famous bookstores – IAMNOTASTALKER

September 26, 2018December 6, 2018

Counterpoint Records and Books from “A Lot Like Love”

I obviously need to start paying closer attention to things because for years I was under the impression that all of the locations from fave movie A Lot Like Love had been tracked down. But while scanning through the 2005 romcom to make screen captures for my recent post on the home where Oliver’s (Ashton Kutcher) parents lived in the flick, I just about fell out of my chair when I realized that one spot remained unearthed – the record/book store where Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet) met – or I guess I should say “re-met” – her future fiancé, Ben Miller (Jeremy Sisto). Being that unknown locales plague me like no other and that there’s pretty much nothing I love more than a good book shop, I immediately set about IDing the place. As fate would have it, the hunt turned out to be one of the easiest of my entire stalking career.

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In A Lot Like Love, Emily reconnects with Ben, after initially meeting him at a mutual friend’s wedding, at a spacious record/book store where the two banter over the last copy of an import CD they both want. Feeling lucky, I headed to Google, inputted “large record bookstore Los Angeles” and the very first result kicked back was for Counterpoint Records and Books at 5911 Franklin Avenue in the Hollywood Hills. One look at images of the place told me it was the right spot. If only all of my searches were so simple! So to the top of my To-Stalk List the site went and I headed right on over there a few weeks later.

Counterpoint Records and Books was originally established by John Polifronio and his then girlfriend/now wife Susan way back in 1979 as a classical music boutique that operated out of the back of The Book Treasury, formerly located at 6707 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

Because of the Boulevard’s rather sketchy nature at the time, the couple decided to relocate the following year and sublet a 600-square-foot portion of a frame store in the more shopper-friendly Franklin Village.

Popular from the get-go, it was not long before John and Susan needed to expand, first taking over the entire frame shop and then spreading over into the storefront next door.

The couple also soon decided to branch out. Longtime collectors of rare and used books, John and Susan eventually found their home overflowing with volumes and elected to incorporate the excess tomes into their inventory.

In 1997, the duo purchased the building that houses Counterpoint, which Susan said in a 2012 interview was the saving grace in the store’s longevity.

The shop, which teems with colorful leaflets, thick novels, stacks of vinyl, copies of used VHS and cassette tapes, and racks upon racks of CDs, remains extremely popular today with locals and visitors alike.

Even actor Ron Livingston is a fan and included Counterpoint in his itinerary for a My Favorite Weekend column for the Los Angeles Times in 2006.

It is not hard to see why the store became such a neighborhood staple. Counterpoint Records and Books is warm, friendly and inviting. The employees that I spoke with not only invited me to take as many photos of the place as I wanted, but spent quite a bit of time chatting with me about the various filmings that have taken place on the premises over the years. Though, shockingly, not a one of them knew about A Lot Like Love!

In the movie, Emily and Ben reconnect while perusing the long CD rack in the middle of the store. Though that area of the shop is largely unchanged from the time that filming took place, the sections around it have been moved. During the shoot, the Religion, Philosophy and Occult sections were situated behind the CDs, but today those shelves house Fiction, as you can see below.

Philosophy and Religion can now be found on the opposite side of the room.

I was thrilled to see that, despite the move, the signage still looks exactly as it did onscreen.

There seems to be a bit of confusion concerning some of Counterpoint’s other cinematic appearances floating around online, so I’ll do my best to clear up the misinformation here.

The shop did pop up at the beginning of Prince’s 2004 “Musicology” music video, which you can watch here.

While many websites state that Counterpoint made an appearance in the 2010 movie Beginners, it was only featured in the trailer (which is where the still below comes from), not the actual film. It seems that the scene shot on the premises wound up on the cutting room floor. To confuse matters further, a different L.A. book boutique – the now defunct Cosmopolitan Book Shop at 7017 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood – does cameo a few times. It is there, not at Counterpoint, that Oliver (Ewan McGregor) and Anna (Melanie Laurent) peruse The Joy of Sex.

Counterpoint Records and Books pops up in Olly Murs’ 2012 “Troublemaker” music video, which you can check out here. (I would be remiss if I did not mention that Olly is such a cutie! I had never heard of him until writing this post and was pleasantly surprised to find while watching his video that he reminds me quite a bit of Michael Bublé in looks and mannerisms.)

