Full House – IAMNOTASTALKER

August 15, 2018August 14, 2018

Michelle’s Downhill Derby from “Full House”

There’s nothing like remnants of a film shoot remaining behind years after the fact to set my heart aflutter. Last June, a fellow stalker named Chris kindly emailed me a lengthy and comprehensive list of Full House locations he had tracked down, one of which was the Griffith Park road where the Downhill Derby from Season 7’s “Michelle a la Cart” took place. Though I did not remember the episode, the locale had me particularly intrigued thanks to some vestiges from the shoot Chris noted were still visible. As he wrote in his email, “In the 2007 imagery on Google Street View, you can still see the faded lane markings on the road from the race.” Um, sign me up! So onto my To-Stalk List the site went and I finally headed out there to see it in person a few weeks ago.

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In re-watching “Michelle a la Cart” in preparation for this post, I realized there’s a reason I did not recall it from its original airing in 1994 – the episode just isn’t all that memorable. It centers around three less-than-scintillating storylines. First, D.J. Tanner (Candance Cameron) laments a phone message left by her ex-boyfriend, Steve Hale (Scott Weinger) – she thinks he’s despondent over their recent break-up, but it turns out he just really wants a CD back. Then there’s Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier) who attempts to learn ballet from Stephanie Tanner (Jodie Sweetin) in the hopes it will improve his hockey-playing skills, which gives us this great visual. Oh, Joey!

In the main narrative, Michelle Tanner (Mary-Kate and Ashely Olsen) decides to build a soapbox car with her aunt Becky (Lori Loughlin) so she can compete in the local Downhill Derby and defeat neighborhood meanie Kenny (K. Evan Bonifant), who thinks she can’t win because she’s a girl. Though lackluster as a whole, the episode did give us a great zinger from Michelle. When faced with her nemesis’ jeering, she tells him, “My dad said if I can’t say anything nice then I shouldn’t say anything at all . . . but my dad’s not here and you’re a weenie!” (You can see a clip of the fabulous moment here.)

The episode culminates in the big Downhill Derby competition, which was set up on Vista Del Valle Drive just west of where it intersects with North Vermont Canyon Road in Griffith Park. The race’s starting point was positioned at the very eastern edge of Vista Del Valle Drive, close to where it dead ends.

The finish line was set up about two hundred feet away, where the hilly part of the road bottoms out.

(Spoiler alert – Michelle, of course, wins the derby and, in the process, learns that girls can do anything boys can do.)

In the episode, the racers’ lanes are made up of uninterrupted white lines and dotted yellow lines, as you can see below.

It is those lines that are still visible today – not just on Google Street View imagery from 2007 as Chris had mentioned, but in real life, too.

Though extremely faded, the dotted yellow lines . . .

. . . and the uninterrupted white lines are still somewhat intact, as you can see in my photos above and below.

While I originally assumed that the markings were painted onto the road strictly for the Full House shoot, it is entirely possible they were there prior to the filming – especially since the yellow lines pictured in my images appear to be newer additions. Considering said lines are not typical road boundaries, though (I have never seen anything like them, at least), and it is unclear as to exactly what they designate, I do not believe they are original elements of the street. Either way, I love that markings visible in a shoot that took place 24 years ago remain evident today.

While I was stalking the Downhill Derby site, security guards happened to be setting up street closures on the premises for a concert that was taking place nearby later that night. I can only imagine their befuddlement in seeing me bounce all over the road, enthusiastically snapping photo after photo of faded lines and loudly exclaiming to the Grim Cheaper how thrilled I was to be seeing them in person. Ah, to be on the outside looking in.

Big THANK YOU to Chris for finding this location and telling me about it! Smile

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 Downhill Derby from the “Michelle a la Cart” episode of Full House took place on Vista Del Valle Drive just west of where it intersects with North Vermont Canyon Road in Griffith Park. (Be advised, some maps refer to Vista Del Valle as “Boy Scout Road,” though Google Maps and my GPS both recognize the street as Vista Del Valle.)

