“The Vanishing” Apartment Building

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Today’s location is an oldie, but goodie.  Waaaaaaaaaaay back in May 2010, the Grim Cheaper and I took a little pre-wedding stalking vacation to the Pacific Northwest to visit our good friends fellow stalker Kerry and her husband, Jim – and to see the grocery store where Michael Buble’s “Haven’t Met You Yet” music video was filmed, which I blogged about here.  Before heading up there, Kerry suggested that I check out the 1993 thriller The Vanishing as she had tracked down all of its locales and thought I might be interested in stalking them.  Well, I ended up watching the flick just a few days prior to our trip and absolutely loved it – and the uniquely tiered apartment building that appeared extensively throughout it.  So Kerry took us right on over there to stalk the place during the second day of our vacay.  And, let me tell you, the building is just as cool in person as it appeared to be onscreen.  (Please excuse my appearance in the photograph above – the Seattle weather was not very kind to my naturally curly hair and I wound up having to either pull it back or hide it under a cap during most of our stay.)

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In The Vanishing, the apartment building is where Jeff Harriman (Kiefer Sutherland) lives with his new girlfriend, Rita Baker (Nancy Travis), after suffering through the unsolved disappearance of his previous girlfriend, Diane Shaver (a pre-Speed Sandra Bullock), three years prior.  The building pops up countless times in the movie.

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As you can see below, it looks pretty much EXACTLY the same today as it did nineteen years ago when The Vanishing was filmed.  Even the paint color is still the same (at least it was in May 2010 when I stalked the place).  LOVE IT!  LOVE IT!  LOVE IT!

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In The Vanishing, Jeff and Rita lived in Apartment #20, which is the real life address number of the unit where filming took place, as well.  So incredibly cool!

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While watching The Vanishing, I had been convinced that the view from the apartment building was fake as it seemed just a bit too spectacular.  So I was floored when it turned out to be the building’s actual view!  Jaw-dropping!

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As luck would have it, while we were stalking the place we happened to meet one of the building’s super-nice residents who invited us to step onto the property to get a closer look.  And while I was seriously tempted to pose for a picture next to Jeff and Rita’s front door, I restrained myself as I was afraid that might be overstaying my welcome just a bit.  Winking smile

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I am fairly certain that the real life interior of Apartment #20 was also used in the filming, although I could not find interior pictures of any of the units with which to verify that hunch.

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You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.  And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Kerry for telling me about this location!  Smile

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Vanishing apartment building is located at 200 Aloha Street in Seattle.  In the movie, Jeff and Rita lived in Apartment #20.

Gas Works Park from “10 Things I Hate About You”

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Another location that I stalked while visiting the Pacific Northwest this past May – and yes, there are still quite a few of them that I have yet to blog about – was Seattle’s famously unique Gas Works Park, the spot where Patrick Verona (aka Heath Ledger) took Kat Stratford (aka Julia Stiles) to play a game of paintball in the 1999 movie 10 Things I Hate About You.  I found this location, as well as countless other 10 Things I Hate About You locations, from fellow stalker Owen, who has managed to compile a mind-bogglingly massive list of Seattle-area filming locales over the past few years.  And I can honestly say that Gas Works Park is easily the most interesting and unique of all of the locations that I stalked while vacationing in Washington State.  Actually, come to think of it, the park is quite possibly the most unique and interesting of all the locations I have ever visited in my entire stalking career!  The place is truly incredible. 

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Gas Works Park, as the name implies, was originally a gasification plant established by the Seattle Gas Company in 1906 to manufacture gas from coal.   The plant was one of Seattle’s main sources of power until 1956 when the city began using natural, instead of “town” – or synthetically produced – gas, at which point the plant was shuttered.  In 1962, the City of Seattle purchased the property for a cool $1,340,000 with the intention of turning the space into a public park.  Enter award-winning landscape architect Richard Haag who was brought in to transform the area into a place of recreation and beauty, which he indeed did, later winning the American Society of Landscape Architects Presidents Award Design of Excellence for the project.  In an unprecedented move, because the property was the only gasification plant still in existence in the U.S., Haag decided to preserve the seemingly-ugly and utilitarian equipment and incorporate them into his park design.  And while a park that features old gas generator towers and rusted boiler rooms might not sound appealing, what Haag left us with is a truly stunning mix of industry and nature. 