Though Curbed Los Angeles reports that Joan Crawford’s (Jessica Lange) book signing in the Season 1 episode of Feud: Bette and Joan titled “You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends?” was shot at Counterpoint, that information is incorrect. Perplexingly, the website even goes so far as to say “According to [production designer Judy] Becker, the production team built a book-signing station for the scene, which Counterpoint opted to keep after filming concluded.” But, as you can see below, the two-story venue that appeared in the episode looks nothing like Counterpoint. Filming actually took place at the Philosophical Research Library at the University of Philosophical Research located at 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard in Los Feliz. You can check out some photos of the space here and here.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Counterpoint Records and Books, from A Lot Like Love, is located at 5911 Franklin Avenue in the Hollywood Hills. You can visit the store’s official website here.

February 21, 2018February 20, 2018

Book Soup from “Bewitched”

I am a total bookstore junkie – as I’ve mentioned numerous times on this site. The rest of the world seems to be leaning in the opposite direction, though. Still I was shocked – and saddened – to learn of the recent shuttering of the Barnes & Noble on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, a place I patronized often during its 20-plus years in business. Reading about the closure got me to thinking about another L.A. bookseller I regularly frequent, one that is thankfully still in business and is also a popular filming location – Book Soup. I first visited the West Hollywood store for stalking purposes way back in October 2011 after seeing it in both Bewitched and Californication and intended on blogging about it shortly thereafter, but never got around to it. Though I’ve been back countless times since, I still somehow have yet to dedicate a post to the site. So I figured it was finally time to do so.

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Originally established in 1975, Book Soup was the brainchild of UCLA graduate student Glenn Goldman. Though the 24-year-old was studying arts management at the time, a lifelong appreciation of bookstores and a dream of one day owning his own led Glenn to change course. Armed with $50,000 in seed money, he took action shortly after earning his degree and settled on West Hollywood as the home of his future shop. As he explained to the Los Angeles Times in a 2000 article, “I really couldn’t contemplate a lot of places. There had been a period of upheaval here in the ‘60s – of thought and ideas – and I felt that the people who lived in the neighborhood would and could really support a bookstore.” Goldman enlisted his friend, architecture student David Mackler, to design the space.

Success did not come quickly, though. In 1992 Glenn told The New York Times, “The store was an immense failure. All this energy met with total indifference.” He wound up so broke, he had to move into the shop, sleeping on a mattress upstairs. It took years, but people did eventually find their way to Book Soup and its clientele grew exponentially, turning it into an area landmark. By the late 1980s, the site had become so popular that Goldman decided to move up the street to a much larger space that still serves as the store’s home today.

Sadly, Glenn passed away rather unexpectedly in 2009. The shop was subsequently purchased by Vroman’s Bookstore, another of L.A.’s most famous independent booksellers. (Vroman’s should be familiar to those who read my site regularly. You can check out a few of the myriad posts I’ve written about the place here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Thankfully, little of Book Soup was changed following the acquisition and the shop is still going strong today.

One of Book Soup’s largest draws is its legendary book signings. Just a few of the luminaries who the store has hosted over the years include Martin Scorsese, Howard Stern, Muhammad Ali, Shaquille O’Neal, The Doors, Mia Farrow, Mark Wahlberg, Ann-Margret, Ed McMahon, Jack Palance, and Annie Leibovitz. Stars have also been known to shop onsite. Drew Barrymore, Marlee Matlin, Nicolas Cage, Elton John, Madonna, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Paris Hilton, Faye Dunaway, Thora Birch, Leonard Nimoy, Ellen Pompeo, Alec Baldwin, Joan Collins, and Robert Downey Jr. have all been spotted perusing the stacks.

With such a vast celebrity clientele, it is not hard to see how Book Soup wound up on both the big and small screens.

In the oddly-shot 2000 drama Timecode, in which four frames of action are shown simultaneously throughout the entire film, Cherine (Leslie Mann) and Emma (Saffron Burrows) shop at Book Soup. The scenes featuring the store are pictured in the top right corner of the screen captures below.

It is at Book Soup that Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell) first lays eyes on Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman) in the 2005 romcom Bewitched.

Jack subsequently follows Isabel to Book Soup Bistro, a café that was formerly located next door to the bookstore in the Carolco building, in a sunken space situated adjacent to the newsstand.

