I would like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a heartfelt Merry Christmas! I will be taking the week off to celebrate with my family. I hope everyone has a safe, fun and fulfilling holiday surrounded by loved ones. I’ll see you back here in the new year!
The Holiday has definitely been on my brain as of late. I wrote about two of the houses used in the 2006 film for the December issue of Los Angeles magazine and recently got to tour Thorne Hall at Occidental College, the setting of one of its most poignant scenes. So I figured it was only appropriate to dedicate a post to another of the movie’s locales, DTLA’s SB Spring building, more specifically its lower level former bank space known as The Majestic Downtown, which masqueraded as the supposed London office of The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the flick. I have blogged about this spot twice before, once in 2010 for my own site and then again in 2014 for L.A. mag. The last time I did some stalking of it, though, an event was being set up and the friendly security guard manning the front door happened to invite me inside for a closer look! I have yet to share the photos I snapped that day, so I decided it was definitely time for a third go-round.
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SB Spring was originally erected in 1924 as the headquarters of the Hellman Commercial Trust and Savings Bank.
Commissioned by Isaias Hellman at a cost of $2.5-million, the Beaux Arts-style structure was designed by the Schultze & Weaver architecture firm.
Featuring an Indiana limestone façade with sweeping arched windows and doors and terra cotta carvings, the 12-story building originally housed offices on the upper levels . . .
. . . and a two-story Spanish Revival-style bank on the ground floor boasting 40-foot-tall hand-painted coffered ceilings, marble columns, stairs and flooring, intricate bronze chandeliers, and a large mezzanine. You can check out a photo of what the grand space looked like during its early days here.
Soon after construction of the property was complete, Hellman Commercial merged with Merchants National Bank and then was taken over by Bank of America shortly thereafter. The 250,000-square-foot structure became the financial institution’s Los Angeles headquarters and, as such, was known largely as the “Bank of America Building.”
When B of A moved its headquarters to a new location on Flower Street in 1972, the upstairs offices of the Spring Street building were leased out to various companies. The ground floor bank, however, remained in operation until its doors were finally closed due to a decline in business in March 1988.
Developer Barry Shy purchased the structure in 2009 and converted the upstairs offices into a 174-unit loft-style apartment building known as SB Spring.
Thankfully, the bank space, now a special events venue known as The Majestic Downtown, has been left largely intact over the years, making it the perfect spot for filming. And locations scouts have definitely taken note!
In The Holiday, The Majestic Downtown is where Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) works as a newspaper writer.
It is during the paper’s Christmas party at the beginning of the film that Iris learns her total cad of an ex-boyfriend, Jasper Bloom (Rufus Sewell), has proposed to the girl that he cheated on her with.
SB Spring has appeared in countless productions in addition to The Holiday. So many, that it would be impossible to chronicle all of its onscreen appearances here, but below are a few of my personal favorites.
Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze) has Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg) fill out a signature card under a fake name at the bank in 1990’s Ghost.
The Majestic Downtown masks as the Fourth Reich Bank of Hamburg where Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) provides his financial records in an attempt to secure a dinner reservation at L’Idiot restaurant in the 1991 comedy L.A. Story.
The site portrays Edge City Savings & Loan, where Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey) works, in the 1994 comedy The Mask.
Robbie Hart (Adam Sandler) applies for a job there in the 1998 romcom The Wedding Singer.
In 2001’s Heartbreakers, Max Conners (Sigourney Weaver) and her daughter, Page Conners (Jennifer Love Hewitt), attempt to withdraw money from their accounts at the bank, but are thwarted by the IRS.
Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner) saves a party at The Majestic Downtown by performing the Zombie Dance from Thriller in the 2004 comedy 13 Going on 30.
And, yes, I did, of course, imitate Jenna doing a Thriller move while I was there, but unfortunately the lighting in the building was extremely low, so my photo did not come out. (Many of the images I took that day suffered the same fate, unfortunately.)
The exterior of SB Spring masquerades as Belle en Blanc bridal salon in the 2011 comedy Bridesmaids.
Me doing my best Helen (Rose Byrne) out in front. Too bad the shop’s ornate intercom isn’t actually there in real life.
Though the interior of the salon was a studio-built set, it is outside of SB Spring that the scene’s most memorable moment took place.
It is there that Lillian (Maya Rudolph), ahem, loses her sh*t in the middle of the street.
Had to do it! (Though I accidentally posed a bit too far to the north.)
