Sex and the City Filming Locations – Page 2

July 31, 2017August 1, 2017

Carrie and Big’s Penthouse from the “Sex and the City” Movie

I know I am in the minority when I say that I like the 2008 Sex and the City movie. Was it the greatest flick ever? No. But I did enjoy it. Seeing it was like being with old friends again, friends I’d missed ever since the HBO television series went off the air in early 2004. The more I watch it, the more it grows on me. Though, again, I know I am in the minority. One aspect of the movie that audiences did pretty much unanimously adore was the exquisite penthouse apartment that Mr. Big (Chris Noth) purchased for longtime girlfriend Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). So last April, while visiting New York, I, of course, was all about stalking the Ziegler House, which was used for interior shots of the penthouse. And, oh, what an interior it was!

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Before I get to the Ziegler House, though, I thought I should mention 1010 Fifth Avenue, the Upper East Side building that served as the exterior of Carrie and Big’s penthouse. I covered the property in a brief post back in 2008, but, in the interest of being thorough, figured it would be appropriate to detail it once again here.

The 15-story prewar building was designed by real estate developer Frederick Fillmore French in 1928.

The Italian Renaissance-style property, which was converted to a co-op in 1979, looks much the same in person as it did onscreen.

Located across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the tony site is just the type of place I’d picture Mr. Big calling home. You can check out what a unit in the building looks like here.

1010 Fifth Avenue is also where Chuck Rhoades, Sr. (Jeffrey DeMunn) lives on the Showtime series Billions, though, as you can see below, the address is changed to “10101 Fifth Avenue” for filming.

Now back to the penthouse interior! As soon as Carrie and Big step over the threshold of 1010 Fifth, they are standing in the Ziegler House, located about 20 blocks south at 2 East 63rd Street. I first learned of the locale thanks to a reader named Allie, who wrote a comment on my 2008 post tipping me off about where the inside shots were lensed.

The historic residence was originally built in 1921 for William Ziegler, Jr., heir to the Royal Baking Powder Company fortune.

Designed by architect Frederick Sterner, the ornate 4-story, 75-foot wide pad is laid out with all of the rooms surrounding a central brick courtyard with a fountain. Along with said courtyard, the property boasts a grand entrance hall, two rear gardens, a library, a 25-foot by 40-foot living room, a formal dining room, a servants’ dining room, a massive kitchen that almost looks to be commercial-grade, two master suites (each with its own dressing room), and fireplaces galore. You can see some interior photos of the place here.

For whatever reason, Ziegler and his then wife, Gladys, only lived in the home for a year before moving out and putting it up for sale in 1925. The dwelling finally sold in 1929 to Norman Bailey Woolworth, of Woolworth five-and-dime fame. He owned the property for the next two decades before donating it to The New York Academy of Sciences, a scientific society that was originally founded in 1817.

NYAS put the house on the market in 2001 and it sold four years later to billionaire financier Leonard Blavatnik for $31.25 million. Blavatnik never moved in, though. Instead, the site, which today goes by the name “Academy Mansion,” is mainly used as a special events venue and for filming. While I really wish I could have taken a peek at the property’s stunning interior, I have to admit that the exterior is nothing to shake a stick at.

Seriously, the photo below looks like a postcard!

The Ziegler House popped up twice in Sex and the City. It first appeared in the beginning of the movie in the scene in which Carrie and Big go apartment-hunting with their real estate agent at 1010 Fifth. Sadly, the wrought iron and glass doors that Carrie and Big walk through in the scene cannot be seen from outside. You can check out a photo of them here, though.

The doors are actually located inside the home, behind the massive wooden entry doors pictured below.

In the scene, the Ziegler House’s palatial entrance hall masked as the lobby of 1010 Fifth. You can see a photo of what the entry hall looks like in real life here.

The elevator situated at the rear of the lobby was faked for the movie. In actuality, there is a doorway located in that area, as you can see here and here.

That doorway leads to the Ziegler House’s stunning living room, which actually looks more like a grand ballroom. It is that room that Carrie first sees upon entering the penthouse, causing her to exclaim, “Oh my God, I have died and gone to real estate heaven!” You can check out some pictures of the living room here, here, and here.