By the time I stalked Book Soup in 2011, while the newsstand was still intact, the restaurant had closed and the space that once housed it was vacant.

The “Book Soup Bistro” signage was still in place, though.

The former restaurant area has since been completely taken over by the Carolco building (which underwent a massive renovation in 2014 and currently serves as the West Hollywood headquarters of IAC) and Book Soup’s newsstand has been moved to the front exterior of the store, as you can see in the recent Street View images below.

Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) meets an amorous fan named Nicole (Lindsay Sloane) at Book Soup in the Season 3 episode of Entourage titled “I Wanna Be Sedated,” which aired in 2006.

In the Season 1 episode of Californication titled “The Whore of Babylon,” which aired in 2007, Hank Moody (David Duchovny) gets into a fist fight with director Todd Carr (Chris Williams) during a signing at Book Soup.

Though countless websites claim that Book Soup is also the spot where Hank first meets Mia Cross (Madeline Zima) in Californication’s pilot episode, that information is incorrect. Hank and Mia’s initial encounter actually took place at the now shuttered Equator Books, formerly located at 1103 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice.

In the Season 1 episode of The Layover titled “Los Angeles,” which aired in 2012, Anthony Bourdain chronicles exciting places to visit during a stopover in L.A., one of which is Book Soup.

The store pops up a couple of times in Netflix’s 2017 film Sandy Wexler as the newsstand that Sandy Wexler (Adam Sandler) – and Arsenio Hall (playing himself) – regularly frequents.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Book Soup, from Bewitched, is located at 8818 West Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. You can visit the shop’s official website here.

May 20, 2015May 19, 2015

The Last Bookstore from “Gone Girl”

I love bookstores – and books. Actual books, not the digitized versions. You will never catch me reading on a Kindle. I like the feel of a book in my hands, the physical act of turning the pages and the smell. I love, love, love the smell of books. The Grim Cheaper always makes fun of the fact that I am constantly smelling my reading materials and when we watched the Sex and the City movie for the first time, he turned to me laughing at Carrie’s “I love the smell” line (video here). So me! So when I discovered The Last Bookstore in downtown L.A. a couple of years ago, it was love at first sight. Not only is the shop a virtual work of art, with interesting details looming around each and every corner, but it carries unique and intriguing tomes (new and used) that you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Oh, and the place is also a filming location. Yep, right up my alley!

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The Last Bookstore was originally founded by Josh Spencer in 2005 as an online emporium that he ran out of his downtown loft. The young entrepreneur had an extensive background in selling books, furniture, records, clothes and cars via eBay, but had decided to focus solely on literary sales. He dubbed his new endeavor “The Last Bookstore.” The name was chosen ironically. As Spencer explained in a Southern California Public Radio interview, “I’ve always been into science fiction and post-apocalyptic things, so I always wondered what a cool ‘last bookstore’ would look like for some future civilization.”

The shop’s website further states, “The name was chosen with irony, but seems more appropriate with each passing day as physical bookstores die out like dinosaurs from the meteoric impact of Amazon and e-books.” Thankfully, The Last Bookstore seems immune to such a fate. By late 2009, Spencer had outgrown his loft and decided to lease a small brick and mortar site on Main Street. By June 2011 (the very same year that the Borders chain filed for bankruptcy), Spencer had outgrown that location, as well, and moved to the much larger, 10,000-square-foot lobby space of the Spring Arts Tower. It was only months before he needed to expand yet again and in February 2012 he began leasing the building’s second floor. Today, The Last Bookstore encompasses over 16,000 square feet – and every last inch of it is spectacular.

The 12-story Spring Arts Tower was originally designed as the Citizens National Bank Building in 1914 by John Parkinson, the same architect who, along with his son, was responsible for Union Station, Bullocks Wilshire, Los Angeles City Hall, and the Security Trust and Savings Bank (now The Federal Bar).

The building’s grand former lobby features mosaic tiled flooring, sweeping 25-foot-tall ceilings, and towering pillars throughout. The Art Nouveau-style space would be beautiful on its own, but Spencer decided to treat it like a blank canvas onto which he could create a work of art. The result is nothing short of incredible.

The Last Bookstore, which is California’s largest independent bookshop, houses an inventory of 250,000 new and used books, with stacks as far and as high as the eye can see.

