Melrose Avenue filming locations

Another L.A. Story location that has been waiting patiently in my stalking backlog is the block of Melrose Avenue where Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) and Sara McDowel (Victoria Tennant) walked and talked after attending a fundraiser for a private art museum in the 1991 flick. Unfortunately though, because the movie was lensed over twenty years ago and that area of Melrose has changed quite a bit during the interim, I am unsure of the exact spot where filming took place. But I sure did my best to try to pinpoint it.

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While watching Harris and Sara’s walk-and-talk scene in L.A. Story, I noticed a neon sign in the background that spelled out “Wacko.” Harris had mentioned in the scene that they were wandering down Melrose, so I decided to begin my hunt there and did a Google search for “Wacko” and “Melrose Avenue.” Sure enough, I was led to an April 1997 Los Angeles Times article that stated, “Wacko, a toy and trinket shop with a bizarre inventory ranging from eyeball magnets to ‘mystic smoke for fingertips,’ is famous for its colorful neon name sign that has become an icon of hipness known worldwide.” (I must not be all that hip being that I had been completely unaware of the sign prior to reading the article. Winking smile ) From there, finding the address of the former Wacko storefront – at 7404 Melrose Avenue – was fairly easy.

It was not until later that I realized a street sign for “Martel Avenue” was visible in the background of the scene. My search would have been a whole lot easier had I noticed that earlier! D’oh!

Wacko was originally established in 1984 by entrepreneur/art collector Billy Shire. Shire’s parents had founded the Soap Plant, a boutique specializing in handmade soap, ceramics and leather clothing, in Los Feliz in 1971. In 1980, Billy took over the family business and moved it to a strikingly unique corner building at 7400 Melrose Avenue. The new space was larger, enabling Billy to expand his wares to include jewelry and books. Four years later, when two vacant storefronts located next door to the Soap Plant became available, he opened a “pop culture toy shop” named Wacko, aka “The Second Happiest Place on Earth.” Besides selling Japanese robots, wind-up trinkets and games, Wacko also offered the largest selection of postcards in all of Los Angeles. In 1986, Shire founded an art showplace named La Luz de Jesus Gallery in the space located upstairs from the Soap Plant and Wacko. All three were so successful that nine years later he opened up sister locations in a 6,500-square-foot space at 4633 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz. Sadly, as the Melrose Avenue clientele shifted from punk to hipster in the late ‘90s, his business began to decline and he wound up closing his outposts there in 1997. His Hollywood Boulevard shops are still alive and well, though. Today, Wacko’s former Melrose Avenue home is the site of a boot shop and cell phone store. You can check out what the building looked like during the Wacko days here.

While the former Wacko building was an easy find, I still have not been able to pinpoint the exact storefronts that Harris and Sara walked in front of in L.A. Story. It is clear from the position of Wacko’s neon sign in the scene that the two were on the north side of Melrose Avenue, heading east from the Martel Avenue intersection towards North Fuller Avenue. None of the storefronts on that particular block match up to what appeared onscreen, though.

Granted a lot can change in 22 years time, but I was absolutely certain that I would find something that had remained the same, something that would allow me to identify the exact storefronts. Sadly though, the Grim Cheaper and I walked up and down that particular block of Melrose several times, screen captures in hand, without turning up a single thing.

The storefront that I most wanted to locate was the spot with the neon-decorated three-panel window, where Harris and Sara paused and where Harris uttered his famous line, “So there I was jabbering at her about my new job as a serious newsman – about anything at all – but all I could think was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful, and yet again, wonderful.”

While I originally thought that the window that appeared behind them in the scene was arched, as you can see in the screen capture pictured below (which I lightened a bit), that is not actually the case. Some sort of arched backdrop was used to create that illusion, but in reality the window is rectangular in shape.

My best guess is that the storefront used is the one located at 7365 Melrose Avenue, which now houses Freak Chic Tattoo. That is just a guess, though. While the shop does boast a similarly-shaped three-panel window, because there are no other identifying marks, it is virtually impossible to say for sure.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Harris and Sara’s walk-and-talk from L.A. Story took place on the 7300 block of Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles’ Fairfax district. The couple was on the north side of the street in the scene, near the storefronts located at 7377 and 7383, heading east. I believe that Harris and Sara stopped in front of the storefront located at 7365 Melrose Avenue. The former site of Soap Plant and Wacko can be found at 7400/7404 Melrose Avenue. You can visit the Soap Plant/Wacko official website here.

