Upper West Side – IAMNOTASTALKER

April 9, 2018April 6, 2018

Gray’s Papaya from “Sex and the City”

You will never catch anyone calling me a “foodie.” My palate leans much more toward comfort than epicurean with meals of choice consisting of chicken strips and ranch dressing, turkey and mashed potatoes, and hot dogs. I am a hot dog fanatic. My favorite spot to grab a ‘furter is Gray’s Papaya in New York. Their franks are simply sublime! I’ve sung the chain’s praises a couple of time on this blog – first in 2007 and then again in 2009. I got a bit of my reporting wrong in the later, though, when I stated that a scene from the Season 5 episode of Sex and the City titled “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number” had been lensed at the company’s Upper West Side outpost. A reader named Sabrina corrected me, commenting that SATC had actually been shot at the Greenwich Village Gray’s. As she explained, “You can see the phone box right next to the exit Carrie uses.” So I took a closer look at the episode and Sabrina was indeed correct! In “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number,” Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) grabs a dog at the GP located at 402 Sixth Avenue. So I immediately added the address to my New York To-Stalk List. Sadly, by the time I finally made it there in 2016, the eatery had closed and a Liquiteria juice bar had taken its place. I still figured it was worth blogging about, though.

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For those who have never had the pleasure of downing a Gray’s Papaya frank, it truly is an experience. The no-frills, walk-up hot dog stand was originally founded in 1973 by Paul Gray – a former employee of rival chain Papaya King – on the corner of Broadway and West 72nd Street on NYC’s Upper West Side. The eatery quickly became a hit with New Yorkers who loved the quality of the dogs and the bargain prices. It wasn’t long before additional outposts popped up around Manhattan, including the one at 402 Sixth Avenue which opened its doors in 1986. Though I never visited it, you can check out what it looked like when it was still in operation thanks to the archived Google Street View images from June 2011 below.

Sadly, though still insanely popular (you’d be hard-pressed to find any Gray’s location that is not crammed with people 24/7), the Greenwich Village outpost shuttered in January 2014 due to a rent hike. It followed the closing of another Gray’s at 539 8th Avenue in Midtown in February 2011 for the same reason, leaving the UWS eatery as the chain’s sole locale.

Things appear to be on the upswing, though. Not only is the flagship UWS outpost still flourishing 45 years after its inception, but a new Gray’s was opened in 2016 at 612 Eighth Avenue in Midtown. Customers have been lining up for the popular Recession Special – two dogs and a papaya juice drink or soda for $4.95 – ever since.

In “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number,” which aired in 2002, a “palpably lonely” Carrie attends the party for her book release sans a significant other. While heading home from the soiree, Carrie’s limo driver (Dena Atlantic) learns that Carrie has just written a book and insists on taking her somewhere to celebrate. The two hit up Gray’s Papaya (long known for being open 24 hours) and when the driver informs the man taking their order about Carrie’s new book, he insists on giving them the dogs for free. The scene was inspired by SATC writer Cindy Chupack’s first Emmy win. Of the experience, she is quoted in Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell as saying, “I didn’t have a date for the Emmys the year we won, and I lost our Sex and the City people at one point during the night, so I felt very ‘minus one’ until my driver said, ‘You won an Emmy? We have to celebrate this!’ and took me through a McDonald’s drive-through and told the guys in the window, ‘She won an Emmy!’ They gave me a free chocolate shake. The limo driver we cast in the episode was very much like the driver I had – although in the episode, Carrie goes to Gray’s Papaya, which is more New York and is actually a favorite place of Sarah Jessica’s.”

Though very little of Gray’s exterior is visible in the scene and what is shown is only via a blurry camera pan, as you can see in the screen captures below as compared to the Google Street View images, the restaurant’s red trim . . .

. . . as well as the location and configuration of the side doors are a match to what appeared onscreen.

And, sure enough, there’s that phone box that Sabrina mentioned.

The Greenwich Village Gray’s has popped up in a couple of other productions, as well. In the 2008 comedy Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Thom (Aaron Yoo) calls Nick (Michael Cera) while standing outside of the eatery to let him know that he has lost Caroline (Ari Graynor).

And Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) takes Stan (Alex O’Loughlin) to grab take-out there in the 2010 romcom The Back-up Plan.