SB Spring plays Capitol Trust Bank, where Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and the gang attend a Homeland Security counterterrorism drill, in the Season 2 episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine titled “Windbreaker City,” which aired in 2014.
In 2018, the exterior of the bank popped up in the music video for the Lil Dicky/Chris Brown song “Freak Friday,” which you can watch here.
And E.B. Jonathan (John Lithgow) unsuccessfully attempts to secure a loan there in the hopes of saving his practice in the Season 1 episode of the new HBO series Perry Mason titled “Chapter 4.”
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Majestic Downtown, aka The Daily Telegraph newspaper office from The Holiday, is located at 650 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the venue’s official website here.
Christmas with the Kranks has got to be one of the oddest movies I’ve ever come across location-wise. The 2004 holiday flick not only used the backlots of three (count ‘em!) three different L.A. studios to portray Riverside, Illinois, the Chicago suburb where the story takes place (as I chronicled in this post), but the soundstages of yet another area studio, The Culver Studios in Culver City, were utilized for several interior sets. And as I only recently discovered, production also played a bit fast and loose with the store where Nora Krank (Jamie Lee Curtis) finally got her hands on – and then promptly lost – a Hickory Honey Ham for a last-minute Christmas party. (The entire ham storyline is problematic, in fact, but more on that in a bit.) I figured the location trickery would make for a great holiday post, so I ran right out to stalk Cordon’s Ranch Market in Glendale, where the majority of the grocery store scene was lensed.
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Sadly, Cordon’s Ranch Market, which was originally established in 1999, shut its doors in April 2015. If only I had identified the location a few years sooner!
After Cordon’s shuttering, the site underwent a heavy remodel and subsequently re-opened as Moss Supermarket a few months later.
Moss did not last long, unfortunately, closing its doors in October 2017, a little more than two years after opening, and the space has sat vacant ever since.
In Christmas with the Kranks, Nora heads to Cordon’s Ranch Market to buy a ham – not just any ham, mind you, but a Mel’s Hickory Honey Cooked, Boneless, Skinless Ham with Natural Juices and Gelatin Added (um, gross!) – for her annual Christmas Eve party that she and her husband, Luther Krank (Tim Allen), have decided to throw at the very last minute upon learning their beloved daughter, Blair (Julie Gonzalo), is unexpectedly returning home from the Peace Corps to celebrate the holidays with them. Hickory Honey Ham, you see, is Blair’s absolute favorite dish.
The shop’s name and signage are both clearly visible at the top of the scene when Nora is shown parking her car. I always assumed both had been faked for the shoot, though, due to the fact that the sign’s lettering and coloring looked very Christmas-y. Then, on a whim a few months ago, I decided to input “Cordon’s Ranch Market” into Google and was shocked when a result was kicked back for a since-closed grocery store in Glendale! One look at the place on Street View confirmed it was where filming had occurred. What amazed me even more was that the signage that appeared in the movie was real, as you can see in this image of Cordon’s exterior from when it was still in operation! Turns out it wasn’t altered to appear more holiday-ish at all!
Nora’s visit to the grocer does not go well. And neither does the scene’s continuity because as soon as filming shifts to the inside of the market, we are at a different location altogether. The store where Nora races another shopper in an attempt to nab the very last in-stock Hickory Honey Ham before ultimately crashing into a floor display at the beginning of the segment does not match these images I found of Cordon’s. The shop that appears onscreen features a muted color scheme and some sort of a village-scape painted on its upper walls, while Cordon’s operated under the Apple Market brand and, as such, boasted bright red, green, and yellow coloring. The movie market also has a checkered brown and white floor, which does not line up with Cordon’s blue and white tiling.
Unfortunately, I am unsure of what grocery store was utilized for the filming of that portion of the scene.
After Nora crashes into the display and loses her chance at grabbing the shop’s sole remaining ham, she comes across a family in the check-out line who happens to have one and she convinces them to sell it to her for an above-market price. And that’s where things get really weird because that segment was shot at Cordon’s! As you can see in these images of the shop, the cashier stands, general décor, and color scheme match what appeared onscreen perfectly.
The fact that two different market interiors were utilized for the rather brief segment makes me wonder if some of the scene was re-shot. Or if Nora was originally supposed to be shown venturing into multiple stores looking for the hard-to-get ham and, at the last minute, producers decided to combine the bits instead. Your guess is as good as mine, though.