Thanks to its whimsical displays, though, it is easy to forget the space is a store. The site seems more like a museum or a movie set or a scene from Alice in Wonderland come to life.

Unique design elements can be found everywhere you turn.

Even the bank’s old vault is utilized as display space.

My favorite décor element, though, has to be is what is called the “Labyrinth Above the Last Bookstore.”

The Labyrinth is absolutely overwhelming in person!

The best part is that The Last Bookstore employees won’t tell you where to find it – you have to go on a hunt to track it down yourself, which the GC and I had a blast doing.

Despite its incredibly unique interior, The Last Bookstore has not popped up very often onscreen, though it was utilized in a rather illicit flashback scene in Gone Girl.

The scene was filmed in the shop’s main room, in the northwestern-most aisle as you first enter the store (though the photograph below was taken from the opposite angle from which the movie was shot).

As I mentioned in this post, the exterior of the Spring Arts Tower appeared in one of my favorite movies, 2004’s Little Black Book, though that was long before The Last Bookstore was founded.

The exterior of the building also appeared briefly in the the Season 2 episode of Castle titled “The Fifth Bullet.”

In a 2011 Los Angeles Times article, Spencer stated, “I think there’s always going to be a great market for books, but it’s definitely going to shrink to those who value and enjoy the ritual of browsing through books and holding books and turning pages. That’s gradually going to become less and less, as the generations pass. This might be the last generation, I think.” If his prediction does someday come to pass, I sincerely hope I am not around to witness it.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Last Bookstore, from Gone Girl, is located at 453 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the store’s official website here.

August 9, 2011August 8, 2011

“Parks and Recreation” Filming at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena

Last Wednesday, while on my morning walk to Starbucks, I happened to pass by fave bookstore Vroman’s and just about fell over when I noticed an entire slew of production trucks parked out front. I, of course, immediately sought out one of the crew members to ask what was being filmed and he told me that it was an episode of Parks and Recreation. And even though I had never actually seen the NBC series before, I decided to stick around to watch the filming – only after getting my Starbucks first, of course. Winking smile The shoot was taking place inside of Vroman’s, in the store’s Reading Group section, which had been set up to look like a book signing event was about to occur. The crew had brought in all new furniture for the scene, as well as several posters for Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America, a book supposedly written by Pawnee, Indiana Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation Leslie Knope (aka Amy Poehler). And while I had assumed that the tome was a fake that had been created solely for the filming, it is apparently a real life publication about the show that is set to be released on October 4th.

A display featuring several copies of Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America was set up in the background of the scene and, throughout the day, before filming began, countless Vroman’s customers would walk up and look through it, thinking it was a real item that was for sale. LOL I am dying to know if anyone actually brought a copy up to the cash registers and tried to purchase it!

At first I was not sure if I would be allowed to photograph the set that the crew had created, so like an idiot I was trying to be sly and take pictures on the down-low, which never seems to work out for me. For some reason, whenever I try to fly under the radar and be covert, I end up drawing attention to myself, which is exactly what happened in this case. One of the crew members noticed me ever-so-stealthily snapping photographs and informed me that I was welcome to take all of the pictures that I wanted . . .

. . . at which point I immediately jumped up onto the podium that Amy Poehler would be standing on during the scene to pose for a pic. Smile YAY!

I was most fascinated, though, with a palm tree located just outside of Vroman’s front doors (which would only be seen in the background of the scene) that set dressers decorated to look like a tree indigenous to the Midwest, where Parks and Recreation supposedly takes place.

As you can see above, the front side of the tree’s trunk had been covered over with fake bark for the filming.

And real life branches from some sort of Midwestern tree (can you tell that I am in no way, shape, or form a green thumb?!?) were mixed in with the actual palm’s branches. The tree looked so incredibly realistic, even up close, that it was almost unbelievable! I don’t think anyone who walked by even noticed that it had been altered, even though the trunk looked a bit odd from the side.

