Casbah Café from “A Lot Like Love”

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Today’s blog is going to be a short one as I am heading out to the eye doctor in a bit to have my eyes dilated, which, second to being on an airplane, is my least favorite activity in the entire world. Speaking of flying, US Magazine recently published an article about celebrity riders which featured actor Billy Crystal’s “Flight Preboard Information”. The “Other notes” section of Billy’s rider states, “Normally holds hands w/ family during takeoff and landing. Keep informed of turbulence.” Um, LOVE IT! Like Billy, I, too, hold my parents’ hands during takeoff, and I am absolutely PETRIFIED of turbulence! Oh, how I wish I were a celebrity so that I could submit my very own flight rider in which I demanded that the crew keep me informed of any upcoming turbulence. Winking smile But I digress.

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Anyway, just down the street from Bar Keeper – the store that stood in for Upon Gallery in fave movie A Lot Like Love, which I blogged about yesterday – is Casbah Café, a French Moroccan-style coffee shop that was also featured in the 2005 flick. And, even though I have already blogged about this location once before very briefly, I just had to drag the Grim Cheaper right on back over there to snap some pics – and grab some coffee, of course! – while we were in the area doing our Christmas shopping last December.

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The Casbah Café, which first opened in 1997 and currently serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, is a very unique and quirky independent coffee house/gift boutique that sells clothing, jewelry and home furnishings collected from various locales around the world, including India, Mexico, Morocco, and Argentina. The shop’s eccentric interior features blue- and orange-painted walls covered in large framed tapestries, a French-inspired chalkboard mirror menu and exposed ductwork. In the March 2004 issue of Toro Magazine, journalist Stephen Hunt hit the nail on the head when he described the Casbah as follows: “On first glance, the café evokes one of those places where Indiana Jones hung out in Cairo. An almost too perfectly shady establishment in which to exchange letters of transit, or a Maltese falcon . . .” The place also has a definite hipster vibe to it. The GC always jokes that he is not cool enough to hang out there because he does not own a pair of skinny jeans. Winking smile And he is right – the Casbah Café is a place where skinny jeans abound.

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Thanks to its fabulous coffee and free Wi-Fi, the Casbah Café has become insanely popular over the years – so popular, in fact, that curbside service has recently been added to provide for the many customers who cannot find a vacant table. Celebrities have even been known to pop into the eatery from time to time. Just a few of the stars who have gotten their caffeine fix there include Madonna, Mia Kirshner, Gwen Stefani, Sofia Coppola, Courtney Love, Patricia Arquette and clothing designer Diane von Furstenberg.

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In A Lot Like Love, Oliver Martin (Ashton Kutcher) and Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet) stop by the Casbah Café to grab coffee after their “silent” New Year’s Eve dinner. It is while there that Emily tries to pay for Oliver’s coffee, to which he says, “No. I appreciate the reach – the acting classes are really paying off – but I got it.” LOL

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In a very brief scene in the Season 4 episode of Southland titled “Wednesday”, Officer Ben Sherman (cutie Ben McKenzie – sigh!) eats breakfast at the Casbah Café – and checks out some girls on their way to a yoga class while doing so.

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The exterior of the Casbah Café shows up very briefly in The Freebie. According to a September 2010 Los Angeles Times article, Katie Aselton wrote the six-page outline for the 2010 indie flick while at the eatery and it even inspired one of the movie’s main storylines in which married man Darren (Dax Shepard) develops a crush on a barista at his local coffee shop. The Casbah will also be featured in the upcoming movie L!fe Happens, which stars Kate Bosworth, Rachel Bilson, and Krysten Ritter.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Casbah Café from A Lot Like Love is located at 3900 West Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. You can visit the café’s official website here.

Bar Keeper – aka Upon Gallery from “A Lot Like Love”

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Back in December, shortly before Christmas, the Grim Cheaper and I headed out to Silver Lake to do some gift shopping for his father at one of the most unique, quirky and whimsical stores in all of Los Angeles – Sunset Junction’s Bar Keeper, the very same spot that stood in for Upon Gallery in fave movie A Lot Like Love.  And even though I have actually already blogged about this location once before way back in January of 2008, during the early days of my site because it was not only a very brief write-up, but also lumped together with a few other A Lot Like Love locations, I figured the place was most-definitely worthy of a re-post.  So here goes.

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On its website, Bar Keeper is described as being a “head shop for those who want to prepare and serve their cocktails with style”.  Specializing in everything from vintage glassware to bar collectibles to hard-to-find liquor,  the place is truly one-of-a-kind.  The store, which first opened its doors on April 4th, 2006, is the brainchild of former reality TV producer Joe Keeper, hence the “Keeper” in the name.  Joe designed the entire shop himself, doing everything from laying down the flooring to constructing the L-shaped wooden bar from which he rings up customers’ purchases.