The other Gray’s outposts are popular filming locales, as well. In the Season 3 episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations titled “New York City,” which aired in 2007, Bourdain heads to the now defunct Gray’s at 539 8th Avenue (which you can see a photo of here), his “favorite local eatery,” for a late-night Recession Special. While there he extols the restaurant, saying, “But man, when I start missing New York, you know, this is one of the things I miss. Ah, come on! A good Gray’s dog!”

It is the original Gray’s Papaya on the Upper West Side (pictured below) that is the most popular with location scouts, though.

The Warriors encounter members of rival street gang The Baseball Furies outside of the Upper West Side Gray’s in the 1979 crime drama The Warriors.

Doug Ireland (Michael J. Fox) brings Andy Hart (Gabrielle Anwar) there for a quick bite in the 1993 romcom For Love or Money.

In 1995’s Die Hard with a Vengeance, John McClane (Bruce Willis) and Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) take a phone call from Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons) at the payphone across the street from the UWS Gray’s.

Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) briefly dines with Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) there shortly before heading out to meet NY152 at the end of 1998’s You’ve Got Mail.

The last time I visited New York, my friends Kim, Katie, Lavonna and I tried to pose for a photo a la Kathleen and Joe in Gray’s front window, but the reflection wreaked havoc with the image. If you look closely at the screen captures above, it actually appears that the restaurant’s window was removed for the filming of the You’ve Got Mail scene.

Lance Barton (Chris Rock) takes Sontee Jenkins (Regina King) for a meal at the UWS Gray’s in the 2001 comedy Down to Earth.

The eatery was shown in an establishing shot in the Season 1 episode of How I Met Your Mother titled “The Limo,” which aired in 2005, though no actual filming took place there.

Michael J. Fox returned to Gray’s in 2013 to shoot a scene for the pilot episode of his self-titled series The Michael J. Fox Show, in which Mike Henry (Fox) and Harris Green (Wendell Pierce) discuss the possibility of Mike returning to work while standing across the street from the restaurant.

The restaurant chain was also mentioned in the Season 4 episode of Glee titled “Makeover” and was a pivotal plot element in the 1997 romcom Fools Rush In, though neither production did any filming on the premises. And while several websites claim that the Season 3 episode of Louie titled “Telling Jokes/Set Up” and the 1998 romance Crossing Delancey were filmed at Gray’s, both were actually lensed at Papaya King outposts.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Gray’s Papaya from the “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number” episode of Sex and the City was formerly located at 402 Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. Today, the site is home to a Liquiteria. The Gray’s that appeared in Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations was formerly located at 539 8th Avenue in Midtown. That spot now houses a Cohen’s Fashion Optical. The Upper West Side Gray’s, from You’ve Got Mail, is still in operation and can be found at 2090 Broadway. A second Gray’s outpost is located at 612 8th Avenue in Midtown. Gray’s Papaya restaurants are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

April 28, 2017April 28, 2017

June’s House from “White Collar”

Sometimes the work and detail that go into creating certain locations absolutely boggles my mind. Case in point – the house belonging to June (Diahann Carroll) on the USA series White Collar. The imposing residence is actually an amalgamation of three different places – a spectacular estate on New York’s Upper West Side, the rooftop terrace of an ornate Murray Hill building, and a studio-built set. While in Manhattan last April, I stalked the estate, known in real life as the Schinasi Mansion, which is used in all of the establishing shots of June’s pad on the show.

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The sprawling Schinasi Mansion was originally built for Turkish-born cigarette magnate Morris Schinasi in 1909. Designed by William B. Tuthill of Carnegie Hall fame, the spectacular French Renaissance-style residence, which boasts Turkish influences, is often touted as being New York’s only remaining stand-alone single-family manse.

Though undeniably striking, Schinasi wasn’t altogether impressed with Tuthill’s final product and refused to pay the architect his $5,655.65 fee, which resulted in a lawsuit.

It’s hard to imagine what Schinasi found fault with. The exterior of the 4-story, 41-by-73-foot structure, which sits overlooking the Hudson River on a plot of land boasting 3,400 square feet of gardens, is a masterpiece of white marble and green-tiled roofing.

The exterior pales in comparison to the interior, though, which is a virtual work of art.