Carrie is next shown the penthouse’s rooftop terrace. In actuality, that space is the Ziegler House’s central courtyard and it is located on the ground floor of the property, not on the roof. You can see an image of it here.

The penthouse’s master bedroom was just a set built on a soundstage at Silvercup Studios in Queens, where much of the movie – and the television series – was lensed. You can check out images of the real Ziegler House bedrooms here, here, here, and here.

The Ziegler House was also utilized in the scene at the end of the movie in which Carrie returns to the penthouse to retrieve her never-been-worn $525 Manolos.

Though Carrie and Big have sold the penthouse by that point and broken up, when she sees him standing in the closet he built for her, all is forgiven, the two embrace, and Big gets down on one knee to propose. Heartbreakingly, Carrie’s spectacular custom closet was just a set. You can see what the Ziegler House’s dressing rooms look like here, here, and here. They’re not too shabby, either!

On a side-note – I actually have a version of the Timmy Woods Eiffel Tower purse that Carrie, ahem, carried in the scene in which she and Big first toured the penthouse! A dear and incredibly thoughtful friend named Marie gifted it to me for my birthday last year. I didn’t have it at the time I stalked the Ziegler House, sadly, otherwise I so would have posed with it outside! Winking smile

The Ziegler House has been utilized in a couple of other productions besides Sex and the City. In the Season 2 episode of White Collar titled “Point Blank,” which aired in 2010, the property masqueraded as the Russian Heritage Museum.

For the shoot, the Ziegler House’s living room, aka Carrie’s piece of real estate heaven, was dressed as a gallery and looked considerably different than it did in SATC.

“Point Blank” also gave us a great view of the property’s terrace.

In the Season 2 episode of Person of Interest titled “Masquerade,” which aired in 2012, the Ziegler House portrayed New York’s Brazilian Consulate.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The exterior of Carrie and Big’s penthouse from the Sex and the City movie is located at 1010 Fifth Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side. The film featured the building’s canopied main entrance, which can be found around the corner on East 82nd Street. The interior of Carrie and Big’s penthouse, aka the Ziegler House, aka Academy Mansion, is located at 2 East 63rd Street, also on New York’s Upper East Side.

May 10, 2017May 9, 2017

Soup Burg from “Sex and the City”

I am the first to admit that I get fixated on the most random things. A few years back, I became obsessed with identifying the diner featured at the very end of the Season 1 episode of Sex and the City titled “Models and Mortals.” Though the eatery only appeared briefly, I was consumed with tracking it down. What can I say? I love a good diner. It took some legwork to find the place, but find it, I did. Sadly, by that time, Soup Burg, at 922 Madison Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side, had long since closed its doors. So while I never got the chance to eat there, I still ran right out to stalk its former location during my trip to the Big Apple last April.

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In “Models and Mortals,” Mr. Big (Chris Noth) and Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) run into each other at a fashion show after-party and strike up a conversation, during which he asks her where she writes her “cute” weekly newspaper column. She responds, “Well, about half the time, I’m at my apartment and the other half I’m over at this coffee shop on 73rd and Madison.” Flash forward to the episode’s final scene. Big surprises Carrie by randomly showing up at said coffee shop, where they discuss men who date models. During their brief conversation (he’s late for a meeting, you see), he informs her, “First of all, well, there are so many goddamn gorgeous women out there in this city. But the thing is this – after a while, you just want to be with the one that makes you laugh.” For those not well-versed in all things Sex and the City, Big is speaking about Carrie. The two get together just a few episodes later.

While scrutinizing “Models and Mortals” for clues as to the coffee shop’s whereabouts, I noticed that a sign reading “Soup Burg” was very briefly visible behind Mr. Big when he first sat down . . .

. . . as well as on the door when he left the restaurant.

