my favorite part of the day! 🙂 Like Leighton, Ed Westwick is also much better looking in person than he appears to be on TV, but what struck me the most about him was the fact that he makes the SAME EXACT facial expressions in real life that he does while acting as Chuck on the show. LOVE IT! Stephanie and I were cracking up the whole time while watching him because he is just so similar to his character.

In between takes Leighton and Ed hung out together on set and seemed to get along really, really well. They were laughing and joking together and appeared to really enjoy each other’s company. It was very cool to see.

And when she wasn’t chatting with Ed, Leighton was pretty much glued to her blackberry. A girl after my own heart, I swear!   🙂

Unfortunately, as you can see in the above photos, during most of the breaks from shooting a big guy in a red sweatshirt stood in front of Ed and Leighton blocking the paparazzi’s view of the two stars and making it rather difficult for me to take photos. 🙁

Because Chuck and Blair are my fave GG characters, I pretty much hit the jackpot with the filming I got to see. I felt really bad for Stephanie, though, as she was absolutely dying to see Serena (aka Blake Lively) in person. The closest we got to seeing her, though, was when her stand-in walked by (pictured above). And, let me tell you, it was absolutely uncanny how much her stand-in looked like her!   Everyone started furiously snapping photos of her until she got close enough for us to realize that it wasn’t actually Blake Lively. LOL

The following morning, October 6th, I once again checked OnLocationVacations and was FLOORED to discover that GG was filming on location yet again – this time in SoHo. So, much to my fiancé and best friend’s chagrin, I once more dragged everyone out to the set to do some stalking. LOL This time actor Penn Badgley, who plays Dan Humphrey on the show, was shooting a scene by himself. And, for some incredibly odd reason, besides the ever-present paparazzi, we were the only stalkers on the set that day. And can I just say here that I so love the New York paparazzi!!! They are so incredibly friendly and so incredibly different from the L.A. paps, who always seem to have a chip on their shoulder. One photog that I struck up a conversation with told us exactly where to stand to get a good pic of Penn. And, sure enough, he was right! It wasn’t two minutes after we moved to where the photog had told us to stand that Penn walked RIGHT BY! 🙂

So, of course, I asked him if he would mind taking a quick photograph with us. Penn was SUPER nice and said that he had to film a really quick scene, but that he’d be happy to pose with us afterwards. You can see him filming the scene in the monitors pictured above.

So, while Penn filmed his brief scene, Stephanie and I waited off to the side and, as promised, just a few minutes later he walked by us once again. When he got close to us he stopped and said to his bodyguard, “Hold on a second, I promised these girls a picture.” How sweet is that!!!!! Sigh!!!!! So darn cool!

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All in all it was an AMAZING experience being on the GG set. The cast and crew could NOT have been friendlier and I had an absolute blast being there! I highly recommend stalking the show if you ever have the opportunity!

A big THANK YOU goes out to OnLocationVacations without whom none of this would have been possible!!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Gossip Girl scenes with Taylor Momsen, Ed Westwick, and Leighton Meester were filmed on the East and West sides of the Conservatory Water, aka the Model Boat Pond, in Central Park near 74th Street and Fifth Avenue. The scene with Penn Badgley was filmed in SoHo at the corner of North Moore and Varick Streets.

October 20, 2009
Nate Archibald’s Townhouse

Rather than suffer through the re-run abyss airing on most television networks this past summer, my fiance and I instead decided to purchase and watch the first two seasons of the hit CW series Gossip Girl, which neither of us had ever before seen. Even though Mike, from MovieShotsLA, had been telling me for months that I would love the show, I steered clear of it as I had been under the incorrect assumption that it catered mostly to the teeny-bopper set. But, let me tell you, once we finally sat down to watch, it didn’t take long for my fiance and I to become totally and completely hooked!!! As much as it pains me to admit, there were literally whole weekends spent watching back to back episodes, the two of us never once leaving the couch! LOL Needless to say, I absolutely FELL IN LOVE with the show . . . and its locations. And, even though Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass are the two GG characters I love the most, the locale I was most excited about stalking while in New York two weeks ago was the absolutely beautiful Neoclassical townhouse belonging to Nate Archibald (aka Chace Crawford) on the show. I found this location – and a few others – thanks to this awesome website. So, bright and early on our very first morning in NYC, I dragged my parents and my fiance out to finally do some Gossip Girl stalking! 🙂

Ironically enough, when we arrived at the townhouse, I almost didn’t recognize the place thanks to the fact that it was COMPLETELY covered in Halloween decorations. LOL But being that Halloween is my favorite holiday, I really didn’t mind. 🙂 The six story townhouse, which was built in 1910 and measures 11,296 square feet, is absolutely beautiful in person and it’s not very hard to see why producers chose to use it as the residence of the Archibald family – heirs to the Vanderbilt fortune – on the show.