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The walls of the unique shop are decorated with a larger-than-life periodic table of the elements, photographs of bartenders from local watering holes, over 70 vintage bar signs, and floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves which hold small-production bottles of liquor.  Keeper scours the U.S. to find his unique stock of vintage barware and rare-label libations, traveling everywhere from the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena to such far-flung locales as Antique Alley, a 33-mile section of Old National Road in Indiana that boasts over 900 different antique dealers. In a December 2008 Los Angeles Times article, Keeper states, “In my heart of hearts, I realize I’m a gift shop, but really, what I feel like I sell is ritual, the art of drinking.”  Well, whatever Joe is selling, people are definitely buying as the store has been extremely popular ever since it first opened.  Some of Bar Keeper’s customers even include set designers from Mad Men who stop by regularly to pick up vintage pieces to feature on the show. Um, love it!

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In A Lot Like Love, Bar Keeper stood in for Upon Gallery, the art gallery where Oliver Martin (Ashton Kutcher) stumbled upon the nude photograph that he and longtime on-again/off-again girlfriend Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet) had taken a few years prior.  At the time of the filming, the storefront, which formerly housed a vintage record shop, was vacant.  The space pops up twice in the movie – first in the scene in which Olive spots his photograph and later when he returns there in the hopes of running into Emily.  Both the exterior . . .

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. . . and the interior of the store were featured in the flick.

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The laundromat located across the street from Upon Gallery, where Oliver waited for Emily in A Lot Like Love, was actually a real life laundromat named Sunset LaunderLand.

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Sadly though, according to the Eastsider LA website, the place closed its doors a couple of years ago and it looks to still be vacant and awaiting a new tenant.

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The exterior of Bar Keeper also showed up very briefly in last week’s episode of fave show 90210, which was titled “Babes In Toyland”, in an establishing shot for the scene in which Dixon Wilson (Tristan Wilds) and Adrianna Tate-Duncan (Jessica Lowndes) waited at a café for the VP of A&R for Def Jam Records.  The actual café where filming took place, though, was the Coffee Pot located at 2201 West Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, a location that I will surely be stalking very soon.  Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Bar Keeper, aka Upon Gallery from A Lot Like Love, is located at 3910 West Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake.  You can visit the store’s official website here.  Sunset LaunderLand, where Oliver waited for Emily in the movie, was formerly located across the street from Bar Keeper at 3903 West Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake.  That site is currently vacant.

The “A Lot Like Love” Apartment Building

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A couple of weeks ago, fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210locations website, tweeted me to let me know that he had just tracked down the apartment building where Oliver Martin (aka Ashton Kutcher) lived in fave movie A Lot Like Love.  As I have mentioned quite a few times before on this blog, A Lot Like Love is one of my all-time favorite romantic comedies and I have stalked pretty much every location featured in it – every location, that is, except for Oliver’s apartment building.  So I was BEYOND excited to receive Geoff’s tweet and while out and about doing some stalking in the Hollywood area this past weekend, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place. 

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The building, which is called the Glen Oaks in real life, was actually featured only once in A Lot Like Love in the scene in which Oliver and Emily (aka Amanda Peet) return home after a New Year’s Eve party.  It is when they walk into Oliver’s empty apartment that Emily discovers that he is moving to San Francisco the very next morning, just when, as she says, “I’m starting to like you”.  The following morning, Emily awakens to discover that Oliver is already gone, but that he has left behind his beloved camera, which prompts her to begin a career in photography.

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And it is obvious from the way the movie was shot that the real life interior of the apartment was also used in the filming.

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I am very happy to report that the Glen Oaks building still looks much the same today as it did when A Lot Like Love was filmed back in 2005.  The exterior paint color has since been changed, but the property is still very recognizable from the movie

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The building also boasts an AMAZING view of the Hollywood sign.

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In A Lot Like Love, Oliver lived in the building’s southwestern-most corner, bottom floor unit which is pictured above. 

Big THANK YOU to Geoff, from the 90210locations website, for finding this location!  Smile

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Stalk It: Oliver’s apartment building from A Lot Like Love is located at 2649 North Beachwood Drive, at the corner of North Beachwood Drive and Glen Oak Street, in Hollywood.  Oliver lived in the building’s southwestern-most unit on the bottom floor, which is denoted with the pink arrow in the above aerial view.