The 12,000-square-foot home features 12 bedrooms, 11 baths, a teak-paneled library with a fireplace and built-in window seat, a smoking room with ceiling frescos and gold leafing, a formal wood-paneled dining room with stained glass windows, a drawing room with carved ceilings, an English basement, two kitchens, a hall made entirely of ornate Egyptian marble, and an entry hall with a sweeping grand staircase and an almost-unbelievably-intricate honeycomb ceiling constructed of wood. The inside of the residence honestly has to be seen to be believed. You can check out some fabulous photos of it here and here.

When Schinasi passed away in 1929, his widow Laurette sold the mansion, at which time it became a finishing school known as the Semple School for Girls. Upon headmaster Rosa Semple’s death in 1965, the property was bought by Columbia University and was transformed into a daycare facility named “The Children’s Mansion.” Under Columbia’s ownership, the residence was also utilized as an Episcopal school and the offices of the Digest of Soviet Press. In 1979, the site transitioned into a private residence once again upon being purchased by Columbia University law professor Hans Smit for $325,000. Hans spent the next twenty years renovating the property, though when he put it on the market in 2006, the real estate listing noted that it still needed major rehabbing.

Originally listed at $31 million, the pad, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a New York City Landmark, received no bites. The price was slashed to $20 million in 2012 and the dwelling eventually sold for $14 million in 2013. The new owners immediately set about revitalizing the structure. The renovation was still in full swing when I stalked the place last Spring, as evidenced by all of my photos.

My dad has a saying he likes to use about people with uncanny good luck – “He could fall into a pile of sh*t and walk out with a brown suit.” That pretty much sums up the character of con man Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) on White Collar. In the series’ pilot, Neal is released from jail into the custody of the FBI’s White Collar division, where he is to act as a consultant, helping agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) catch art thieves and forgers in return for his partial freedom (though he is able to live on his own and move freely, he is forced to wear an ankle bracelet). When Neal scoffs at the seedy apartment the FBI has secured for him, Peter informs him that the low class digs cost $700 a month and if he can find more suitable accommodations for the same amount, he is welcome to move. While shopping for clothes at a nearby thrift store in the scene that follows, Neal meets a wealthy widow named June (Diahann Carroll) who is donating her late husband’s designer suits. Neal and June strike up a conversation – and an unlikely friendship (turns out June’s late husband was a con man, too!) – that ends with Neal moving into the idyllic attic apartment (complete with a large rooftop terrace) of June’s massive mansion, said to be located at 87 Riverside Drive, for the bargain price of $700 a month.

The exterior of the Schinasi Mansion was shown regularly in establishing shots of June’s palatial pad throughout White Collar’s six-season run.

The home’s actual interior was also utilized in several episodes, including the pilot (pictured below).

Neal’s fabulous attic apartment, unfortunately, does not exist in real life, but was a studio-built set. You can see what the Schinasi Mansion’s attic area actually looks like here and here.

I’ve recently decided that if the Grim Cheaper and I ever buy a place and have the means to have it professionally decorated, we are so hiring a set designer rather than an interior decorator! Ammiright?

While Neal’s uh-ma-zing terrace was also a studio-built set, I was thrilled to discover while researching this post that the patio scenes from the pilot were shot at an actual place – one of the penthouses at the Windsor Tower residential building, which is located at 5 Tudor City Place in Murray Hill. You can see a photo of one of the actual Windsor Tower penthouse terraces here and a video of another one here.

The set re-creation of Neal’s terrace, which very closely resembles the Windsor Tower terraces (albeit a much smaller version), is pictured below.

White Collar is hardly the first production to make use of the Schinasi Mansion.

In the 1994 comedy Bullets Over Broadway, the dwelling masked as the home of actress Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest).

In the Season 3 episode of Damages titled “Your Secrets Are Safe,” which aired in 2010, the mansion was the site of the Tobin family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

It, along with another massive mansion, was used as the residence of Spencer Fisher (Kyle Bornheimer) in the Season 2 episode of Royal Pains titled “Spasticity,” which also aired in 2010.

In the 2014 thriller Innocence, the property portrayed the home of Tobey Crawford (Graham Phillips).

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Schinasi Mansion, aka June’s house from White Collar, is located at 351 Riverside Drive on New York’s Upper West Side.

