Year: 2018

Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden from “Pure Genius”

The Grim Cheaper and I are finally getting around to landscaping the backyard of our new house, so to say I’m into gardens lately would be an understatement. If I knew how to use Pinterest (I swear I cannot figure that site out), I’d be pinning foliage design ideas left and right. Instead I’ve been visiting gardens IRL and snapping copious photos. One idyll that I only just learned about thanks to a brief mention in the March 2018 issue of Los Angeles magazine is Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, a bucolic space tucked away on a sleepy residential street in Pasadena. When I discovered upon further digging that the spot is also a filming location, I decided I had to visit it stat for both backyard inspo and blogging purposes.

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Originally commissioned by Charles Storrier Stearns and his wife, Ellamae Sheppard, on the grounds of their sprawling Pasadena manse (which you can see a photo of here) in 1935, the 2-acre glen took a whopping 7 years to complete.

The couple called upon landscape architect Kinzuchi Fujii to design the picturesque space.

Sadly, shortly before completing the project, Fujii was sent to an internment camp where he remained until the end of World War II. Though he considered the garden his crowning achievement, he never returned to see his vision finalized.

What he created is nothing short of magical, with walking paths;

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two large ponds;

a 15-foot devil’s bridge made of granite,

a teahouse that was initially constructed in Japan and then taken apart before being shipped to Pasadena, whereupon it was reassembled at the garden;

numerous footbridges;

and a plethora of plant varieties including Japanese maples, Chinese elms, and redwood trees.

Upon Ellamae’s death in 1949, the Storrier Stearns estate was sold at auction to an antiques dealer named Gamelia Haddad Poulsen. Though she subdivided the vast property into seven separate parcels and razed the massive mansion, she held onto the Japanese garden as well as an adjoining plot on which she built a modest home.

Gamelia cherished the tranquil space, caring for and maintaining its beauty until the state declared imminent domain on a 1/3-acre portion of it in 1975 as part of the Interstate 710 expansion. With the fate of the garden in flux, she left it to deteriorate. The ponds eventually dried up, the plants shriveled, and the teahouse burned down.

When Gamelia passed away in 1985, her son, Jim Haddad, and his wife, Connie, inherited the garden and the home. The 710 expansion had still yet to see fruition by that time, so the couple finally decided to restore the property. The painstaking project took 15 years to complete, but the ponds were eventually filled, the teahouse was rebuilt to exacting specifications, the foliage was replanted, and Fujii’s vision was restored.

The Haddads kept the garden, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, mainly private, opening it up to the outside world solely as a special events venue and for filming.

It was not until 2016 that the couple made the site available to tour.

Today, Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden is open to the public every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and the second and last Sunday of each month.

Thanks to the Pasadena Star-News, I learned that the pilot of Pure Genius (originally named Bunker Hill) was lensed on the premises in 2016. (Though the article misreported the location of filming as Arlington Garden, which is situated across the street, one quick scan through the episode told me that shooting had actually taken place at Storrier Stearns.)

The garden appeared throughout the episode, masking as the grounds of the supposed Palo Alto-area Bunker Hill Center for the Advancement of Medicine.

As you can see in the screen capture below, the exterior of a Bunker Hill building was digitally added to the background of one of the scenes featuring the garden.

While I know that Storrier Stearns must have been utilized in other filmings over the years, I was unable to dig up any other productions it appeared in.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, from the pilot episode of Pure Genius, is located at 270 Arlington Drive in Pasadena. The property is open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and the second and last Sunday of each month from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $10. You can visit the garden’s official website here.

May 21, 2018
Sorry For the Delay . . .

Sorry to have been M.I.A. for the past week. We had friends in town visiting and I was a little remiss in my blogging duties. I did do a ton of stalking while they were here, though (we even ran into Ken Todd while stalking TomTom, as you can see above!), so a bunch of new locations will be coming your way starting Monday. See you then!

May 18, 2018
Voletta Wallace’s House from “Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac & the Notorious B.I.G.”

I have never been a fan of rap. My musical tastes tend to run far more tepid (read: Michael Bublé, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, and ‘80s pop). The Grim Cheaper likes to joke that my iPod song list hasn’t been updated since I first got the device back in 2001. Regardless, when I heard about Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac & the Notorious B.I.G., the recent USA series that chronicles the respective 1996 and 1997 killings of rappers Tupac Shakur (Marcc Rose) and Christopher ‘Biggie’ Wallace (Wavyy Jonez), I was completely enticed. Granted, anything having to do with true crime is pretty much guaranteed to pique my interest, but when I learned that the show was shot in Los Angeles and starred Josh Duhamel, I was all in! Thankfully, it did not disappoint. The GC and I were hooked from episode 1. Presented via a sequence of ever-switching timelines, Unsolved is both thoroughly dynamic and a marvel of historical accuracy. I knew little of either murder case prior to watching, but fell down a rabbit hole of research after each episode aired and was thrilled at the level of precision and veracity displayed. I was also thrilled to recognize the supposed Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania home where Biggie’s mom, Voletta Wallace (Aisha Hinds), lived as the very same dwelling featured in the infamous opening sequence of the 1955 classic Rebel Without a Cause, which I had stalked back in 2012, but never blogged about.

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The residence only appears once on Unsolved in a particularly heart-wrenching scene at the end of the final episode in which Detective Greg Kading (Duhamel) visits Voletta at her home in the Keystone State to explain in person why police are no longer looking into her son’s case.