Our Movie Locations-Themed Scavenger Hunt

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My good friend/party planner extraordinaire Natalie Drees has become famous in our circle over the past few years for creating absolutely amazing customized scavenger hunts.  She plans one for pretty much every event she hosts and not only are they insanely fun, but they also provide a fabulous way for people to get to know each other.  So, once it was decided that our rehearsal dinner would take place at POP Champagne & Dessert Bar in Old Town Pasadena and that all of our family and friends would be invited, I asked Nat if she wouldn’t mind creating a movie locations-themed hunt to cap off our evening.  And, thankfully, she said yes!  Because Nat lives in San Francisco and therefore does not know the Pasadena area all that well, though – nor is she particularly into this thing that we call stalking – she enlisted the help of fellow stalker Owen to carry out the endeavor.  And I have to say that the two pulled it off beautifully!

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Natalie figured that most of our guests wouldn’t be quite as into filming locations as I am, so she based the scavenger hunt not around finding where a specific production was filmed, but around finding particular restaurants and bars in Pasadena that also happened to be filming locations.  If teams could subsequently figure out what was filmed at each particular restaurant or bar – by talking to their servers or using their iPhones – extra points would be awarded, but filming location knowledge was not in any way required to participate.  Besides figuring out which location each clue referred to, teams would also be required to obtain specific items from each location in order to complete the hunt.  As always, each team was given a set of pens, a bag to collect all of our scavenger hunt items, and a book detailing our assignment, the rules of the game, and the clues.

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The booklets were handed out at the end of the rehearsal dinner at POP Champagne Bar and my best friend Kylee, who was managing the hunt, gave all of the teams five minutes to read them over, before yelling out “On your mark . . . get set . . . go!”.  At that point our entire group of fifty literally RAN out of the restaurant!  It was like a mass exodus and I can only imagine what our fellow diners were thinking!  LOL  The scavenger hunt clues read as follows:

Clue Number 1 –  

It’s been said “men want

a lady on the street . . .”

Perhaps women want

An “uomo” who can take the heat.

Once they find him,

They’ll take some “pane”.

Bring it  back to the judge

And you’ll “vincere”.

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The solution to Clue Number 1 was the restaurant Il Fornaio, which was featured in the 2000 movie What Women Want and was actually the very first movie I ever saw being filmed upon moving to Los Angeles.  Before purchasing a house, my parents and I lived in an apartment in Old Town Pasadena and we would walk down to Il Fornaio to grab a bite to eat at least once a week.  We got to know quite a few people who worked at the eatery and one night one of the servers let us know that Mel Gibson was going to be filming a movie at the restaurant the very next day.  So, my mom and I, of course, headed back there bright and early the following morning to watch!  It was an extremely cool experience for both of us and while we did not get to meet Mel Gibson, he did wave to us and say ‘hi’ several times while on his various cigarette breaks.  Anyway, Nat came up with the brilliant idea of using foreign words in each clue which correlated to the type of food served at the restaurants we were supposed to visit.  In the case of Il Fornaio, which is Italian, she used several Italian words – “uomo” translates to “man”, “pane” to “bread”, and “vincere” to “win”.  Well, once I read the words “women want”, I knew exactly which restaurant the clue was referring to and my team (which consisted of me and the GC, my best friend Robin and his girlfriend Steffi, and Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and his fiancé Ame) immediately headed on over there.  Unfortunately though, my mom, of course, also immediately figured out the answer to the clue and was right on our heels!  In the movie, Il Fornaio appeared in the scene in which Nick Marshall (aka Mel Gibson) has lunch with his daughter Alex Marshall (aka Ashley Johnson) after buying her a prom dress.

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One of the rules of the game was that all teams would have to purchase a round of drinks at each and every bar, so as not to anger the various managements by having large groups of people running in and out of the restaurants, causing a disruption.  When we arrived at Il Fornaio, Mike suggested that we each get a shot as we could drink them quickly and then be on to our next location.  Well, I am a complete and total lightweight and typically do not drink anything other than champagne and I really did not want to be doing shots at each and every bar we went into the night before my wedding, so I quickly ixnayed that idea.  But the next thing I knew, my friend Steffi had six full shot glasses lined up in front of her.  I immediately said, “No, I can’t drink a shot!” to which she replied, “These are champagne shots!”  I had no idea what on earth a champagne shot was, but she informed me that she had asked the bartender to pour a bit of champagne into six shot glasses.  The bartender at first balked at the idea, but when Steffi explained that I was a soon-to-be bride who only drank champagne, she agreed and poured us our “champagne shots”.  We are holding them in the above photograph and I can honestly say that that particular moment was one of my favorites of the entire wedding.  So incredibly cute!!!!!!

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Clue Number 2

Don may ride a white horse

To get to this filmed bar.

If he were in gay Paris

This would be more on par.

Once he arrived

A “serviette” he’d obtain.

In Pasadena it’s this,

Hopefully without a stain.

