Don’t forget to check out today’s Los Angeles magazine post – about the model home from Arrested Development – here. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
The Girls United Group Home from “The Fosters”
In April, a fellow stalker named Ashley asked for some help in locating the Girls United group home from both the television show The Fosters and its web series spin-off, The Fosters: Girls United. I had never heard of either production before, but through a bit of Googling came across this Wikia article about the house. The stunning property immediately piqued my interest and I spent the next few minutes trying to track in down. It turned out to be an easy find, too, thanks to a Foursquare page that stated the dwelling was located on East Kensington Road in Angelino Heights. From there, it was only a matter of seconds before I found the unique pad via Google Street View at 766 East Kensington.
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In real life, the seven-bedroom, two-bath, 4,070-square-foot house was built in 1908 and sit on 0.28-acres of land. It last sold in October 2001 for $515,000.
The home’s fabulous detailing and double-peaked roofline are very reminiscent of the residence used in House Bunny (which I blogged about here).
Besides being architecturally stunning, the place also boasts some pretty amazing views of downtown L.A.
In The Fosters, Callie Jacob (Maia Mitchell) is sent to live at the Girls United group home, which is operated by Rita Hendricks (Rosie O’Donnell), after she is caught running away from her foster family in the Season 1 episode titled “House and Home.” The residence also appeared in the Season 1 episodes titled “Things Unsaid,” “Family Day” and “Us Against the World.”
The property’s actual address number of 766 was shown in the “House and Home” episode.
I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the residence was also used in the filming, but I was not able to find any interior photographs of the place to prove that hunch.
The house also appeared in the five-part web series spin-off of The Fosters titled The Fosters: Girls United.
You can watch the first The Fosters: Girls United web series episode, titled “Run Baby Run,” by clicking below.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Big THANK YOU to Ashley for challenging me to find this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Girls United group home from The Fosters and The Fosters: Girls United is located at 766 East Kensington Road in Arlington Heights.
Happy Memorial Day!
I would like to wish my fellow stalkers a very happy Memorial Day! I hope you are all enjoying a fun and safe three-day weekend and taking at least a moment to remember what today is really about – America’s fallen heroes.
Viva Cantina from “The Girls Next Door”
Each May, my girl Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, and I have a standing lunch date to celebrate her birthday. We usually hit up Sizzler (‘cause we’re fancy like that!), but this year she requested to dine at Viva Cantina in Burbank – a place I had long wanted to stalk thanks to its appearance in a Season 3 episode of The Girls Next Door. So I, of course, happily obliged.
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Viva Cantina, also known as Viva Fresh, has been around since 1962. Surprisingly though, I could find no information whatsoever about its history online or in any of my books about Los Angeles (and believe me, my collection is extensive).
What I can report on, thanks to my experience dining there earlier this week, is that the food is delish! Pinky and her husband, Mr. Keith Coogan from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead fame, love the place so much that they eat there almost weekly, in fact.
In the Season 3 episode of The Girls Next Door titled “May the Horse Be with You,” Holly Madison, Kendra Wilkinson, Bridget Marquardt, and a few of their Playmate friends visited Sunset Ranch and took part in their famous Dinner Tour horseback ride (something the Grim Cheaper and I have always wanted to do).
The Dinner Tour, which costs $100 per person, is comprised of a four-hour, five-mile evening ride through Griffith Park with a mid-way meal stop at Viva Cantina. Um, count me in!
During their visit, Holly, Kendra, Bridget and the girls ate in Viva’s red-leathered back room.
Pinky and I also ate in the back room, which is pictured below.
And while I could have sworn that an episode of Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica was also lensed at Viva Cantina, I scanned through my DVDs of the series while researching this post and did not see the eatery pop up anywhere.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Viva Cantina, from the “May the Horse Be with You” episode of The Girls Next Door, is located at 900 West Riverside Drive in Burbank. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. The Los Angeles Equestrian Center, from Beverly Hills, 90210 and Pretty Woman (which I blogged about here), is located right next door at 480 West Riverside Drive. You can visit the Equestrian Center’s website here. And Pickwick Bowl, from Parks and Recreation (which I blogged about here), is located across the street at 1001 West Riverside Drive. You can visit the Pickwick Bowl website here.