As fate would have it, while we were taking photographs of the townhouse, the real life owner happened to walk outside, so I, of course, had to ask him a few questions about the filming. He was SUPER nice to us, but was very nonchalant about Gossip Girl, as if the filming of a hit television show on his property was an everyday occurrence, which I suppose, for him, it actually is. LOL Besides telling us that Chace Crawford is very nice in person, the owner also mentioned that the real interiors of his house are used for the filming of the interiors of the Archibald home, as well. So cool! 🙂

Even cooler is the fact that in the Season 2 episode of Gossip Girl entitled “There Might Be Blood”, the real life address of the home is shown as Nate’s return address on the letter he mails to Jenny! 🙂 Love it!

And thanks to fave book Manhattan on Film: Walking Tours of Hollywood’s Fabled Front Lot, I found out that the Archibald townhouse was also used as the office of therapist Susan Lowenstein (aka Barbra Streisand) in the 1991 movie The Prince of Tides.

And, from how it appears in the movie, I am pretty sure the real life interiors of the home were also used in the filming.

AND, according to this article, the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson, rented this very same house for about six months back in 1999 for the bargain price of $75,000 a month while recording his “Invincible” album. SO COOL!

I honestly can’t recommend stalking Nate’s townhouse enough! It is such an amazing piece of property, that even if it wasn’t a filming location, I’m pretty sure I’d still be obsessed with it. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Nate Archibald’s townhouse from Gossip Girl is located at 4 East 74th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Located right around the corner at 25 East 73rd Street is Via Quadronno, my very favorite place to eat breakfast in all of New York. Their croissants are out of this world!

October 19, 2009
FAO Schwarz

Every year while in Manhattan I drag my fiancé out to Fifth Avenue to stalk the most famous toy store in the entire world – the FAO Schwarz Flagship Store that was made famous in the 1988 movie Big. Because I am a total kid at heart, the shop honestly has to be one of my very favorite places in all of New York. Although, being that the store encompasses three stories and over 65,000 square feet of retail space, I should hardly be calling it a “shop”. It is more of an attraction, or, to be more precise, a sort of hands-on retail playground. Take my word for it when I say that there is no other place like it in the entire world. The first FAO Schwarz store, or Schwarz Toy Bazaar as it was originally called, was opened in 1862 in Baltimore, Maryland by a man named Frederick August Otto Schwarz (hence the FAO in the name) and sold only dolls. In 1870, Frederick moved his store to a location on Broadway in New York City and expanded his selling empire to include a wide selection of high-end toys. When Frederick passed away in 1911, his heirs inherited the company and continued to run it. In 1931, the store, which had become known as FAO Schwarz and had grown to become THE finest and most exclusive toy store in the entire world, moved to 745 Fifth Avenue, just across the street from its current location. But by 1963, Frederick’s heirs had grown tired of running the company and decided to sell it to Parent Magazine. After several subsequent owners, in 1985 the store was sold yet again to the joint partnership of Christiana Companies, businessman Peter L. Harris, and investment banker Peter C. Morse. Harris breathed new life into the company, which had faltered under the high ownership turnover, and in 1986 moved the flagship store to its current location in the former auto showroom of the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue. It was at the grand opening of the new flagship store that the now famous 28-foot tall “Welcome to our World of Toys” singing clock was unveiled.   And it was only two years later that the store would be immortalized by a piano playing Tom Hanks in the 1988 comedy Big. Throughout the ‘90s, the store saw several different ownerships yet again and, under the helm of the Rite Start Company, began to severely falter. In 2003, FAO filed for bankruptcy, not once, but twice, and shuttered eighteen of its twenty-two stores. And on January 26th, 2004, the unthinkable happened – the store’s Fifth Avenue location closed its doors. For the next ten months, the new owners, D.E. Shaw Laminar Portfolios, regrouped, revamped and remodeled the floundering company, and on the day before Thanksgiving 2004, the flagship store re-opened to much fanfare. It has been extremely successful ever since.