June 22, 2018August 10, 2018

Jesse and Becky’s Honeymoon Send-Off Location from “Full House”

I have grown used to productions playing fast and loose with location continuity, but was still flummoxed when I came across a thread back in January 2016 on a now defunct website in which a commenter asked if anyone knew which residence was used as the Tanner family home in the Season 4 episode of Full House titled “The Wedding: Part 2.” At the time, I was completely unaware that a pad other than the one at 1709 Broderick Street in San Francisco (which I blogged about here and here) had ever been utilized as the Tanners’ on the series. I immediately emailed my friend/guest poster extraordinaire/resident Full House expert Michael (you can read his many IAMNOTSTALKER articles here) to see if he had any intel on the locale and was not at all surprised when he wrote back telling me that he did. As he informed me, in “The Wedding: Part 2,” Jesse Katsopolis (John Stamos) and his new wife, Becky (Lori Loughlin), are sent off on their honeymoon from outside of 1320 Carroll Avenue in Echo Park.

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For those who don’t remember the circumstances of “The Wedding: Part 2,” all 8 seasons of Full House are currently available for streaming on Hulu. I’ll also provide a little refresher here, though. Thanks to a series of hapless events, Jesse winds up arrested and jailed in “Tomato Country” on his wedding day and has to be bailed out by his bride-to-be moments before the ceremony. The nuptials finally go off without any additional hitches and by the end of the episode, the couple are sharing their first dance (to “Jailhouse Rock,” no less) in the Tanner family living room. (And wow, can I just say that is quite the headdress on Becky!)

Not that D.J.’s (Candace Cameron Bure) is much better. But I digress.

After Becky and Jesse cut the cake and toss the requisite bouquet and garter, the scene cuts to a night shot on what is supposedly the Tanners’ San Francisco street, where Danny (Bob Saget), Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin), D.J., and the rest of the clan wave good-bye to the departing newlyweds as they venture off via motorcycle on their honeymoon. The residence barely visible in the background of the scene is known as the Heim House in real life. Other than a similar style of architecture, it does not bear much resemblance to 1709 Broderick – though, truth be told, it is never really specified that the pad is supposed to be the Tanners’ in the episode. In all fairness, maybe producers intended it to be a neighboring property or perhaps one across the street. Regardless, being that Full House was lensed in Los Angeles, it makes sense that cast and crew did not travel all the way to San Francisco to shoot the brief honeymoon send-off segment and instead found a suitable replacement location closer to home.

What perplexed both Michael and me is why the production did not make use of the Midwest Residential Street homes on the Warner Bros. Studio backlot where we both thought the show had been lensed. As Michael emailed me, “The scene is so quick and dark that the WB houses could have been used to similar effect.” As he came to find out, though, Full House was not shot at Warner Bros. during its entire eight-year run. Stage 28 at Sony Pictures Studio in Culver City was actually home to the series for its first 6 seasons. (To confuse matters further, Sony was known as Lorimar-Telepictures when Full House initially began shooting in 1987. The Sony changeover took place in 1989.) It was not until the start of Season 7 in 1993 that the production was moved to the WB in Burbank. Because Sony does not have a backlot to speak of, producers had to head to a real street to shoot “The Wedding: Part 2” in 1991 – and what better place to go to than the 1300 block of Carroll Avenue, which is comprised of the largest concentration of Victorian-style homes in Los Angeles.

The Heim House, originally built in 1887, boasts one of the block’s prettiest façades with a wraparound porch, carved wooden detailing, two towers, and zigzag trim.

The Queen Anne-style pad is Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #77.

The picturesque property also briefly appeared in the Season 3 episode of Charmed titled “Primrose Empath” as one of the houses from which Prue (Shannen Doherty) could hear the voices and feel the pain of its inhabitants.

The two dwellings located east of the Heim House, 1300 Carroll Avenue, which is known as the Phillips House in real life, and 1316 Carroll Avenue, aka the Russell House, are also visible in “The Wedding: Part 2,” though as you can see below, the former is now obscured by foliage and can no longer be seen from the angle from which the episode was shot.

On a Tanner house side-note – when I went to input a map link for 1709 Broderick Street in the opening paragraph of this post, I noticed that a large group of fellow stalkers can be seen posing for photos in front of the Tanner home in the most recent Google Street View imagery of it from June 2017, which absolutely cracked me up.

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

Big THANK YOU to my friend Michael for finding this location! Smile You can check out his many IAMNOTASTALKER guest posts here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: In “The Wedding: Part 2” episode of Full House, Jesse and Becky are sent off on their honeymoon from outside of 1320 Carroll Avenue in Echo Park.

