famous locations – Page 7

June 14, 2011June 15, 2011

Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant from “The Office”

One location that I have been on the lookout for for quite a few weeks now is the Italian restaurant where the Dunder Mifflin gang hosted the annual Dundies Awards ceremony in the Season 7 episode of fave show The Office titled “Michael’s Last Dundies”. I had an inkling that the eatery was most likely located somewhere in the Van Nuys area, near Chandler Valley Center Studios where the series is lensed, so one of my first lines of attack was to do a Google search for the terms “Italian restaurant”, “Van Nuys”, and “filming”. My query kicked back numerous results, most of which pointed to an eatery in Valley Glen named “Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant” and when I looked at an exterior image of the place on fave website LA Time Machines, I saw that it indeed matched up perfectly to what had appeared on The Office. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place and grab some lunch two Sundays ago.

Barone’s Famous Italian restaurant was originally founded way back in 1945 by brothers Tony, Frank, and Mike Arpaia, all of whom had just returned home after finishing a stint in the Air Force during World War II, and their sister, Josephine Barone. The siblings purchased a defunct eatery named Barto’s at the corner of Beverly Glen and Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks and, in order to to save a bit of money, simply dropped the “T” and added an “N” and an “E” to the former restaurant’s exterior signage, thus creating “Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant”. The establishment became so popular that just four years later the family was forced to move it to a larger space located at 14151 Ventura Boulevard, where it remained until 2006, at which time it was moved to its current home on the corner of Oxnard Street and Mammoth Avenue in Valley Glen. It was that Valley Glen location that I set out to stalk two weekends ago.

Barone’s Famous Italian restaurant, which has served such luminaries as Huntz Hall, Leo Gorcey, Lucille Ball, John Wayne, and Jane Russell, is still family-owned and operated to this day, 66 years after its inception. The eatery has long been known for its rectangular-shaped pizzas, an idea which was born out of a need to fit more pies into the restaurant’s tiny oven, but because I am diabetic and have to stay away from carbs, the GC and I were unfortunately not able to sample any. I instead opted for the Chicken Marsala entree, while the GC sampled Barone’s “Famous Stuffed Mushrooms” and a Caesar salad, and, sadly, I have to say that none of it was especially tasty. Sad smile I had such high hopes for the place, too! Being that we saw no less than thirty pies make their way out the door for delivery in the short time that we were dining there, though, I am guessing that it is the pizzas that have kept people coming back to this place time and time again for over six decades.

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In the “Michael’s Last Dundies” episode of The Office, Michael Scott (aka Steve Carell), Deangelo Vickers (aka Will Ferrell), Pam Beesly (aka Jenna Fischer), Jim Halpert (aka John Krasinksi) and the rest of the Dunder Mifflin Scranton Branch employees gather at the supposed Scranton, Pennsylvania-area Louis Volpe’s Italian Restaurant to celebrate the 2011 Dundie Awards. Chaos, of course, ensues and they all end up getting kicked out of the establishment by the restaurant’s manager after Deangelo screams out the word “vomit” numerous times during his acceptance speech.

Upon entering the restaurant, though, I was shocked to discover that it looked NOTHING at all like what had appeared on the show. From what I was able to discern after talking to the restaurant’s super-nice hostess, while the “Michael’s Last Dundies” episode did use the exterior of Barone’s for some filming, all of the interior scenes were filmed elsewhere – at a location that I am unfortunately still on the hunt for. UPDATE – fellow stalker Owen recently tracked down one of the series’ crew members, who informed him that the interior of Louis Volpe’s was in actuality just a set that was built at Chandler Valley Center Studios.

Some filming has taken place inside of the Barone’s space over the years, though. The eatery was the spot where Mark “Rat” Ratner (aka Brian Backer) took Stacey Hamilton (aka Jennifer Jason Leigh) out on a date, for which he forgot his wallet, in the 1982 movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High. At the time, the restaurant was a German establishment named Hoppe’s Old Heidelberg, which was originally founded in 1958.

Thankfully, as you can see in the above screen capture and photograph, even though the establishment has gone through several ownership changes throughout the years, very little of the interior has been altered since Fast Times at Ridgemont High was filmed almost three decades ago. So incredibly cool!

In 1995, Hoppe’s Old Heidelberg was sold to a new owner, Switzerland native and Chef-of-the-Year-awardee Ueli Huegli, who renamed the place Matterhorn Chef and gave the menu a Swiss flair. In 2005, the restaurant was featured in the Billy Bob Thornton movie Bad News Bears.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant, which served as the exterior of Louie Volpe’s restaurant from the “Michael’s Last Dundies” episode of The Office, is located at 13726 Oxnard Street in Valley Glen. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

February 22, 2011February 22, 2011

The “Our House” House

Two weeks ago, fellow stalker Cait posted a comment on my site challenging me to find the home where the Witherspoon family – Gus (aka Wilford Brimley), Jessie (aka Deidre Hall), David (aka Chad Allen), Molly (aka Keri Houlihan), and Kris (aka my girl Shannen Doherty) – lived in the 1980’s television series Our House. Surprisingly enough, despite the fact that I am such a humongous Shannen Doherty fan, I had never actually seen an episode of Our House and was unsure of where the property might be located. Thankfully though, I had a couple of clues to help me out in the hunt. In her comment, Cait had informed me that she had spotted a “159” address number on the dwelling located across the street from the Witherspoon house and she also included a link to the Season 1 episode of the show titled “First Impressions”, in which quite a bit of the property was shown. So, I immediately started scanning through it.

