Los Angeles architecture – IAMNOTASTALKER

April 16, 2018April 15, 2018

Oliver’s San Francisco House from “A Lot Like Love”

I have made no secret over the years of my obsession with the 2005 romcom A Lot Like Love. And I thought I was quite well-versed in its locations. So I was shocked when fellow stalker Tovangar2 (you may remember him from this post) published a comment on my site in November 2015 alerting me to the fact that the supposed San Francisco house where Oliver Martin (Ashton Kutcher) lived in the flick was actually located in Los Angeles – at 1321 Carroll Avenue in Echo Park, to be exact. For the life of me I could not remember the exterior of Oliver’s SF residence being shown in the movie, so I immediately popped my A Lot Like Love DVD into my computer, started scanning, and, sure enough, about 45 minutes in was a shot of Oliver returning to a large Victorian pad after a long day at work. Considering I’ve seen the film about 25 times, I don’t know how I missed it! Fortunately, I happened to be in L.A. just a few days after learning about the locale, so I ran right out to stalk it. Thank you, Tovangar2!

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According to Big Orange Landmarks, the pad, which is known as the Beaudry House in real life, has quite an interesting history. Constructed in the Queen Anne/Eastlake style in 1887, the dwelling was initially located at 1145 Court Street, just west of North Boylston, about seven blocks south of where it currently stands. You can check out a map showing where it was originally situated here.

By the late ‘70s, the Beaudry House had grown severely dilapidated, the result of a downturn in the neighborhood and negligible maintenance. Though the property as well as its neighbor, the Irey House at 1123 Court Street, were rewarded Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument status, they both suffered from vandalism, graffiti and age. At around the same time, a group of Carroll Avenue homeowners banded together to form the Carroll Avenue Restoration Foundation in the hopes that they could thwart the development of a large vacant plot of land on their street. Fearing that the addition of a sizeable contemporary residence on the lot would be at odds with the community’s decidedly historic Victorian aesthetic, the organization resolved to purchase the plot and relocate the Beaudry and Irey Houses there. Thanks to some savvy maneuvering and many generous donations, CARF was successful and the two dwellings were moved via flatbed truck to their new street on March 22nd, 1978. You can check out a photo of the drive, which took two hours to complete, here.

Today, the Beaudry House, which is actually classified as a duplex, is a glowing example of preserved Victorian architecture. The 3,201-square-foot property – which consists of a 1-bedroom, 1-bath unit downstairs and a 2-bedroom, 1-bath second-level space, as well a carriage house that has been converted into a studio – boasts pocket doors, period sconces, wood detailing, stained glass windows, a 3-car garage, and 0.28 acres of land.

The residence last sold in December 2015 for $1.2 million. You can check out some interior photos from the listing here. Because the pad is a duplex with a converted carriage house, it oddly has three different kitchens, which is a bit jarring to see.

Here’s hoping the new owners will convert the property back into a single-family home.

The Beaudry House appears only once in A Lot Like Love, in the scene in which Oliver returns home from work to learn that his live-in girlfriend Bridget (Moon Bloodgood) wants to break up with him just minutes before dinner guests are expected to arrive. in the movie, the residence actually belongs to Bridget. As Oliver later explains to his on-again/off-again love Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet), “I’ve been killing myself at work – nights, weekends, even at home. Well, Bridget’s home. See, I moved in with her. That was my big mistake right there. I should have stuck to the plan. I mean, the plan, the plan was working! And the irony of it is that Bridget actually loves plans.”

The actual interior of the property was also featured in the film, as you can see in the screen capture as compared to the MLS photo of the home pictured below.

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

Big THANK YOU to Tovangar2 for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Oliver’s “San Francisco” house from A Lot Like Love is located at 1321 Carroll Avenue in Echo Park. Several other homes in the neighborhood have also appeared onscreen – the Sanders House at 1145 Carroll is where Ola Ray hid from zombies in Michael Jackson’s Thriller, 1329 Carroll portrayed the Halliwell sisters’ residence on Charmed, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) grew up at 1355 Carroll on Mad Men, and Holly’s (Amy Ryan) Nashua house from the “Employee Transfer” episode of The Office is around the corner at 1347 Kellam Avenue.