And it truly is a wonder to see! The famous singing clock no longer greets customers at the front entrance, but there is now a candy shop, two treehouses, a view of Central Park and the Plaza, an on-call magician, life size Lego displays, and – my favorite area – a Newborn Nursery (pictured above), where kids can “adopt” amazingly realistic looking baby dolls for the bargain price of $80.

And I have to say that, for some odd reason, I absolutely LOVE those Newborn Nursery dolls. Well, truth be told, I actually have a proclivity for any kind of doll, but some of my favorites have to be the FAO Schwarz Newborns. I realize I am a grown woman, but every single time I visit New York, I just HAVE to go to the Newborn Nursery and take a picture with one of the dolls. I must have over ten different photographs pretty much identical to the one pictured above in my collection. LOL I know, I know, I am a total dork!

Believe me, the irony was not lost on me as I posed for the above photograph holding a baby doll . . . on my THIRTIETH birthday. Not kidding. 🙂

Even though FAO Schwarz has since changed ownership several times and was even closed for the better part of 2004, I am happy to report that it is still, for the most part, recognizable from Big.

For those who have never seen the movie, it was at FAO that the now infamous piano playing scene starring Tom Hanks and his boss, Robert Loggia, took place. I sooooo LOVE that scene! “Chopsticks!” 🙂 I can still remember sitting in the movie theatre at eleven years old, watching that scene for the very first time and being absolutely mesmerized over not only the piano dance, but also the toy store in general. My eleven year old mind could not comprehend that a place like that really existed!   🙂

As you can see in the above screen capture, at the time Big was filmed, the foot piano was located on the store’s main floor, near the front door. That area, which is called the Great Hall, now houses FAO’s massive collection of stuffed animals.

Today the Big piano is located towards the back of the store’s second level. And every hour, FAO puts on a Big style piano show, where store employees dance on the keyboard and play games like “Name That Tune” with the audience. So cool! 🙂

And you can even purchase your very own Big piano for the bargain price of . . . $250,000! No, that’s not a typ0 – the darn thing actually costs $250,000!!!!! LOL LOL LOL If I had that kind of money lying around, you can bet I wouldn’t be spending it on a toy piano!

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FAO Schwarz was also featured at the end of 1995’s Mighty Aphrodite as the location where Woody Allen runs into his former mistress, played by Mira Sorvino. The toy store was also featured in the movies For Love Or Money, Big Business, Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew and the Amy Grant documentary entitled Building the House of Love.

Besides being a filming location, FAO Schwarz is also quite a celebrity magnet. On December 15, 2005, Tom Cruise hosted then-girlfriend Katie Holmes’ 25th birthday party at the store after hours.   He even had the place stocked with balloons and cupcakes from Katie’s favorite bakery, Billy’s Bakery, for the occasion. Other celebs who have been spotted at the legendary toy store include Ashley Simpson, Bindi Irwin (daughter of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin), Kate Gosselin, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Kelly Ripa, Britney Spears, Posh Spice, Heidi Klum, Calista Flockhart, Bernadette Peters, Cindy Crawford, Isla Fisher, Brooke Shields, and Conan O’Brien.

I honestly can’t recommend stalking the FAO Schwarz Flagship Store enough! The place certainly has the ability to bring out the kid in everyone, whether you are 9 or 99! 🙂 But if you aren’t planning a trip to the Big Apple anytime soon, you can also cyber-stalk the store from the comfort of your own home here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The FAO Schwarz Flagship Store is located at 767 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

October 14, 2009
The Carlyle Hotel

Yet another of my favorite New York haunts is the ultra-exclusive Carlyle Hotel, located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I blogged about the Carlyle’s famous Bemelman’s Bar, which was featured in Sex and the City: The Movie, after last year’s trip to the Big Apple, but didn’t include much information on the actual hotel itself. So, here goes. The Carlyle Hotel, which was named after author Thomas Carlyle, was built by Moses Ginsberg and designed in the Art Deco style by architects Sylvan Bien & Harry M. Prince. The thirty-five story building first opened its doors in November of 1930 and was actually a residential hotel at the time, with apartments leasing for approximately $20,000 a year. To show you how times have changed, today there is a room at the Carlyle which rents for approximately $15,000 a night! LOL Due to the Great Depression, the hotel did not fare well during the early years. In 1932, it was sold to new owners who managed to keep it afloat and occupied, but failed to really put the hotel on the map. In 1948, businessman Robert Whittle Downing purchased the building with the intent of transforming it into an exclusive, upscale hotel property. And transform it, he did! Shortly after the change of ownership, then-president Harry S. Truman stayed at the Carlyle, and the rest, as they say is, history. Every president since that time has stayed at the Carlyle at least once during their presidency. In fact, JFK owned an apartment at the hotel from 1953 until the time of his death and was such a frequent visitor that during his tenure the Carlyle earned the nickname “the New York White House”. (By the way, I have absolutely no idea what I was looking at when my dad snapped the above picture, but it’s the only one I have of the front of the hotel. LOL)