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While watching the episode, I noticed that there were large sidewalks on the street in front of the Witherspoon residence and my first instinct was that the property was located somewhere in or around the Hancock Park area.

That instinct was only strengthened when I saw the ginormous house (pictured behind Wilford Brimley in the screen capture above) located next door to the Witherspoon residence. So, I immediately started searching through all of the blocks in Hancock Park that were in the 100 range, but I could just not seem to find the Our House residence anywhere.

As it ended up, my hunch was off by quite a bit. Not that it mattered, though. 😉 Just three days after posting her challenge to me, Cait published another comment on my site saying that she had found the Our House house! Apparently, while looking for an unrelated location, Cait came across an address on Cahuenga Boulevard that was in the 100 range. So, she started searching through online maps for all streets parallel to Cahuenga that also had 100 blocks. She had a hunch that the house had to be east of Western Avenue and, after scouring online maps to find what she believed was the right area, got in her car and proceeded to drive up and down each and every street in that neighborhood. She eventually found the property exactly where she thought it would be – at 158 South Kingsley Drive! YAY! After finding the house, Cait said, “I can understand now why you enjoy ‘stalking’ so much – it’s like a treasure hunt in a great big city and it’s fun to succeed at it!” That is SO very true, Cait! I honestly could not have said it better myself! Smile So, after Cait gave me the address, I dragged the GC right on out to stalk the place. Unfortunately though, as you can see above, because the sun was directly in front of the house when I showed up to stalk it, my photographs did not come out very well.

You can see a much better view of the house on Google Street View (pictured above) by clicking here.

While there have been quite a few changes made to the property during the past twenty-three years that the show has been off the air, it is, thankfully, still very recognizable as the Witherspoon residence.

Before writing today’s post, I sat down to watch the “First Impressions” episode in full and was shocked to see a fake address number of “14” posted on the front of the Witherspoon home. Being that a two-digit house number is very rare – in fact, I don’t think I have ever seen one in my entire life – it seems strange to me that set decorators would choose to use one on the show, rather than a vastly more common three-, four-, or five-digit address number. It is times like these that I so wish I could get inside a producer’s head to figure out what their reasoning behind such an odd decision was!

On an Our House side note – As you can see above, Shannen Doherty was absolutely ADORABLE on the series! So darn cute!

You can watch the Our House opening credits, in which the Witherspoon residence is shown, by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Cait for finding this location! Smile

Stalk It: The Our House house is located at 158 South Kingsley Drive, just north of Koreatown, in Los Angeles.

January 12, 2011January 11, 2011

Patrick Swayze’s Former Apartment

Ever since the Grim Cheaper purchased the Dirty Dancing: Limited Keepsake Edition DVD for me this past Christmas, I have become just a tad bit obsessed with finding out more behind-the-scenes information about the movie. So, the other day I picked up Patrick Swayze and wife Lisa Niemi’s autobiography which is titled The Time of My Life and, let me tell you, I’ve hardly been able to put it down since. It is an absolutely FABULOUS book and Patrick Swayze was an absolutely AMAZING man! The unbridled love that he had for his wife is riveting to read about and heartbreaking at the same time, now that he has since passed away. Let’s just say that theirs was not a typical Hollywood union. Patrick married Lisa on June 12, 1975, when he was only 22 years old and she was only 19, and they remained together and completely devoted to one another throughout the rest of his life. While the majority of married actors surrounding him on movie sets were conducting on-set affairs during filming, Lisa accompanied Patrick on each and every single shoot – whether he was filming in Los Angeles or in the far reaches of Africa – and I think that is part of what made their marriage so strong. If you have any interest whatsoever in learning more about Patrick Swayze or the movie Dirty Dancing, I honestly cannot recommend The Time of My Life enough! The book also doles out quite a few stalking addresses, including one of the couple’s first Los Angeles apartments, which I ran right out to stalk yesterday!

Patrick and Lisa first moved to Southern California in 1979, after spending several years together in New York. The two first lived in the ground-floor apartment of a home owned by two older women in the Hollywood Hills. Of his new landlords, Patrick said, “The women upstairs were real characters, and one of them seemed always to have a tumbler of scotch in her hand.” LOL In 1980, after living in that apartment for a little over a year, the couple moved to what Patrick describes in the book as “an apartment in West Hollywood, on La Jolla Avenue”. Well, as soon as I read those words I knew I was going to have to track down that apartment! Thankfully though, Patrick made the job extremely easy for me by putting in the book the above photograph of himself, along with his mother and Lisa, standing outside of their apartment in which an address number of “623” was visible. Because he had described the place as being in West Hollywood, I had assumed it would be located on North La Jolla Avenue, but when I searched for that address via Google street view, nothing matched up. So, I then looked at the building located at 623 South La Jolla Avenue and there was his apartment, looking almost EXACTLY the same as it had back in the early 80s when the Swayzes had called the place home!. So incredibly cool!