October 29, 2010September 29, 2017

The Fisher & Sons Funeral Home from “Six Feet Under”

One location that I stalked well over a year ago, but for whatever reason have yet to blog about, is the Victorian-style residence which stood in for the supposed North Hollywood-area Fisher & Sons (and later Fisher-Diaz) Funeral Home on the immensely popular HBO series Six Feet Under. Amazingly enough, up until yesterday morning, I had never seen even one episode of the show and, unfortunately, I have to say that after watching the pilot episode yesterday morning, I wasn’t all that impressed with it. It’s a bit of an odd series. The only part I enjoyed was one of the opening scenes in which David Fisher (aka a pre-Dexter Michael C. Hall) tells a supposedly grieving widower (played by Harper Roisman) that his wife is at peace now, to which the widower replies, “If there’s any justice in the universe, she’s shoveling sh*t in hell!” LOL LOL LOL

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But while I didn’t especially like the pilot, I did absolutely fall in love the main house featured in it. In real life, the property is known as the Auguste Marquis Residence and it was originally built in the Queen Anne/Eastlake style (much like the “Thriller” house that I blogged about yesterday) in 1904 and is Los Angeles’ 602nd historic cultural monument. The dwelling, which currently houses the Filipino Federation of America, boasts 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a whopping 6,324 square feet of living space, and sits on over half an acre of land. The home was originally built for a Swiss native named Auguste Rodolphe Marquis, who worked for Death Valley’s Johnnie Consolidated Gold Mining Company, from which he made a considerable fortune. The property was purchased shortly after the second World War by General Hilario Camino Moncado, a native of the Philippines and founder of the Filipino Federation. His heirs still own the property to this day.

The Auguste Marquis Residence was featured each week as the home where the dysfunctional Fisher Family – siblings David, Nate (aka Peter Krause), and Claire (aka Lauren Ambrose) and their mother Ruth (aka Frances Conroy) – lived and operated their mortuary business on Six Feet Under, which ran from 2001 through 2005.

In real life, the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home sign is, of course, not there.

And while the home was mostly just used for establishing shots, some occasional filming was also done onsite there throughout the series five year-run, as was the case with the pilot episode, screen captures of which are pictured above.

The interior of the Fisher home was a set that was built on a soundstage at the Columbia/Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood and, from what I’ve been able to discern online, looks nothing like the interior of the actual Auguste Marquis Residence. A short film named Good Night was also filmed on location at the Six Feet Under funeral home in September of 2009 and Don Cunanan, the set photographer, snapped some pictures of the filming, in which you can see some of the residence’s real life interior. You can take a look at those photographs here.

On a coincidental side note – I was floored to spot Mountain View Cemetery, which I just blogged about this past Tuesday, featured quite extensively in the pilot episode of Six Feet Under, as the site of the funeral of Nathaniel Samuel Fisher (aka Richard Jenkins).

And I’d like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a VERY happy Halloween! Hope your holiday is fun and candy-filled!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Filipino Federation of America – aka Fisher & Sons funeral home from Six Feet Under – is located at 2302 West 25th Street in the West Adams District of Los Angeles.

August 17, 2010August 7, 2010

Holly’s Nashua House from “The Office”

Another location from The Office that I stalked recently was the supposed Nashua, New Hampshire-area house that Holly Flax moved into in the Season 5 episode titled “Employee Transfer”. I found this location, yet again, thanks to fellow stalker Owen who went on a mission a while back to try to track down as many Office locales as possible. So, thank you, Owen! Ironically enough, though, I actually didn’t need his help on this one because as soon as I first saw the “Employee Transfer” episode, I was fairly certain that the Nashua house scenes had been filmed either on or near Carroll Avenue in the Angelino Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles – an area which boasts the city’s largest concentration of Victorian-era homes. I was already quite familiar with Carroll Avenue and its architecture as the haunted house from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video and the Halliwell residence from the television series Charmed are both located there. And, sure enough, my stalking instincts were right on! While Holly’s house is not actually located on Carroll Avenue, it can be found just around the corner from it.

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In the “Employee Transfer” episode, Michael Scott (aka Steve Carell) and Darryl Philbin (aka the hilarious Craig Robinson) move Michael’s girlfriend Holly Flax (aka Amy Ryan) into her new home in Nashua, after she has been transferred back to the Dunder Mifflin branch where she formerly worked.