As soon as Kading walked into Voletta’s yellow-hued kitchen, I immediately recognized it as the kitchen from the Rebel Without a Cause house. As fate would have it, the pad recently hit the market as a fully-furnished rental and I had come across the listing, which mentioned its 1955 cameo, a few weeks prior and, of course, perused photos of the interior. For whatever reason, the images of the kitchen stuck with me. (What can I say, ingraining film locations into my memory is my super power.) More particularly, the home’s huge hood situated above the center island stuck with me, as did the woven bamboo shades hanging in the window. (The GC was on a kick to purchase very similar window coverings for our new house, but I found them a bit too tiki-inspired for my taste and finally convinced him to go with more neutral-colored blinds. Thanks to our many back-and-forth debates on the subject, shades are definitely something I take notice of lately.) Certain Voletta’s kitchen was the very same one I had seen in the MLS photos, I quickly pulled up the Rebel Without a Cause pad’s listing and was floored to see that they were, indeed, a match – right down to the wall clock, bar stools, and mounted television set!

The exterior of Voletta’s residence has proved harder to track down. I did discover that the imagery shown of it is actually stock footage from Shutterstock of “a slow aerial approach and flyover of a Pennsylvania farm house in the Autumn.” The home is apparently very popular in the stock footage world as I found a second reel featuring it, this one titled “A high angle flyover of a typical snow-covered farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania in the winter.”

In real life, the Rebel Without a Cause dwelling, which was originally built in 1912, features 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, 4,398 square feet, a formal dining room, a sun room, a large veranda, multiple decks, a pool, a barbeque area, a detached gym with a steam shower, and a 0.24-acre lot.

According to my buddy E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle called the place home for a time in the 1920s.

Though the Southern Colonial-style residence is often counted among Los Angeles’ most iconic film locations due to its appearance in Rebel Without a Cause, not much of it can actually be seen in the movie. The lower portion of the pad is just barely visible in the beginning scene in which Jim Stark (James Dean) lays down in the street while playing with a toy monkey shortly before being arrested for “plain drunkenness.”

The property has a couple of other cameos under its belt, as well. In the 1959 sci-fi film Teenagers from Outer Space, it portrays the home of Alice Woodward (Sonia Torgeson).

I am 99.9% certain that the scenes taking place in and around Alice’s pool were shot at a different location altogether.

Not only do building permits show that no pool existed at the property until 1993, as you can see in the screen captures as compared to the MLS photos above and below, the pool that was eventually built is much smaller than the one that appeared in Teenagers from Outer Space. It is also situated in a different position with regards to the residence than what was shown onscreen.

The dwelling also pops up as the Kappa Omega Psi fraternity house where Michael Ryan (C. Thomas Howell) and his friends crash a party in the 1985 comedy Secret Admirer.

The interior of the home also appeared in the movie.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Voletta Wallace’s house from Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac & the Notorious B.I.G. is located at 7529 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood Hills West.

May 9, 2018
Big and Carrie’s Apartment from “Sex and the City 2”

Apparently I did a lot of stalking during my April 2016 New York vacation because there are some places I do not even remember visiting. Case in point – while organizing my photos from the trip a couple of days ago, I came across several images of the stately building above which I had no recollection whatsoever of taking – nor did I have any clue what production the structure was from. Thankfully “1030 5th Avenue” was painted on the awning, otherwise I might never have figured it out! Address in hand, I scanned through my NYC stalking list and was shocked to discover that the locale was actually where Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big (Chris Noth) lived in the 2010 flick Sex and the City 2. How I did not recognize it right off the bat is beyond me! I guess I have to chalk it up to some major stalking overload.

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The handsome 13-story property was designed in 1925 by J.E.R. Carpenter, the prolific architect/developer who was not only responsible for more than 25 buildings on the Upper East Side, but was dubbed “the father of the modern large apartment here in New York” in 1932’s The Real Estate Record & Guide.

The stunning 16-unit pre-war building is chock-full of modern amenities.

Deemed a “white-glove” property by StreetEasy, the neo-Italianate-style co-op features a fitness center, an elevator with an operator, a full-time doorman, a canopied entrance, a spacious lobby, and a laundry room.

Situated on the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 84th Street, the structure also boasts stunning views of Central Park and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Each apartment is appointed with spacious dimensions, a multitude of rooms, high ceilings, and wood-burning fireplaces.

Considering its tony location and gorgeous trappings, it is not surprising that quite a few celebrities and public figures have called the place home over the years, including Academy-Award-winning producer Wendy Finerman, actor Robert Redford, journalist Diane Sawyer, director Mike Nichols, and CoreComm CEO George S. Blumenthal.

1030 Fifth Avenue pops up twice in Sex and the City 2. It first appears in a beginning scene that shows Carrie leaving her apartment and heading out to meet the girls at Bergdorf Goodman . . .

. . . before transitioning to a flashback of Carrie’s arrival in New York in the ‘80s. As you can see in my photographs as compared to the screen captures above and below, the building’s canopy was swapped out for a striped one during the shoot.

1030 Fifth is featured again a few scenes later when Big and Carrie return home from Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony’s (Mario Cantone) wedding.

In the movie, the building is said to be the same place where the couple purchased a penthouse in the first film. As Carrie narrates, “After Big and I sold the extravagant rooftop penthouse we thought we were meant to live in, we decided that maybe we needed to come a little more down to earth. So we did. Twelve floors to be exact.” In reality, the structure featured in the first flick is located two blocks south at 1010 Fifth Avenue. I blogged about that locale last July. The two sites do bear a striking resemblance to each other, though, as you can see below.

As to why the shift in locales was made from the first to second film, I am uncertain, but producers sure did find an extremely similar replacement.

In Sex and the City 2, Carrie and Big are shown to live in unit 12B.