In the book, Patrick says that his apartment came with a two-car garage that he and Lisa turned into a woodworking shop as the couple ran a carpentry business on the side, which kept them afloat financially in between acting gigs. I am guessing that their garage was the one denoted with the pink arrow in the above photograph.

But, for whatever reason, in the above photograph, which was included in the book, Patrick is shown posing with his brand new DeLorean car outside of the garage belonging to the neighboring apartment building. That area, too, though looks very much the same today as it did back in the early 80’s.

Shortly after moving into the apartment, the Swazyes found themselves broke with only $3 in their bank account. Patrick says, “The saving grace of our new apartment was the orange tree in the backyard, which ended up feeding us for the difficult weeks we spent trying to pull our financial life together. We managed to scrape together enough coins to buy a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread, and that, with the oranges, was what we ate.” Just a few weeks after going broke, fate intervened and Patrick landed the lead role of “Bandit” in the television series Renegades. His career took off from there. The couple continued to live in the La Jolla Avenue apartment for the next few years as Patrick’s fame continued to grow. But after the television series North and South aired in 1985, the actor became a household name and the Swayzes had to move from their beloved, but entirely-too-accessible apartment. Patrick says, “Lisa and I also realized that we’d now have to take steps to protect our privacy. Even in those pre-internet days, there were still paparazzi all over Hollywood, not to mention some overzealous fans who weren’t above staking us out at home. When I got the role of Orry Main, it allowed us to buy a five-acre ranch, where we could keep horses and enjoy nature without being disturbed.” That ranch, which they named “Rancho Bizarro and which Lisa still owns to this day, is located on Lemoncrest Avenue in Sylmar, about twenty miles north of Los Angeles.

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Another location that Patrick talks about in The Time of My Life – one that I was absolutely DYING to stalk until I found out that it was no longer there – was the Harkness Theater at Lincoln Center in New York. In September of 1973, Patrick, who was at the time a member of the Harkness Ballet Company, was hired to pose for artist Enrique Senis-Oliver who had been commissioned by oil heiress Rebekah Harkness to paint a large mural in her new theatre, which was then just being built. The enormous painting, which Patrick says “stretched from the stage to the very top of the proscenium and down both sides”, was titled Homage to Terpsichore and it featured hundreds of nude men dancing. Incredibly, all of those men were Patrick! Over a period of several weeks, Enrique had used the actor/dancer as the model for each and every single male featured in the mural! Sadly though, that mural is no longer as the Harkness Theatre was torn down in 1977, only a few short years after it had been built. So incredibly sad! You can see photographs of part of Patrick’s mural here and here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Patrick Swayze’s former apartment building is located at 623 South La Jolla Avenue in Los Angeles. The garage Patrick posed in front of with his new DeLorean is located just north of his apartment building and is denoted with a pink arrow in the above aerial view.

December 17, 2010December 16, 2010

The “Six Feet Under” Flower Shop – One of the Last Places James Dean Was Seen Alive

I promise to get back to my wedding blogging in the near future, but for today I thought I’d do a post about a location that I stalked this past weekend – the Blossom d’Amour flower shop where Ruth Fisher (aka Frances Conroy) worked on the hit HBO television series Six Feet Under. While doing some research on the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home from the series, which I blogged about back in October, I came across the IMDB trivia page for the show which stated that Ruth’s floral shop was actually a former gas station – but not just any gas station. As it turns out, it is the station where James Dean stopped to fill up the tank of his Porsche 550 Spyder on the afternoon of September 30, 1955 while on his way to Salinas where he was scheduled to participate in a car race. The twenty-four year old actor was tragically killed just a few hours later, at approximately 5:45 p.m., when his Porsche collided with a Ford Tudor driven by a man named Donald Turnupseed at the intersection of Highways 46 and 41 in Cholame, California. For whatever reason, that gas station was later transformed into a floral shop/car wash named A Touch of Romance and it was that floral shop that was eventually featured on Six Feet Under. Quite a bit of history for a tiny, non-descript florist located on a sleepy corner of L.A.’s San Fernando Valley!

I was hoping that there would be some sort of plaque or photograph on display commemorating the shop’s unique and storied history, but, sadly, I couldn’t find anything of the sort while I was stalking the place. It is absolutely mind-boggling to me that a person could very well get their car washed at this location or purchase some flowers for a loved one without ever realizing that they were standing on hallowed ground!