And I am very happy to report that the residence looks EXACTLY the same in person as it did on the show. Holly’s house is absolutely GORGEOUS and it is not very hard to see why producers chose to film there, although, in my mind at least, it looks far more like a San Francisco-area home than one that would be found in Nashua. I’ve never been to New Hampshire, though, so don’t quote me on that one. 😉

Holly’s Nashua house, which is known as the Jesse Hall Residence in real life, actually has quite a bit of history to it, as do most properties in the neighborhood. The Hall Residence was designed by contractor John M. Skinner in 1887 for $6,000 and it is a carbon copy of the property located directly to the east of it, which is known as the Henry G. Hall Residence. Because the homes are identical in appearance and were both owned by families with the last name of Hall, they are known in architectural circles as “the Hall Twins”. And while the house was originally a single-family dwelling, in 1915 Jesse Hall’s son, Tracey, transformed the property into a duplex and it remains so to this day. The Hall Twins were both designated Historic-Cultural Monuments in June of 1979. You can read more about their history on the Big Orange Landmarks blog here.

On an Office side note – EW Magazine is reporting that Amy Ryan will be back for a whopping eight episodes during the show’s upcoming seventh season. YAY! You can watch a clip of Amy appearing on fave show Chelsea Lately in which she talks about how she landed her recurring role as Michael Scott’s love interest Holly Flax. Apparently, after she was nominated for an Oscar for the movie Gone, Baby, Gone, she told her agent that she wanted to use her newfound Hollywood clout to land a guest spot on The Office, which was her favorite show. She ended up landing the part of Holly and when she arrived on the set the first day and told Rainn Wilson the story of how she booked the role, he told her “You really should aim higher.” LOL I first watched that interview long before I had ever seen an episode of The Office and remember being absolutely fascinated by the fact that Amy loved the show THAT much. But now that I’ve become an Office devotee, I TOTALLY get it. If I was nominated for an Oscar, I, too, would so try to use my clout to land a role on that show. 🙂

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Holly Flax’s Nashua house from The Office is located at 1347 Kellam Avenue in the Angelino Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The house from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video is located just around the corner at 1345 Carroll Avenue and the Charmed residence is located at 1329 Carroll Avenue.

July 14, 2010July 13, 2010

The Tam O’Shanter Inn from “Glee”

A couple of weeks ago I dragged my fiancé out to stalk the Tam O’Shanter Inn which appeared in the Season 1 episode of Glee titled “Dream On”. I found this location thanks to an eagle-eyed stalker who recognized the restaurant immediately while watching the episode back in May. And even though I no longer consider myself a “Gleek” (gasp!), I just could not resist stalking the place. And yes, you read that right – I am no longer a huge fan of Glee. In fact, I can’t even really say that I like the series at all anymore, let alone love it like I used to. In my never-to-be-humble opinion, the show has gone WAY downhill ever since it returned from its four month hiatus this past April. I don’t know if it’s due to the fact that it became such a humongous hit in such a short period of time or if the writers just simply got lazy, but somewhere along the way the show lost its heart. It’s become more about the music and less about the characters that I grew to love so deeply in the first part of the season. While the series used to be over-the-top and fun, in recent months it’s become ridiculous and largely unbelievable – Kurt and Mercedes joining the cheerios, Olivia Newton-John asking Sue Sylvester to star in a re-make of her “Physical” video, and Shelby Corcoran – the coach of Vocal Adrenaline – adopting Quinn and Puck’s baby???? Like, huh??? I could go on and on and on. Not to mention the fact that Mr. Shue, who was in my eyes the real heart of the show, has become a complete and total jerk – i.e. cheating on Emma, pretending to be in love with Sue Sylvester (I don’t even know what to say about that one!), and hooking up with his arch-enemy and head of the rival Glee club, Shelby Corcoran. Sigh. The whole thing makes my head hurt. Although I did love it when all of the kids were calling him “Man Whore” in the “Bad Reputation” episode. Anyway, despite all of that, because I loved part one of the series’ first season SO much, I still find it fun stalking locations featured on the show. Which is how my fiancé and I ended up at the Tam O’Shanter Inn two weekends ago.