Purchase safely in hand, Nora then heads out of Cordon’s, where she is promptly bumped by a passerby, causing her to drop the ham.
It subsequently rolls through the store’s parking lot . . .
. . . and into the street . . .
. . . where it sits for a brief moment . . .
. . . before getting run over by a big rig . . .
. . . which almost hits Nora in the process.
Though she manages to escape unscathed . . .
. . . the ham does not. (Per production designer Garreth Stover, 26 hams were destroyed during the making of the scene.)
As if the market location switch-up isn’t enough, there’s more! Though Nora returns home defeated and sans ham, a guest named Marty (Austin Pendleton) unexpectedly brings one to the Krank’s party, saving Christmas pretty much, and Nora is shown proudly serving it later in the evening to her future son-in-law, Enrique Decardenal (Rene Lavan). But in an unexpected twist, in one of the movie’s final scenes Luther grabs an uncooked ham off of his kitchen counter and brings it over to his neighbors’ house as a sort of peace offering – which begs the question, where in the heck did that second ham come from? Did another guest bring it? Did Nora reconstruct the ham that was run-over by the big rig? Did it show up as some sort of Christmas miracle? Unfortunately, a DVD commentary was never created for the film, so, short of a sit-down with director Joe Roth, we may never know. It seems to me a pretty huge gaffe, though, especially considering the Hickory Honey Ham storyline is so central to the movie. I am shocked that no one caught it in post-production.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The former Cordon’s Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks is located at 2931 Honolulu Avenue in Glendale. The store is currently closed and vacant.
If I had to pick a favorite movie character it would be Arthur Abbott (Eli Wallach) from The Holiday. There’s nothing about him that I don’t adore – his kind heart, his wit, his charm, his championing of Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet). And there’s no scene that makes me cry more than the one in which he is honored by the Writers Guild of America West at the end of the film. When those theatre doors open and he sees that the auditorium is packed, the emotion is overwhelming! And then, just when you think you’ve caught your breath, his theme music – composed by Miles Dumont (Jack Black) – comes tinkling through the speakers and the tears start all over again. So I was ecstatic when, while on a tour of Occidental College with Mike, from MovieShotsLA, a couple of years back, our guide pointed to Thorne Hall on the north edge of campus and informed us that the iconic scene – which you can watch here – had been shot there! Though we didn’t get to see the inside of the building that particular day, thanks to an incredibly nice contact I have at the school who interviewed me a few years ago, I was able to tour it last month, just in time for a holiday post!
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Thorne Hall was the brainchild of Rev. Remsen D. Bird, who served as Occidental’s president from 1921 to 1946. Upon taking office, Bird set out to expand and enhance the campus. Top on his list of wants was a large auditorium capable of hosting the entire student body and staff. The project was finally made possible thanks to financing provided by Charles Thorne, heir to the Montgomery Ward fortune, and groundbreaking took place on May 21st, 1937.
Myron Hunt & H.C. Chambers, the architecture team who also gave us Pasadena Central Library, were commissioned to design the Palladian-style beauty, which was named in honor of Charles’ late wife, Belle Wilber Thorne. The venue opened to the public on July 13th, 1938 with a concert put on by Westminster Choir School.
Little of the landmark site has been altered in the ensuing decades, though it did undergo a $2.1-million renovation in 1989. Spearheaded by architect/preservation specialist Brenda Levin, the project mildly revamped the auditorium’s interior by adding baffling over the stage to allow for better acoustics. As she explained to the Los Angeles Times, “Thorne Hall is one of Hunt’s purest Palladian buildings. Its beautiful Beaux Arts colonnade closes the western end of the main campus axis, and gives it its great sense of calm. I had to try and modernize the hall’s interior without cheapening its relationship to the dignity of its exterior.” A woman after my own heart!
The grand 792-seat venue has hosted countless famous figures over the years including Martin Luther King Jr., Bob Hope, Linda Ronstadt, Harry Belafonte, Edward James Olmos, Richard Nixon, Jane Goodall, Earl Warren, Robert Frost, Amy Tan, Anne Lamott, Cesar Chavez, Desmond Tutu, and Oliver Stone, just to name a few.
According to a 2013 Occidental magazine article, in 1940 Howard Swan, then director of the space, stated “Belle Wilber Thorne Hall today is more than a structure of steel and concrete. Thorne Hall is an institution, fostering activities that reach out and touch many interests and many persons. The donor of the building wished it to receive extensive use; certainly none of us realized that we were so soon to witness the development of an institution of strength, tradition, and power.” Charles Thorne’s hope for extensive use is still being realized today, with the venue serving as the site of such varied events as theatre productions, concerts, lectures, speeches, classes, and dance performances.
