Hilton Pasadena from “The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training”

Hilton Pasadena from The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training-6960

I always love it when a filming location sneaks up on me.  This past weekend, the Grim Cheaper and I headed to Pasadena to attend the closing party for my favorite store, Lula Mae.  (Yes, you read that right – Lula Mae, my happy place, is, sadly, shuttering later this month.  While I am devastated over the closure and will miss the shop and its owner, Marci, more than words can say, I couldn’t be happier for Marc as she embarks upon a new adventure in the Pacific Northwest.)  After checking in to the Hilton Pasadena upon arriving in Crown City, I decided to do some Googling to see if anything had been filmed on the premises and was thrilled to come across a Wikipedia mention of the hotel’s appearance in the 1977 comedy The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training.  Some further digging revealed that the property had played host to a couple of other productions, as well, throughout the years.  While I typically try to only book lodgings that have been featured onscreen for all of my travels, in this case, staying at a filming location was a happy accident!  So I decided I just had to blog about the place.

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The Hilton Pasadena originally opened its doors in December 1970.

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Since that time, the 13-story property has undergone numerous renovations, the most recent of which was completed in fall 2017.

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So it goes without saying that the site looks quite a bit different today than it did in its early years, when it boasted 264 rooms, a 26,000-square-foot shopping arcade, a top-floor restaurant, a two-story lobby, and a dark wood and deep red color palate.

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Currently the lodging features 296 rooms and suites, 28,494 square feet of meeting space (including downtown Pasadena’s largest ballroom!), an outdoor pool and hot tub, a health club, a business center, a pantry market, and a bright, open lobby.

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The hotel also boasts an onsite restaurant, The Corner Craft Kitchen + Bar.

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Hilton Pasadena is a gorgeous property and the GC and I thoroughly enjoyed our time there.

Hilton Pasadena from The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training-6958

Hilton Pasadena from The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training-6959

In The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, the site masquerades as The Houston Hilton, where the Bears are put up while in town to play a charity game at the Astrodome.  The exterior of the property is only shown once in the movie and very briefly at that.

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I am fairly certain that one of the hotel’s actual hallways and a couple of the rooms were also utilized in the film.

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Thanks to the Remington Steele Shrine website, I discovered that the Hilton masks as the Brinkley Hotel, where Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) spies on her sister’s husband in order to determine if he’s having an affair during a dental convention, in the Season 2 episode of Remington Steele titled “Steele Sweet on You,” which aired in 1984.  Both the exterior . . .

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. . . and interior of the site are used extensively in the episode.

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Watching it, you really get a sense of how different the property looked during its early days.

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It looks so different, in fact, that at first I wasn’t sure if Remington Steele had made use of the Hilton’s interior for the shoot or if the production had utilized another hotel.  Thankfully though, after scrutinizing the episode, I am able to say with certainty that it was, indeed, filmed inside the property.  As you can see below, in one scene, Remington Steele (Pierce Brosnan) walks by a lobby directory and a listing for “Harry Kamp Clothiers” is visible.  Some Googling led me to this 2009 Pasadena Now article which states that the clothing boutique was initially located in the lobby of the Pasadena Hilton.  Eureka!

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The rooms . . .

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. . . and hallway that appeared in the episode were not actual parts of the Hilton, but sets built at CBS Studio Center where the series was lensed.

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Thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, I learned that in the Season 8 episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia titled “Frank’s Back in Business,” which aired in 2012, a Pasadena Hilton meeting room is the site of the Atwater Capital shareholders’ meeting.  Though the hotel’s ballrooms have since been remodeled, you can check out an old photograph of one of the event spaces in which the carpet matches what appeared in the episode here.

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

Hilton Pasadena

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Hilton Pasadena, from The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, is located at 168 South Los Robles Avenue in Pasadena.  You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

The Federal Bar from “Parks and Recreation”

The Federal Bar Parks and Recreation (6 of 26)

It’s shaping up to be Parks and Recreation week at IAMNOTASTALKER.com, as here I am with yet another location from the series.  I actually came by today’s locale accidentally.  While scanning through P&R’s “Operation Ann” episode for yesterday’s post about the Hamburger Hamlet in Sherman Oaks, I spotted The Federal Bar, a North Hollywood watering hole that I stalked back in May of last year because of its appearance on fave show Perception.  For whatever reason, I had yet to blog about it, though, and, thanks to the P&R kick I’ve been on lately, figured today was the perfect time to do so.

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The ornate brick building that currently houses The Federal Bar was originally constructed as a branch of Security Trust and Savings Bank in 1926.  It was designed by John and Donald Parkinson, the father-and-son architectural team who also created Union Station (which I briefly blogged about here), Bullocks Wilshire (which I blogged about here) and Los Angeles City Hall (am oft-used filming locale that I have, shockingly, never stalked).  Parkinson and Parkinson built several similar-looking bank buildings for the Security Trust chain across Los Angeles throughout the years.  The one located at 5601 North Figueroa Street in Highland Park is a virtual twin to The Federal Bar.  That structure, which I have yet to stalk, has appeared countless times onscreen.  It is currently featured each week as the police station on the new CBS series Battle Creek.

