Be sure to check out my latest Los Angeles magazine article about the Sanderson house from The Grinder, my new favorite TV show. My articles typically get published in the early afternoon hours.
Chez Jay from “A Single Man”
The April issue of Los Angeles magazine (for which I wrote my very first print article ever – you can read it here) featured a Time Frame image of one of Santa Monica’s most historic restaurants, Chez Jay, reminding me that while I had stalked the watering hole ages ago, I had yet to blog about it. So here goes!
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Chez Jay was originally founded by a Connecticut-born struggling actor named Jay Fiondella. During the 1950s, Jay was working as a bartender at Sinbad’s on the Santa Monica Pier and, before his shifts, he would often grab a bite to eat at a nearby coffee shop named Dawn’s Cafe. He learned through his regular visits that Dawn’s was struggling financially and one fateful day the owner offered to sell the place to him for the bargain price of $1. Fiondella laid down the bill and the eatery became his. He named the place “Chez Jay,” in honor of Chez Joey, the restaurant owned by Frank Sinatra in the 1957 movie Pal Joey. (In a fateful twist, Sinatra would later become a Chez Jay regular.) The new eatery opened for business on July 4th, 1959. For the grand opening fete, Jay brought in showgirls and an elephant. Yes, an elephant! (You can see a photograph of it here.) Legend has it that the animal slammed its trunk on the bar at one point in the evening, denting it, and that that dent it still visible to this day.
The tiny space, which boasts a scant 10 tables, 12 bar stools and a 150-square-foot kitchen, quickly became popular with everyone from locals to the Hollywood set. Just a few of the luminaries who have dined there over the years include Ava Gardner, Vivien Leigh, Peter Sellers, Angie Dickinson, Chris Penn, Bronson Pinchot, Warren Beatty, Hugh Hefner, Robert Mitchum, my girl Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, Marlon Brando, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Jim Morrison, Michael Caine, Fred Astaire, John Belushi, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Dennis Hopper, Steve McQueen, Natalie Wood, Henry Kissinger, Leonard Nimoy, Cher, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger, Kiefer Sutherland, Mick Jagger, Tony Bennett, Joan Baez, Lee Marvin (legend has it that he once rode his motorcycle right up to the bar and ordered a drink), Julia Roberts, Sean Penn, Quentin Tarantino, Drew Barrymore, and Kevin Bacon. Frank Sinatra and other members of the Rat Pack would dine there weekly before their regular poker game. David E. Kelley and Michelle Pfeiffer even met there for the first time during a dinner party. And Matt Damon and Ben Affleck worked on their Oscar-winning screenplay for Good Will Hunting in the establishment’s back room. Not too shabby of a clientele!
Legend has it that Chez Jay was also the inspiration for the Regal Beagle, local Santa Monica hangout of Jack Tripper (John Ritter) and the gang, on Three’s Company.
Jay Fiondella passed away in 2008 at the age of 82 and the iconic restaurant is now run by his son, Chaz, daughter, Anita, and longtime business partner, Michael Anderson. The eatery’s future became uncertain shortly after Jay’s death when the City of Santa Monica began demolishing an adjoining parking lot to build what is now Tongva Park. During construction, city officials decided that Chez Jay did not fit in with their vision and hoped to demolish the place to make room for an open-air, family-friendly establishment. Thankfully, preservationists stepped in and the historic watering hole was given landmark status in late 2012. Chez Jay’s future is still somewhat uncertain, though, as the restaurant may be forced to undergo a remodel or an add-on. You can read a more in-depth history of the site here and here.
Despite having stalked Chez Jay on more than one occasion, the Grim Cheaper and I have never actually eaten there. It’s not for lack of trying, though. The place is always packed to the gills and typically doesn’t even have any standing-room-only space.
Thanks largely to the fact that little of Chez Jay has been changed over its 55-year history, the place has been featured onscreen several times. In the 1990 film Bad Influence, the restaurant was where Alex (Rob Lowe) took Michael Boll (James Spader) for a beer shortly after meeting him.
The interior of Chez Jay was also shown briefly in the scene.
In the 2009 drama A Single Man, Chez Jay popped up twice as The Starboard Side bar. It first appeared in the flashback scene in which George (Colin Firth) remembered first meeting his longtime boyfriend, Jim (The Good Wife’s Matthew Goode).