Oh, and filming.
It is at Thorne Hall that the Writers Guild of America West hosts “An Evening with Arthur Abbott,” in honor of the legendary octogenarian screenwriter, in The Holiday.
As Arthur walks into Thorne’s lobby with Iris, his worst fears are confirmed – it appears as if no one has shown up for the event.
But when the doors to the auditorium open . . .
. . . a resounding applause breaks out and Arthur is overwhelmed to see a packed house engaged in a massive standing ovation. His life’s work, it turns out, has not gone unnoticed by his peers.
Iris and Arthur proceed down the aisle into Thorne’s auditorium . . .
. . . and Arthur ventures onto the stage where he gives a glorious speech about the showbusiness of yesteryear. It is a heartwarming scene from beginning to end.
Sadly, the stairs he walked up (on his own!) were just set dressing brought in for the shoot.
Thorne Hall’s actual stairs are located on the extreme sides of the stage, as you can see below.
The Holiday is hardly the only production to feature Thorne Hall. In fact, the site popped up in another favorite of mine!
In 1994, Thorne was used extensively as Evans Hall, the California University theatre where Brenda Walsh (Shannen Doherty) auditioned, rehearsed, and performed as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the Season 4 episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 “Divas,” “Acting Out,” “Truth and Consequences,” and “Vital Signs.” The exterior . . .
. . . the lobby . . .
. . . and the auditorium all appeared in the episodes. (That’s a very young Ryan Hurst, aka Gerry Bertier from Remember the Titans, in the screen caps below.)
In what is actually a leftover establishing shot from 90210, Thorne Hall popped up briefly as “Evans Hall Library,” where Phoebe Halliwell (Alyssa Milano) investigates the death of her friend, Charlene Hughes (Rebecca Cross), in the Season 2 episode of Charmed titled “Ex Libris,” which aired in 2000. All interiors were shot at DC Stages in downtown L.A., though.
Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) gives a speech on raptors and asks for funding to continue his research on the subject in Thorne Hall in 2001’s Jurassic Park III.
Thorne portrays the Georgetown University auditorium where Tabitha Fortis (Laura Dern) gives a lecture on poetry in the Season 3 episode of The West Wing titled “The U.S. Poet Laureate,” which aired in 2002.
A prop fountain was installed in front of the hall for the shoot to give the locale more of a D.C. feel.
Thorne Hall masks as the U.S. Embassy in Belgravia, where a Marine is killed during a terrorist attack, in the Season 8 episode of NCIS titled “Defiance,” which aired in 2011.
In 2014 and 2015, Thorne Hall was turned into “Nerdvana” for Seasons 2 and 3 of the reality competition series King of the Nerds.
The Grim Cheaper and I happened to be on campus during one of the Nerd shoots and got to see Thorne Hall dressed in all of its Nerdvana glory!
Most recently, the building popped up briefly in the background of the Season 1 episode of The Romanoffs titled “Bright and High Circle,” which aired this past November.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Thorne Hall, from The Holiday, can be found at Occidental College, which is located at 1600 Campus Road in Eagle Rock. Please be advised that the theatre is closed to the public and is only accessible to those attending performances and shows on the premises. You can find out about the venue’s upcoming events here.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas – well, as much as it can in SoCal – which means it’s time to start posting holiday locales! I’m kicking off the season with the pad that portrayed the Banks family residence in the Season 1 Yuletide-themed episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air titled “Deck the Halls.” Now you’re probably thinking, ‘But you’ve blogged about the Fresh Prince house already, years ago.’ And you’d be correct. Way back in 2008, I did write about the massive Colonial manse that regularly appeared as the home of Will (Will Smith), Carlton (Alfonso Ribeiro), Uncle Philip (James Avery), Aunt Viv (Janet Hubert), Hilary (Karyn Parsons), and Ashley (Tatyana Ali) on the popular series. (Spoiler! It’s actually in Brentwood, not Bel-Air!) But . . .