In reality, the interior of their apartment was just a set built inside of a soundstage at Silvercup Studios in Queens where much of the movie was lensed. You can check out some photographs of what the actual twelfth floor unit, which takes up the entire level, looks like here. The stunning 6-bedroom, 6-bath space is currently for sale for a cool $38 million.

The last time I took a tour of Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, I was thrilled to see Carrie and Big’s “good” couch on display in the Property Department.

And their ottoman . . .

. . . where Carrie is sitting when Big gives her a black diamond wedding ring, which is my favorite scene in the movie. I absolutely love when Carrie says, “It’s gonna be just us two. Are we enough?” And Big responds, “Kid, we’re too much!”

1030 Fifth Avenue also pops up in the 2010 comedy The Good Guy as the building where Tommy Fielding (Scott Porter) lives. (Please pardon the graphics on the images below – I had to snag the captures from the movie’s trailer.)

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Carrie and Big’s apartment from Sex and the City 2 is located at 1030 Fifth Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side.

May 4, 2018
Tom’s Restaurant from “Seinfeld”

Considering it is one of New York’s best-known film locations, you’d think I would have stalked Tom’s Restaurant, aka Monk’s Café from Seinfeld, ages ago. That was not the case, though. While the Morningside Heights eatery had been on my To-Stalk List ever since my first visit to Manhattan back in 2005, due to the fact that it is located all way at 112th and Broadway, it kept getting pushed to the back burner. Then, while doing research prior to my April 2016 trip to the Big Apple, I came across the following passage in the book The Best Things to Do in New York – “As a rule, comfort food gets better the father uptown you go, and the melts, shakes, and fried chicken at Tom’s are close to perfect.” Near-perfect fried chicken? Say no more! I was not going to pass that up! So straight to the top of my To-Stalk List the restaurant went and the Grim Cheaper and I headed right on over there with our friend Lavonna one of our first days in town.

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Tom’s Restaurant was originally founded way back in 1940 by Greece native Tom Glikas.

He didn’t hold onto the place for long, though. A scant six years later, Glikas sold his namesake eatery to the Zoulis family who continue to own and operate it to this day.

Still situated on the same busy corner on which it was originally established, little of the restaurant has changed throughout the course of its almost 80-year history.

The quality Greek and American offerings, massive menu, affordable prices, and late-night hours turned the diner into a neighborhood staple from the get-go and it remains such today, with locals, tourists, and students from nearby Columbia University alike all popping in for superb comfort food, most of it made from scratch.

Even celebrities have been known to drop by. Over the years such luminaries as William Hurt, John McCain, Larry David, Madeleine Albright, Christopher Reeve, Mike Tyson, Richard Dreyfuss, Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello, and Barack Obama have all been seen dining on the premises.

Considering Tom’s long history in New York, it is not surprising that the place found its way onscreen. On Seinfeld, the restaurant popped up pretty much weekly as the regular hangout of Jerry Seinfeld (played by himself), Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), George Costanza (Jason Alexander), and Kramer (Michael Richards). Though it is arguably the show’s most iconic location, its familiar exterior did not make an appearance until the Season 2 premiere titled “The Ex-Girlfriend.”

Prior to that, the outside of the gang’s favorite coffee shop was only featured on one occasion – in the pilot. For that episode, titled “The Seinfeld Chronicles,” a different exterior was utilized. Located at 208 Varick Street in the West Village, the site is currently home to a McDonald’s (pictured below via Google Street View), but it housed an independent diner at the time that the series started filming. Though the signage shown on Seinfeld reads “Pete’s Luncheonette,” I am fairly certain that was not the establishment’s actual name.

The same restaurant was also utilized in the 1984 comedy The Muppets Take Manhattan as the spot where Kermit the Frog lands a day job while trying to get his Manhattan Melodies musical onto Broadway. In looking at the imagery of Pete’s from both productions, I am fairly certain that what was shown in “The Seinfeld Chronicles” was just recycled footage from The Muppets.

Back to Tom’s. As you can see in the screen capture as compared to the photograph below, though some aspects of the eatery’s exterior, including the windows and wood framing, have changed since Seinfeld was shot, the place is still very recognizable from its onscreen stint. The interior is another story, however.

Only the outside of Tom’s Restaurant appeared on Seinfeld. As is the norm with sitcoms, which are shot in front of a live audience, all of the show’s interior filming took place on studio-built sets. In this case, the Monk’s Café scenes were lensed on a soundstage (Stage 19 during Seasons 1-3 and Stage 9 during Seasons 4-9) at CBS Studio Center, located at 4024 Radford Avenue in Studio City.

I got to see portions of the Monk’s set, including a booth and a wall, when I visited the Warner Bros. “Television: Out of the Box” exhibit at The Paley Center for Media in 2012. (Though, considering many of the items on display weren’t exactly authentic, I cannot say with certainty that the artifacts pictured below are indeed legit.)

The actual interior of Tom’s does not resemble the Monk’s set in the slightest, which made seeing the restaurant in person rather jarring.

Though the place does have a counter . . .

. . . and booth seating, it looks nothing like the spot made famous for its big salads.

While not a big restaurant by any means, Tom’s is also significantly larger than Monk’s. Regardless of the disparities, it was still a huge thrill to finally see the site in person.

And I am happy to report that the assertion made in The Best Things to Do in New York was not wrong. While I opted for chicken strips instead of the fried chicken meal (I never pass up chicken strips when I see them on a menu), they were outstanding – as was the ranch dressing they were served with!

For those wondering how the name “Monk’s Café” came to be, per an article Jerry Seinfeld wrote for New York magazine, the moniker was rather uninspired. He says, “We called the coffee shop Monk’s because there was a Thelonious Monk poster in the office where Larry [David] and I were writing, and we just needed a name.”