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So stunning, in fact, that it has become a popular Seattle wedding venue, as unlikely as that might seem.  As you can see in the above photograph, one was even being set up while we were stalking the place.

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Part of what makes the 20.5-acre park, which is both a Seattle City Landmark and a Washington State Landmark, so spectacular is its amazing views of Lake Union, Downtown Seattle, and the Space Needle.

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And, as fellow stalker Kerry pointed out, the park also boasts a perfect water-side view of the Sleepless in Seattle houseboat.  So incredibly cool!

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Thanks to the park’s unique architecture, it should come as no surprise that filmmakers have returned there time and time again to shoot various productions.  In 10 Things I Hate About You, Patrick takes Kat to Gas Works Park to play paintball after she sneaks him out of detention and it is there that the couple shares their first kiss.  In real life, the park does not actually feature a paintball area, though.

You can watch the 10 Things I Hate About You paintball scene by clicking above.

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In the 1992 movie Singles, Gas Works Park is the location where Linda Powell (aka The Closer’s Kyra Sedgwick) says yes to Steve Dunne’s (aka Campbell Scott’s) marriage proposal.

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In the 1989 movie Three Fugitives, the park is the spot where Ned Perry’s (aka Martin Short’s) daughter, Meg (aka Sarah Rowland Doroff), speaks for the first time.

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Gas Works Park was also featured twice on the reality television series The Amazing Race.  It first appeared as the finish line for the final competition in Season 3 and was later used as the starting point in the very first competition in Season 10 (pictured above).

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Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen for telling me about this location and to fellow stalker Kerry and her husband Jim for taking me there.  Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

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Stalk It: Gas Works Park, from 10 Things I Hate About You, is located at 2101 North Northlake Way in Seattle, Washington.  The area where the paintball scene was filmed is denoted with a pink “X” in the above aerial view.  The park is open daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.  You can visit the official Gas Works Park website here.

Dr. Mott’s House From “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”

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Another The Hand That Rocks the Cradle location that I stalked while vacationing in the Pacific Northwest this past May was the ultra-modern abode which belonged to Dr. Victor Mott (aka John de Lancie) and his wife, Peyton Flanders (aka Rebecca De Mornay), in the 1992 thriller.  Amazingly enough, I didn’t actually remember the Mott home from the one time I viewed the movie almost two decades ago, but my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry, who lives in Washington State, insisted I stalk the place while we were up there and drove me and the Grim Cheaper by it on our final day in Seattle.  And thank goodness she did, too, because the dwelling is nothing short of spectacular!  In fact, how it is possible that I didn’t remember it from the film is absolutely beyond me!

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In real life, the Mott residence, which seems to have been constructed almost entirely out of windows, boasts 4 bedrooms, a whopping 6 bathrooms, and 3,750-square feet of living space.  The home was actually built in 1991, the same year that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was lensed, so my guess is that it was vacant at the time of filming which is how producers came to use it in the movie.

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The Mott house is featured in quite a few scenes in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and, as you can see in the above screen captures, looks very much the same today as it did nineteen years ago when the movie was filmed.  There have been a few subtle changes made to the residence over the years, of course, including the addition of a substantial amount of foliage around the front perimeter of the property, which wasn’t there at the time of the filming.

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The residence’s front porch area has also been altered since The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was filmed and now features a blue-shingled overhang and brown wooden front doors, neither of which, in my never-to-be-humble-opinion, seem to fit in well with the rest of the abode.  I much prefer the movie version of the front porch as to how it is currently designed.