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. . . as a fellow stalker named Ashley informed me in August 2013, for whatever reason a different home was utilized as the family’s pad in the “Deck the Halls” episode. Thinking it would make for a great Christmas post, I set out to find the place, which turned into quite a long and tedious affair. I started by scouring the Colonial section of every online location database, then spent hours poring over Google Aerial Views looking for any large properties with a rounded portico – all to no avail. I once even thought I saw the house pop up in the Instagram story of a friend who was attending a holiday soiree at a Colonial-style dwelling. I quickly figured out the name of the party’s hosts and searched property records to find their address, only to discover upon getting a better look at the residence via Street View that it was not, in fact, the right place. Oh, the (admittedly crazy) lengths I go to to bring filming location information to the masses! It was not until this past February (almost five years after my search began!) that an unexpected source came to my rescue.
That month, upon the (very emphatic) recommendation of Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, the Grim Cheaper and I started watching Barely Famous, VH1’s fake reality series about the lives of sisters Erin and Sara Foster, daughters of music producer David Foster (who just so happens to be the man largely credited with discovering Michael Bublé – but I digress). While viewing the pilot episode, I just about screamed as an establishing shot of Erin and Sara’s home came into view. In an instant, I knew it was the pad from “Deck the Halls.” Thank you, Pinky!
Barely Famous not only provided much more expansive views of the residence, but an address placard was also visible in several episodes. Though I couldn’t quite make out the number displayed, it was apparent that said number was five digits, which meant the property was located somewhere in the Valley. Up until that point, I had only been searching the Hollywood/Hancock Park areas and their environs, near Hollywood Center Studios (now Sunset Las Palmas Studios) where The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s first season was lensed, as sitcom location managers typically don’t veer far from the lot when choosing locales. Oops!
Knowing the place was actually in the San Fernando Valley gave me a whole new lease on the hunt! Armed with the information, I headed over to Google Maps and found the Banks’ Christmas house/Barely Famous residence fairly quickly at 10436 Kling Street in Toluca Lake.
The 2-story, 17-room American Colonial Revival-style estate is definitely fit for a king – or the Banks family, as the case may be – with 5 bedrooms, 4 baths, 3,898 square feet of living space, a master suite with a massive walk-in closet, multiple fireplaces and built-in bookcases, a 0.42-acre yard, a pool, a spa, a putting green (!), a detached 3-car garage, and a gazebo. You can see some interior photos of the pad, which was originally built in 1941, here.
In the “Deck the Halls” episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which aired in 1990, Will laments the fact that Aunt Viv and Uncle Phil are less than traditional when it comes to decorating for Christmas. So Viv gives him free reign to adorn their mansion – and soon comes to regret that decision. The Toluca Lake pad was shown a few times in establishing shots of the Banks’ home in the episode.
The property does bear a strong resemblance to the Brentwood estate typically used on the show, as you can see below, but not so much so that eagle-eyed viewers wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
All of the interiors from the “Deck the Halls” episode were, of course, shot on a studio set.
The property was only utilized for establishing shots on Barely Famous, as well.
All interiors were filmed elsewhere – I believe at an actual house and not on a set, though I am unsure of exactly where.
The pad is also where Juanita Solis (Madison De La Garza) attends a princess-themed birthday party in the Season 5 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow,” which aired in 2008.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Ashley for asking me to track down this locale and to Pinky Lovejoy, from the Thinking Pink blog, for providing the key that finally helped me find it. 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Banks mansion from the “Deck the Halls” episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, aka Sara and Erin’s house from Barely Famous, is located at 10436 Kling Street in Toluca Lake. The estate regularly used as the Banks home on Fresh Prince can be found at 251 North Bristol Avenue in Brentwood.
Update – this contest has ended. Congratulations to winner Ronald O.!
Snow is falling, the scent of pine needles is in the air, so it must be . . . time to watch some awesome movies and TV shows on COMET TV and CHARGE!
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Yep, this December the sci-fi and horror classic The Terminator is blasting its way through Comet TV! Check out the classic and the birth of Cyberdyne Systems!
If that wasn’t enough to celebrate the holiday season Babylon 5 has a Christmas marathon! After you sip your egg nog and trim the tree, turn on COMET TV for a spacey Christmas marathon! Starting at 10a/9 C! And don’t forget to check out Area 10! The best in cult classic films are airing all month long on Comet TV!
To top it all off, I am offering one awesome COMET TV viewer a chance to win a prize pack with some exclusive swag!
The Comet TV and CHARGE! December Prize Pack has:
1 – Limited Edition Terminator Muscle Shirt – Show off those guns! Figuratively and literally in this awesome Terminator Tee! Do some flexing and share your pics on the gram with the hashtag #CometTV.