Tom’s Restaurant also appeared in the Season 3 episode of The Bionic Woman titled “Long Live the King,” which aired in 1978.

Because The Bionic Woman was filmed in Los Angeles, the eatery was only utilized for establishing shots in the episode. The scene taking place inside the restaurant was lensed elsewhere – either at a actual L.A.-area café or a studio-built set.

Italian director Gian Franco Morini made the eatery the subject of his 2014 film, Tom’s Restaurant – A Documentary About Everything.

That same year, Jerry Seinfeld paid homage to his former series by shooting a Season 3 episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee at Tom’s along with fellow alums Jason Alexander and Wayne Knight.

The episode, titled “The Over-Cheer,” finally gave us a shot of George and Jerry sitting inside the actual Tom’s.

Not only is the eatery a filming location, but it also inspired a popular song – Suzanne Vega’s 1987 ditty “Tom’s Diner.” As the singer explained to The Guardian in a 2016 article, “When I was at college in Manhattan in the early 1980s, I used to go to Tom’s Restaurant on 112th and Broadway for coffee. I liked its ordinariness: it was the kind of place you’d find on any corner. One day, I was in there mulling over a conversation I’d had with a photographer friend, Brian Rose, about romantic alienation. He told me he saw his life as if through a pane of glass. I came out of Tom’s with the idea of writing a song about an alienated character who just sees things happening around him. I was walking down Broadway and the melody popped into my head. The line about the actor ‘who had died while he was drinking’ was true: William Holden’s obituary had been in that morning’s paper. The ‘bells of the cathedral’ were those of St. John the Divine up the street, though I made up the bit about the woman ‘fixing her stockings’ and changed ‘restaurant’ to ‘diner’ to make it rhyme.” A fan named David Hammar did a deep dive into figuring out the exact day Vega penned the song (a man after my own heart!) and posted the results of his quest on Suzanne’s official website. Parsing through old newspaper archives and weather reports, Hammar pinpoints the date as November 18th, 1981. Well, sort of. The article makes for a fabulous read. You can check it out here. (For whatever reason, the photo below was not actually taken at Tom’s Restaurant, but at a different establishment.)

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Tom’s Restaurant, aka Monk’s Café from Seinfeld, is located at 2880 Broadway in New York’s Morningside Heights neighborhood. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

May 2, 2018
The Disney Garage

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I am obsessed with all things Disney – especially Disneyland. I can hardly pass by the “Disneyland Drive” sign on the 5 Freeway without feeling a twitch. Not surprisingly, whenever I find myself in Orange County, my only interest is visiting the park and spending every waking moment there. I am definitely a show-up-before-opening-stay-until-closing-and-then-spend-an-extra-hour-on-Main-Street kind of girl. As such I’ve never really ventured out to do much stalking in the area. One local spot I’d been dying to see for ages, though, was the Disney Garage, aka Walt Disney’s very first animation studio which is on permanent display at the Stanley Ranch Museum in Garden Grove about two miles south of the Happiest Place on Earth. I finally got my chance last March thanks to a doctor appointment in the OC that I accompanied my dad to. While there was not enough time during our quick trip to allow for a Disney day, I made sure to schedule a stop at Stanley Ranch and we headed right on over there upon arriving in town.

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I briefly covered the story of the Disney Garage in a May 2014 Scene it Before post for Los Angeles magazine, but a more thorough recap is in order here. Upon returning home to Missouri after serving in World War I, Walt secured a job at the Kansas City Slide Company which produced both live-action and animated film advertisements. The work fascinated the 18-year-old and it wasn’t long before he was creating his own animations using a borrowed camera in his father’s garage. (Garages seem to be a theme in young Walt’s life.) In 1921, Disney partnered with cartoonist Ub Iwerks and under the label Laugh-O-Gram Films started producing shorts including one about a live-action character named Alice who lived in a cartoon world. The company failed after less than two years and in July 1923 Walt headed west to Los Angeles, where he rented a room at $5 a week from his uncle Robert who lived at 4406 Kingswell Avenue in Los Feliz. (That’s Uncle Robert’s house pictured below.) Of the move, he said, “I packed all of my worldly goods – a pair of trousers, a checkered coat, a lot of drawing materials and the last of the fairy-tale reels we had made – in a kind of frayed cardboard suitcase. And with that wonderful audacity of youth I went to Hollywood, arriving there with just 40 dollars.”

After a brief stint trying to break into the production world, Walt returned to his original passion, transforming his uncle’s small detached garage into a make-shift animation studio, which Robert charged him an additional $1 a week to use. Fashioning a cartoon stand out of lumber and plywood boxes, Disney got to work creating cartoon gag reels with the hope that he could sell them to the Pantages Theatre chain to play before movies. You can check out some historic photos of the garage, which was formerly located down the driveway on the home’s east side, here and here.

The Pantages plan was abandoned when producer Margaret Winkler tapped Disney to create more Alice cartoons (which later became known as the Alice Comedies) in October 1923. In conjunction with the deal, Walt partnered with his brother, Roy, and moved his studio out of his uncle’s garage and into the back of a real estate office located down the street at 4651 Kingswell Avenue. By February 1924, the brothers needed more space and secured a lease on the storefront next door at 4649 Kingswell. Today, that spot, which has since been renumbered 4647, houses a print shop named Extra Copy (pictured below). It is the Kingswell building that The Walt Disney Company officially recognizes as Walt’s first studio. He wasn’t there long, though.