It became even more mind-boggling to me when I found out that a picture of Dean had actually been taken on that fateful day while he was gassing up his car! As fate would have it, photographer Sanford Roth was traveling with the actor to Salinas to document his race and he happened to snap a photograph of Dean while at the service station. I think it goes without saying that if I owned that shop, I would have a HUMONGOUS copy of that photograph on display so that my customers would know the significance and the history of the property. Geez, why do I always have to think of everything?? Smile

In the Season 1 episode of Six Feet Under titled “Brotherhood”, Ruth gets a job working at the Blossom d’Amour floral shop and she continues to work there throughout much of the show’s second season. She also ends up becoming romantically involved with the shop’s Russian owner, Nikolai, for a time. And I am very happy to report that the shop still looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did when Six Feet Under was being filmed.

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For those who are interested in locations of this sort, I HIGHLY recommend picking up a copy of Chris Epting’s two books James Dean Died Here: The Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks and Marilyn Monroe Dyed Here: More Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks (I LOVE that last title, by the way!), both of which were gifted to me by fellow stalker Lavonna a few months back. They are FABULOUS books which feature hundreds of famous – and infamous – locations. I just discovered that Epting also recently released a third book in the series, Elvis Presley Passed Here: Even More Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks, so guess which item has just been added to this stalker’s Christmas list! Winking smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: A Touch of Romance, aka the Six Feet Under flower shop, aka the gas station where James Dean filled his Porsche with gas on his fated last day, is located at 14325 Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.

December 14, 2010December 6, 2013

Granville Towers – Portia de Rossi’s Former Home

I just recently finished reading Portia de Rossi’s new memoir Unbearable Lightness and I have to say that it was easily one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life! I literally could NOT put it down. The memoir is a harrowing account of the actress’ long-time eating disorder which consumed her life during the years she portrayed Nelle Porter on the hit television series Ally McBeal. Besides being a fabulous read, the book’s topic really hit home with me as I was once told by an acting teacher that I was “stocky” and needed to lose weight if I wanted to make it in this business. I was a size two at the time. Needless to say the notion of “there is no such thing as too thin” is alive and well in Hollywood. Thankfully I had a strong foundation to fall back on at home and was able to blow off my acting teacher’s words – and eventually her class. But it is easy to see why someone like Portia, who was already deeply insecure over the fact that she was gay and whose family lived a world away in Australia, would falter in that sort of environment. Her story is both heartbreaking and fascinating and I honestly cannot recommend reading it enough. Anyway, in the book, Portia talks about living in a penthouse unit at the legendary Granville Towers in West Hollywood, so as soon as I finished reading the tome, I immediately ran right out to stalk the place.

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The Granville Towers, which was originally an apartment building named The Voltaire, was built in 1930 in the French Revival style by architect Leland Bryant, who also designed one of my favorite hotels in Southern California – the Sunset Tower Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. The 7-story, 40-unit property was a celebrity magnet from the very beginning and such stars as Ann Sothern, Jack Lord, Arthur Treacher, Janet Gaynor, and Rock Hudson called the place home. My girl Marilyn Monroe even stayed there for a brief while after her divorce from Joe DiMaggio in 1954. In the 1980s, the property was transformed into a luxury hotel at which point it was renamed The Granville. A few years later it was transformed yet again, this time into an upscale condominium building, and Hollywood luminaries once again began calling the place home. Just a few of the celebrities who have lived there in more recent years include Nicole Scherzinger, Ashley Greene (her boyfriend Joe Jonas is a frequent visitor), Mickey Rourke, Brendan Fraser, David Bowie, Amy Locane, and Michael Michele.

Portia de Rossi lived in the building’s north tower penthouse from the late 1990s through mid-2002. Of first seeing the penthouse apartment, she said, “I felt as though I had been transported to an artist’s loft in a city like Philadelphia, which was much more exciting to me than where I actually was. Where I was, was predictable. But the apartment made me think there was more to life than being an actress on a David Kelly show.” She signed the papers on the spot and immediately set about transforming the upstairs attic loft into a workout room. Of her makeshift gym, she says, “The treadmill was really the only thing up there and was perfectly centered in the attic, between the wall of windows that showcased the industrial city that was the roof of the Sunset 5 and the east windows through which I could see all the way downtown. The wall opposite the smokestacks acted as a bulletin board where I had taped pieces of paper. Mostly the pieces were exaggerated to-do lists. I say ‘exaggerated’ because they said things that were more like goals that I wanted to achieve than things that needed to be done. The largest piece of paper with the boldest writing stated ‘I WILL BE 105 POUNDS BY CHRISTMAS’.” She also fastened a list of cards to the wall just to the left of her to-do list. Each card featured a number, beginning at 111 and running backwards. Portia was 111 pounds at the time and each time she lost a pound, she would remove a card. Of her weight wall, she says, “It helped keep me focused and it helped me to remember that once I’d achieved the new lower weight and the card stating my previous weight was gone, that I could never weigh that much again; that the old weight was gone. It was no longer who I was. It was getting more difficult to lose weight as I got thinner, so I needed all the incentive and motivation I could muster. Putting my weight on the wall was a clever thing to do as it always needed to be in the forefront of my mind, otherwise I might’ve forgotten and walked on the treadmill instead of run, sat instead of paced. I once saw a loft where a famous writer lived, and all over the wall was his research for the novel he was writing. He described the book to me as his life’s work, his magnum opus. I felt like controlling my weight was my magnum opus, the most important product of my brain and was worthy of devoting a wall to its success.” See what I mean? Absolutely riveting – and harrowing – stuff!