So I headed to Google and quickly came across a Yelp page for a defunct eatery by that name which stated its former address as 1095 Lexington Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side. Eureka, right? Wrong. It was not long before I figured out that while Soup Burg was a longtime UES staple dating back to the ‘40s, during its heyday the restaurant actually boasted three outposts, none of which was still in operation. The Lex Ave location did not open until 2004 and the third iteration at 1026 1st Avenue was also established around that same time. Since “Models and Mortals” was lensed in 1998, I knew the episode could not have been shot at either of those two spots. Filming had to have occurred at the original Soup Burg. So back to the drawing board I went. Another Google search led me to this 2014 The New York Times article which noted that the restaurant’s inaugural site was on the corner of East 73rd Street and Madison Avenue – exactly where Carrie had said it was in the episode! D’oh! The article also mentioned that the space was now home to a cashmere shop. From there it was easy to pinpoint the eatery’s exact former address of 922 Madison.

Soup Burg was originally established at the Madison Avenue site way back in 1948. I am unaware of who initially founded it, but in 1964, the café was purchased by Greek native Peter Gouvakis, who had worked on the premises since 1958. Soup Burg thrived under Gouvakis’ tutelage, becoming a veritable New York institution.

During the 1970s, Peter’s son Jimmy started working at Soup Burg, eventually taking it over, along with his brother, John, and their brother-in-law, Timmy Vlachos. The trio further grew the business and perfected the recipes. Soup Burg became known citywide for its burgers, which Time Out NY rated as the third best burgers in all of Manhattan in 2004. Though the two sister cafes were opened, the Madison Avenue location remained the best-loved. Of the site, New York magazine had this to say, “There are a few places on the East Side with this name, each as small as your first – or current – apartment, each looking like it was built in two days, each routinely buffed to a high Formica shine, and each with a menu big enough to daunt the banquet kitchen at the Marriott Marquis. Ignore all of them but the one at this address.”

In July 2006, Jimmy was informed that the rent on the Madison Avenue site was increasing from $21,000 a month to $65,000. Sadly, Gouvakis could not afford the increase and the restaurant (which, by that time, had been operating in the same space for 58 years!) shuttered later that month. By November, the upscale Manrico Cashmere boutique had moved in. You can see what the Madison Avenue Soup Burg looked like while it was still in operation here, here, here, and here. And you can read two great articles on its closing on the Doktor Weingolb blog here and here.

By that time, the 1st Avenue location had also closed its doors. And though the Lexington Avenue outpost remained open and extremely popular with New Yorkers as one of the only spots in the neighborhood to get a decent, affordable meal, it, too, faced a rent hike in 2014 and shuttered in June of that year. The increase was a pretty dumb move on the landlord’s part if you ask me, being that, per Google Street View, the space is currently vacant and does not look to have ever been occupied since Soup Burg moved out.

Many mourned the loss of the last operating Soup Burg. The New York Times journalist Anne Barnard had this to say about the closure, “The Soup Burg is – was – the archetype of what in today’s homogenized, all-American city is usually called a diner. Premillennial, pre-Starbucks New Yorkers would call it a coffee shop. Not the kind where you get a latte, though that item was grudgingly added to the menu. The kind where you get a burger bigger than its bun, or home fries with sweet peppers and onions, or a chicken orzo soup with saltines. Where you can sit down and eat for $10, with a bottomless, not distractingly good $1.50 coffee, and where they know your face, your order and sometimes even your name.”

I’m really sad I never got the chance to dine at any of the Soup Burg restaurants, but at least the original is forever immortalized onscreen thanks to Sex and the City.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Soup Burg, from the “Models and Mortals” episode of Sex and the City, was formerly located at 922 Madison Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side. The space currently houses Manrico Cashmere. Via Quadronno, one of my very favorite Big Apple eateries, is located right around the corner at 25 East 73rd Street. It also appeared in “Models and Mortals.” You can read my post on the restaurant here.

March 8, 2017March 7, 2017

Strand Book Store from “Sex and the City”

I have made no secret of my love for bookstores on this blog, especially in recent weeks (as evidenced here and here). I literally cannot get enough of them! So when I spotted a book boutique pop up in the Season 2 episode of Sex and the City titled “The Freak Show,” which I was re-watching shortly before my trip to New York last April, I knew I had to track it down and stalk it. Come to find out, the place is one of NYC’s most famous and historic book sellers!