Today’s “L.A.” Mag Post – Walley World from “National Lampoon’s Vacation”
Be sure to check out my latest blog post for Los Angeles magazine today – about the Walley World entrance from National Lampoon’s Vacation – at LAMag.com. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Leo’s Apartment Building from “Relativity”
During my recent Relativity location-finding fest, I also managed to track down the apartment building where Leo Roth (David Conrad) lived with his quirky roommate, Doug (Adam Goldberg) – who was actually my favorite character – on the show. I really could kick myself over this one, though, because I began searching for the property while watching the third episode of the series, which was titled “First Impressions”, and did not have many clues to help with the hunt. Had I waited until the fifth episode, “Moving,” in which Leo’s address was literally spelled out, it would have been a much quicker find. Instead, I spent a ridiculous amount of time scanning the background of “First Impressions,” looking for readable signage on storefronts near Leo’s place and then Googling to see if said businesses were still in existence. Thankfully, after numerous searches, I finally found one that was.
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In “First Impressions,” a sign reading “Asia Auto Center” was visible across the street from Leo’s apartment. An internet search led me to a listing for an Asia Auto Center at 3700 West Pico Boulevard in Arlington Heights. Sure enough, when I looked at the address via Google Street View, there was Leo’s building right across the street.
In reality, Leo’s building is located at 1310 4th Avenue, just south of West Pico Boulevard. So when I watched the “Moving” episode a few nights after finding the place and heard it mentioned several times that Leo lived near “Pico and 4th Avenue,” I had a major face-palm moment. D’oh!
Pictured below are a few of the many neighborhood signs that I had tried to read and do Google searches for. As you can see, it was not the easiest of tasks.
It is said several times on the series that Leo’s neighborhood is a bit sketchy and I can attest to that fact being true in real life, as well. Just as I pulled into a parking space near the building, a man hopped over the fence of the business across the street, opened the dumpster located there and began throwing its contents onto the sidewalk. Yeah, I pretty much could not wait to get out of there, hence the limited number of photographs I have for this post.
The full exterior of Leo’s building is never actually shown on Relativity – at least not in any of the episodes I have re-watched up until this point. Typically, tight shots of the doorway and balcony are all that appear onscreen.
Thanks to that doorway, with its ornate casing, and balcony, with its wrought-iron detailing, the building has a very New Orleansy-feel.
The structure still looks very much the same today as it did when Relativity was filmed 18 years ago. As you can see below, not even the address plate has been altered since 1996! Love it!
The Arlington Heights building was only used for exterior filming on the series. The ramshackle interior of Leo and Doug’s loft existed only on a studio soundstage.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Leo’s apartment from Relativity is located at 1310 4th Avenue in Los Angeles’ Arlington Heights neighborhood.
Haskell’s Ice Cream Hut from “The Brady Bunch”
I have been a The Brady Bunch fanatic since I was about three years old. Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to be Cindy Brady (Susan Olsen) and don blonde pig tails on a daily basis. Too bad my hair was brown, curly and far too short for pig tails. As an adult, I still love the show and in recent years have stalked many of its locations. Being that the vast majority of the series was shot on the Paramount backlot, though, and that very few non-studio locales were used, I figured I had pretty much visited them all ages ago. So I was floored when a fellow stalker named Michael recently alerted me to a new one – Haskell’s Ice Cream Hut from the Season 5 episode titled “Marcia Gets Creamed.”
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In “Marcia Gets Creamed,” Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Jan (Eve Plumb) and Peter (Christopher Knight) get jobs at the local ice cream shop. A rather tight establishing shot of the parlor, in which the signage was cut off, was the only view of the exterior shown in the episode, so, try as he might, Michael could not figure out where filming had taken place.
Then fate stepped in. While randomly watching the Season 7 episode of My Three Sons titled “TV or Not TV” a few weeks back, Michael spotted the very same exterior. This time, though, the sign, which read Cherry House Ice Cream, was fully visible.