Tam O’Shanter Inn actually has a long and celebrated Hollywood history. It was first opened in June of 1922 by Lawry’s restaurant chain founders Lawrence Frank and Walter Van de Kamp and has the distinction of being Los Angeles’ oldest restaurant that is still operating in the same location and by the same family. Art director/humorist Harry Oliver, designer of the Spadena House in Beverly Hills (aka the Witch’s House from Clueless), was commissioned to design the original building in what is called the “storybook-style” of architecture. In fact, the restaurant’s original interior closely resembled that of a ride at Disneyland. The property was extensively remodeled and expanded in 1968 at which time it was renamed the “Great Scot”. In 1982, in honor of the restaurant’s 60th anniversary, the original name, which refers to a style of hat worn in Scotland, was restored and it has remained to this day.

In the “Dream On” episode of Glee, Will Schuester (aka cutie Matthew Morrison) takes frenemie and former Glee-club-rival Bryan Ryan (aka guest star Neil Patrick Harris) to the Tam O’Shanter Inn for a drink to convince him to not shut down the Glee club. Will finally gets Brian to concede and the two wind up singing a rousing rendition of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”.

When we first walked into the Tam O’Shanter Inn, I asked the hostess who greeted us at the door where exactly the “Dream On” episode had been filmed. Well, let me tell you, she could NOT HAVE BEEN NICER! She immediately sat us in the bar area in the exact spot where Matthew Morrison and Neil Patrick Harris were sitting in the episode. She also told us the direction the cameras were facing during filming, what areas of the restaurant could be see in the background, and asked if we wanted to reenact the “Piano Man” scene while she took photographs of us. LOVE IT! I was SO down with reenacting the scene, by the way, but the Grim Cheaper was having none of that! 😉

Filming for the yet-to-be-released Larry Crowne movie, which stars Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks, also took place at the Tam O’Shanter Inn earlier this year. According to the bartender we spoke with, producers had the above-pictured green rug made especially for the filming and then gifted it to the restaurant after shooting wrapped. SO DARN COOL!

Besides being a filming location, the restaurant is also a long time celebrity hangout. Just a few of the luminaries who have been spotted there over the years include Mary Pickford, John Wayne, Fatty Arbuckle, and Tom Mix. Walt Disney loved the place so much that he frequented it on an almost daily basis and on one visit gifted the owners with the above-pictured cartoon, which he personally drew of Lawrence Frank. According to the restaurant’s website, Disney executives dined at Tam O’Shanter’s so often that the place became known as “Disney’s studio commissary”. Apparently Walt’s favorite table was #31, while John Wayne preferred #15.

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I honestly cannot say enough good things about the Tam O’Shanter Inn. I absolutely LOVED the place! Especially their fried calamari appetizer!

On a Glee side note – For those of you who have not yet seen Heather Morris, who plays Brittany on Glee, performing “Single Ladies” live with Beyonce at the 2009 American Music Awards, you can do so now by clicking above. Apparently, Heather was not originally being considered as a cast-member for Glee, but was first called in by series creator Ryan Murphy to teach series regulars Chris Colfer and Jenna Ushkowitz the “Single Ladies” dance for the Season 1 episode titled “Preggers”. Fate stepped in, though, and Murphy ended up liking the actress/professional dancer so much that he immediately cast her in the role of ditzy cheerleader Brittany. And the rest, as they say, is history!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Tam O’Shanter Inn from Glee is located at 2980 Los Feliz Boulevard in the Atwater Village section of Los Angeles. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