A little over a year later, the brothers put down a deposit on some vacant land on Hyperion Avenue in Los Feliz and proceeded to build a small single-story studio which they moved into in January 1926. As the company grew, so did the space. In his book The Art of Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms, Christopher Finch says, “It was constantly being expanded.” (Sadly, that site was torn down in 1966 and a Gelson’s Market currently stands in its place.) The brothers eventually ran out of room to expand any further at that location and switched their sights to Burbank where they purchased 51 acres and began construction on a much larger studio. The company moved to their new digs at 500 South Buena Vista Street about a year later. The Walt Disney Company still calls the site home today. I was lucky enough to tour it in July 2009. The photos below are from that visit.

But back to the garage. In 1981, a foamer named Paul Maher was perusing old photographs of historic sites and came across an image of Uncle Robert’s garage. A stalker at heart, Maher decided he had to see the place in person and headed over to Kingswell Avenue the next morning. What he found shocked him. Not only was the bungalow undergoing a renovation in order to be turned into a rental, but the famous garage was set to be razed. Thankfully, Paul stepped in. He quickly tracked down the residence’s owner who offered to sell him the standalone, single-car structure for $6,400 – if he agreed to also become her new tenant. He moved in shortly thereafter. Maher soon ran into financial problems, though, and had to vacate the premises. He subsequently put the garage up for auction for $10,000, but incredibly there were no takers. As fate would have it, Art Adler, the senior contractor for the purchasing department at Disneyland, happened to be at the auction and couldn’t bear the thought of Walt’s former studio being lost to the ages. He started chatting up other auction-goers asking them to chip in funds to save the structure and quickly had $8,500 in hand thanks to a band of 8 people who were promptly dubbed “Friends of Walt Disney.” The group later grew to 18 members, all of whom worked tirelessly to preserve the garage.

All the Friends of Walt Disney needed now was a place to display the structure. The group contacted several museums, including the Smithsonian Institution and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, but none could guarantee the garage a permanent exhibition space. Art finally approached the Stanley Ranch Museum, run by the Garden Grove Historical Society, and the organization was thrilled to accept the piece.

The historical society quickly got to work in preparing the 12-by-18-foot structure for its new home. A concrete slab was poured, broken slats were replaced, protective weather coating was added, and Disney memorabilia was set up inside. (You can take a peek at the interior here). The restored garage was dedicated on October 20th, 1984.

Even though Walt technically created the first Alice short in his father’s garage and even though The Walt Disney Company doesn’t officially recognize it, Uncle Robert’s garage is though of by most fans as Walt’s first studio. Of the structure’s importance, Adler said, “He may not have done a lot of work here, but this is where he started – and that’s what counts. It is important that this garage be preserved so children can look at the humble beginnings of a man who would later create an empire that brought happiness and joy to children all over the world. It’s a way to tell kids that you can start from nothing and, in a relatively short time, achieve great things.”

In the interest of being thorough – and to provide some armchair tourism for those who can’t make it out to Stanley Ranch Museum themselves – I snapped photos of each of the garage’s four sides. That’s its west side below.

There’s the rear.

And the pics below are the best I could get of the east side.

The Disney Garage is hardly the only historical structure located on the grounds of the Stanley Ranch Museum.

The open air site was originally the family home/ranch of horticulturist Edward G. Ware. In 1970, Ware’s daughter, Lillian Agnes Stanley, donated the two-acre parcel to the Garden Grove Historical Society. The following year, Stanley’s son gifted the group Ware’s original 1892 residence, a barn, a tank house, and his own Craftsman-style pad. And thus, a museum was born.

Since that time several of the area’s most historic homes and structures have been donated and moved to the site. The museum now boasts 17 buildings, including one of the city’s first post offices, originally opened in 1877;

a former Main Street storefront that housed an electric shoe store and a barber shop at various times;

a replica of a firehouse once located on Garden Grove Boulevard;

. . . and many others.

Cloaked in history, Stanley Ranch Museum is a fabulous place for both Disney and non-Disney fans alike to enjoy a sunny Southern California day.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Stanley Ranch Museum, the home of the famous Disney Garage, is located at 12174 Euclid Street in Garden Grove. Tours are offered the first and third Sunday of every month at 1:30 p.m., so plan accordingly. Robert Disney’s house, where the garage was originally located, can be found at 4406 Kingswell Avenue in Los Feliz. Extra Copy, aka Walt Disney’s first official studio, is located just three blocks west at 4647 Kingswell.

April 30, 2018
Saddle Peak Lodge from “Bones”

There is no shortage of historic restaurants in Los Angeles that have appeared onscreen. Despite their abundance, I thought I was well-versed on pretty much all of them. One I went completely unaware of for years, though, was Saddle Peak Lodge in Calabasas. I only learned of the 100-plus-year-old eatery in March 2013 while searching for the general store featured in the Season 2 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Camping Trip.” During my hunt, I came across screen captures of a 1960 Perry Mason episode lensed at Saddle Peak Lodge and the structure shown looked quite a bit like the market I was trying to track down, so I did some further digging. Come to find out, the restaurant was expanded and remodeled significantly in the years following the Perry Mason shoot and most definitely was not the spot I had been searching for, but I was intrigued nonetheless – especially when I found out it had appeared in countless productions. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to see it shortly thereafter. (Though I am happy to report that the location of the 90210 general store was eventually unearthed as 34813 Bouquet Canyon Road in Santa Clarita, the structure was sadly torn down in 2003.)

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Saddle Peak Lodge was originally established as a rustic one-room general store/roadhouse at the turn of the 19th Century. Situated along a well-traveled road in the Santa Monica Mountains, visitors would pop in for a quick bite to eat or to pick up basic sundries while en route to their respective destinations.

Named in honor of a peak located nearby, the small market (which you can see an early photograph of here) stocked little besides sandwiches, drinks and basic goods.