September 26, 2016February 17, 2017

Harmon Pet Care from “Fuller House”

Well, my fellow stalkers, I am finally home from my trip back east. Over the course of twelve days, the Grim Cheaper and I hit up Washington D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia and stalked a myriad of locations in the process (I took close to 3,000 pictures! I’m shocked my computer didn’t crash when I uploaded them all!). Those posts will be coming soon. In the meantime, though, we had to scoot off on another quick trip (I swear I think I have traveled more this year than any year prior), so my friend, fellow stalker Michael, of countless The Brady Bunch posts fame (you can read them here, here, here and here) has graciously stepped in yet again with a slew of fabulous guest columns that I will be publishing over the course of this week. Thank you, Michael! So without further ado . . .

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I’m back for my fifth guest post. And brace yourself, it’s not about The Brady Bunch—what ever happened to predictability? I’ve flipped the calendar from the 70s to 2016 to cover a contemporary comedy, Fuller House, created and produced by the same folks that brought us Full House and starring most of the cast from the 90s classic.

I had anxiously awaited the release of the new series since it was first announced, even visiting Warner Bros. last winter (and again this summer, but that’s a story for another day) to get a better look at a backlot facade they’d built to stand in for the San Francisco-located home used on the original sitcom. I was looking forward to seeing how they’d incorporate the new facade into the program and how they’d redo the iconic opening titles.

Although I was pleased enough with the new show, I’ll admit I was a little disappointed that Fuller House didn’t go all out and create a multi-location opening title a la Full House, and instead went with a more modern opening without any on-site filming. The tenth episode, “A Giant Leap,” was filmed partly on location at AT&T Park in San Francisco, but even those scenes were limited to the ball park. The new series didn’t offer many new establishing shots to track down, and even the facade that had been built on the Warner Bros. backlot went mysteriously unused, while vintage footage of the San Francisco home was dusted off to establish scenes set in the iconic house.

Something new did catch my eye, though—an establishing shot used throughout the first season. D.J. Tanner—not to be confused with her sister Stephanie who’s now a D.J. spinning under the name D.J. Tanner—is a veterinarian working at Harmon Pet Care. And while all of the interior scenes were shot at Warner Bros. in Burbank, the establishing shot of the clinic was filmed in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Admittedly, it wasn’t much work to pin down this location. Paper lanterns, ornamental street lights, and a sign that reads “Welcome to Chinatown” left little doubt.

On my last visit to San Francisco, I headed to the Dragon’s Gate—the formal entrance to Chinatown, and the beginning of a major shopping artery. The Dragon’s Gate actually appeared in the unaired original pilot episode of Full House. Rather than send the cast to Northern California, production had body doubles for the actors filmed at quintessential San Francisco landmarks. These clips were then used extensively in the closing titles of the pilot, and some also reappeared in the first season opening and closing titles.

Continuing my walk, I quickly came upon the intersection shown in Fuller House—Grant Avenue and Sacramento Street, looking south.

As I started to line up the shot, I noticed something that I hadn’t at home. The Harmon Pet Care sign is mounted to an entirely different building than the building with the Harmon Pet Care awning. Because of the angle of the shot used on Fuller House, you can’t see much of the facade behind the sign. I imagined that the pet clinic signs were digitally added to to a piece of stock footage in post-production. My suspicions about the digital manipulation were confirmed when I noticed that among other changes, an awning at the end of the street in the clip is brown in the Fuller House clip, but is currently red, and has been for at least a couple of years before the production of the new show.

The Harmon Pet Care sign is superimposed over Old Shanghai, a home decor and fashion retailer.

And the awning is that of the Far East Café.

I didn’t dine at the Far East Café, so I can’t attest to their menu offerings, however I’ve read that it’s a particularly vintage restaurant and has some unique architecture. The building dates back to the early 1900s, while the restaurant opened in the 20s and some of the original decoration is even older having been imported from China.

The rest of the block and signage looks very similar to the Fuller House establishing shot.

The eighth episode, “Secrets, Lies and Firetrucks,” contains the only evening establishing shot of the pet clinic. For this footage, the camera was moved to the opposite end of the block.

It wasn’t until I was writing this post that I noticed an entirely different building was shown in an establishing shot for the season’s last episode, “Love Is in the Air.” Nearly all of the business names were digitally removed, but thankfully they left a visible address that allowed me to home in on the alternate location. For this clip, B & C Laundromat on Waverly Place stands in for Harmon Pet Care. The awning from the Far East Café footage was digitally reversed and placed above its entrance.

Editor’s Note – A big THANK YOU to Michael for sharing this fabulous post with us (especially the uh-ma-zing graphic below, which I’m enthralled with)! I’m already looking forward to the rest of this week’s offerings!