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It appears as if a window has also since been added to the rear portion of the home’s second story, as well.  Other than those few changes, though, the property looks almost exactly the same in person as it appeared onscreen in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.  Love it!  And, although you can’t quite tell in the above photograph due to the crappy weather we were experiencing that day, the breathtaking views of Downtown Seattle and Puget Sound that were shown in the movie are the real life views that can be seen from the actual home.  Sigh!

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The real life interior of the property was also used for a few scenes in the movie as well.

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As you can see in the above screen capture, and as was the case with the Bartel home which I blogged about yesterday, the property’s real life address was referred to in the movie in the scene in which Marlene Craven (aka Julianne Moore) looks at the real estate flyer for Dr. Mott’s former house.

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Big THANK YOU to my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry for bringing me to this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Dr. Mott’s house from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is located at 2502 37th Avenue West in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.

Elliott Bay Cafe – The Inspiration for Cafe Nervosa on “Frasier”

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Another location that I stalked while visiting the Pacific Northwest this past May was Elliott Bay Cafe – the Seattle-area coffee shop that was the inspiration for Cafe Nervosa on the hit television series Frasier.  I first learned about this location from my good friend Nat, who in turn learned about it a few years earlier while taking Bill Speidel’s “World Famous” Underground Tour of Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square District during a vacation in Washington State.  And even though I was never a huge fan of Frasier (I watched the show occasionally, but it wasn’t a part of my weekly must-see-TV lineup), when I found out that I was going to Seattle I decided I just had to stalk the place – mostly because of how much I love me some coffee!  So, just a few hours after stalking the very first Starbucks store, I dragged the Grim Cheaper, my good friend and fellow stalker, Kerry, and her husband, Jim, out to Elliott Bay Cafe for my second latte of the day.

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As it turns out, Elliott Bay Cafe is a SUPER cool little spot.  In fact, I think I would have liked the place even had it not been a (sort-of) filming location.  The cafe is located in Pioneer Square’s Globe Building, which dates back to 1891, and is actually most famous for the legendary bookstore, Elliott Bay Book Co., which up until earlier this year was located upstairs from it.  The huge store, which carried over 150,000 different titles, originally opened in 1973 and had been patronized by everyone from former-President Bill Clinton to authors Barbara Kingsolver, Norman Mailer, and George Saunders.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I think there is absolutely nothing cooler than a combination coffee bar/bookstore.  When Elliott Bay Book Co. was open, shoppers could buy a cup of espresso and then venture upstairs to loiter among the shelves or, consequently, grab a few books to peruse while sitting downstairs sipping on a latte.  So darn cool!  Sadly, the Elliott Bay Book Co. moved to a new location on Capital Hill in early 2010, but thankfully the Frasier cafe, which is actually located underground, remained behind.  And yes, you read that right – Elliott Bay Cafe is located underground.  Most of Seattle was situated “underground” at one point in time actually.  The Pioneer Square District, which was established in 1852 and is considered the birthplace of Seattle, was originally built on tidal flats that, in the early years, would flood horribly each and every time it rained – which was quite often.  So, after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 destroyed most of the city, it was decided that the new streets would be raised a full story higher than their predecessors.  To accomplish this feat, retaining walls were constructed on each side of the district’s former roads.  The area between them was then filled in with dirt and subsequently cemented over, which raised the entire city one full level.  During the street raising, storeowners had built temporary street-level shops, so as not to lose out on business during the interim.  When construction on the new roads was finally completed, the storeowners simply vacated their former shops and moved up to the second level to sell their goods.  The street level spaces were then left abandoned and forgotten for the next seven decades. 