The Granville is a truly beautiful building and features a 24-hour doorman, valet parking, a lobby with a piano, an indoor pool and spa, and a large garden patio area complete with statuaries and fountains. You can view some great interior photographs of the building here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Granville Towers is located at 1424 North Crescent Heights Boulevard, just south of Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood.

November 10, 2010November 9, 2010

Dr. Mott’s House From “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”

Another The Hand That Rocks the Cradle location that I stalked while vacationing in the Pacific Northwest this past May was the ultra-modern abode which belonged to Dr. Victor Mott (aka John de Lancie) and his wife, Peyton Flanders (aka Rebecca De Mornay), in the 1992 thriller. Amazingly enough, I didn’t actually remember the Mott home from the one time I viewed the movie almost two decades ago, but my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry, who lives in Washington State, insisted I stalk the place while we were up there and drove me and the Grim Cheaper by it on our final day in Seattle. And thank goodness she did, too, because the dwelling is nothing short of spectacular! In fact, how it is possible that I didn’t remember it from the film is absolutely beyond me!

In real life, the Mott residence, which seems to have been constructed almost entirely out of windows, boasts 4 bedrooms, a whopping 6 bathrooms, and 3,750-square feet of living space. The home was actually built in 1991, the same year that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was lensed, so my guess is that it was vacant at the time of filming which is how producers came to use it in the movie.

The Mott house is featured in quite a few scenes in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and, as you can see in the above screen captures, looks very much the same today as it did nineteen years ago when the movie was filmed. There have been a few subtle changes made to the residence over the years, of course, including the addition of a substantial amount of foliage around the front perimeter of the property, which wasn’t there at the time of the filming.

The residence’s front porch area has also been altered since The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was filmed and now features a blue-shingled overhang and brown wooden front doors, neither of which, in my never-to-be-humble-opinion, seem to fit in well with the rest of the abode. I much prefer the movie version of the front porch as to how it is currently designed.

It appears as if a window has also since been added to the rear portion of the home’s second story, as well. Other than those few changes, though, the property looks almost exactly the same in person as it appeared onscreen in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Love it! And, although you can’t quite tell in the above photograph due to the crappy weather we were experiencing that day, the breathtaking views of Downtown Seattle and Puget Sound that were shown in the movie are the real life views that can be seen from the actual home. Sigh!

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The real life interior of the property was also used for a few scenes in the movie as well.

As you can see in the above screen capture, and as was the case with the Bartel home which I blogged about yesterday, the property’s real life address was referred to in the movie in the scene in which Marlene Craven (aka Julianne Moore) looks at the real estate flyer for Dr. Mott’s former house.

Big THANK YOU to my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry for bringing me to this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Dr. Mott’s house from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is located at 2502 37th Avenue West in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.

November 2, 2010September 29, 2017

Halloween 2010 at the Hotel Santa Barbara

As I mentioned last week, this past Saturday morning the Grim Cheaper and I headed up north to the Central Coast of California to spend Halloween with our good friends who live in Santa Barbara, or the “American Riviera” as the seaside city is colloquially known. For those who have never visited the area during Halloween, I must say that there is just simply no place better to spend the holiday. For whatever, Santa Barbara has got some MAJOR Halloween spirit. Downtown State Street turns into one big Halloween fest each and every October 31st, during which everyone – and I do mean everyone – dresses up for the occasion. It’s an absolute blast and if you EVER have the opportunity, I HIGHLY recommend spending at least one Halloween there!

At one point in the evening, we even witnessed a flash mob dancing to “Michael Jackson’s Thriller”, in which ALL of the participants were dressed like Zombies. So darn cool! But I digress.

Anyway, as I always do when planning a vacation, I set out to find a hotel to stay at that had some sort of Hollywood history or cinematic significance. And find one, I did! While doing some cyberstalking I came across an article on the Santa Barbara Conference & Visitors Bureau website titled “Movie Tourism is a Natural in ‘Hollywood North’”. Besides doling out some fabulous area filming location information, the article also stated that in the 1920s the Hotel Santa Barbara, a place where I have actually always wanted to stay, was “the getaway for many of Hollywood’s brightest stars”, including actors Leo Carrillo, Clark Gable, and Carole Lombard. So, I immediately booked the GC and I a room there.

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The 84-room, Mediterranean-style property, which was originally named “The Saint Barbara Hotel”, was established in 1916 and was one of the first hotels built by famed Santa Barbara hotelier Neal Callahan. The original hotel building was destroyed during the June 29, 1925 earthquake and was rebuilt by Callahan the following year. From the very beginning, the upscale hotel enjoyed a loyal following, housing vacationing starlets and wealthy tourists alike. According to this October 2000 Los Angeles Times article, during Prohibition the property even boasted a hidden gambling room on its premises, where alcohol was indeed still served. And while in later years the hotel degraded a bit in stature, it underwent an extensive $4 million renovation and restoration project in 1997 and is once again a popular upscale vacation venue.