As it turns out, Cherry House was a real ice cream parlor/coffee shop located at 13701 Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. The establishment has long since been shuttered, but the building that once housed it still looks very much as it did when it appeared on The Brady Bunch in 1973. The site is currently home to an amplifier and guitar store named the Amp Shop.
Shockingly, I cannot find any information about Cherry House Ice Cream parlor online, other than the fact that it was established sometime in the 1950s. You can check out some photographs taken of the shop in 1952 here.
Only the exterior of Cherry House was used on The Brady Bunch. The pink-hued interior of Haskell’s Ice Cream Hut was a set built inside of a soundstage at Paramount. You can watch the “Marcia Gets Creamed” episode – in which Marcia fires Peter for being a “Capital G Goof Off” – here.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Michael for telling me about this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Amp Shop, aka the former Cherry House Ice Cream parlor, aka Haskell’s Ice Cream Hut from The Brady Bunch, is located at 13701 Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.
My Latest L.A. Mag Post – About Casa Walsh and Jason Priestley’s New Book
Don’t forget to check out my latest Los Angeles magazine post today – about the Walsh house from Beverly Hills, 90210, Jason Priestley’s new book and how I got started stalking – on LAMag.com. (My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.)
The “Relativity” House
Back in 1996, the Bedford Falls Company, the production company behind fave show My So-Called Life, debuted a new dramedy named Relativity. I was hooked on the series from the get-go. Sadly, it suffered the same fate as My So-Called Life and was cancelled after a solitary season. Unlike MSCL, though, which prospered in syndication, Relativity was not really ever heard from again. So when I recently found some episodes online, I just about flipped my lid. The Grim Cheaper happened to be out of town at the time and I proceeded to indulge in a rather long Relativity binge-watching session. I also, of course, spent some time tracking down several of the show’s locations, including the architecturally unique home where the Lukens family – David (Cliff De Young), Eve (Mary Ellen Trainor), Jennifer (a very young Poppy Montgomery) and Isabel (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) – lived.
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First a little background on the show, being that I am guessing most of my fellow stalkers have never heard of it. The storyline centered around the relationship of Isabel and Leo Roth (David Conrad), two twentysomethings from Los Angeles who meet randomly while on vacation in Italy. It is love at first sight. The only caveat is that Isabel has a longtime boyfriend, Everett (Randall Batinkoff), back home – a boyfriend whom she flew to Europe to get some distance from. Upon returning to California, Isabel promptly breaks up with Everett, much to the dismay of her family. The series then follows Isabel and Leo’s blossoming relationship and all of the tribulations that come along with it. Of choosing Relativity as the title, producer Marshall Herskovitz is quoted in a 1996 Entertainment Weekly article as saying, ”Obviously, we’ve borrowed the notion of Freud’s that whenever two people go to bed, there are six people in the room, because their parents are also in the room.”
I tracked down the location of the Lukens home thanks to the fact that a street sign reading “1200 N. Corsica Dr.” was visible in the background of a scene featured in the episode titled “First Impressions.” From there, I just did a Google search for “1200 North Corsica Drive” and, though it took me longer than I’d like to admit, finally found the residence at 1269 Corsica Drive in Pacific Palisades.
The exterior of the Lukens home was only shown a few times on Relativity and very briefly at that. What was shown, though, was spectacular! I am in love with the unique slatted roofline!
In real life, the 1960 property features four bedrooms, four baths, 3,496 square feet of living space and 0.39 acres of land. It last sold in September 2001 for $1,875,000.
Virtually none of the exterior (which reminds me a bit of The Brady Bunch house) has been changed since Relativity was filmed on the premises 18 years ago.
I am fairly certain that the interior of the Lukens home was just a set and not the interior of the actual house.
On a Relativity side-note – a couple of years ago, while doing some stalking of an event that was attended by Lisa Edelstein (who played Leo’s sister, Rhonda), Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, and I discovered our mutual love of the series. At the time, I had never met anyone else who had even heard of Relativity before, so the fact that she not only knew of it, but was just as in love with it as I was amazed me. Sometimes I really feel like the two of us share a brain. After discovering our mutual Relativity obsession, we had a fabulous fan girl moment with Lisa in which we both absolutely spazzed out. Lisa was shocked when we brought up the show, which isn’t surprising because I am fairly certain that Pinky and I were the only two people who ever watched it. 