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Until 1965, when, in an attempt to restore the Pioneer Square District, a Seattle preservationist named Bill Speidel decided to start giving tours of the underground area.  The tours became a huge hit with residents and tourists alike and has been going strong ever since.  So, on the recommendation of my good friend Nat and because I wanted to learn more about the Frasier coffee shop, the Grim Cheaper and I purchased tickets for Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour.  Sadly though, while I thought Elliott Bay Cafe was absolutely awesome, I can’t say the same for the tour.   While the whole thing sounds very exciting, as you can see in the above photographs there just isn’t a whole lot to see.  And the tour guides seemed to be more interested in telling lame jokes than they were in teaching us about Seattle’s unique history.  From what I’ve read on the Yahoo! Travel reviews, the tour used to be fabulous, but has deteriorated greatly since Bill’s death in 1988.  Whether or not it was ever good, I can’t say for sure, but I do know that the tour the Grim Cheaper and I embarked on was HORRIBLE.  Like really, really horrible.  So bad, in fact, that at one point while we were underground, the GC grabbed my arm and said, “I think I’ve found an exit door! I am pretty sure we can escape from this thing unnoticed!”  LOL  But I digress.

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Anyway, Cafe Nervosa appeared weekly throughout Frasier’s eleven season-run as the hang out of radio host Frasier Crane (aka Kelsey Grammer) and his fellow KACL employees.  As you can see in the above screen captures, while Cafe Nervosa does bear a passing resemblance to the real life Elliot Bay, according to the barista I spoke to while there, the place has been remodeled numerous times since Frasier was on the air, most recently in November of 1999, and formerly looked much more similar to its TV counterpart.  Boo!

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The exterior of Cafe Nervosa was also shown on the series from time to time. 

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As you can see in the above photographs, though, besides having a green awning, the set exterior looks nothing like Elliot Bay Cafe’s real-life exterior.

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Even though the coffee house doesn’t much resemble Cafe Nervosa, I still HIGHLY recommend stalking the place!  It’s a far better way to experience Seattle’s Underground than embarking on the tour AND they serve up some fabulous coffee to boot!  🙂
 

You can watch the Season 1 episode of Frasier titled “My Coffee With Niles”, which takes place in its entirety at Cafe Nervosa, by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Elliott Bay Cafe is located at 103 South Main Street in Seattle, Washington.  You can visit the Cafe’s official website here.

The “Grey’s Anatomy” House

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Another location that my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry took me to stalk while I was visiting the Pacific Northwest earlier this year was the Seattle-area home owned by Meredith Grey (aka Ellen Pompeo) on the long-running television series Grey’s Anatomy.  I’ve only actually ever seen one episode of the show – the Season 2 episode titled “Enough is Enough” in which my friend Lukas Behnken was a guest star – but since we were in the area and since Kerry knew the address, I figured I might as well stalk the place.  I have heard such amazing things about the series over the years, though, that I really do think I need to start tuning in.  Especially since the main house used in the series is such a cool one!  I was actually quite shocked to discover that the Grey’s residence was located in Seattle, as the show is taped for the most part right here in Los Angeles – at both Prospect Studios in Los Feliz and the Veterans Administration Sepulveda Ambulatory Care Center in North Hills.  But apparently, the cast and crew make a few treks each year up to the Seattle-area to shoot some exterior and establishing shots, including all of the shots of Meredith’s home.

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On the show, the house originally belonged to Meredith’s mother and while she announced in the pilot episode that she was planning on selling it, she later decides to keep it and live in it with her fellow Seattle Grace Hospital interns Izzie Stevens (aka Katherine Heigl) and George O’Malley (aka T.R. Knight).  The home has been featured regularly in all six seasons of the series.

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The address of the home on the series is said to be 613 Harper Lane, but in reality it is located in the Queen Anne Hill neighborhood of Seattle on Comstock Street.  The home, which was originally built in 1905 and according to fave website Zillow is currently worth about $1.2 million, boasts 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, and 2,740 square feet of living space.