JFK’s wife Jackie was also a frequent guest at the Carlyle during her lifetime. The hotel honored her patronage by placing the above framed photograph just inside the main entrance. Ironically enough, rumor has it that Marilyn Monroe was also a frequent visitor to the Carlyle – but only when JFK was in town and only when Jackie wasn’t able to accompany him. According to legend, there is a secret tunnel system located below the hotel which allows the rich and famous to enter and leave the property without being spotted by the masses. Thanks to the discretion and privacy that the Carlyle affords, it has long been a celebrity magnet. In fact, the New York Times just recently dubbed it “a Palace of Secrets”. Just a few of the celebs who have been spotted at the hotel through the years include Elizabeth Taylor, Steve Martin, Debbie Reynolds, Princess Diana, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Christian Slater, France’s First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Scarlett Johansson, Jack Nicholson, Gwen Stefani, Nicole Kidman, Jay Z, Beyonce, Ryan Reynolds, Britney Spears, Swiss tennis star Roger Federer, Kate Bosworth, Victoria Beckham, Kate Hudson, Katie Holmes, and Tom Cruise. And, of course, Sarah Jessica Parker. In fact, SJP and Matthew Broderick are such fans of the Carlyle that they not only honeymooned at the hotel, but hosted an after-after party for the Sex and the City: The Movie premiere there.

The Carlyle is an absolutely beautiful place, with sparkling marble floors, dark wood paneling, crystal chandeliers, and antique elevators complete with real gloved operators. And I highly recommend stalking the place! If you can’t afford to stay there (the average cost of a room is about $525!), you can grab a drink in the hotel’s Bemelman’s Bar or dine in their restaurant, Cafe Carlyle. On our last trip to the Big Apple, we stopped in to the hotel and I asked my dad to snap some photos of of it for me while I went to ask the concierge about the filming that had taken place there over the years. The two pictures shown above were the result of that request. LOL Why he took only two photographs, both of me and not of the hotel, I’ll never know! LOL My apologies! Anyway, to get a better idea of what the Carlyle looks like inside, take a peek at the photo gallery on the hotel’s website. 🙂

The Carlyle is also, of course, a filming location. Woody Allen met ex-wife Tea Leoni at the Carlyle’s Bemelman’s Bar for a drink in the 2002 movie Hollywood Ending. Woody also shot a date scene with Dianne Wiest in the hotel’s restaurant, Cafe Carlyle, for the 1986 movie Hannah and her Sisters.

According to the book New York: A Movie Lover’s Guide, the penthouse where Anthony Hopkins lived in Meet Joe Black was actually one of the Carlyle Hotel’s deluxe suites. The exteriors of his building, however, were filmed elsewhere.

Also according to New York: A Movie Lover’s Guide, the Carlyle stood in for the European hotel where Glenn Close first met Jeremy Irons in the 1990 movie Reversal of Fortune, but I’m not entirely sure that information is correct. As you can see in the above screen captures, the decor just doesn’t seem to match that of the Carlyle.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Carlyle Hotel is located at 25 East 76th Street on New York’s Upper East Side.

October 13, 2009
The St. Regis Hotel

Last year while visiting Manhattan, I dragged my boyfriend out to the posh St. Regis New York hotel on 55th Street. I had wanted to see the St. Regis not so much because it is an oft-used filming location, but because my girl Marilyn Monroe stayed there back in 1954 while on location in New York filming favorite movie The Seven Year Itch. I found this spot thanks to favorite Manhattan stalking book New York: The Movie Lover’s Guide, which claimed that the hotel was the site of a monumental fight between Marilyn and her then-husband Joe DiMaggio. According to the book, and just about everything else ever written about The Seven Year Itch, Joe and Marilyn’s relationship was not in a good place at the time of the filming. Things came to a head on September 15, 1954 – the night Marilyn filmed the famous subway grate scene.   Joe was on hand for the shoot that night and became absolutely irate at the fact that 5,000 spectators had showed up to catch a glimpse of his wife’s unmentionables. Legend has it that the fight between Marilyn and Joe started out on the 52nd street set and continued all the way back to their suite at the St. Regis Hotel, where their screaming awakened the entire floor! Now, I’m not sure if the story about the St. Regis brawl is true or not, but I just had to stalk the hotel regardless. 🙂