It did not take long for the place to become a popular respite for the Hollywood set thanks to the many movie ranches located nearby. Such stars as Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Milton Berle were all known to pop in when filming in the area. In later years, Richard Burton, Ernest Borgnine, and members of the Rat Pack were frequent guests.

In the 1960s, Saddle Peak Lodge was purchased by Bud and Jean Simmert who transformed the establishment into a larger, more upscale restaurant. It went through further renovations and expansions in 1985 after being acquired by Grand American Fare Inc., the enterprise that also founded the Oar House Bar & Buffalo Chips Restaurant in Santa Monica (which later became O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Restaurant, made famous in The Truth About Cats & Dogs). The company’s owner Al Ehringer was responsible for creating the lodge-inspired aesthetic that still graces the eatery today.

The stone and wood space is both decidedly rustic and elegant at the same time.

And its patio is one of the most gorgeous in all of L.A.

As such, Saddle Peak Lodge has become one of the area’s most popular wedding and event venues.

Owned by Al’s ex-wife Ann Ehringer since 1992, the restaurant boasts countless warm, homey touches that make dining there feel more like being in a friend’s home than a public space.

Antique books . . .

. . . unique lamps . . .

. . . and other curiosities can be found at every turn.

Saddle Peak Lodge, which can host 225 hungry patrons at a time, has won countless accolades and awards over the years including the AAA Four Diamond Award, Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence, and a Michelin star.

And the restaurant is even more popular with celebrities than ever. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted there in recent years include Molly Ringwald, Selena Gomez, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, and Titus Welliver. Bruce Jenner even proposed to Kris Kardashian at Saddle Peak Lodge in 1991.

The hostess that the GC and I encountered upon entering Saddle Peak Lodge could not have been nicer and invited me to take all the photos of the place that I wanted even though we were not dining on the premises. She was also kind enough to fill us in on some of the site’s filming history. I was most excited to hear about the restaurant’s appearance on my grandma’s favorite show, Bones. In the Season 6 episode titled “The Truth in the Myth,” which aired in 2011, the eatery portrays the Pine Tree Manor hotel where Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) investigate the suspicious death of television host Lee Coleman (Leigh McCloskey). Both the exterior . . .

. . . and interior of the restaurant were featured in the episode.

In the 1955 drama The Fast and the Furious, Connie Adair (Dorothy Malone) stops for lunch at Saddle Peak Lodge and winds up getting kidnapped by escaped fugitive Frank Webster (John Ireland).

I am unsure if the interior shown in the movie was Saddle Peak’s actual interior or a set.

As I mentioned earlier, the restaurant was featured in a 1960 episode of Perry Mason. In Season 3’s “The Case of the Prudent Prosecutor,” Jefferson Pike (J. Pat O’Malley) fakes being shot outside of Saddle Peak Lodge.

Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland) and his family stop at Saddle Peak to use the phone and grab some provisions after learning that the city of Los Angeles has been destroyed in a nuclear attack in the 1962 thriller Panic in Year Zero!

As was the case with The Fast and the Furious, I am unsure if the interior shown onscreen was the restaurant’s actual interior or a set.

In the Season 6 episode of Dynasty titled “The Decision,” which aired in 1985, Miles Colby (Maxwell Caulfield) dines with Fallon Carrington Colby (Emma Samms) at Saddle Peak Lodge.

Thanks to fellow stalker Colette, I learned that Saddle Peak Lodge masked as Sable Mountain Ski Resort, where Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) found herself snowed in with an Olympic ski team in the Season 5 episode of Murder, She Wrote titled “Snow White, Blood Red,” which aired in 1988.

Larry David (playing himself) discusses basketball with friends over dinner at Saddle Creek in the Season 2 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm titled “Shaq,” which aired in 2001.

In the Season 3 episode of Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica titled “Newlyweds Two Year Anniversary,” which aired in 2005, Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson celebrate their anniversary at Saddle Creek Lodge.

Saddle Peak pops up in the “Dinner with Rush” segment of the 2010 documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, which you can watch here.

In the Season 4 episodes of Awkward. titled “Snow Job: Part 1” and “Snow Job: Part 2″,” which aired in 2014, the restaurant portrays the hotel where the Palos Hills High School gang stays while on the senior ski trip.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Saddle Peak Lodge, from “The Truth in the Myth” episode of Bones, is located at 419 Cold Canyon Road in Calabasas. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

April 25, 2018
Moorten Botanical Garden

If you follow any lifestyle, fashion or beauty blogger, chances are you’ve seen some variation of the photo above. For those who don’t keep up with influencers, the image is of the cactarium – aka cacti terrarium – at Moorten Botanical Garden in Palm Springs. The structure has been documented on social media so frequently as of late that The Telegraph recently dubbed it “the most Instagrammed greenhouse in the world.” I first learned about the garden in December 2015 while reading this article about the desert in Sunset magazine. In the days that followed, I spotted pictures of the place pop up in the IG feeds of no less than three bloggers I follow. Moorten it seemed was everywhere! Considering I had called the Coachella Valley home for three years by that point, I thought it was a bit sacrilegious that I had never seen the idyll in person myself. So I promptly dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there a few weeks later – and was thrilled to learn upon doing so that the site is a filming location!

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Moorten Botanical Garden was established by railroad-worker-turned-actor Chester Moorten, who was best known for appearing in the Keystone Cops silent films. Upon being diagnosed with Tuberculosis in the ‘30s, Chester left Los Angeles and headed east to Palm Springs with the hope that the desert air would provide him some relief. A longtime green thumb, Moorten started cultivating and selling cacti and other desert foliage at a downtown Palm Springs shop/nursery that he opened in 1938 and quickly earned himself the nickname “Cactus Slim.” Everyone from area locals to the actor’s celebrity friends were customers.