On a side note – I apologize for the short blog posts I’ve been publishing as of late.  My parent’s recent, and what has been on-going, move – which has taken place over the past four weekends and has involved packing up a 2,000 square foot residence, staging that residence for sale, moving my parents temporarily into their friends’ currently vacant home, putting 1/3 of their possessions into a storage facility, and the other 2/3’s into two portable POD moving containers – has really taken it out of me.  And it’s definitely been a group effort, too.  Mike, from MovieShotsLA, even pitched in to help us out!  Not many people I know would be willing to help their friends move, let alone their friend’s parents, but that’s just the kind of guy Mike is – and it is why he is one of my very best friends!  Anyway, escrow on my parent’s former house closes TODAY (halleluiah!), so the move is finally over – for the time being at least – and I can now get back to my normal life, normal routine, and normal blogging.  After a nice hot bubble bath and nice, tall glass of champagne, that is!  Thanks for bearing with me over the past few weeks, my fellow stalkers!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Kerry for taking me to this location!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The Grey’s Anatomy house is located at 303 Comstock Street in Seattle, Washington.

The Fremont Troll from “10 Things I Hate About You”

Another location that I stalked while visiting the Pacific Northwest this past May was a famous Seattle-area sculpture known as the Fremont Troll, which appeared in a brief scene in the 1999 teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You.  The Troll, which weighs two tons and was built out of wire, ferroconcrete, and rebar steel, lurks under Seattle’s Aurora Bridge and measures eighteen feet tall.  It was originally constructed in 1990 over a period of seven weeks by four local artists named Steve Badanes, Will Martin, Donna Walter, and Ross Whitehead.  At the time, the area under the bridge had become a haven for drug dealers and other miscreants, so in 1989, with the hopes of cleaning up the space, the Fremont Art Council sponsored a national contest for artists to create a piece of work which would be displayed there permanently.  The menacing-looking Troll, which is also known as the Troll Under the Bridge and was inspired by the well-known children’s fairy tale Three Billy Goats Gruff, was the winning design and has since become a Seattle-area icon, so much so that it even has its very own Facebook page!

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I found out about this location from fellow stalker Owen, who somehow managed to track down every single locale which appeared in 10 Things I Hate About You.  To be honest, I wasn’t actually all that keen on stalking it, though.  It looked a bit odd online and since it had only been featured for a few brief seconds in the movie, I didn’t think it was a very blog-worthy location.  As it turns out, though, I couldn’t have been more wrong.  The mixed media sculpture, while not necessarily beautiful, is incredibly unique and I am so, so glad that my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry ended up taking me there.  If you happen to be in the area, I can’t recommend stalking it enough!  My favorite aspects of the Troll are the fact that its left eye consists of an old hubcap and its left hand is clasping an actual Volkswagen Beetle.  Not kidding!  Apparently, the car once boasted a California license plate and also housed a time capsule filled with Elvis Presley memorabilia, but both had to later be removed due to vandalization of the sculpture.

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In 10 Things I Hate About You, the Troll is the site of the scene in which Cameron James (aka Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Bianca Stratford (aka Larisa Oleynik) discuss how to get her sister, Kat Stratford (aka Julia Stiles), to attend an upcoming party.

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And while the Troll also appears in a brief scene with Jennifer Aniston in the movie Love Happens, due to scheduling conflicts the actress never actually set foot in Seattle during the filming.  Instead, the rest of the cast and crew traveled there, while a body double stood in for Jennifer and kept her back to the camera during the scene.  Her stand-in is pictured in the grey hat in the screen capture above.  Ah, the magic of Hollywood!

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Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen for finding this location!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

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Stalk It: The Fremont Troll, from 10 Things I Hate About You and Love Happens, is located on the corner of Troll Avenue North and North 36th Street, directly underneath the north end of Aurora Bridge in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.