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The Federal Bar Parks and Recreation (23 of 26)

For many years, The Federal Bar space operated as Paperback Shack Books, an independent bookstore owned by Earl Spar.  In the mid-2000s, the proprietors of Fred 62 (a popular restaurant/filming locale in Los Feliz that I blogged about here) acquired the location and began an extensive, three-year renovation process to turn it into a restaurant/nightclub.  They named the new venture “Bank Heist,” which I think was a rather unfortunate dubbing considering one of the bloodiest bank heists in L.A.’s history took place just a little over two miles away.

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Bank Heist opened in late September 2007, but never really had a chance to establish itself.  Less than four months later, on January 7th, 2008, it was gutted by a fire.

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In 2010, Knitting Factory Entertainment CEO Morgan Margolis spotted the architecturally stunning building while taking his children to a martial arts class (I am guessing that class was held at the dojo from The Karate Kid, which is located less than a block south) and thought it would make the perfect place for a new Knitting Factory music club (his insanely popular Hollywood Knitting Club outpost had closed in 2009).  The historic look of the building caused him to eventually rethink his plans, though, and, after leasing the place, he decided it was better suited to house a gastropub.

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Of the neighborhood, Margolis stated in a Los Angeles Daily News article, “I was really trying to get to the next area I felt was going to move forward, and North Hollywood seems to be transitioning consistently.  A lot of other areas were also moving up – i.e. Silverlake, Los Feliz, downtown – but I felt like they were already getting saturated.  There are also a lot of great architectural spaces that I like that are hard to find in certain areas.  I like a lot of brick, I like old buildings, auto garages and warehouses.  I like high-beamed ceilings.  This area seems to have an abundance that is popping up.  And I found an area where I felt like you could still touch the square footage at the right price.”

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After a bit of renovation, The Federal Bar was opened in early 2011.  According to a 2012 Los Angeles Times article, it turned a profit the following month and has continued to do so every month since.

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The 5,000-plus-square-foot space, which was fashioned by interior designer Rod Sellard, boasts four (yes, four!) bars, a second floor special events area with a stage, and an outdoor patio.

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The Federal Bar is nothing short of spectacular, both inside and out, and it is not very hard to see why the place has become popular with location scouts.

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In the Season 4 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Operation Ann,” Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) headed to The Federal Bar to spy on Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones), who they thought was out on a secret date with her boss Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe).  As Leslie and Ben soon discovered, though, Ann was actually on a date with Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari).

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While scanning through the episode to make screen captures for yesterday’s post, I immediately recognized The Federal’s intricate exterior.

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In the scene, Tom and Ann were sitting in the southwest area of The Federal’s bottom floor and Leslie and Ben spied on them through the windows located on Weddington Street.

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The Federal Bar Parks and Recreation (19 of 26)

The Federal portrays the Philadelphia bar where the Dunder Mifflin gang crashes a trivia contest Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez) is participating in in the Season 8 episode of The Office titled “Trivia.”

The Federal popped up as two different places in the Season 2 episode of Perception titled “Wounded.”  One of the bars on the main floor was used as the watering hole where Kate Moretti (Rachael Leigh Cook) told Blake Rickford’s (Logan Bartholomew) date that he was a suspected rapist.

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And one of the upstairs bars was where Kate spied on Blake later in the episode.

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The exterior of The Federal was also used in that scene.

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The Federal also popped up in flashback scenes in Perception’s next episode, titled “Warrior.”

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In 2013, The Federal masked as Sudz in the Season 9 episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia titled “The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award.”

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Only the interior of The Federal was used in the episode, though.  The establishing shot that was shown was of Alla Spina restaurant, located at 1410 Mount Vernon Street in Philadelphia, which I found thanks to this amazing map of the series’ City of Brotherly Love locales.

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Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) attend a “jazz brunch” with Amy’s ex, Teddy Wells (Kyle Bornheimer), at The Federal in the Season 4 episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine titled “The Audit,” which aired in 2017.

The women of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills debrief on the latest Lisa Vanderpump drama while at The Federal in the Season 9 episode titled “A Wolf in Camille’s Clothing.”

In 2013, Morgan Margolis opened a second Federal Bar inside of another former Security Trust and Savings Bank building.  It, too, has appeared onscreen.  Located at 102 Pine Avenue in Long Beach, the space formerly housed Madison steakhouse, which was where Brad’s (Vince Vaughn) company Christmas party was held in the 2008 comedy Four Christmases.

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

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for taking many of the photos that appear in this post.

The Federal Bar Parks and Recreation (25 of 26)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Federal Bar, from the “Operation Ann” episode of Parks and Recreation, is located at 5303 Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood.  You can visit the bar’s official website here.