1 – Exclusive Blair Witch Holiday Ornament – Deck the halls and ring in the new year with the Blair Witch! This hand-crafted ornament will bring holiday scares to you and those you love!
1 – Terminator Dog Tag – John Connor is the leader of the resistance and this promo dog tag set will get you ready to battle the cyborgs of the future!
1 – Babylon 5 and Space: 1999 Custom Snack Box – This is the perfect treat to celebrate any trip to space. It might require some popping, but this custom box will satisfy any spacey craving!
Entering is easy – simply click on the link below, follow me on Instagram and then provide your Instagram handle. If you already follow me on Instagram, then simply click below to enter and input your Instagram handle. The contest begins today and runs through January 5th. The winner will be announced on January 6th.
This giveaway is open to US residents only. Each household is only eligible to win the COMET TV and CHARGE! October Prize Pack via blog reviews and giveaways. Only one entrant per mailing address per giveaway. If you have won the same prize on another blog, you will not be eligible to win it again. Winner is subject to eligibility verification. The prize will be sent via FedEx or USPS. No P.O. Boxes please.
It is not everyday that a one-minute clip gets me hooked on an entire television series, but that is exactly what happened with Brooklyn Nine-Nine. A few months back, my friend Kate texted me a hilarious highlight from a Season 5 episode in which Detective Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) leads a group of criminals in a rousing acapella rendition of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” during a police lineup. I had never heard of the show at that point, but, let me tell you, as soon as the first strains of “You are my fire . . . “ hit my ears, I was done for! Any procedural that incorporates boy band music into its storyline is guaranteed to be a surefire favorite with me! The Grim Cheaper and I started watching the series that very night and have been binging it ever since. Not only is the acting superb and the dialogue laugh-out-loud funny, but (bonus!) it is shot in L.A., which means plenty of stalking for me. One of its locales, the small Chinatown eatery Nick’s Cafe, I first spotted in Season 3’s “House Mouses” and then again just a few weeks later on yet another series we are obsessed with, Bosch. So I decided I just had to run out and stalk the place.
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A veritable city institution, Nick’s Cafe (not to be confused with Nick’s Coffee Shop & Deli on Pico) was founded way back in 1948 by Navy vet Nick Viropolous.
In an unusual move, Nick chose to operate the place sans a name for the four decades that he owned it. As longtime waitress Lois Fuentes recalled in a 1995 Los Angeles Times article, “We went 41 years without a name. People would call it the Corner Cafe, the Ham House, all sorts of things. Nick was afraid if he gave it a name it might bring in more people. ‘Then you gotta hire more help,’ he’d say.”
The Ham House moniker, which is still sometimes used today, came about thanks to the bone-in ham, sliced to order, that Nick displayed daily on the eatery’s U-shaped counter.
Amazingly, the original counter is still intact today, seventy years after the restaurant first opened!
In the mid-90s, Viropolous sold the eatery to two LAPD homicide detectives who finally gave the place a name – Nick’s Cafe, in honor of its founder. The duo also installed a train track around the perimeter of the ceiling with a running model train that would circle the diner during open hours. Those tracks remain on display today (you can see them in the photos below), though the locomotive cars no longer operate.
Considering the profession of the new owners, it is not surprising that Nick’s became immensely popular with local police following the change of hands. As such, the restaurant has since been featured on numerous detective shows. But more on that in a bit.
In 2009, the cafe was taken over by a man named Rod Davis and it is still going strong today, largely thanks to the fact that little has been altered over the years. Not only is much of the décor original, but many of Nick’s recipes are still in use today.
I opted for a grilled cheese sandwich during my visit and it was honestly one of the best I’ve ever had. Granted, a grilled cheese is pretty hard to mess up, but the one served at Nick’s is stellar, with perfectly buttered toast and thick layers of two different kinds of cheese.
Most hours of the day at Nick’s are standing-room only, due to both its popularity and small size – the only available seating is at the counter, which is lined by a scant 25 stools, though the outside patio can accommodate an additional 25.
In the Season 3 episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine titled “House Mouses,” which aired in 2016, Jake convinces fellow detectives Hitchcock (Dirk Blocker) and Scully (Joel McKinnon Miller) to take over his drug case by buying them lunch at Nick’s.
The restaurant’s filming history far pre-dates Brooklyn Nine-Nine, though.
In 1997, Nick’s was the setting for the Depeche Mode video “It’s No Good,” which you can watch here.