Seattle’s Fairmont Olympic Hotel

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Another location that I stalked back in May while visiting the Pacific Northwest was the famous Fairmont Olympic Hotel located in Downtown Seattle.  The Olympic is a landmark Seattle building that has appeared in countless productions over the years and has played host to dozens of celebrities in its almost ninety-year history, so there was no way I was going to miss stalking it while visiting the area!  The hotel, which first opened on December 6, 1924, was built on the former site of the University of Washington on an area of land known as the “Metropolitan Tract”.  The Tract, which encompasses four square blocks, was donated to the University in 1861 by Arthur Denny, one of Seattle’s original founders, and is still owned by the school to this day.  In the early 1920s, following the end of World War I, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce put together a committee dedicated to developing a luxury hotel in the downtown area.  It was quickly decided that the hotel would be built on the former University of Washington site, which at the time was being leased out by the Metropolitan Building Company.  After several battles with the Regents, construction of the hotel, which was made possible through a public bond drive, finally began on April 1, 1923.   Architectural firms George B. Post & Sons and Bebb & Gould were chosen to design the property, and construction, the cost of which totaled around $5.5 million, was completed in November of 1924.  Amazingly enough, the property still looks very much the same today as it did when it first opened its doors over eight decades ago!

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The Olympic Hotel was constructed using only the finest materials including American Oak, granite, terra cotta, and Belgian marble.  The room furnishings alone cost over $800,000 – and we’re talking 1920’s money!  The hotel became an immediate success and despite suffering some economic loss during the Great Depression remains one of Seattle’s finest hotels to this day and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.  That same year, management of the Olympic was taken over by the Four Seasons Group, who immediately commandeered a $60 million restoration of the property during which the number of guest rooms was actually reduced, in order to make suites larger and more comfortable.  The hotel re-opened as the Four Seasons Olympic in 1981.  In 2003, management of the property once again changed hands, this time with the Fairmont Hotels and Resorts group taking over, after which point the hotel became known as the Fairmont Olympic.  And, as you can see in the above photographs, the property is absolutely breathtaking inside!

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I honestly cannot recommend stalking the Olympic enough – not only is it beautiful, but the staff truly could NOT have been nicer!  The concierge on duty spent about ten minutes speaking with me about the filming that has taken place on the premises over the years and even gifted me with this awesome Reel Life in Seattle film locations map.  So darn cool! 

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And, in a lucky twist of fate, the property’s famed Spanish Ballroom happened to be unlocked while we were stalking the Olympic, so we got to go inside and take a quick peek at it.

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The Fairmont Olympic Hotel has long played host to the rich and famous, including foreign dignitaries, presidents, and celebrities.  A few who have stayed there over the years include Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Hoffa, Elvis Presley, Joan Crawford, John Glenn, Bing Crosby, John Wayne, and Bob Hope.  Most recently, Twilight actor Jackson Rathbone checked in to do some publicity for his new movie The Last Airbender.

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And, as I mentioned above, the Olympic is also a filming location!  In the 1994 thriller Disclosure, Tom Sanders (aka Michael Douglas) goes to the Fairmont to break into the room where his co-worker John Conley Jr. is staying in order to gain access to the “Arcamax” – a cutting-edge, digital reality machine. 

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According to the concierge that we spoke with, the hotel, which was then operated by the Four Seasons, was still using actual keys at the time and not key cards as was portrayed in the movie.  For the scene in which John was shown fiddling with his key card, producers had to bring in a fake card reader to attach to one of the hotel’s real life doors.  So cool!

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In the 1987 thriller House of Games, con-man Mike (aka Joe Mantegna) and psychologist Margaret Ford (aka Lindsay Crouse) sneak into Room 1138 of the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel.  It’s absolutely amazing to me that the property still looks so similar today to how it appeared in a movie which was filmed over 23 years ago!!!!  At the time, much of the Olympic’s rich wood wall paneling was covered over with white paint, but otherwise the interior looks exactly the same today as it did then!  So darn cool! 

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In 1987’s Black Widow, the Olympic was the Seattle hotel where murderess Catharine Peterson (aka Theresa Russell) holed up while trying to trap her latest mark.

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The Olympic’s pool, which you can see a photograph of here, was also used in Black Widow as the spa where journalist Alex Barnes (aka Debra Winger) interviewed Etta (aka Diane Ladd) about her brother’s untimely death.