While the interior of the bar was also used briefly in the scene, not much of it was visible. The large amount of people shown packed inside it is a pretty accurate depiction of what the place is like in real life, though.
In a later scene, George runs into a student named Kenny (Nicholas Hoult) while at Chez Jay and the two have drinks.
The interior is shown in that scene, as well.
Chez Jay is also where Mark Callan (Wilson Bethel) meets with one of his father’s cronies in the Season 1 episode of All Rise titled “What the Constitution Greens to Me.”
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
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Chez Jay, from Bad Influence, is located at 1657 Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.
“Parks and Recreation” Filming at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena
Last Wednesday, while on my morning walk to Starbucks, I happened to pass by fave bookstore Vroman’s and just about fell over when I noticed an entire slew of production trucks parked out front. I, of course, immediately sought out one of the crew members to ask what was being filmed and he told me that it was an episode of Parks and Recreation. And even though I had never actually seen the NBC series before, I decided to stick around to watch the filming – only after getting my Starbucks first, of course. 
The shoot was taking place inside of Vroman’s, in the store’s Reading Group section, which had been set up to look like a book signing event was about to occur. The crew had brought in all new furniture for the scene, as well as several posters for Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America, a book supposedly written by Pawnee, Indiana Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation Leslie Knope (aka Amy Poehler). And while I had assumed that the tome was a fake that had been created solely for the filming, it is apparently a real life publication about the show that is set to be released on October 4th.
A display featuring several copies of Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America was set up in the background of the scene and, throughout the day, before filming began, countless Vroman’s customers would walk up and look through it, thinking it was a real item that was for sale. LOL I am dying to know if anyone actually brought a copy up to the cash registers and tried to purchase it!
At first I was not sure if I would be allowed to photograph the set that the crew had created, so like an idiot I was trying to be sly and take pictures on the down-low, which never seems to work out for me. For some reason, whenever I try to fly under the radar and be covert, I end up drawing attention to myself, which is exactly what happened in this case. One of the crew members noticed me ever-so-stealthily snapping photographs and informed me that I was welcome to take all of the pictures that I wanted . . .
. . . at which point I immediately jumped up onto the podium that Amy Poehler would be standing on during the scene to pose for a pic. 
YAY!
I was most fascinated, though, with a palm tree located just outside of Vroman’s front doors (which would only be seen in the background of the scene) that set dressers decorated to look like a tree indigenous to the Midwest, where Parks and Recreation supposedly takes place.
As you can see above, the front side of the tree’s trunk had been covered over with fake bark for the filming.
And real life branches from some sort of Midwestern tree (can you tell that I am in no way, shape, or form a green thumb?!?) were mixed in with the actual palm’s branches. The tree looked so incredibly realistic, even up close, that it was almost unbelievable! I don’t think anyone who walked by even noticed that it had been altered, even though the trunk looked a bit odd from the side.
I was absolutely dying to get a photograph with Rob Lowe (whose autobiography, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, was recently loaned to me by my good friend/fellow stalker Kerry and is can’t-put-down-AMAZING!) and figured I could catch the actor on his way into the bookstore before filming got started. Sadly though, Vroman’s has three different entrances and I waited outside of the wrong one and missed him entirely. Major, major FAIL! Especially since he was reportedly incredibly friendly and nice! Apparently, one of the Vroman’s employees, who goes by the twitter handle @howsannie, had sent out the following tweet the previous evening: “Parks & Recreation is filming at the store tomorrow. Dibs on @RobLowe!”, to which the actor responded, “I expect prominent book display!” When Rob walked into the store the following afternoon, his books were indeed on prominent display and he not only signed a bunch of copies for Vroman’s to sell, one of which is pictured above, but he also signed a copy for @howsannie. How incredibly cool is that? He even tweeted a photograph of himself from the set that day, which you can take a look at here. I was lucky enough to get to watch Rob, along with Amy Poehler and Chris Pratt, during the filming and all I can say is WOW! The guy is VERY good looking! Much more so than he appears to be onscreen. And while I would have waited around until the shoot wrapped to try to get a picture with the cast, I had promised Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, that I would stalk a movie premiere with her later that afternoon, so I couldn’t. Ah well! Here’s hoping they will be filming in Pasadena again sometime soon!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Vroman’s Bookstore is located at 695 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. You can visit the store’s official website here. Look for the Parks and Recreation episode that was filmed at Vroman’s to air sometime in the next two months or so.