Way back in July 2009, a fellow stalker named Zoe emailed me to ask for some help in tracking down a hamburger-shaped restaurant that had appeared regularly in establishing shots on the original Melrose Place. Because I had never really watched the series, though, and had never noticed a burger-shaped eatery in all my years of living in L.A., I was not able to offer much help. So imagine my surprise when, while stalking in the West Hollywood area with Mike, from MovieShotsLA, a couple of months ago, we drove by the Starbucks pictured above and he announced that in the late ‘90s it was a famous hamburger-shaped restaurant named The Burger That Ate L.A. and that it was featured in an early episode of MP. I just about passed out from excitement over the news! More exciting still was the fact that, as Mike pointed out, even though the eatery has since gone through a series of different incarnations, the shape and structure of it is still almost exactly the same as it was when it was a burger place. Yay! Because we were rushing off to stalk Frank’s Wedding Coordinator shop from Father of the Bride (which I blogged about here) though, we did not pull over to take pictures. (I know, I know – me passing up the chance to stalk a Starbucks is seriously blasphemous!) But I immediately added the address to my To-Stalk list and finally dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there a couple of weeks ago.

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In the pilot episode of Melrose Place, Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth) drops Donna Martin (Tori Spelling) and David Silver (Brian Austin Green) – all of whom were making a guest appearance – off in front of The Burger That Ate L.A. before heading over to see her new boyfriend, Jake Hanson (Grant Show), who “lives around the corner” at the Melrose Place apartment building (which I blogged about many, many moons ago here). As you can see below, The Burger That Ate L.A. was quite an extraordinary place.

The eatery also popped up in the opening credits of Melrose Place’s pilot episode and, as I mentioned above, in the series’ regular establishing shots of the Melrose District neighborhood, where the characters supposedly lived.

The Burger That Ate L.A. was also featured very briefly in the Season 1 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “The First Time”, in the scene in which Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley) takes his former girlfriend, Sheryl (Paula Irvine), who is visiting from Minnesota, sightseeing.

The unique programmatic design of The Burger That Ate L.A. was the brainchild of restaurateur David Alderman, who also founded Carlos & Pepe’s in Fort Lauderdale and Moonshadows in Malibu (where Mel Gibson partied before his infamous DUI arrest in 2006). Alderman became inspired to shape his latest venture like a hamburger late one night while watching a B-movie. According to this July 7th, 1989 Los Angeles Times article, of the idea, he said, “Something in the old movie must have flipped a switch, and a light bulb popped in my head. I grew up in West Los Angeles, and often passed the Tail o’ the Pup hot-dog stand, which is shaped like a sausage sticking out between two buns.” Alderman commissioned the Solberg + Associates (which was then known as Solberg + Lowe Architects) firm to design and carry out his vision and The Burger That Ate L.A. was opened in mid-1989. The kitschy diner featured bar stools that were shaped like pickle wedges and a huge tomato slice that was suspended from the ceiling. What I wouldn’t give to have been able to see it in person! Sad smile

The Burger That Ate L.A. was insanely popular for a time and even attracted its fair share of celebs. Apparently, Drew Barrymore once dined there, as did Axl Rose. Sadly though, the popularity did not last. While I do not know the exact date of its closure, by October 1994, The Burger had already been shut down, re-opened as the Acapulco Chicken Café (which inexplicably retained the burger shape of the building, as you can see here), closed yet again and left to deteriorate. At some point, the façade of Los Angeles City Hall was removed, but when Starbucks leased the property in 1995 or 1996, they added it back on, which I think is so incredibly cool! As you can see below, the basic shape of the place is still exactly the same as it was back in The Burger That Ate L.A. days. The rounded “burger” area is still there, as are the winged backdrop and the curved windows. And, as you can see in this 2000 photograph of the building on the Starbucks Everywhere website, the place even retained its brick siding for a time.

I cannot tell you how exciting it is to discover that, despite years of change (or in this case decades!), some remnant of a historic location still exists, no matter how small. And I love, love, love that Starbucks not only chose to incorporate the basic shape of The Burger That Ate L.A. into its design, but also restored the City Hall façade back onto its roof. While most Starbucks stores look like cookie cutter versions of themselves, this one not only stands out, but also preserves a bit of Los Angeles’ history in the process. That’s Starbucks for you – making the world better, one latte at a time. Winking smile

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Burger That Ate L.A., from the pilot episode of Melrose Place, was formerly located at 7624 Melrose Avenue in the Melrose District of Los Angeles. The space now houses a Starbucks.

Tag: Melrose Avenue filming locations

Melrose Avenue from “L.A. Story”

The Burger That Ate L.A. from “Melrose Place”