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The Olympic’s former Seneca Street entrance also appeared very briefly in the 1989 flick The Fabulous Baker Boys. And the 1973 movie Harry in your Pocket, which starred James Coburn as a pickpocket, was also filmed at the hotel. 

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The Fairmont Olympic Hotel is located at 411 University Street in Seattle.  You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

The Athenian Inn from “Sleepless in Seattle”

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Another location at the very top of my Must-Stalk-While-in-the-Pacific-Northwest list was the Athenian Inn Seafood Restaurant and Bar, which made a brief, but quite memorable appearance in the 1993 romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle.  I had been absolutely dying to stalk the restaurant for what seemed like years for a couple of reasons.  One, because as I’ve mentioned before, Sleepless has long been one of my very favorite movies.  And two, because fellow stalker Kerry had previously visited the place and told me that there were numerous photographs of the filming displayed on the restaurant’s walls.  As you can imagine, I could NOT wait to see those photographs for myself!  So, after grabbing a coffee at the very first Starbucks store, which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, Kerry, her husband Jim, the Grim Cheaper, and I all headed across the street to Pike Place Market, where the Athenian Inn has been located for over a century.  Yes, you read that right!  The Athenian Inn, which was founded by the three Pappadakis brothers, who hailed from Greece – hence the “Athenian” in the name –  first opened over one hundred years ago, in 1909.  Originally a bakery/candy shop/luncheonette, the establishment later transformed into a bar (in 1933, it was one of the first places in Seattle to be granted a liquor license to serve wine and beer) and then eventually into a full-blown restaurant.  In 1964, the Inn was purchased by Bob and Louise Cromwell, who added a lounge and a balcony to the premises, and although Bob passed away in 2002, Louise still owns and manages the place to this day.  You can read a more comprehensive history of the restaurant here.

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In Sleepless in Seattle, the Athenian Inn was the restaurant where Sam Baldwin (aka Tom Hanks) and his friend Jay (aka Rob Reiner) discussed dating in the ‘90s, “cute butts”, and the mystery that is tiramisu.  And even though the scene that was filmed there took up only one minute and thirty-eight seconds of screen time, it made such an impact on the movie-going public that seventeen years later the place is STILL one of Seattle’s top tourist attractions!  Isn’t that amazing?!?!  Less than two minutes of screen time in a movie that is almost two decades old and the restaurant is still drawing crowds!  INCREDIBLE!  It reminds me of what happened with Magnolia Bakery in New York – a cupcakery that appeared in a one minute and seventeen second scene from an episode of Sex and the City which first aired over a decade ago, and fans are STILL lining up around the block to catch a glimpse of the place.  I think it is so incredibly cool when a movie or television show creates such a monumental impact like that!  But I digress.

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The Sleepless in Seattle scene that was filmed at the Athenian Inn was shot at the northwest corner of the restaurant’s counter, right near the main entrance.  

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Not that I really need to explain that here, though, because the restaurant actually has plaques which denote the exact location where filming took place.  How incredibly cool is that????  Oh, how I wish EVERY filming location would honor its cinematic history by doing something similar.  LOVE IT!!!  LOVE IT!!!  LOVE IT!!!

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And fellow stalker Kerry and I, of course, just had to recreate the Sleepless scene while we were there!

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Thankfully, little has changed at the Athenian Inn in the more than 17 years since Sleepless was filmed there and the place looks pretty much EXACTLY the same today as it did then.

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In fact, from what I’ve been able to discern, it seems that not much has been changed in the more than hundred years since the historic restaurant first opened.  The neon sign that was first hung over the establishment’s front door by the Pappadakis brothers in 1933 is still hanging in the very same spot to this day!  So darn cool! 