The St. Regis New York was built in 1904 by millionaire businessman John Jacob Astor IV and at the time was considered to be the finest hotel in all of Manhattan. Today it is considered to be one of the finest hotels in all of the world. Astor’s goal was to build a hotel where guests would not only experience the utmost in luxurious accommodations, but at the same feel as if they were staying in a private home. To give his hotel that “home away from home” feel, each of the St. Regis’ 229 rooms (164 regular rooms and 65 suites) featured a doorbell. 🙂 At the time of its opening each room also boasted such state-of-the-art amenities as personal thermostats, fire alarms, central air conditioning, telephones, Steinway pianos (yes, each room had its own Steinway piano!!!!), and – my personal favorite – a centralized vacuum system.   Rather than lugging around vacuum cleaners all day long to each and every room, the housekeeping staff had only to attach a small hose to sockets that were located in the hotel walls and the dirt would simply be sucked away. My former boss had a centralized vacuum system in his house and, let me tell you, it’s just about the COOLEST THING EVER! The fact that the St. Regis had one back in 1904 is mind-boggling to me! In today’s world, the St. Regis name has become synonymous with luxury, splendor, and the utmost in hospitality. The amenities of 2009 include a spa, a fitness center, a business center, and twenty-four hour butler service!! The St. Regis New York has won countless awards over the years, including most recently “Top 75 Hotels in the United States” by Conde Nast Traveler, “World’s Best” by Travel & Leisure Magazine, the “Five-Star Award” by the Mobil Travel Guide, and – for the past fourteen years in a row – the “Five Diamond Award” by AAA! The above photographs were taken during last year’s New York vacation in a sitting room located just off of the St. Regis lobby. As you can see, the hotel is absolutely BEAUTIFUL inside and I just love visiting it.   I would also LOVE to stay there sometime, but being that rates start at around $600 per night, there is no way in heck the Grim Cheaper would ever go for that!

The exclusive St. Regis has long been a celebrity haven. Besides Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, past guests of the hotel include Humphrey Bogart, Salvador Dali, Russian Prince Colonel Serge Obelensky, Marlene Dietrich, Rex Harrison, Alfred Hitchcock, Ernest Hemingway, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, John Huston, Joseph Pulitzer, William Paley, and Gertrude Lawrence, just to name a few. In more recent years Demi Moore, Nathan Lane, Pierce Brosnan, Sean Penn, Victor Garber, Scarlett Johansson, Tara Reid, Thora Birch, Courteney Cox, and Martin Short have all been spotted at the hotel.

And, of course, the St. Regis is also a filming location! 🙂 The hotel’s King Cole Bar showed up in fave movie The First Wives Club, as the location where Goldie Hawn lamented over being asked to play the character of “Monique’s mother” – instead of “Monique” – in her next movie. The King Cole is famous in and of itself thanks to the massive Maxfield Parrish mural of Old King Cole and his knights flanking the bar.    In 1906, John Jacob Astor IV paid $5,000 for the commission of the eight foot by thirty foot mural and first hung it in another of his hotel properties, the Knickerbocker. When the Knickerbocker closed its doors in 1932, the mural was brought over to the St. Regis and hung above the bar, where legends about it abound – two in particular. The first story states that the face of King Cole in the painting is actually that of the hotel’s owner, John Jacob Astor IV. Legend also has it that the reason behind the King’s mischievous expression in the mural is that he has just passed gas. I’m not kidding! LOL   And yet another legend asserts that the King Cole Bar is where the first ever Bloody Mary was served on U.S. soil. 🙂

The King Cole Bar was also featured very briefly in the movie The Devil Wears Prada as the location where my love Simon Baker gave Anne Hathaway the unpublished manuscript for the 7th “Harry Potter” book. I so LOVED The Devil Wears Prada, by the way. The movie is worth seeing just for Anne Hathaway’s wardrobe alone! 🙂

The St. Regis also popped up in the 1976 movie Taxi Driver as the location where Cybil Shepherd caught a ride with cabbie Robert De Niro.

In 2000’s Miss Congeniality, Michael Caine and Sandra Bullock dined at the St. Regis’ now-defunct Lespinasse Restaurant.