August 29, 2016August 27, 2016

The Ansonia from “Single White Female”

There is no shortage of strikingly beautiful, ornately embellished buildings on New York’s Upper West Side. I blogged about one of them, The Apthorp, and the circuitous route some friends and I took to stalk it on Friday. That route included a stop at another gorgeous UWS structure, The Ansonia, easily one of the most breathtaking properties I have ever laid eyes on. Since the site has appeared in countless productions over the years, including the 1992 thriller Single White Female, I figured it was definitely blog-worthy.

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Commissioned in 1899 by millionaire property developer William Earl Dodge Stokes, the building took five years to complete at a cost of $3 million, finally opening to the public on April 19th, 1904. The 17-story Beau Arts-style structure originally served as a luxury residential hotel.

Encompassing 550,000 square feet of space, the ornate limestone building was designed by French architect Paul E. M. Duboy, though Stokes was said to have had a large hand in the conception.

Upon completion, The Ansonia boasted a roof garden with two pools, a basement swimming pool, an art collection, a towering rooftop skylight, a two-story mansard roof, turreted corner towers, balconies, and balustrades.

Stokes also harbored a virtual circus of animals onsite. Several geese, goats, ducks, a bear, a pig, and 500 chickens made their home in the roof garden, while seals were stationed in a fountain in the lobby.

Each of The Ansonia’s 340 suites featured countless then cutting-edge amenities such as an early form of air conditioning, electric stoves, a tubing system to deliver messages, and hot and cold running water.

According to a 2005 New York magazine article, Stokes was not a fan of insurance companies and hoped to avoid using them in any of the dealings with his new building. As such, he went so far as to establish a company that manufactured a strong terra-cotta that would help fireproof The Ansonia. The interior walls were also built incredibly thick for the same purpose, making the hotel units largely soundproof, which made the site attractive to musicians such as conductor Arturo Toscanini, pianist Igor Stravinsky, and opera singers Lauritz Melchior, Ezio Pinza, Enrico Caruso, and Lily Pons, who all stayed on the premises at one time or another. Other luminaries who checked in included Billie Burke, Florenz Ziegfeld, Babe Ruth, and Jack Dempsey. The Ansonia was also where Arnold “Chick” Gandil and some of his fellow Chicago White Sox players cooked up the scheme to throw 1919 World Series.

The 1930s and ‘40s were not kind to The Ansonia. Due to the Great Depression, the site began to lose revenue causing all of the hotel facilities, including restaurants, to be shut down and the building was eventually transformed into an apartment house. During World War II, the property was stripped of all of its metal detailing, which was then sent to be used for war supplies, and its large skylight covered over with tar to satisfy the blackout ordinances.

The structure fell into such disrepair that it even faced demolition by its then owner in 1970. Thankfully, Ansonia residents and concerned local citizens stepped in and had the building landmarked, protecting it from being razed. In 1978, the property was purchased by investor Jesse Krasnow who began a lengthy restoration process. His idea of restoration was vastly different from most of the residents, though, and in 1980 they banded together, filed a lawsuit against Krasnow, and began a rent strike. There was dissention among the ranks, though, and a smaller group wound up breaking off and filing a different lawsuit. Of the tenuous situation, journalist Steven Gaines said in the same New York magazine article, “The Ansonia Hotel became the single most litigated residence in the history of New York City. A housing-court judge was assigned full-time to the case, and over the next ten years, Krasnow found himself cast in the role of one of the city’s most villainous landlords.” Jesse eventually converted the Ansonia to a condominium building, bought out the most troubled tenants, and set the property on a more copasetic path. He still owns the building today.

One look at The Ansonia’s uniquely arresting architecture and it is easy to see how it has wound up onscreen so many times over the years – far too many times for me to fully chronicle here, but I’ll try.

In Single White Female, The Ansonia served as the apartment building of Allison Jones (Bridget Fonda), where she first lived with her philandering boyfriend, Sam Rawson (Steven Weber), and then with her psychotic roommate, Hedra Carlson (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Many great shots of the property were shown in the movie.

Though the interior of Allison’s apartment was a set and not one of The Ansonia’s actual units . . .

. . . the building’s grand interior staircase, which spans 17 floors, was utilized in the filming.

Curmudgeon actor Willy Clark (Walter Matthau) lived at The Ansonia in the 1975 comedy The Sunshine Boys.

That same year, the alley that runs behind The Ansonia appeared in Three Days of the Condor as the spot where Joseph Turner (Robert Redford) engaged in a shootout.