Stalk Them: Far East Café and Old Shanghai, aka Harmon Pet Care from Fuller House, are located at 631 and 645 Grant Avenue in San Francisco, respectively. B&C Laundromat, aka Harmon Pet Care from the “Love Is in the Air” episode, is located at 115 Waverly Place in San Francisco.

September 26, 2014September 26, 2014

Griffith Park from the “Full House” Opening Credits

Growing up, I was obsessed with ABC’s TGIF series Full House. Like obsessed! Because my Uncle Tim lived with my family during my younger years, I related closely to the show – and thought it was insanely cool that I had my very own “Uncle Jesse.” So I was thrilled when fellow stalker Michael contacted me recently to let me know that he was in the process of hunting down the park used in the opening credits of Full House’s first three seasons. I had always been under the impression that the credits had been filmed in San Francisco, where the show was set. As Michael informed me, though, it was not until Season 4 that the cast was flown out to the City by the Bay to shoot on location. During Seasons 1 through 3, the opening segments featuring the series’ actors were lensed in a Los Angeles park and a B-roll team was sent to SF to film similarly-dressed doubles for all of the wide-angle shots. As you can imagine, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by Michael’s quest.

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I gave Michael a few of my best guesses as to where filming could have taken place. Those guesses included Lacy Park in San Marino, Johnny Carson Park in Burbank and Griffith Park in Los Feliz. Not able to pinpoint the location via Google aerial views, he ventured out to do some in-person recon and quickly discovered that Griffith Park was the right spot. Now I should mention here that Griffith Park is one of the largest parks in America. It measures 4,310 acres! So the fact that Michael was able to track down this locale – on foot, no less! – is pretty darn amazing. My hat is off to him.

As Michael discovered, all of the park scenes from Full House’s Season 1-3 opening credits (which you can watch below) were shot in Griffith Park’s Park Center area, just southwest of where Griffith Park Drive meets Crystal Springs Drive.

Amazingly, despite the passage of almost thirty years, that area of the park looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did when Full House originally aired in 1987.

The opening credits park scenes included a shot of the Tanner family playing a friendly game soccer;

a shot of Jesse Katsopolis (John Stamos) and Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier) ditching Danny Tanner (Bob Saget) to hit on some female fellow park-goers;

and a shot of the group running down a hill. It was that hill that was most exciting for me to see. The Full House opening was so ingrained in my memory that as soon as I stepped into that spot, my head filled with the words to the theme song, “Everywhere you look (everywhere), there’s a heart, (there’s a heart), a hand to hold onto.”

The structure seen in the background of the hill segment is the Park Services Building located at 4800 Griffith Park Drive.

Prior to this search, I had no idea that a different actor – John Posey – had played the Tanner family patriarch in Full House’s original pilot. Once the series got picked up, Bob Saget was hired to replace Posey and the episode was reshot. You can watch the original opening with Posey by clicking below and you can read an interview with him in which he talks about losing the Full House gig here.

You can watch all of the Full House opening credits (Season 1-8) by clicking below.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The opening credits of Full House’s first three seasons were filmed in Griffith Park’s Park Center, which is located at 4730 Griffith Park Drive in Los Feliz. A detailed aerial view of the area denoting where each segment of the credits was filmed is pictured below.

September 10, 2014October 22, 2018

The Victorian from “Mr. Mom”

Some movie scenes just seem to stay with you, seared into your memory for years, despite the fact that you can remember little else about the storyline. That’s how it was for me and Mr. Mom. I had not seen the comedy since 1983 when it first premiered in theatres and recalled few details from it, but the scene in which Jack (Michael Keaton) dried his baby’s bottom in a public restroom using a hand blower had stuck with me. Recently, on a whim, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to re-watch the flick. I was pleasantly surprised to discover how relevant Mr. Mom still is – and even more pleasantly surprised to recognize a location while watching!

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In a brief scene towards the end of Mr. Mom, Jack goes out to dinner with some of the housewives from his neighborhood.

Despite some changes to the exterior, I immediately recognized the spot where the group dined as The Victorian (aka Basement Tavern) located at 2640 Main Street in Santa Monica. It is a place that the Grim Cheaper and I frequent on a regular basis whenever staying on L.A.’s west side. We discovered the eatery about a year ago during an evening stroll on Main Street and fell in love with its gorgeous patio – which I posted a picture of on Instagram – on sight. We promptly decided to grab dinner there and were thrilled by the restaurant’s top-notch menu and fabulous happy hour. It has been one of our dining staples ever since.

