Another location that Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I stalked while in the San Fernando Valley a few weeks ago was the It’s A Grind Coffee House featured weekly in the opening credits of the Showtime series Weeds. I was dying to stalk this location not only because I love anything and everything having to do with coffee, but because of a little bit of trivia that I had read online. According to IMDB, the It’s A Grind coffee company has had a product placement deal with Weeds since the series began. Those who watch the show regularly will recall that Nancy (aka Mary-Louise Parker) carries around an iced drink from It’s A Grind in pretty much every scene. A woman after my own heart, I swear! Anyway, when it came time to shoot the opening credits, which features a scene where about a dozen businessmen dressed all alike enter and exit an It’s A Grind, for some odd reason producers chose NOT to film at an It’s A Grind location, but at a Starbucks store. They literally went to all the trouble of redressing the store and removing the Starbucks logo to replace it with It’s A Grind signage for the shoot. Being that It’s A Grind is a real coffee company with locations dotted all over the L.A. area, I cannot for the life of me figure out why they didn’t just use one of the real stores for the filming! It doesn’t make any sense! I guess I just have to chalk it up to the magic of Hollywood! 🙂
Because of the Starbucks store’s odd filming history, I decided I just had to stalk the place. The only problem was that I had no idea where it was located. According to IMDB, the store from the opening credits was located somewhere in Calabasas. So, since Mike is familiar with the Valley, I sent him the above screen capture and he recognized its location immediately. 🙂 YAY! So a few weeks ago, the two of us headed out to stalk the It’s A Grind/Starbucks store from Weeds. 🙂 And, of course, being that it’s a Starbucks, I highly recommend stalking the place! 🙂 And thanks to the numerous amount of stars that live in the Calabasas area, the store is no stranger to celebrity. I hear that MJ’s brother Jermaine Jackson is even a regular there. 🙂
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Big THANK YOU to Mike for finding this location! 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: The It’s A Grind/Starbucks coffee house from Weeds is located at 26531 Agoura Road in Calabasas. You can visit the It’s A Grind website to find a real It’s A Grind location here.
It’s actually a lot easier, faster, cheaper to replace the logo in post production. Not hard to do at all, it’s even easier since the camera doesn’t move! 🙂
Very cool find though!
A lot of the opening credits were filmed over the course of a week in the Mont Calabasas housing development at the end of Las Virgenes Road, then the crew moved over to the Starbucks to get those shots. You can see the fountain from the opening credits outside of the Mont Calabasas gate, however the filmmakers employed some special effects to alter the appearance. When they were actually filming, the fountain was not changed so I have a feeling that the store was not physically redressed, but altered in the editing room with their Hollywood magic! 🙂