Two Brittany Murphy productions have been shot at The Ansonia. In the 2001 thriller Don’t Say a Word, the building served as the home of Dr. Nathan R. Conrad (Michael Douglas).

And at the beginning of the 2003 comedy Uptown Girls, Brittany’s character, Molly, called a top floor residence home.

In the 2006 comedy My Super Ex-Girlfriend, G-Girl (Uma Thurman) puts out a massive fire at The Ansonia.

The Ansonia served as the home of Rowena Price (Halle Berry) in the 2007 thriller Perfect Stranger.

The building masked as the fictional Upper East Side Drake residential hotel, supposedly located at 999 Park Avenue, on the 2012 television series 666 Park Avenue.

The real life interior of The Ansonia was featured in the pilot episode of the series. Those interiors were later re-built on a soundstage at Cine Magic Riverfront Studios in Brooklyn for all subsequent filming once the show was picked up.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Ansonia, from Single White Female, is located at 2109 Broadway on New York’s Upper West Side.

July 6, 2016July 1, 2016

Terry’s Apartment from “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”

I’ve made no secret over the years of my love for Jumpin’ Jack Flash. (You can read the posts I’ve done on the 1986 comedy’s locations here, here, here, and here.) Whoopi Goldberg is literally perfection in her role as zany New York bank employee Terry Dolittle and I pretty much go around quoting her and the other characters on a regular basis (“Get Larry, the heavy-set guard! Get Larry, the heavy-set guard!”). So when a fellow stalker named Mick emailed me in July 2013 to ask for some assistance in tracking down a few of the movie’s locations, I was eager to help. Somehow I got distracted, though, and never did any investigating. Then Mick contacted me again the following February and this time I got to work.

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One of the locales Mick was hoping to find was the apartment where Terry lived. So I popped in my DVD and was thrilled to see that there was a restaurant located on the ground floor of Terry’s building and that its name, La Tablita, was clearly visible on its awning.

An internet search for “La Tablita” and “New York” led me to an ad in a 1985 issue of New York magazine that listed the eatery’s location as 65 West 73rd Street. I headed right on over to Google Street View, popped in that address and, sure enough, it was the right spot!

The exterior of Terry’s apartment building was only shown a couple of times in Jumpin’ Jack Flash, but it was extremely memorable to me due to the unique glass block pop-out located next to the front door.

I was floored to see that virtually none of the property had been changed since filming took place there three decades ago. (I honestly cannot believe the movie will be turning 30 in October!)

Today, the La Tablita space serves as home to a hardware store. Other than a change in tenant, though, it, too, still looks very much the same as it did onscreen.

Terry’s apartment building is part of a set of neighboring row houses that were designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh, the same architect who gave us The Plaza Hotel, the Dakota, and the original Waldorf-Astoria, which was demolished in 1929 in order to make way for the Empire State Building. Construction on the homes began on July 20th, 1882. Terry’s building was completed on January 21st, 1885.

Of the 28 properties originally constructed by Hardenbergh, only 18 remain. They can be found from 15A through 19 West 73rd Street and 41 through 65 West 73rd Street. Sadly, the ten homes that once stood in between those two groups were demolished during the Great Depression in order to make room for a 16-story apartment building.

The row houses that do remain standing have been left largely untouched from their original design.

Terry’s building is one of the few that has been modified. The large glass block pop-out that was so memorable to me from Jumpin’ Jack Flash is obviously a later addition and not an original 1885 detail. Other than that, Hardenbergh’s design remains intact, though. You can read more about the history of the 73rd Street row homes here.

Only the exterior of the property was used in Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Terry’s apartment interior was a set built on a soundstage at 20th Century Fox Studios in Century City where portions of the movie were lensed. You can check out what a unit in the building actually looks like here. Apparently, the images are from the penthouse, which cracked me up as the place is teeny tiny. I mean, come on! That kitchen looks like it should be on a ship and the second bedroom is more like a closet. Sex and the City really led me astray when it comes to apartment sizing in New York. So did Friends and pretty much every other movie/TV show set in the Big Apple for that matter (outside of Wanderlust), including Jumpin’ Jack Flash! As you can see below, Terry’s apartment was huge compared to the building’s actual units.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Terry’s apartment from Jumpin’ Jack Flash is located at 65 West 73rd Street on New York’s Upper West Side.