April 7, 2010April 7, 2010

The “Glee” Vanity Fair Photo Shoot

In early December of last year, I came across these Fan Sites Network photographs of the male stars of Glee – including my latest love, cutie Matthew Morrison – posing for an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair at the Urban Light display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and I just about died. I absolutely COULD NOT WAIT for the article to be published so that I could stalk the display and blog about it. I’m really not kidding – on January 1st, February 1st, and March 1st of this year, I literally ran to my local newsstand to check out the latest issue of the magazine to see if the Glee pics were in there. Well, the photos – ahem – photo was finally published this past Thursday in the magazine’s May issue and I have to say that I was sorely disappointed with it. I had whole-heartedly been expecting the Glee actors to garner a cover story or, at the very least, a full-fledged feature article, so, you can imagine my disappointment last Thursday upon discovering that the actual publication consisted of a single page. Yes, you read that right – ONE single, solitary page. In my never-to-be humble opinion ;), I have to say that Vanity Fair really dropped the ball on this one! I mean, HELLO! Glee is not only the biggest new show of the 2009 Fall television season and is finally returning to the airwaves after a FOUR MONTH hiatus, but it also recently won both a Golden Globe Award (for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy) and a SAG Award (for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series) along with countless other awards and nominations too numerous to list here – before its very first season had even been completed, no less! Shouldn’t that at least garner them more than a half page picture and tiny write-up buried all the way on page 181? Shame on you, VF! Not only that, but I wasn’t exactly crazy about the sole photograph that did get published, either. It is a pretty dark and dreary picture, especially considering that Glee is a show chock full of . . . well, glee! But, even though I wasn’t very happy about the finalized product, I still just HAD to stalk the place where the photo shoot took place. So, this past weekend I dragged my fiancé out to Wilshire’s Miracle Mile District and did just that.

I’ve actually driven by the Urban Light display countless times over the past few years and have always found it a bit odd, to say the least. As you can see in the above photographs, the large scale art installation consists of a group of grey-colored lights standing right smack dab in the middle of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s central courtyard which is located along the heavily trafficked Wilshire Boulevard in Mid-Town L.A. Trust me when I say that the whole thing looks very bizarre when driving by at 35 miles per hour. And even though I’ve always admired the many vintage street lamps that are in still in use around the Los Angeles area, the Urban Light display always seemed out of place to me and I never had any interest in stopping my car to get a closer look.

That is, until my good friend Renae sent me the above picture of her family taken earlier this year, which I thought was just about the coolest family photograph I had ever seen! I absolutely loved, loved, loved it and, in turn, realized what an amazing display the Urban Light installation actually was. I mean can you even imagine taking wedding photographs there?? They would be A-MA-ZING!

The Urban Light display, which is comprised of a group of 202 actual working 1920’s and 1930’s era Los Angeles street lamps that took over seven years to collect, was created by performance artist and sculptor Chris Burden in early 2008. Burden is perhaps best known for his highly controversial performance pieces from the early 1970s, the most famous of which was entitled “Shoot” and involved an assistant actually shooting him in the arm while onstage. Not surprisingly, he was made to see a therapist after that production. 😉 Burden also once had himself nailed to a Volkswagen Beetle during a show. Needless to say, the guy’s a bit out there. According to this article which was written by Susan Freudenheim and appeared in the January 30th, 2008 issue of the Los Angeles Times, in recent years Burden has shifted his attention from performance art to “large-scale assemblage sculptures”. He first stumbled upon the vintage street lamps that would become the foundation of his “Urban Light” display in December of 2000 at the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena. Even though he had no plan for them at the time, he immediately purchased a pair of the vintage lights for $1600. An avid collector of a wide array of tchotchkes, Burden soon found himself in possession of 150 of the street lamps and used them to build a small scale display outside of his studio. Eventually, a few big wigs at LACMA viewed the installation and knew it would be the perfect piece to stand in the middle of the new courtyard that was being built outside of the museum. Andrew M. Gordon, a chairman on the LACMA board, donated the money to purchase the display, to which Burden had added 52 more lamps, and the rest, as they say, is history. The installation’s first lighting was on February 7, 2008 and coincided with the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA. In a humorous side note, not only did each of the 202 lamps have to actually be installed per Los Angeles City Code, but they were also all inspected by the Bureau of Street Lighting. No that’s not a joke, Los Angeles actually has a Bureau of Street Lighting!

Seeing the Urban Light sculpture up close and personal is extremely jarring as the display is absolutely HUGE, much more so then it appears to be when simply driving by. Burden designed the piece so that visitors could actually walk through each of the lights to experience what he describes as “architecture without walls”. And let me tell you, one can easily get lost in the middle of the installation, as I obviously did in the above photograph. 🙂 I honestly can’t recommend stalking the Urban Light display enough. It is an absolutely beautiful and truly unique place that everyone should see in person at least once.