The hotel was very reasonably priced by Santa Barbara standards (most hotels in the seaside city are exorbitantly expensive and not very well maintained), especially considering the place’s centralized downtown location. Lots of freebies, such as bottled water in the room, wireless internet, and a continental breakfast, were also included. Our room, while small, was extremely cozy and very nicely appointed.

And it also boasted a fabulous view of Downtown State Street and the Santa Barbara Mountains. And even thought the staff there couldn’t tell me much about the history of the place nor about any of its celebrity clientele during the heyday of Hollywood, I honestly can’t recommend the Hotel Santa Barbara enough! I’ve stayed in quite a few different hotels in the area over the years and not only was the Hotel Santa Barbara one of the nicest, it was also one of the least expensive, which, of course, pleased the Grim Cheaper to no end. 🙂

As always, the GC and I looked to Hollywood for our costume inspiration this year and decided to dress up as Ferris Bueller (aka Matthew Broderick) and Sloane Peterson (aka Mia Sara) from fave movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. My mom, whose help we enlisted to make Ferris’ leopard print vest, was convinced that no one would recognize us being that the movie is almost two and a half decades old. I, however, knew that would not be the case. I mean, hello! Ferris and Sloane are iconic! How could people NOT know who we were! And sure enough, I was right – people recognized us pretty much everywhere we went that night. 🙂 Well, a few did refer to us as Ferris and “Simone”, but hey, that’s close enough. 😉

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Hotel Santa Barbara is located at 533 State Street in the heart of Downtown Santa Barbara. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

November 1, 2010October 29, 2010

Helen Bernstein High School – The New William McKinley High from “Glee”

A little birdie recently told me that fave show Glee was no longer filming on location at Juan Cabrillo High School in Long Beach – a locale which I blogged about back in January of this year – and that producers had found a new school to stand in for the fictional William McKinley High, one that is located a bit closer to Paramount Studios where the series is lensed. So, I immediately started digging around the internet to find out exactly which school was now being used and fairly quickly came across this YouTube video which an anonymous person had taken of the cast while they were filming the Season 2 episode of the show titled “Audition”. In the comments section, the video’s author explained that the segment had been taped at Helen Bernstein High School in Hollywood. So, I immediately put the location high up on my “To Stalk” list and after embarking on the Paramount Tour with fellow stalker Lavonna and her friends Beth, Debbie, and Connie, who were in town visiting from Ohio a few weeks back, we all set out to stalk the new William McKinley High.

Helen Bernstein High School, which was named after the former president of the Los Angeles teachers’ union who passed away in 1997, just recently opened in the fall of 2008. The school was constructed by the award-winning Chicago-based architecture firm of Perkins+Will in order to help ease the overcrowding at both John Marshall High School in Los Feliz and Hollywood High School in Hollywood. The four-story school, which boasts 2,000 students, sits on 12. 4 acres of land, and measures a whopping 238,492 square feet of learning space, is easily one of the largest educational institutions that I’ve ever come across in my entire life! The place is absolutely massive, and in an interesting historical note, was built on the former site of Fox Television Center/KTTV Studios, where such iconic shows as Saved by the Bell, Maude, One Day at a Time, Diff’rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, In Living Color, The Jeffersons and the pilot episode of Family Ties were filmed. The studio, which later changed its name to Metromedia Square, was sold to the the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2000 and just three years later it was demolished entirely to make way for the new high school. You can read more about the construction of Helen Bernstein High here.

The area of the school that is most prominently featured on Glee is the main quad, which was the site of the New Directions’ rousing performance of “Empire State of Mind” in the “Audition” episode and the spot that I most wanted to stalk. And even though we had waited until 4 p.m. to visit Helen Bernstein, after school was already over for the day, I wasn’t sure how amenable the staff would be to letting us onto the property. When we explained that we were HUGE Glee fans, though, and that Lavonna and her friends were in town visiting all the way from Ohio, one of the super nice office administrators agreed to bring us over to the quad area and then allowed us to take all of the photographs of the place that we wanted! 🙂 YAY!

In the “Empire State of Mind” scene, the Glee kids put on a lunchtime show in order to try to entice their fellow McKinley High students to join New Directions. And I have to say that the performance has to be one of my all-time favorites of the entire series, most likely because I absolutely love that song. In fact, I think I like the Glee kids’ version of it even more than I do the original! “In Neeeeew Yoooooooork . . . “

You can watch the FABULOUS “Empire State of Mind” scene by clicking above.

While we were stalking the quad, Lavonna, Beth, and I got to act out our own little mini-versions of the scene, which I was absolutely floored about.