I was absolutely dying to get a photograph with Rob Lowe (whose autobiography, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, was recently loaned to me by my good friend/fellow stalker Kerry and is can’t-put-down-AMAZING!) and figured I could catch the actor on his way into the bookstore before filming got started. Sadly though, Vroman’s has three different entrances and I waited outside of the wrong one and missed him entirely. Major, major FAIL! Especially since he was reportedly incredibly friendly and nice! Apparently, one of the Vroman’s employees, who goes by the twitter handle @howsannie, had sent out the following tweet the previous evening: “Parks & Recreation is filming at the store tomorrow. Dibs on @RobLowe!”, to which the actor responded, “I expect prominent book display!” When Rob walked into the store the following afternoon, his books were indeed on prominent display and he not only signed a bunch of copies for Vroman’s to sell, one of which is pictured above, but he also signed a copy for @howsannie. How incredibly cool is that? He even tweeted a photograph of himself from the set that day, which you can take a look at here. I was lucky enough to get to watch Rob, along with Amy Poehler and Chris Pratt, during the filming and all I can say is WOW! The guy is VERY good looking! Much more so than he appears to be onscreen. And while I would have waited around until the shoot wrapped to try to get a picture with the cast, I had promised Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, that I would stalk a movie premiere with her later that afternoon, so I couldn’t. Ah well! Here’s hoping they will be filming in Pasadena again sometime soon!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Vroman’s Bookstore is located at 695 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. You can visit the store’s official website here. Look for the Parks and Recreation episode that was filmed at Vroman’s to air sometime in the next two months or so.

April 14, 2011April 14, 2011

Skylight Books from “Joan of Arcadia”

Another Los Feliz location that the Grim Cheaper and I stalked two weekends ago was Skylight Books, the bookstore where Joan Girardi (aka Amber Tamblyn) worked on the 2003 television series Joan of Arcadia. In a very synchronicitous twist of fate, the GC and I had visited Skylight Books way back in October of last year, just a few minutes before grabbing dinner at the nearby Dresden Restaurant from Swingers. We both fell in love with the bookstore immediately, but, because I had never seen an episode of Joan of Arcadia, I had no idea whatsoever that the place was a filming location. Then, randomly enough, the very next day I met up with fellow stalker Chas, from the ItsFilmedThere website who was in town visiting from Indiana, and he happened to mention that he was taking his mom to Skylight Books later that afternoon because Joan of Arcadia was one of her very favorite shows. Well, let me tell you, I just about died upon finding out that information and immediately added the store to my “To Re-Stalk” list and dragged the GC back there two Saturdays ago after eating lunch at Fred 62.

In the pilot episode of Joan of Arcadia, God (who in this particular instance was played by Kris Lemche) instructs Joan to get a part-time job at Skylight Bookstore – the store’s actual name was used in the series – for reasons he does not specify. She continued to work there throughout the series’ short two-season run.

Both the interior and the exterior of the store were used regularly on the show.

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Interestingly enough, according to this fantastic article about the filming of Joan of Arcadia, all of the bookstore scenes during the first season of the series were filmed on location at the actual Skylight Books. Production designer Bill Eigenbrodt says he chose the store due to its “distinct visual personality”. And let me just say that, with its high, peaked ceilings, numerous skylights, concrete flooring, large trees, exposed ducts, brick walls, and extensive use of wood décor, the store definitely does have a unique look. Ironically enough, while Joan of Arcadia is set in the fictional town of Arcadia, Maryland on the East Coast, to me Skylight Books has more of a Pacific Northwest feel to it. But, then again, what do I know. Winking smile

For the second season of the series, producers had a replica of the store built on a soundstage and they changed things around quite a bit, making the shop slightly larger, dropping the ceilings, adding more brick walls, and infusing the decor with a bit of a Craftsman style.

Skylight Books, which was originally founded in 1996, is a VERY cool bookstore and I can’t recommend stalking it enough! Apparently it has been used quite often in filming, but the SUPER nice clerk that I spoke with was unsure of which other productions had been lensed there. He did mention that some location scouts from Glee had been there that very week, so the shop might just be showing up on the show in the near future!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Chas, from the ItsFilmedThere website, for telling me about this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Skylight Books from Joan of Arcadia is located at 1818 North Vermont Avenue in Los Feliz. You can visit the store’s official website here.