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And, of course, I just had to pose in the exact spot where the Glee picture was taken, which is on the northwest corner of the installation. 🙂

Note – The Glee photograph which appears in this post does not belong to me, but remains the sole property of photographer Michael Roberts and Vanity Fair Magazine.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” display, where the Glee guys’ Vanity Fair photo shoot took place, is located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in Mid-Town L.A. The Glee boys posed in the display’s northwest corner, which is pictured above. The May issue of Vanity Fair, which features the Glee photograph, will be on sale throughout the end of April. If you would like to check out a more in-depth photoshoot of the cast, pick up this month’s Glamour.

February 12, 2010February 11, 2010

The Firehouse from “Ghostbusters”

This past weekend while doing some stalking in Downtown L.A. I dragged my fiancé out to see an oft-used filming location that has long been at the top of my “To-Stalk” list. That location is known as Fire Station #23, a real life former working fire house that served as the offices of Dr. Raymond Stantz (aka Dan Aykroyd), Dr. Peter Venkman (aka Bill Murray), Dr. Egon Spengler (aka Harold Ramis), and Winston Zeddmore (aka Ernie Hudson) in the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. And as fate would have it, when we pulled up to the now-defunct fire station, the caretaker of the property, an EXTREMELY nice man named Daniel Taylor, happened to be standing outside speaking with a student filmmaker. So, I, of course, struck up a conversation with him and asked if it might be alright if I stepped inside to take a look around and snap a few photographs. And, let me tell you, I just about fell over from excitement when Daniel told me to go right in! YAY!

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Fire Station #23 actually has quite a storied, and sometimes scandalous, history. The structure, which first opened on October 2, 1910, was designed by the prominent architectural firm of Hudson & Munsell and served as the headquarters of the Los Angeles Fire Department for over a decade. The three story building, which cost between $57,000 and $60,000 to construct and measured 26 feet wide, 167 feet deep and encompassed 13,600 square feet of space, has been mired in controversy ever since the day it was first dedicated. In the beginning, angry citizens deemed the construction costs far too steep for a public building, especially since tax payers were footing the bill and considering the extravagance with which the place was built. And it has been said that no other fire station in the country is as opulent. The top floor of the structure housed the Fire Chief’s suite, an apartment which every fire chief from 1910 to 1928 called home. The suite featured a marble bathroom complete with a double bathtub, Peruvian mahogany wall paneling, imported Italian tile detailing, oak flooring, a private elevator, a brass bed, a roof garden, a marble fireplace, and French bevel glass mirrors. The second floor contained the captain’s dwelling, a library with built-in bookshelves, and bunks for twenty firefighters. The bottom floor contained an open arcade with enamel tiled walls, 21 foot high pressed tin ceilings, and stalls to accommodate ten horses. Pretty amazing for a fire house, huh? The Los Angeles Times even dubbed the place “the Taj Mahal of fire stations”.

Fire Station #23 remained in operation for fifty years, whereupon its men responded to over 60,000 fires. But with the city moving towards building more modernized stations, Engine Truck Company #23 closed its doors for good on November 23rd, 1960. Because a station in Pacific Palisades adopted the “23” company number, the shuttered station took on the name “Old 23”. For the next six years, the fire department utilized the space for medial records storage and as a training facility. In 1966, the same year it became a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, the fire house was shut down by the department completely. For the next ten years, as the area surrounding the building became more and more impoverished, the station fell into serious disrepair and suffered from extreme vandalism and looting. In 1979, the Fire Commission decided to renovate the property and eventually turn it into a firehouse museum. A non-profit organization named Olde 23 was set up to oversee the restoration process and to raise funds for the massive undertaking. In 1980, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Nine years later, though, in 1988, the plans for turning Old #23 into a museum were nixed and the city opened their Los Angeles Fire Department Museum at a location in Hollywood instead.