And I, of course, just had to take a picture in the spot where Rachel Berry (aka Lea Michele) was sitting at the very end of the scene, although, as it turns out, I ended up sitting just a bit too far to the left. Ironically enough, while we were snapping photographs, we spotted some Glee crew members who were onsite setting up for some filming which was going to be taking place the following day. They did not seem all that friendly, though, so I did not attempt to talk to any of them.

All of the William McKinley High School gym scenes – even those filmed during Season 1 – take place at Helen Bernstein, as well.

As do the cafeteria scenes, but unfortunately we were not able to stalk those two areas while we were there. You can see some fabulous interior photographs of the school here, though.

And, according to the YouTube video commenters, the scene in which Finn Hudson (aka Cory Monteith ) sang “Hello, I Love You” in the Season 1 episode titled “Hell-O” was also filmed at Helen Bernstein High School.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Helen Bernstein High School, aka the new William McKinley High School from Glee, is located at 1309 North Wilton Place in Hollywood. Please remember that Helen Bernstein is a working high school and is not actually open to the public. If you would like to visit it, I recommend doing so on off hours when children are not present and always, always get permission from a staff member in the main office before entering the school grounds. The area where the Glee kids sung “Empire State of Mind” is the main quad, which is located just due east of the school’s entrance and is denoted with the pink arrows in the above aerial view.

October 26, 2010September 29, 2017

Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch . . . A Second Time

This past weekend, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to one of my all time favorite Halloween-themed stalking locations – Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch in West Hollywood. The family owned and operated patch, which is located on a vacant plot of land on North Doheny Drive in between Keith and Harland Avenues, has been serving L.A.’s west side since 1986 and each year during the month of October is the place to see and be seen in Southern California. And even though I’ve actually blogged about this location once before, way back in October of 2008, since it is a landmark Haunted Hollywood stalking venue, I thought it was only fitting that I write about it once again since we are just a few days away from Halloween.

For whatever reason – I am guessing due mostly to its centralized location – the patch has been a celebrity magnet ever since its inception almost two and a half decades ago. Anyone who’s anyone stops by there during the month of October for a bit of Halloween fun. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted there recently include Tobey Maguire and Jennifer Meyer, Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale, Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott, The Girls Next Door’s Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt, Britney Spears, Marcia Cross, Scott Baio, Chris Noth, Sara Gilbert, Justin Chambers, Jessica Alba, Mark Wahlberg, Courteney Cox, Christina Aguilera, Laurence Fishburne, Halle Berry, Usher, Breckin Meyer, Dave Grohl, Victoria’s Secret-model Alessandra Ambrosio, and Cougar Town’s Busy Philipps. I could literally go on and on here, but that gives you somewhat of an idea of the patch’s extensive celebrity clientele. Unfortunately, the GC and I did not see any stars while we were stalking the place this past Sunday, but we did run into Heidi Klum and Seal during our first visit there back in 2007 (the two are pictured above) and last year we missed both Tori Spelling and Gwen Stefani by mere minutes! UGH!

And while I love Mr. Bones, I must admit that the Grim Cheaper isn’t too crazy about the place thanks to the fact that they charge a $4 entrance fee for each adult (kids are $2). That fee can later be applied to any pumpkins or Halloween merchandise that is purchased, but as the GC says, Mr. Bones has to be the only pumpkin patch on the planet that has a cover charge. 😉 Besides pumpkins, the patch also boasts plenty of activities to keep the kids (and those adults who want to join in on the fun) occupied, including a large pumpkin-shaped jump house, face painting, a super slide, a small straw maze, a petting zoo, and a pumpkin decorating station. The patch also offers catered lunches of pizza, kosher hot dogs, and sausages. And I can personally attest to the fact that the hot dogs there are fabulous. 😉

Mr. Bones also boasts quite a large paparazzi following. The paps have been a fixture there pretty much ever since the place first opened. As you can see in the above pictures, for a time Mr. Bones employees tried to thwart photographers’ efforts by surrounding the property with large black-out curtains which blocked views of the patch from the street. And each year it seemed that not only did those curtains grow taller and taller, but so did the paparazzo’s ladders.

But this year things changed considerably. I guess the patch has now resigned itself to the fact that as long as it is going to be there each year, so are the paparazzi, because they have now set up a cordoned off “press area” at the corner of the property in which the photogs are allowed to stand and take pictures. A pumpkin patch with a cover charge and a press area? Only in L.A., I swear! SO LOVE IT!

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I honestly cannot recommend stalking Mr. Bones enough! Be forewarned, though, its pumpkins do run on the expensive side – but, then again, you can’t put a price tag on celebrity sightings now can you? 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch is located at 702 North Doheny Drive in West Hollywood. You can visit the official Mr. Bones website here. The patch is open this year from October 2nd through the 31st. Mr. Bones charges a cover fee of $4 per adult and $2 per child during the weekends. That fee can later be applied to the cost of any pumpkins or Halloween merchandise that is purchased while there.