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The solution to Clue Number 2 was Cheval Blanc Bistro, which I blogged about back in December of last year and which was used in the original Father of the Bride movie as the spot where George Banks (aka Steve Martin) takes Bryan MacKenzie (aka George Newbern) for a drink.  Because there are not many French restaurants in Old Town Pasadena, this was an easy one.  Also tipping me off to  the clue’s answer was the fact that Don is my dad’s name, aka the name of the “father of the bride”.  Amazingly enough, my mom and her team were hot on our tail upon arriving at this particular bar, as well!  My aunt Lea, who was on my mom’s team, had asked the bartender at Il Fornaio if she knew of any French restaurants in the area and the bartender told her that the only place she could think of was Cheval Blanc.  My mom’s best friend, who speaks fluent French, immediately said “Cheval Blanc means white horse!  That’s the place!” and they took off for the restaurant.  At Cheval Blanc we were required to obtain a “serviette”, aka a “napkin”.

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Both my team and my mom’s team spent quite a bit of time at this restaurant and ordered a round of drinks and relaxed since we were so far ahead of all of the other groups.  And amazingly enough, my mom’s team happened to meet an actor while at Cheval Blanc and they got his autograph for an extra 50 points!  He wasn’t anyone famous, but he did have his own IMDB page, so he counted as a “star”.

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Clue Number 3 –

You can get a roll

In California’s 91105.

This filming location

You may not recognize.

You won’t need a fork,

But two pieces of wood

To experience

Lindsay’s favorite hood.

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The answer to Clue Number 3 was, of course, Maikobe Japanese Restaurant – aka the former Ruby’s Diner which stood in for the Peach Pit on my favorite show of all time Beverly Hills, 90210.  For anyone who knew anything about me or anything about the city of Pasadena for that matter, this clue was a no-brainer.  In an unfortunate twist of bad luck, though, Maikobe had unexpectedly closed its doors just a few days before our rehearsal dinner, so when we showed up there for the scavenger hunt, we could not go inside to obtain our “two pieces of wood”, aka a set of chop sticks.  Mike immediately started looking around for other sushi restaurants in the area and noticed one directly across the street from Maikobe (perhaps this is why the place went out of business! Winking smile) and ran right on over to grab some chopsticks.  BUT, amazingly enough, my mom’s team had happened to grab a set of chop sticks at Sushi Roku near Il Fornaio earlier during the hunt (they had gone in to collect matchbooks for extra points and the hostess had, for whatever reason, also given them chopsticks!), so as soon as her team realized Maikobe was closed, they immediately started running to the last stop on the hunt and ended up coming in first place!  So, yes, even though Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I were on the same team, we LOST the scavenger hunt!!!!!  Unbelievable!!!!  But at least now you can see where I get my stalking skills from!  In our family, the apple definitely does not fall far from the tree!  On a side note – you can see a great picture of what Maikobe looked like back when it was Ruby’s Diner here.

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Clue Number 4 –

At this Latin lounge with a fitting name

Their life together they can star living

Before their honeymoon, as husband and dame.

Ask for this in your drink-o.

Tie it in a knot with your tongue

To get an extra cinco.

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The solution to Clue Number 4 was Vive Lounge, where fave movie A Lot Like Love was filmed.  At the time the movie was filmed, the place was a Chinese-Malaysian fusion restaurant named Nonya, but that eatery closed down back in 2006 whereupon Vive moved in.  Amazingly enough, very little of the  décor was changed upon the transition and the restaurant still looked almost exactly the same as it did in the movie.  Because there is only one Latin-themed lounge in Pasadena, my mom and her team were easily able to figure out what location the final clue was referring to.  Especially once they realized that “vive” translates to “live” in Spanish.  For winning the hunt, each member of my mom’s team was awarded with a bag of microwave popcorn and a pass for a free movie at any AMC Theatre.  So incredibly cool!  All in the all, the scavenger hunt turned out FABULOUS and all of our guests, even those who seriously lagged behind, absolutely LOVED it.  It was the perfect end to a perfect evening.  On a sad side note, though – the GC and I walked by Vive this past Friday night and discovered that it had closed it doors!  I can only hope that the new owners also choose to keep the original Nonya’s décor so that all of us stalkers can still appreciate it.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Natalie Drees can create customized scavenger hunts for parties and corporate events based upon any and all sorts of themes.  You can contact her via her event planning website Pop Planning.  Il Fornaio, from What Women Want, is located at 24 West Union Street in Old Town Pasadena.  You can visit Il Fornaio’s website here.  Cheval Blanc Bistro, from Father of the Bride, is located at 41 South De Lacey Avenue, also in Old Town Pasadena.  You can visit the Cheval Blanc website here.  The former Maikobe restaurant, aka the Peach Pit from Beverly Hills, 90210, is located at 45 South Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena, but is currently vacant.  Vive Lounge, the former Nonya restaurant from A Lot Like Love, is located at 61 North Raymond Avenue in Pasadena, but is also currently vacant.  You can visit the former Vive Lounge website here.