Seven years later controversy came raining down upon the fire house once again when Los Angeles Times staff writer Robert J. Lopez authored a front page article accusing the Olde 23 corporation of misuse of funds. According to the article, Olde 23 had been collecting massive amounts of money (over $210,000 to be exact) thanks to the numerous film shoots that had taken place on the premises over the years. Not only had the company failed to turn that money over to the city, though, but no one had even informed the city that any sort of filming was going on. Being that a city department is responsible for handing out film permits, I’m not quite sure how this even happened, but I guess it’s just another case of a beaurocracy’s right hand not knowing what the left is doing. Causing further scandal was the fact that even though the city had moved the museum location to a different site seven years prior, Olde 23 was still collecting not only filming fees that would supposedly go into the museum fund, but also donations for the project. AND (yes, there’s more!) the supposed non-profit was ALSO collecting filming fees from production companies for shoots that were taking place at other firehouses in the area – firehouses that the Olde 23 company had no jurisdiction over! LOL Talk about a sh*tstorm!! 😉 President and C.E.O. of the Olde 23 company was none other than Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald O. Manning himself, who resigned from his post just 8 days after Lopez’s newspaper article hit the stands. Following his resignation, Fire Station #23 continued to host film shoots, with the money going to the City of Los Angeles, the property’s rightful owner. Just this past September, though, the building was designated surplus property and the city is considering selling it to several different private investors, including a restaurant developer and a non-profit arts education group.

Daniel Taylor, who has been caretaker of the property since 1985 and who the city is currently trying to evict, has different plans for the building, though. He recently formed the Corporation for History, Arts, and Culture (CHAC) with the hopes of restoring the old firehouse to its original grandeur for use as both a cultural center and a filming location. He estimates the restoration project to cost upwards of $8 million and is trying to raise funds now. If you would like to learn more about the cause, you can do so on CHAC’s official website. And while the future of the historic firehouse remains to be seen, in the meantime I highly recommend stalking it as it is a truly beautiful and unique building.

In Ghostbusters, the exterior of the gang’s headquarters (pictured above) was actually filmed at Hook & Ladder Company #8 located at 14 North Moore Street in New York.

But for the interior filming, cast and crew came to Fire Station #23 in Downtown Los Angeles. And I am happy to report that the interior looks almost exactly the same today as it did in 1984 when Ghostbusters was filmed! Amazing!

The boys’ back office area is not there in real life, though, and I am assuming it was just a set that was added solely for the filming.

The upstairs of the firehouse was used in the filming, as well, but unfortunately I didn’t get to see that area while I was there.

Five years later cast and crew returned to Fire Station #23 once again to film the interior scenes for Ghostbusters II.

And I just about died when I spotted the wooden wall adornment pictured above, which was featured in the sequel. So cool!

The firehouse was also featured in 1994’s The Mask, in which it doubled as Jim Carrey’s deceitful car mechanic’s office.

He later vandalizes the place after turning into “The Mask”.

In 2003’s National Security, the firehouse was used as the location of Earl Montgomery (aka Martin Lawrence) and Hank Rafferty (aka Steve Zahn’s) stakeout. Only the exterior of the building and a very small portion of the interior (pictured above) were featured in that shoot, though. Firehouse #23 has also appeared in V.I. Warshawski, Police Academy 2, Flatliners, Set It Off, RE(e)volution, Big Trouble in Little China, in the television series Firehouse, and in the Season 4 episode of The A-Team entitled “The Road to Hope”. All in all, it has been featured in more than 50 commercial, television, movie, and music video productions over the years.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Fire Station #23, aka the firehouse from Ghostbusters, is located at 225 East Fifth Street in Downtown Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the station is not in the safest of areas, so please exercise caution if you choose to stalk it. You can visit the CHAC Fire Station #23 website here.

September 28, 2009September 28, 2009

Lou Ferrigno’s I Love You, Man House

Another location from fave movie I Love You, Man that I have been absolutely dying to stalk is the ultra modern, ultra large manse that belonged to Lou Ferrigno in the flick. As always, I enlisted the help of fellow stalker Owen in tracking this location down. Ironically enough, though, around that same time, fellow stalker Ashley was visiting the L.A. area and just happened to notice the Ferrigno house in the distance while driving on Fairfax Avenue. She had yet to see I Love You, Man, but because the house was so unique looking, asked her boyfriend to snap a quick picture of it. Well, you can imagine her surprise a few days later, when, while watching the in-flight movie on the way home, which, as luck would have it just happened to be I Love You, Man, she recognized the Lou Ferrigno house as the one she had admired from a distance just a few days prior. So, Ashley immediately emailed me as soon as she got home to let me know of the home’s location. Well, literally that SAME day, I got an email from Owen letting me know that he had also found the house! LOL I guess this was one location that I was really meant to stalk! 🙂