March 18, 2011March 17, 2011

Alicia Silverstone’s “The Kind Diet” Book Signing

This past Wednesday night I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to my favorite local bookstore, Vroman’s (which coincidentally just appeared in the most recent episode of Modern Family, but more on that later), to attend the book signing and discussion for Alicia Silverstone’s new lifestyle tome The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet. Even though I am not in any way, shape, or form a vegan, I was absolutely DYING to attend the book signing because, as I have mentioned a few times before on this blog, not only is Clueless one of my all-time favorite movies, but Alicia and I happened to grow up in the same hometown – San Mateo, California – so I have always had a very special place in my heart for the actress. Because I am a diabetic and on a very strict, virtually no-carbohydrate diet, though, and because most vegan diets that I have read about tend to favor carbs, I was not actually interested in purchasing a copy of Alicia’s book for myself. But my good friend Nat, who actually attended San Mateo High School – Alicia’s alma mater – is a vegan and she absolutely LOVES Alicia’s book – and her lifestyle blog, The Kind Life – so I decided I would purchase a copy for her as a little “just because” present. Which is how the GC and I found ourselves heading over to Vroman’s at about 5 p.m. this past Wednesday night. And, as always, before the event got started, I sent him outside to snap some photographs of Alicia when she arrived. Winking smile

The signing began right on time, at 7 p.m., but for some reason it was VERY strictly monitored. No photographs WHATSOEVER were allowed during the event – not when Alicia walked into the room, not during the discussion session, and not while standing in line waiting to have our books signed. We were told shortly before her arrival that each guest would be allowed one – and only one – posed photograph with Alicia (which I could NOT have been more excited about as most celebs will not actually pose for pictures during a signing), but otherwise photographs of any kind would not be allowed. To enforce this, two quite burly Pasadena policemen were on site and they threatened to remove anyone who was even spotted with a camera in their hands during the event! So I was extremely thankful that the GC had managed to snap some photographs of Alicia outside of the store.

Alicia, who is currently pregnant, was ABSOLUTELY adorable in person and much taller than I had expected her to be, although she was wearing some fairly tall heels. She walked directly to the podium upon arrival, introduced herself, and started speaking about why she decided to write The Kind Diet, which was an extremely surreal moment for me as it was like watching the Haitian immigrant debate scene from Clueless (pictured above) come alive before my very eyes. I kept having to pinch myself to make sure that it was all really happening and that I wasn’t actually at home sitting in front of my television set. I have to say that in person, Alicia reminded me A LOT of Cher, her Clueless alter-ego. In real life, Alicia has the same mannerisms, facial expressions, and vocal tendencies that I had grown so familiar with from watching the movie over and over again. And I can honestly say that I love Alicia even more now than I did before. The actress came off as extremely charming, warm, genuine, and sweet. She was also poised, well-read, and wildly knowledgeable about veganism, holistic medicine, and healthy nutrition. I was riveted listening to her and, while not a vegan, found myself agreeing whole-heartedly with the vast majority of what she had to say. She also handled herself incredibly well when one of the audience members asked her an asinine question about veganism and pregnancy, in which he tried to make Alicia look bad. (Honestly, if you don’t agree with her lifestyle and are not a fan of hers, then why come to the event????) Alicia responded to him, though, with honesty, wit, and a bit of snarkiness and ended up making him look like a complete and total moron. As we left the event, I found myself wondering how she managed to do that! I cannot tell you how much I would love to be able to tell a rude person off without breaking my cool and all the while seeming poised and charming. But I digress. I was most surprised to hear Alicia speak about diabetes and veganism. As it turns out, her diet does not favor carbohydrates at all and is actually very similar to the diet I am currently on, so it looks like I am now going to have to buy a copy of the book for myself!

After Alicia’s speech, which lasted about thirty minutes, we all lined up to meet the actress. Alicia really took her time with all of her fans and seemed to have an incredibly warm and open personality. And, as promised, every guest got to pose for a photograph with her, which I was absolutely floored about!

Nat’s signed book is pictured above.

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Alicia’s inscription reads, “Dear Natalie, Thank you for loving the book! <3, Alicia Silverstone”.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, fave show Modern Family recently did some filming on location at Vroman’s Bookstore. The final scene of the Season 2 episode titled “Two Monkeys and a Panda”, in which Mitchell Pritchett (aka Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron Tucker (aka Eric Stonestreet) peruse various books on parenting, took place near the store’s Current Event’s section.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Vroman’s Bookstore is located at 695 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. You can check out the store’s upcoming signings here. You can purchase Alicia Silverstone’s book The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet here. You can visit Alicia’s lifestyle blog, The Kind Life, here. And you can check out future L.A.-area book signings and other celebrity events on my Upcoming Celebrity Events page here.