Kensi Blye (Daniela Ruah) and Marty Deeks (Eric Christian Olsen) visit Nick’s Cafe while investigating a terror suspect in the Season 3 episode of NCIS: Los Angeles titled “Patriot Acts,” which aired in 2012.
That same year, on yet another procedural, Detective Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy) counsels Officer Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie) about not getting emotionally attached to cases while standing in line at Nick’s in the Season 4 episode of Southland titled “Risk.”
The diner is the site of an armed robbery in DJ Snake and Justin Bieber’s 2016 “Let Me Love You” music video, which you can watch here.
Fellow stalker Geoff, of the 90210Locations website, informed me that the same year Ian Gallagher (Cameron Monaghan) and Lip Gallagher (Jeremy Allen White) lunched outside of Nick’s in the Season 7 episode of Shameless titled “Swipe, F***, Leave.”
As I mentioned earlier, Nick’s also appeared on Bosch. In Season 3’s “Clear Shot,” which aired in 2017, Detective Santiago Robertson (Paul Calderon) discusses a recent case with Terry Drake (Barry Shabaka Henley) at the eatery.
And in yet another police-related production, Ponch (Michael Peña) meets some local CHP officers at Nick’s in the 2017 comedy CHIPS.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Nick’s Cafe, from the “House Mouses” episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, is located at 1300 Spring Street in Chinatown. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. The eatery closes at 3 p.m. each day, so please plan accordingly.
I am an extremely excitable person. A visit to Disneyland, randomly running in to a friend, a surprise sale at a favorite store, unexpected access to an off-limits filming location – all can send me into a tailspin. Such was the case last week when the Grim Cheaper and I were driving to stalk the former Dutch Chocolate Shop – a stunning oft-used locale in downtown L.A. that typically sits hidden away behind an unsightly metal rolldown door. As I ventured past the site looking for parking, I saw that the door happened to be open and got so excited I nearly careened the car into oncoming traffic. After calming down (slightly) and securing a parking spot, I ran back to the store, hyperventilating all the way, and was met by the extremely friendly man that runs it, who, lo and behold, invited us inside! More hyperventilating ensued (obvs). Still, days later as I sit here and write this, I cannot believe I actually got to see the inside of the place. As Yelper Andrew W. recently noted, the Dutch Chocolate Shop is “the Holy Grail of downtown Los Angeles’ – heck, maybe all of Los Angeles’ – historical and artistic sites.”
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I was first made aware of the Dutch Chocolate Shop when writing my post about The Magic Castle in October. While doing research on the historic Hollywood club, I came across a mention on IMDB that it had portrayed the headquarters of the Greatest Detective Society in the Season 8 episode of Castle titled “G.D.S.” I headed right on over to Amazon to download and scan through the episode, but one look at the cavernous space shown onscreen and I knew IMDB had gotten it wrong. The locale was most certainly not The Magic Castle. I was absolutely captivated by it, though, and promptly started trying to track it down, which I did fairly quickly thanks to Castle Wiki. As the website informed me, filming had taken place at a former chocolate shop, of all things, once located at 217 West 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles.
Situated on the ground floor of a rather non-descript (and now graffiti-covered) 1898 building, the confectionary was the brainchild of E.C. Quinby, P.W. Quinby, and W.M. Petitfils of the Chocolate Shop Corporation.
The group leased the four-story structure in 1913 and renovated the street level space to the tune of $40,000. Architecture firm Plummer & Feil was commissioned to carry out the redesign.
The architects secured Pasadena artisan Ernest Batchelder to wallpaper the interior of the Dutch Chocolate Shop (or “the Chocolate Shoppe” as it was sometimes referred to) with his famous tilework, including murals which were to be Dutch in theme.
Per Big Orange Landmarks, “The Shoppe was to serve as a prototype for a whole chain of soda parlors, each with a different European country as its theme. For whatever reason – some say it was the high cost of Batchelder’s work – this never came to pass, and the 6th Street location was the first and last Chocolate Shoppe.”
Ernest’s fees might have been high, but the owners certainly got what they paid for because the finished product is absolutely stunning, with groined arches, tiled pillars, and 21 bas relief murals all depicting imagery of life in Holland.
The space, which is extremely reminiscent of Grand Central Terminal’s Whispering Gallery, is exquisite.