The two-story, Victorian-style property was originally constructed as a private residence for an optometrist named Dr. George Kyte in 1892. At the time, it was located at 1003 Ocean Avenue. In 1973, the 15,000-square-foot home was moved about a mile and a half south to its current location as part of Santa Monica’s California Heritage Museum project. A neighboring residence, the First Roy Jones house, was moved to an adjacent lot at the same time. The Jones House was slated to become a historical museum and the Kyte House an upscale restaurant. There were some hold-ups in the planning and development process, though, and it was not until 1977 that The Chronicle was opened inside of the Kyte House. It was founded by restaurateur Lud Renick as a sister eatery to his Pasadena outpost of the same name, which was located at 897 Granite Drive. (The Pasadena Chronicle originally opened in 1971 and was shuttered in 1996. In more recent years, the Granite Drive site housed Jennifer Lopez’s former Cuban bistro, Madres, which I blogged about here and here).

While doing research for this post, I was shocked to discover that The Chronicle was where John Thomas Sweeney worked after serving a scant three-year-eight-month jail sentence for the killing of his former girlfriend, 22-year-old Poltergeist actress Dominique Dunne. I have long loved the writings of author Dominick Dunne and have read quite a bit about the 1982 murder of his daughter. When Sweeney was released from prison in 1986 after serving what Dominick called “a tap on the wrist” of a prison sentence, he landed a job as head chef at The Chronicle. The Dunne family was furious upon hearing the news and famously began standing outside the eatery each night, handing out flyers to patrons which read, “The food you will eat tonight was cooked by the hands that killed Dominique Dunne.” Sweeney soon quit, changed his name and moved to the Pacific Northwest. I had known about the flyers and the Dunne’s ongoing fight for justice for their daughter, but never knew the location of the restaurant where they staged their nightly protests.

The Chronicle, which you can see a photograph of here, shut its doors sometime around 1987. After the closure, the Kyte House was acquired by the Gerson family, who also own fave restaurant Malibu Café at Calimigos Ranch (which I blogged about last month). The Gersons operated the property solely as a special events and wedding venue for many years, but in 2010 they opened Basement Tavern, a 2,000-square-foot bar, in the basement of the home. On evenings when weddings are not taking place in the actual house, the Basement Tavern also serves dinner and drinks on the residence’s patio and bottom floor. The Victorian is a truly charming place with excellent food and I cannot more highly recommend dining there.

Fellow stalker Chris informed me that The Victorian also popped up as the supposed San Francisco-area Le Grill restaurant, where Jesse Katsopolis (John Stamos) took the Tanner family to dinner to celebrate his wife Becky’s (Lori Loughlin) promotion, in the Season 8 episode of Full House titled “The Producer.”

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The former The Chronicle restaurant from Mr. Mom, now The Victorian, is located at 2640 Main Street in Santa Monica. You can visit the property’s official website here and Basement Tavern’s official website here.

April 22, 2008February 13, 2009

San Francisco Stalking!

This weekend while visiting San Francisco, my friend Nat put together a custom made stalking tour of The City by the Bay for me. She said she had a new found respect for me, as she hadn’t realized how much time and energy finding locations took until she put together the tour for me. I make it look so easy! LOL 🙂

One of the first stops on our tour was the park where the Tanner Family had their famous picnic in the opening credits of Seasons 1-4 of Full House, one of my fave sitcoms of the 80s. The Tanner’s picnic was held in Alamo Square Park, right in front of the famous Seven Sisters homes. The Seven Sisters, or Painted Ladies, as they are more commonly referred to, are a group of seven very famous, very beautiful Victorian homes that were built in the 1890s. The homes are such a huge tourist trap and frequent filming location that they are also known as “Postcard Row.” You can see the picnic location and the Seven Sisters in the opening credits of Full House here.

Our next stop was the Tanner Family home from Full House. Their red-doored house is not one of the Seven Sisters as is commonly believed, but is actually a different VIctorian home located a few blocks away on Broderick Street. The front door is no longer painted red and there is now a large tree blocking most of the front of the home, but it is still very recognizable! You can see the home in the Full House opening credits here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It:The Full House house is located at 1709 Broderick Street, just off Divisadero Street, in San Francisco. Alamo Square Park is located in the Western Division area of San Francisco. Invasion of the Body Snatchers also featured a scene filmed in Alamo Square Park. The Painted Ladies can be found just across the street from the park at 712-720 Steiner Street. The man who built the homes, Matthew Kavanaugh, lived in number 722 during the 1890’s.