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Lukens family’s home from Relativity is located at 1269 Corsica Drive in Pacific Palisades.
The Warehouse Restaurant from “Anger Management”
While visiting L.A. last week, the Grim Cheaper and I stayed in Marina del Rey. One late afternoon, during a waterfront stroll, we found ourselves passing by a unique eatery that had long been on my To-Stalk List. Situated on the bustling Admiralty Way amongst upscale hotels and high-rise apartment buildings, the nautical-themed The Warehouse Restaurant is almost hidden from view. I first spotted the place years ago on another oceanside walk with the GC and was instantly intrigued as I had never before seen anything like it! The structure looks like a ramshackle beach hut, complete with a large man-made lagoon out front. My first thought was ‘This place has to have been in movies!’ During that particular visit, The Warehouse was, sadly, closed so I was not able to venture inside to inquire further. This time, though, we passed by just as the clock was reaching cocktail hour and I convinced the GC to pop in for some drinks.
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The Warehouse Restaurant was originally founded way back in 1969 by award-winning cameraman Burt Hixson. To decorate his eatery, Burt salvaged authentic nautical equipment from old San Pedro shipyards. The result is quite spectacular and utterly one-of-a-kind.
Actual wharf posts, boats, fishing nets and buoys flank the exterior.
The lagoon even boasts a large pier jutting out into its middle.
The interior is comprised of whiskey barrels, crates suspended from the ceiling, wooden oars and hanging lanterns.
The place feels like Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride come to life.
The establishment also boasts some pretty fantastic waterfront views.
The GC and I ate in the bar, which just so happens to be the area of the restaurant most often utilized in filming. But more on that later.
Thanks to its fabulous fare and kitschy aesthetic, The Warehouse Restaurant was a hit from the get-go. According to a Beaver County Times article, in 1973 it was the nation’s most successful restaurant. The eatery has also, of course, attracted its fair share of celebrities and has walls upon walls of photos of stars posing with Warehouse menus to prove it.
Just a few of the celebs pictured include Kirk Cameron;
a very young Michael Douglas;
‘N Sync boy-banders Justin Timberlake, Lance Bass, JC Chasez and Chris Kirkpatrick;
and Cary Grant (at least I’m pretty sure that’s Cary Grant).
We even spotted a celebrity during our visit there – Two Broke Girls’ Garrett Morris, who was nice enough to pose for a picture with me. (Too bad it turned out a bit blurry.)
In the mid-80s, after opening several successful sister restaurants, Burt decided to establish a boutique hotel in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and sold off his popular eateries. Today, The Warehouse Restaurant is owned by Lee and Martha Spencer, who also own another of my favorite Los Angeles hot spots – the Smoke House in Burbank, which I blogged about here.
Thanks to its unique tropical look, The Warehouse Restaurant has been immortalized onscreen several times over the years. In the 2003 comedy Anger Management, the site masqueraded as the Boston eatery where Dr. Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson) forced Dave Buznik (Adam Sandler) to hit on a random girl named Kendra (Heather Graham).
The following year, the eatery popped up in Meet the Fockers as the Miami, Florida restaurant where Bernie and Rozalin Focker (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand, respectively) hosted an engagement party for their son, Greg Focker (Ben Stiller), and his fiancé, Pam Byrnes (Teri Polo).
The exterior of The Warehouse Restaurant was also shown briefly in the film.
In 2013, The Warehouse cameoed as the crab shack where the maritime law trial of Lucille Bluth (Jessica Walter) took place on Season 4 of Arrested Development.
The restaurant’s entrance was shown during the trial, as well.
The Warehouse also served as Bliss Point, the supposed Dana Point eatery where Jen Harding (Christina Applegate) and Judy Hale (Linda Cardellini) confront Jen’s dead husband’s mistress, Bambi (Olivia Macklin), in the Season 1 episode of Dead to Me titled “I Can’t Go Back.”
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Warehouse Restaurant, from Anger Management, is located at 4499 Admiralty Way in Marina del Rey. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.