Joe Jackson’s (not MJ’s father) music video for his 1982 song ‘Steppin’ Out’ was also filmed at the hotel. And Woody Allen has shot no less than THREE movies on location at the St. Regis – Anything Else, Hannah and Her Sisters (the hotel was the site of Michael Caine and Barbara Hershey’s illicit affair), and Radio Days (Mia Farrow was a cigarette girl in the King Cole Bar).

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I honestly can’t recommend stalking the St. Regis New York enough. It is a truly beautiful, truly unique hotel. And I’d also recommend stalking the King Cole Bar – if you can get a seat, that is. My fiancé and I have tried to grab a cocktail there countless times on each of our numerous trips to New York, but have never been able to get a seat in the popular bar. 🙁

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The St. Regis New York hotel is located at 2 East 55th Street, at Fifth Avenue, in Manhattan. You can visit their website here.

October 12, 2009
Rye Playland

Another location that fellow stalker Owen visited a few weeks back while spending the day in Rye, New York was the amusement park featured at the very end of the 1988 Tom Hanks movie Big. Rye Playland, which is also called Playland Amusement Park or just simply Playland and is run by Westchester County, New York, is the only government-owned and operated amusement park in the entire United States. In the early 1900s, Westchester County Park Association purchased two beachside theme parks after local citizens became upset over the unruly patrons fraternizing there. The Association tore down the existing parks and built Rye Playland in their place. The Art Deco style park opened on May 26, 1928 after a scant six months of construction. The new park featured an ice skating rink, a boardwalk, a fine dining restaurant, a swimming pool, two beaches, and numerous rides, including the Grand Carousel, which was built by Mangels-Carmel in 1915. In 1987, Playland was declared a National Historic Landmark and it is still in operation to this day, looking much the same as it did when it first opened over 81 years ago.

Due to its quaint, beachside charm, movie producers have made much use of Playland over the years. It is at the Rye amusement park that Tom Hanks finally locates the elusive Zoltar machine and makes his wish to be a kid again in fave movie Big. As you can see in the above screen capture and photograph, the entrance to the park looks a bit different today than it did in 1988 when Big was filmed. The two white pillars flanking the front gates have long since been removed, as has the pine tree that used to stand in the center island.

Also, at the time the movie was filmed, the large fountain at the front of the park was not in operation. That fountain was in full swing, though, when Owen visited Playland a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, due to all of the spouting water, he couldn’t match up his photograph perfectly to the screen shot, but the two pictures you see above were taken from the exact same vantage point.

Most of the scene from Big took place on Playland’s curved boardwalk, which is located just around the corner from the park’s main entrance and, which, amazingly enough, still looks almost exactly the same today as it did twenty-one years ago when the movie was filmed.

The only thing missing, of course, is the Zoltar machine. 🙁 But notice how the payphone in the above photograph is still in the EXACT same place that it was when the movie was filmed!!

Owen, of course, wasn’t expecting to find a magic fortune telling machine on the pier during his stalk, so imagine his surprise when he discovered that a Pepsi machine was standing just a few feet to the left of where Zoltar was situated in the movie.

So, of course, he just HAD to pretend to kick the machine, like Tom Hanks did in the movie. LOVE IT! 🙂

Rye Playland also showed up in Fatal Attraction, as the spot where Glenn Close took Michael Douglas’ daughter for the day after kidnapping her from school. In the movie, the two are shown riding Playland’s iconic Dragon Coaster, which was built in 1929 and was designed by Frederick A. Church. The Dragon Coaster is 3,400 feet long, rises to 85 feet at its highest point, and is one of only about a hundred wooden roller coasters still in operation in the United States.

Mariah Carey also rode the Dragon Coaster in the 1995 video for her song “Fantasy”, which was filmed in its entirety on location at Playland. The video also made use of the park’s boardwalk and parking lot area.

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Other productions filmed at Playland include Pieta, Sweet and Lowdown, Tenderness, The Muppets Take Manhattan and several episodes of BET Now.

A big THANK YOU to Owen for stalking this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Rye Playland is located at the end of Playland Parkway in Rye, New York. You can visit their website here. Park admission fees range between $20 to $30, but you can access the boardwalk area, where Big was filmed, for free. Parking costs an average of $5, depending on the day. The boardwalk area is located just around the corner from the park’s main entrance. The Who’s the Boss? house is located just a mile North of Playland at 13 Onondaga Street, also in Rye.

October 9, 2009