In 1940, Moorten married botanist Patricia Haliday. Together the couple expanded Chester’s business to include landscape design and were soon hired by such luminaries as Walt Disney, Red Skelton, Jimmy Van Heusen, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Lily Pons to create backyards at their desert homes. Walt even tapped the duo to curate the foliage for Frontierland at his soon-to-be-built Disneyland Resort.

The couple also expanded their nursery into a cactus museum of sorts, using it as a showcase for their growing landscape business.

Cultivated from plants gathered during the couple’s many world travels, the site soon evolved into an area attraction.

In its early days, such luminaries as Dwight Eisenhower, Mamie Eisenhower, and Ginger Rogers were all known to pop in.

In 1955, Chester and Patricia moved the garden to its current home, a 1.5-acre plot of land at 1701 South Palm Canyon Drive complete with a sprawling Mediterranean-style estate that became their residence.

Dubbed “Cactus Castle,” the 1929 dwelling was originally commissioned by nature photographer Stephen Willard and his wife, Beatrice, who lived on the premises until 1947.

When Slim passed away in 1980, Patricia continued to live at the estate, but handed over the daily operation of the garden to the couple’s son, Clark, who shared his parents’ deep love of horticulture.

Clark then moved into Cactus Castle with his family upon Patricia’s passing in 2010. He continues to run the garden to this day, carrying on his parents’ legacy with gusto.

Currently, Moorten Botanical Garden, which is also known as Desertland, is comprised of 3,000 different varieties of plants organized into 9 geographical regions including California, Texas, Arizona, Baja California, Colorado, the Mojave Desert, the Sonoran Desert, South Africa, and South America.

Woven landscapes greet visitors at every turn . . .

. . . as do unique relics like the loveseat created from a cedar burl pictured below . . .

. . . and vegetative curiosities such as the extraordinary S-shaped tree situated just outside of Cactus Castle’s front door, which was moved to the garden from Palm Canyon after being struck by lightning.

The bolt caused the tree to burn and collapse to the side, but it survived and continued to grow in a curved position.

The Moortens propped it up on rocks after re-locating it and subsequently created a waterfall underneath (which was not turned on the day we were there).

Moorten Botanical Garden also boasts an array of crystals, rocks, fossils, antique mining tools, a gift shop/nursery, and a menagerie of desert animals.

Its biggest draw, though, is the cactarium. An invention of Chester’s, the shutter-worthy structure was erected one day when Patricia happened to be out of town.

As Clark explained to The Telegraph, “Originally the cactarium had a wooden frame, and it was covered with double thickness window screen for shade. My father wanted a more greenhouse-type of structure, so he bent all the pipes while mother was away for a week in around 1976 or 1977.” Patricia was reportedly not at all happy with the result. Little did she know the rounded shed would become one of the desert’s biggest draws some forty years later. Though not much to look at from the outside . . .

. . . the cactarium’s interior is pretty spectacular.

Filled with rare specimens of plants . . .

. . . the structure is literally dripping with greenery.

Looking around Moorten Botanical Garden, it is not hard to see why so many are enchanted with the place and how Instagram has served to make it even more popular.

The site is just that picturesque.

True to form, I ran into a popular blogger, iPhone camera in hand and photographer husband trailing closely behind, while I was there.

Moorten Botanical Garden is not just an Instagram star, though. The site has also popped up a couple of times onscreen.

Back in 1995, the garden was featured in the 18th episode of the 6th season of Rescue 911 in the segment titled “Chance Encounter,” which covers the true tale of two young hikers both named Jennifer who were rescued after falling off a cliff in Palm Springs in 1994. At the end of the bit, the real life Jennifers stroll through Moorten with their rescuers. You can watch the segment here.

In the Season 13 episode of Visiting . . . with Huell Howser titled “Moorten Botanical Garden,” which aired in 2005, the convivial host visits the site and conducts an extensive interview with Clark. You can watch the full episode here.

Moorten also makes an appearance in the 2017 horror film Valentine DayZ in a scene that is featured in the trailer, which is where the stills below came from. I couldn’t actually find the flick available to stream anywhere, which the GC said is incredibly telling.

If you happen to find yourself in the desert, I highly recommend a visit to Moorten Botanical Garden.

The site can easily be traversed in about an hour and admittance is only $5.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Moorten Botanical Garden is located at 1701 South Palm Canyon Drive in The Mesa neighborhood of Palm Springs. You can visit the garden’s official website here.

April 20, 2018
The Three Clubs from “Swingers”

Besides a great coffee shop, there’s pretty much nothing I love more than an unpretentious bar/restaurant that boasts a retro vibe (as evidenced here, here, here, here, here, and here). Add in a filming location element and I am completely smitten! One that had been on my To-Stalk List for what seemed like eons was The Three Clubs in Hollywood, an onscreen maven most famous for its appearance in the 1996 indie hit Swingers. For whatever reason, though, I kept failing to make it over there – until August 2016, that is, when a good friend who worked on the premises hooked me up with a private tour of the place. I was immediately taken with the bar’s ‘50s aura. Walking inside feels like stepping into a Mad Men episode! Somehow, I never got around to blogging about it, though, which I did not realize until going through my Lightroom library the other day. So I figured it was high time I do so.

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The Three Clubs is a longtime stalwart in the Hollywood bar scene. Established by nightclub impresarios Marc Smith and Matthew Webb on December 27th, 1991 in a former strip mall dive bar near the corner of Santa Monica and Vine, the watering hole has been going strong for more than two and a half decades!