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Thankfully, the locale was not very hard to identify. While scrutinizing “The Freak Show,” I spotted a red oval-shaped logo situated next to Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) with the word “Strand” centered in it and recognition immediately clicked. I had come across mentions of Strand Book Store, or “the Strand” as it is more commonly known, countless times over the years while researching interesting spots to check out in the Big Apple. Touted as one of NYC’s oldest and largest book shops, the place intrigued me and its name stayed lodged in my brain, but somehow I never made it a point to see it in person during any of my trips back east. So I decided to remedy that and put the site at the very top of April’s New York To-Stalk List.

Originally established in 1927, Strand Book Store was the brainchild of 25-year-old bibliophile Benjamin Brass. The shop was initially located on Fourth Avenue’s Book Row, a six-block area in Greenwich Village comprised of no less than 48 book sellers. Brass dubbed his emporium, which back then sold only used tomes, in honor of the famed Strand street in London where countless notable writers, including Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Virginia Woolf, have lived over the years.

In 1956, Benjamin’s son, Fred, took over management of the Strand and moved it to its current home on the corner of Broadway and East 12th Street the following year. Though Book Row and the 47 other boutiques once located there are no longer in existence, the Strand managed to not only survive throughout the years, but thrive.

Fred eventually purchased the building housing the store and expanded his retail space. Today, the Strand encompasses three and a half levels comprised of more than 2.5 million new and used titles – or as the Strand’s tag line states, “18 miles of books.” The boutique, which is now co-run by Fred and his daughter Nancy and tended to by 240 employees, also stocks gifts, cards, and various other sundries.

Unfortunately, the employee that I spoke with told me no photos were allowed inside the store, so I was only able to snap pics of the exterior.

In “The Freak Show” episode of Sex and the City, which aired in 1999, Carrie dates a succession of men who all turn out to have freakish habits. The segment shot at the Strand involved a broker named Max (Thomas Pescod) who, as Carrie learns, has a penchant for pilfering books. The brief scene took place outside of the store among the bargain dollar carts stationed on Broadway.

Sex and the City is hardly the only production that has been lensed at the Strand. In the 1993 drama Six Degrees of Separation, Ouisa (Stockard Channing) visits the bookstore with some friends to look for a copy of Sidney Poitier’s biography in order to see if her houseguest, Paul (Will Smith), is lying about being his son.

It is at the Strand that Julie Powell (Amy Adams) laments the unfavorable New York magazine article written about her to her friend Sarah (Mary Lynn Rajskub) in the 2010 biopic Julie & Julia.

Tyler Hawkins (Robert Pattinson) works at Strand Book Store in the 2010 drama Remember Me.

While the exterior of the Strand was featured briefly in the 2014 comedy They Came Together . . .

. . . interior filming took place at Community Bookstore, located at 143 Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn.

In the Season 1 episode of Master of None titled “Finale,” which aired in 2015, Dev (Aziz Ansari) contemplates his life choices while reading The Bell Jar at the Strand.

That same year, Bryan Robbins (Josh Helman) popped into Strand Book Store while looking for his sister, Claire (Sarah Hay), in the Season 1 episode of Flesh and Bone titled “Reconnaissance.”

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Strand Book Store, from “The Freak Show” episode of Sex and the City, is located at 828 Broadway in New York’s Greenwich Village. You can visit the shop’s official website here.

August 19, 2016August 27, 2018

The Rum House from “Birdman”

The Grim Cheaper typically could care less about filming locations, but he is absolutely obsessed with the movie The Godfather. So I included a couple of locales from the 1972 Best Picture winner on the itinerary for our recent trip to the Big Apple. One of those spots was Hotel Edison, a historic Theater District lodging that made a brief appearance in the flick. While we were stalking the place, we happened to strike up a conversation with the super-friendly doorman who informed us that the property’s first-floor bar, The Rum House, had been featured in another Best Picture winner, 2014’s Birdman. So we headed right on in to snap some photos of it. As I’ve said many times before, stalking begets stalking.