According to a commenter on Curbed Los Angeles, Feil instructed Ernest to fashion the tiles to look like chocolate bars. While a sweet (see what I did there) anecdote, I do not believe it to be true being that not only did Batchelder regularly utilize dark brown hues in his work, but per a different Curbed article and a Los Angeles Conservancy reference manual, the shingles’ current shading is actually an unintentional discoloration caused by shellac.
The Dutch Chocolate Shop, which operated as a confectionary, a soda fountain and a lunch/dinner restaurant, opened to the public in 1914.
You can see what it looked like in its early days here and here.
Though beautiful, the Dutch Chocolate Shop was not successful in the long run and by the early 1920s it was shuttered. The tiled space changed hands several times in the years that followed before being transformed into Finney’s Cafeteria in 1947. The eatery proved highly popular with the downtown set and remained in operation for almost forty years, until it, too, closed its doors in 1986 and was subsequently sold to an investment group.
For some inexplicable reason, the former Dutch Chocolate Shop was transformed into an arcade of sorts in 1997 – its vaulted rooms divided up by stalls, its gorgeous tiling covered over with particle board, and stacks of wares piled in every available nook and cranny. You can see some photos of its tragic appearance from that time period on Big Orange Landmarks. The space then became an electronics/pager store, as the signage hanging outside still attests to.
In 2012, the site, which is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, rather fortuitously wound up in the hands of former furniture dealer Charles Aslan. As reported in a Los Angeles Times article from that year, “The funny thing was that Aslan hadn’t come to the building for Batchelder. The exuberant businessman, born in Singapore, had only recently learned who Batchelder was.” After removing the plywood covering the former arcade’s walls and accidentally unearthing the virtually pristine historic murals and tile work, though, an idea took shape – to revitalize the entire structure by opening an upscale hot chocolate bar on the ground level, a restaurant on the second, artist studios on the third, and a tile manufacturing shop on the fourth. Again, from the L.A. Times – “Soon this man who once sold over-the-top factory furniture from an open lot on La Cienega Boulevard was expressing his devotion to the Pasadena artisan who epitomized the handmade. ‘The whole building is going to be Batchelder,’ Aslan said proudly of the 25,000-square-foot, four-story structure he has leased for the next 13 1/2 years.” Sadly, his intentions to reinvigorate the once grand space have not yet come to fruition. The roadblocks are mainly due to the structure’s lack of a rear exit, which is needed in order to secure a large enough certificate of occupancy to accommodate a restaurant of any sort. Though the building looks to have been put on the market for a brief time in late 2017, there weren’t any takers and current plans for the Dutch Chocolate Shop site seem to be uncertain.
Today, it sits vacant and, outside of the occasional filming, closed up . . .
. . . but thankfully well-preserved.
The “G.D.S” episode of Castle, which aired in 2016, made spectacular use of the Dutch Chocolate Shop. One look at the images below and it should be clear why I became so obsessed with the place.
Interestingly, “G.D.S.” was not the first Castle episode to utilize the site. In 2012, the Dutch Chocolate Shop masked as “the lair of an evil laser-gun-making genius” named Benjamin Donnelly (Armin Shimerman) in the Season 5 episode of the series titled “The Final Frontier.”
The exterior of the building also appeared in the episode.
The Dutch Chocolate Shop’s filming history far predates Castle, though.
Way back in 1918, Sheila Moore (Dorothy Gish) got a job there in The Hope Chest. Sadly, I could not find a copy of the movie with which to make screen captures anywhere, but photos from it appear on both Wikipedia . . .
. . . and The Daily Mirror website.
In the 1980 drama The Hunter, Ritchie Blumenthal (Eli Wallach) convinces bounty hunter Papa Thorson (Steve McQueen) to bring in fugitive Tony Bernardo (Thomas Rosales Jr.) while eating lunch at what was then Finney’s Cafeteria.
The Dutch Chocolate Shop site masks as The Museum of Human Misery: Hall of Low-Grade Crappiness in the Season 2 episode of The Good Place titled “Rhonda, Diana, Jake, and Trent,” which aired in 2018.
And it masquerades as a secret cellar beneath the Sisters of the Divine Path convent in the Season 5 episode of Lucifer titled “Detective Amenadiel,” which aired in 2020.
According to the nice man who runs the place, the locale was also utilized in a Shania Twain video, though I was unable to figure out which video in particular.
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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Dutch Chocolate Shop, from the “G.D.S.” episode of Castle, is located at 217 West 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the space is closed to the public and typically hidden from view.