The interior, designed by Marc himself, is largely influenced by Sin City, the Golden Age of Hollywood, and Ol’ Blue Eyes. As Smith told LAist in a 2017 article, “We liked Vegas, we were very into Frank Sinatra. I have to thank the Rat Pack crew for being very pivotal in that world. I had a ’66 T-bird, a ’66 Triumph. We just wanted old things. It was kind of old Hollywood.” With décor elements including tucked-away leather banquettes, wooden wainscoting, and a rock-encrusted doorway, the retro aesthetic is undeniable. The Three Clubs is comprised of two very distinct rooms – the main area, dubbed “the Lounge” (pictured below), is an intimate, low-lit space featuring a large mahogany and leather bar, a black sparkly ceiling, and what the watering hole’s official website calls “casino-style carpeting.”

The Back Bar (pictured below) is a more open space with a small wooden bar, a central stage, raised seating areas, and a disco ball.

Even the cocktail menu was retro-inspired, long before drinking vespers, old fashioneds, and Manhattans was considered cool. As Smith was quoted telling LAist, “I remember talking to a magazine writer about [serving martinis at my lounge] and she was like, ‘What do you mean? That sounds really boring, like [a place] my parents went to. Are you sure?’” The novel concept took, though, and crowds were soon flocking to the place.

The Three Clubs became a celebrity draw from the get-go, as well. Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn were regulars during its early days – which is how the taproom wound up being featured in Swingers – and are still known to pop in today. Renee Zellweger worked for a time as a bar-back there. And Quentin Tarantino, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise, Emily Osment, Steven Spielberg, Jay Leno, and Billy Idol have also all been spotted on the premises.

The Three Clubs actually pops up twice, portraying two different spots, in Swingers. Toward the beginning of the movie, the Back Bar masks as the Bamboo Lounge, the tiki-themed watering hole said to be located inside the Stardust Resort and Casino where Mike (Favreau) and Trent (Vaughn) meet up with Lisa (Katherine Kendall) and Christy (Deena Martin) after a night of gambling in Las Vegas. The space looks quite a bit different in the scene than it does in real life thanks to a large amount of Hawaiian-themed set dressing that was brought in for the shoot.

Later in the film, the Lounge appears as the bustling interior of The Room, where Mike, Rob (Ron Livingston), and Charles (Alex Désert) assemble before heading to a party in the hills.

Swingers is hardly the only production to have utilized The Three Clubs over the years.

In the Season 2 finale of Mad Men titled “Meditations in an Emergency,” which aired in 2008, a newly pregnant Betty Draper (January Jones) heads to The Three Clubs after doing some shopping and winds up having a tryst with a stranger in the bar’s back office.

Andy (Josh Cooke) pops into The Three Clubs where he meets singer Vanessa (Odette Annable) at the beginning of the 2010 comedy Group Sex.

Val (Al Pacino) and Doc (Christopher Walken) grab drinks at The Three Clubs in 2012’s Stand Up Guys.

In the Season 6 episode of Castle titled “For Better or Worse,” which aired in 2014, The Three Clubs portrays two spots. The Lounge first pops up as Tildy’s Tavern where Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) goes looking for her college love, Rogan O’Leary (Eddie McClintock), and gets him to sign divorce papers.

The Back Bar later plays the Roadhouse strip club where Kate and Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) track down a stripper named Sapphire (Sarah Karges). Both spaces were dressed heavily for the shoot and are therefore not very recognizable from their appearances in the episode.

Frankie Valli (John Lloyd Young) and Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) are interviewed by Lorraine (Erica Piccininni) at The Three Clubs in the 2014 biopic Jersey Boys.

The bar also supposedly pops up in Parks and Recreation, How to Get Away with Murder, Angie Tribeca, FlashForward, and Private Practice, but I am unsure of which episodes in particular. If anyone happens to know, please fill me in.

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 Three Clubs, from Swingers, is located at 1123 Vine Street in Hollywood. You can visit the bar’s official website here. The watering hole is open from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. daily.

April 18, 2018
“Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare” Giveaway!

Truth or Dare, the latest horror flick from Blumhouse Productions, was released this past Friday and I, for one, could not be more excited! Not only does the film star Pretty Little Liars’ Lucy Hale, but it was filmed exclusively in Los Angeles! So be prepared for some Truth or Dare locations to be coming your way this October! I am even more excited to be hosting a special giveaway in honor of the movie’s release in which one lucky reader will win a fabulous prize package! So grab a friend and take the Truth or Dare challenge to see who survives.

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First up, test your skills on the Truth or Dare Challenge Blog App by clicking below! The game requires two players. Complete the Truth or Dare challenge before time runs out – or pass . . . if you dare! The player who completes the most challenges in the shortest amount of time wins!

Then enter to win the fabulous Truth or Dare Night Pack which includes:

1 – Limited Edition Truth or Dare Card Game: This limited edition Truth or Dare Game is only available via this promotion and has a run of 200 pieces worldwide. It has a card deck featuring dares and the creepy crawly items you need to satisfy the dares in the deck. Test your resolve… The truth will set you free!

1 – Truth or Dare Official Promo Tank – Show off the goods with this Truth or Dare Official Tank. Once you play the card game, the winner will get this tank to show off to all their friends!

The game seriously sounds so fun (I mean, the dares involve eating insects – which are included!) that I considered keeping it for myself.

Entering is simple – just follow me on Twitter by clicking below for a chance to win. If you already follow me on Twitter, you still have to click below to enter. Send out a tweet about the contest through the link below for bonus entries! The winner will be announced on April 22nd!

Play the game . . . if you dare!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

April 17, 2018