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Commissioned by Milton J. Kramer, the 26-story Hotel Edison was originally designed by Herbert J. Knapp in 1931. Thomas Edison was enlisted to turn on the property’s lights (albeit via a remote control from his home in New Jersey) during the grand opening ceremony.

Despite a few renovations that have taken place over the years, the hotel still appears to boast much of its original Art Deco detailing. You can check out a postcard with vintage images of the property here.

At the time of its founding, Hotel Edison featured three onsite restaurants. Today, there is only one eatery/bar in operation on the premises – The Rum House.

The Rum House was originally established in 1973. By the time its owners lost their lease in 2009, the place was in desperate need of a facelift.

Thankfully, a group of restaurateurs including Kenneth McCoy, Michael Neff, and Abdul Tabini took over the space in 2011 and began a renovation. The threesome kept much of the watering hole’s original charm intact, while adding some updates, including a new bar, lighting, and tile flooring. Of the redesign, McCoy stated in a 2015 New York Post article, “We wanted to bring back the feeling of a Times Square piano bar in the 1940s or ’50s.” You can see what it formerly looked like here.

The renovated lounge quickly became a hit with New Yorkers, tourists, and celebrities alike. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted there include Tony Danza, George Wendt, Jake Gyllenhaal, Molly Ringwald, and Jon Hamm. Emma Stone and Bill Murray even tickled the ivories there together one night in 2014.

The Rum House appeared twice in Birdman. It first popped up in the scene in which Mike (Edward Norton) and Riggan (Michael Keaton) discussed their bad preview.

The exterior of The Rum House was also featured in that scene. Through a bit of camera trickery, the bar was made to appear as if it is situated next door to the St. James Theatre, where much of the film took place. In reality, though, it is located three blocks to the north.

Riggan returns to The Rum House to grab a drink in a later scene and winds up confronting theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan).

According to the Post article, location manager Joaquin Prange chose The Rum House, which shut down for a week to accommodate the shoot, because of its old school aesthetic. He says, “The place needed to fit with Michael Keaton’s character. He’s a recovering alcoholic. Just the fact that he’s taking a drink is a big deal, and the look of the place needed to reflect that. Rum House is dark and woody, with a bit of a patina, like the kind of place where Riggan Thomson would go for a drink by himself. This is not about drinking during the good times, but we also wanted a bar that looked classy, a place that could make you a good cocktail. It was not about finding a dive.” The cast and crew wound up liking The Rum House so much that an impromptu wrap party was held there the last night of filming shortly after the final scene was lensed.

As I mentioned earlier, Hotel Edison appeared briefly in The Godfather. It popped up at the beginning of the scene in which Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana) headed to meet with Sollozzo (Al Lettieri). In the segment, Brasi is shown walking through the Edison’s rear hallway, which can be reached via 46th Street. (Sadly, that area of the hotel was closed for renovations when we were there so I could not photograph it.) When Brasi turned the corner to head into the restaurant where he ultimately met his end, though, he was at a different location entirely – a much disputed location. While it has been reported in several books and online that Sollozzo killed Brasi in Hotel Edison’s now shuttered Sofia Ristorante Italiano, according to Scouting NY the scene was actually shot at the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn.

The same Hotel Edison hallway appeared in 1994’s Bullets over Broadway as the spot where David Shayne (John Cusack) argued with Julian Marx (Jack Warden) about hiring Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly) for a role in his play.

I was floored to discover while researching Hotel Edison for this post that the site’s now shuttered Café Edison was used in an episode of Sex and the City! In Season 5’s “Anchors Away,” Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) seeks shelter from the rain – and a bowl of matzo ball soup – at the eatery and winds up being seated next to a woman who has a penchant for lithium-laced ice cream. Café Edison was a longtime Theater District staple that served meals onsite from 1980 through 2014 when its owners, unfortunately, lost their lease. The space currently remains shuttered. You can see some photos of what it used to look like here.