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I honestly cannot recommend stalking the Athenian Inn enough!  The food was great, the prices reasonable, the views of Elliot Bay amazing, and the staff super friendly.  Not to mention the many nods to the restaurant’s cinematic history which are proudly displayed on the walls.  🙂

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The Athenian Inn from Sleepless in Seattle is located at 1517 Pike Place, inside Pike Place Market, in Seattle.  You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.  In Sleepless, Tom Hanks and Rob Reiner sat at the northwest corner of the restaurant’s counter.

The “Sleepless in Seattle” Houseboat

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Another Seattle area location that my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry stalked for me a few weeks back was the houseboat where Sam Baldwin (aka Tom Hanks) and his son Jonah (aka Ross Malinger) lived in one of my favorite romantic comedies of all time, 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle.   I just re-watched Sleepless last night, actually, in order to write today’s post and was absolutely amazed at how incredibly fabulous the movie still is, almost two decades after it was first released!   It’s a classic and I honestly cannot tell you how much I LOVE it.  Like LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!  In fact, I can still remember exactly where I was when I first saw it seventeen years ago.  It was the summer of 1993, I was sixteen years old, and my parents and I were vacationing in Santa Barbara.  While shopping on State Street, we stumbled upon Paseo Nuevo Cinemas, saw Sleepless on the marquee, and decided to buy tickets.  I actually still have my ticket from that day, in fact, in a shoebox somewhere in my closet.  In the years since, I’ve walked by that same movie theatre countless times while visiting the Santa Barbara area and each time I do the memories from that day never fail to bring a smile to my face.  So, when Kerry mentioned that she was going to stalk the Sleepless houseboat, I just about died.  Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see that place in person!  So, I decided that, even though I have yet to stalk the house myself yet, I just had to blog about it.  Thank you, Kerry!

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In Sleepless in Seattle, Sam and Jonah Baldwin leave their home in Chicago and move into the Seattle area houseboat pictured above in order to make a fresh start after losing their wife and mother, respectively, a few months prior.

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In real life, the Sleepless in Seattle houseboat is located in a gated community of sorts in the Lake Union area of Seattle, Washington (actual gates are pictured above) and is, sadly, not at all visible from the street.  Typically, the only way to catch a glimpse of the place is if you travel by it by boat.  Thankfully, though, as I’ve mentioned before on my blog, Kerry isn’t one to be easily deterred.  As luck would have it, there was an open house in the neighborhood on the day Kerry stalked the place and so she was allowed to wander right in past the main gate!  YAY!

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As you can in the above screen captures and photographs, the houseboat looks almost EXACTLY the same today as it did when Sleepless was filmed over 17 years ago!  In fact, the only differences I noticed were that the front door is currently painted a bright red color and that the fencing around the back patio has been changed from metal to wood.

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The four bedroom, two bath houseboat, which was first built in 1978, was apparently for sale in 2008 for a whopping $2.5 million, but I was unable to discern if it was ever actually purchased by someone or if it is still currently up for grabs.  If you look at the home’s interior photographs on its real estate website, though, you can see that the inside was not used in the filming of Sleepless.  Although the interior of the real life home and its onscreen counterpart bear a striking resemblance to each other, you can tell by the location of both the kitchen and the stairway leading up to the second level that they are not the same place.  In real life, the inside of the houseboat, which measures 2,075 square feet, is also much larger than it was made to look onscreen.  I am guessing that the entire interior that appeared in the movie was just a set that producers had built on a soundstage somewhere.

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If you’ll notice in the above picture, though, the little bench that Sam sits on at night in the movie is there in real life, too.  So LOVE it!

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I am happy to report, too, that the mailboxes seen in the flick are in fact the community’s real life mailboxes and that they look very much the same today as they did back in 1993 when Sleepless was filmed.  YAY!

Big THANK YOU to Kerry for stalking this location!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The Sleepless in Seattle houseboat is located at 2460 Westlake Avenue North in the Lake Union area of Seattle, Washington, right next to Boatworld Marinas.  Please remember that the home is located in a private community and do not trespass.