October 21, 2010October 24, 2010

The Griffith Park Merry Go Round from “The Mentalist”

One location that I have wanted to stalk for almost two years now, ever since November of 2008 when it appeared in the Season One episode of The Mentalist titled “Seeing Red”, was the merry go round where Patrick Jane (aka Simon Baker) lured murder suspect Travis Tennant (aka Noel Fisher). The only problem was that I had absolutely NO idea whatsoever where to find it, as in my ten-plus years of living in Southern California the only merry go round that I had ever encountered was the one located on the Santa Monica Pier and it didn’t look anything like the one that had appeared in The Mentalist. So, I immediately called up Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and asked him if he knew where it was located. Sure enough, he did! As fate would have it, the merry go round is located right in the heart of L.A.’s Griffith Park and Mike used to ride it regularly when he was a kid!

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The Griffith Park Merry Go Round is actually something of a Los Angeles landmark and I am extremely shocked that, up until its appearance on The Mentalist two years ago, I didn’t even know of its existence. The Merry Go Round was first built in 1926 by the Spillman Engineering Company and is currently the only full size Spillman carousel still in operation today. It was originally commissioned by the Spreckels family, of the Spreckels Sugar Company, to be used at their San Diego theme park, the Mission Beach Amusement Center. Sadly, the amusement center was shuttered in 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression and the Merry Go Round was subsequently moved to Balboa Park to be featured in the California Pacific International Exposition. When the exposition ended in 1937, a man named Ross Davis purchased the carousel and transported it over 120 miles north to its new home in Griffith Park, where it is still in operation to this day, over seven decades later.

The Griffith Park Carousel is comprised of 68 different hand-made horses, all of which “jump” – ie. move up and down – and boast tails made of authentic horse hair.

The carousel also features a custom-built Stinson 165 Military Band Organ, which plays a library of over 1500 different songs.

And, incredibly enough, the Griffith Park Merry Go Round even served as the inspiration for one of the most famous landmarks in the entire world – Disneyland! Yes, you read that right. According to one of my very favorite stalking tomes, Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors, Griffith Park historian Mike Eberts states, “Walt Disney brought his young daughters to the carousel and this is one of the places where he began to dream up the idea that would lead to Disneyland.” So incredibly cool! The bench where Walt used to sit during those outings (which is pictured very poorly above) is still on display at the merry go round to this day. And, according to the book Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, Walt’s daughter Diane “thought the inception [of Disneyland] took place during the Sunday afternoons when Walt picked the girls up from religious services – he never attended himself – and took them to the Griffith Park merry-go-round, where they would spend hours. ‘He’d see families in the park,’ Diane would later recall, ‘and say, ‘There’s nothing for the parents to do . . . You’ve got to have a place where the whole family can have fun.’” Further adding to the carousel’s celebrity status is the fact that James Dean’s very first acting job took place there! It was a commercial for Pepsi Cola and, in it, the newbie actor was shown handing out bottles of the soft drink to teenagers who were riding the merry go round. Such incredible history!

I, of course, had to take a ride on the carousel while I was there and it was so incredibly fun! Being there brought me RIGHT BACK to my childhood when I used to ride the Edgewater Packing House Carousel on Monterey’s Cannery Row each and every weekend. In an odd coincidence, I just found out today that my childhood merry go round was also designed by the Spillman Engineering Company, but it is sadly no longer in operation publicly as it was purchased by a Vegas millionaire who had it installed in a room in his home! Not kidding! But I digress.

In the “Seeing Red” episode of The Mentalist, Patrick Jane hypnotizes a young murder suspect named Travis in order to lead him to a supposed Sacramento-area merry go round so that he can be captured by the CBI.

Mike clued me into the fact that the Merry Go Round was also featured at the very end of the 1988 comedy Twins, in the scene in which Julius and Vincent Benedict (aka Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, respectively) meet up with their wives, Marnie and Linda Mason (aka Kelly Preston and Chloe Webb, respectively), and their new twin children at a carousel in a park.

Once Mike told me about the Merry Go Round, I started noticing it popping up in all sorts of movies and television shows, including the Season 2 episode of CSI: New York titled “Zoo York”, in which the body of a teenage debutante is found on the supposed Central Park carousel.

The Griffith Park Merry Go Round also showed up in the 1992 flick Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as the spot where Amylin (aka Paul Reubens) turned Grueller (aka Sasha Jensen) into a vampire.

And it also appeared briefly in the Season 1 episode of MacGyver titled “Every Time She Smiles” as a supposed Bulgaria-area merry go round.

And thank you to fellow stalker Eileen, who informed me that the carousel also appeared in the video for the Jessica Simpson/Nick Lachey song “Where You Are”.

The Merry Go Round was also featured in the Sally Field-directed movie Beautiful, but I don’t own that movie, so I was not able to make screen captures.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Griffith Park Merry Go Round is located at 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, inside of Griffith Park, in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles. The Merry Go Round is open each Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. During the summer months, it is also open on weekdays. The Merry Go Round can be a bit tricky to find and is not entirely visible from the road. The easiest way to get there is to take Los Feliz Boulevard to Crystal Springs Drive and head north. Make a left onto Fire Road and park in the first lot that you come to. The Merry Go Round is located just north of that lot.