The hotel’s Edison Ballroom also made an appearance in “Anchors Away” as the spot where Carrie and her friends party with the plethora of sailors in town for Fleet Week. At the time, the space was known as Supper Club and, though it looks a bit different today, it is still recognizable from its SATC cameo. You can check out some photos of what it currently looks like here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Rum House, from Birdman, is located at 228 West 47th Street, inside of Hotel Edison, in New York’s Theater District. You can visit the watering hole’s official website here.

August 1, 2016July 29, 2016

The “Sex and the City” Starbucks

One of the best things about starting this blog is the people it has put me in contact with – a myriad of fabulous individuals who share my unique affection for filming locations. One such fellow stalker, a New Yorker named Gary, has gifted me with countless Big Apple locales since we first started exchanging emails way back in 2010. Most of Gary’s knowledge comes from driving a cab for three years. The job took him all over NYC, made him familiar with its nooks and crannies, and he now knows the city like the back of his hand. He has also come across quite a few filmings during his tenure in New York and, thanks to his hawk-like memory, can recall where each took place. One such filming was of a Sex and the City episode that Gary witnessed being shot at the Starbucks at 16th Street and Eighth Avenue. Well believe you me, when I read the words “Sex and the City” and “Starbucks,” I practically came unglued and added the locale to my NYC To-Stalk list. And while Gary could not remember which episode the scene appeared in, it did not take me long to figure it out.

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In Season 4’s “The Good Fight,” Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) heads to the Eighth Avenue Starbucks for some respite after getting into a huge fight with then fiancé Aidan Shaw (John Corbett) over the lack of space in their newly shared apartment. (You can watch that fight here.) While there, she says, “I used to think those people who sat alone at Starbucks writing on their laptops were pretentious posers. Now I know – they’re people who have recently moved in with someone. As I looked around, I wondered how many of them were mid-fight, like myself. The hard thing about fighting in relationships as opposed to Madison Square Garden? No referee. There’s no one to tell you which comments are below the belt or when to go to your separate corners. As a result, someone usually gets hurt. And it seems the closer a couple gets and the more stuff they have between them, the harder it is to figure out exactly why they’re yelling. When it comes to relationships, I couldn’t help but wonder, what are we fighting for?” Despite the fact that I have re-watched the entire Sex and the City series a copious amount of times, I often forget how ingenious the writing is. When the Grim Cheaper and I first moved in together, we had Aidan and Carrie’s exact same fight. In preparation for our move – and the tiny closet at our new apartment – I had thrown out countless outfits that I loved. So when the GC showed up with six (six!) medium-sized boxes filled solely with white undershirts, I practically had a meltdown. Thankfully, we survived our tiff (after five of those boxes of undershirts were thrown out, of course), but Carrie and Aiden did not. They broke up just two episodes later.

Most of the Starbucks scene was shot looking in through the property’s south window.

Though the café’s exterior remains unchanged from its onscreen appearance in 2002, I somehow failed to snap a photograph of the correct window.

You can check out Google Street View images of it below, though.

While very little of the Starbucks interior was shown in “The Good Fight,” it is apparent that the space has been remodeled since filming took place and looks a bit different today.

In the scene, Carrie sat at a tall shared table in the middle of the café.

That exact table is no longer there, but a similar one currently stands in the same spot.

I was excited to see that the seating that runs along the south window, which was visible in the scene, remains intact.

It was raining when we showed up to stalk “The Good Fight” Starbucks and, as a result, the place was exorbitantly crowded, which made it a bit difficult to snap pics. The deluge is also the reason I did not pose for my normal photograph out in front of the locale. And although I hate rain pretty much more than anything, as I said that day to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, “I’ll take rain in New York over sun in Palm Springs any day!” Smile

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Starbucks from “The Good Fight” episode of Sex and the City is located at 124 8th Avenue in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood.

July 25, 2016July 22, 2016

Arnold’s Turtle – The Inspiration for Central Perk on “Friends”

It appears that my posts have been heavy on filming location inspiration as of late. On Friday, I blogged about the Annie orphanage and the two buildings that it was modeled after. And here I am today with another spot that served as inspiration – this one Arnold’s Turtle Vegetarian Café, the eatery that Central Perk from Friends was based upon.