The Lou Ferrigno house shows up a few times in the movie, most notably as the site of the infamous “Open House” scene in I Love You, Man, in which Jason Segel calls out a man not only for attending the event for the sole purpose of impressing a girl, but also for farting while there! LOL When the perpetrator leaves the house he says, “You know what, guy, I like it, but I’m thinking it might be a little bit small.” To which Jason Segel says, “Totally, and it smells like fart.” LOL LOL LOL

Quite a bit of the Lou Ferrigno house was used in I Love You, Man, including the exterior,

the back patio,

the living room,

and the entryway, which, as you can see in these interior photographs of the house, all look exactly the same in real life as they did in the movie.

Ostensibly missing in real life, though, are the Lou Ferrigno statue, artwork, and memorabilia. 😉

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The Lou Ferrigno house, which, of course, does not actually belong to the Hulk star in real life, is no stranger to celebrity. There are rumblings online that the 6 bedroom, 8 bathroom, 9,204 square foot home which sits on over an acre of land has been owned by both Merv Griffin and the Sony Company in the past. I don’t know if that information is true or not, but the house has been the site of some very fashionable Hollywood parties, including one in 2005 for the exclusive New York/London Club the SoHo House and another for the Entertainment Group “House of Hype”.

Sadly, as you can see in the above photograph, besides the large front gate, not much of the house is visible from the street.

But you can catch some great views of it if you head up Hercules Drive . . .

. . . or down Laurel Canyon Boulevard. (Please excuse the power lines! LOL)

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Big THANK YOU to both Owen and Ashley for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Lou Ferrigno’s house from I Love You, Man is located at 1 Electra Court in the Mt. Olympus area of the Hollywood Hills.

September 21, 2009September 21, 2009

The Matchstick Men House

Another location I dragged my fiance to while in Venice last weekend was the house used in the 2003 movie Matchstick Men. I found this spot thanks to fellow stalker Chas, who made it his mission to find EVERY SINGLE Matchstick Men location in the L.A. area. And find them all, he did! Chas’ entire catalog of Matchstick Men locales can actually be found on the Seeing Stars website, but the spot I was most interested in stalking, of course, was the residence belonging to obsessive-compulsive con man Nicolas Cage in the flick. I had absolutely fallen in love with the unique Mid-Century Modern-style home with a tree growing through its front porch when I first saw Matchstick Men in the theatre six years ago. So, when Chas mentioned that he knew where the house was located, I just about died of excitement and immediately ran right out to go stalk it! 🙂

I am very happy to report that the Matchstick Men house looks exactly the same in person today as it did onscreen six years ago. For those who don’t remember, Nicolas Cage’s residence in the flick was a very unique, very flat, one story white 50’s-style abode. But the coolest feature of the house actually had to be the large tree growing right through the roof of the front porch. I’ve never seen anything quite like it in my entire life and when I first saw the movie, I remember wondering if the tree was real or just a prop added for the filming. Well, as it turns out, the front porch tree is a real feature of the house and is still there today. Love it!

The Matchstick Men house is located on a very cool street that is actually chock full of similar looking Mid-Century Modern-style homes. More than a few of them even have a tree growing through their front porch roof, too. Love it! 🙂 According to Zillow, the MM house, which was built in 1948, has 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, and measures a tiny 1,016 square feet.

Chas also told me that, according to the Matchstick Men DVD’s director’s commentary, the scenes that took place in Nicolas Cage’s backyard in the movie were actually filmed at another location altogether – a house located somewhere in the San Fernando Valley near Woodland Hills.

The home’s real life backyard is pictured in the above aerial image, and as you can see, is much smaller than the backyard portrayed in the movie and does not have a pool.

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If you were at all a fan of the movie – or of Mid-Century Modern-style architecture in general – I highly recommend stalking the Matchstick Men house.

Big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Matchstick Men house is located at 3508 Meier Street, just outside of Venice, in West Los Angeles.