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I first learned about the place in a 2015 The Huffington Post article titled “8 Behind-the-Scenes Stories You’ve Never Heard About Friends” written by Todd Van Luling. In the column, art director John Shaffner talks about the inspiration behind what became TV-dom’s most famous café. He says, “The coffee house came about because there was a little restaurant that we used to all go down to on West 4th Street in Manhattan and it had a door in the corner. So we went to Kevin [Bright] and Margaret [I believe he means Marta Kauffman] and David [Crane] and when we showed them the model and I said, ‘We want to do a little corner door like the restaurant that we used to go to,’ and they remembered it as well. It was called Arnold’s Turtle.”

The article pointed out that the eatery had long since been shuttered and was now the site of Hamilton’s Soda Fountain & Luncheonette, which, as Luling states, is “not exactly Central Perk, but, for superfans, maybe worth a trip.” You know it! So I headed right on over there during our April visit to NYC.

Arnold’s Turtle was originally established by Arthur Fine and Ingrid DeHart in 1975. The place’s unusual moniker was an homage to Arthur’s first pet, a turtle that was given to him by his grandfather when he was a baby. For years, the turtle had no name and apparently Arthur’s father took to calling him “Arnold’s Turtle.” Who is Arnold, you ask? The imaginary person who cared for the reptile. I know, it’s confusing. You can read the full story here.

The site was apparently a vacant shell at the time that Ingrid and Arthur took over and, with the help of their friends, was transformed into a warm and inviting space in which diners could play backgammon and other games while sipping coffee or waiting on their meals. The menu, which you can take a look at here, was heavy on vegetables and natural fare.

About ten years after opening, Arnold’s Turtle moved from its initial West Village home at the corner of West 4th and Bank Streets to a space at 210 Spring Street in SoHo. (That site was shuttered in 1990 and today Ingrid is a food blogger, nutrition coach and EFT practitioner.) The West Village space has gone through several different incarnations in the years following Arnold’s closure, including an Italian restaurant name La Focaccia, which opened in 2007, and an American Nouveau bistro named Tremont, which followed in 2011. When Tremont closed up shop three years later, Hamilton’s Soda Fountain & Luncheonette opened in its place.

Through all of the changes, those corner doors that figured so prominently in the design of Central Perk, remained intact and the exterior of the building still bears a striking resemblance to the Friends gang’s regular hangout.

If only the interior remained intact, as well. From everything I’ve read, it shared quite a bit with its onscreen counterpart. Eclectic, arty décor? This review of the place states that the atmosphere was “rustic and pleasantly Bohemian.” Check. Casual and inviting aura? This 1976 The Village Voice article said Arnold’s Turtle had “the homey appeal of a friend’s living room.” Check, again. The same article also described the eatery as boasting the following furnishings, “plants, mirrors, stereo, exposed brick.” Check, check, check, and check. Oh, and it served “café standards, espresso and cappuccino (four variations of each).” Again, check. The only thing that seems to be missing is a big orange couch. Ah, how I wish I could have visited when Arnold’s Turtle was still in operation.

I did have the pleasure of dining at Hamilton’s Soda Fountain, though, and absolutely loved the place. Luling, it turns out, was correct – it’s not exactly Central Perk, but worth a trip, regardless, especially for a superfan like myself. (Big THANK YOU to my friend Katie for providing the image below.)

Seeing those corner doors was particularly magical. (That’s fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, standing outside of the famous doors in my photo below, FYI. Smile )

I absolutely loved the message written on the stoop out front, too.

And bonus – the site is also a filming location, from one of my favorite productions, no less! I was thrilled to learn from a fellow stalker named Gary that back in the La Focaccia days, the restaurant had a cameo in the 2008 Sex and the City movie as the spot where Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) met Louise’s (Jennifer Hudson) fiancé, Will (Joshua Henry). (SJP had a short commute to work that particular day.)

Unfortunately, and as I only just discovered while doing research for this post, Hamilton’s Soda Fountain & Luncheonette recently closed. I am not sure what is in store for the space in the future, but hopefully it won’t remain shuttered for long. (Big THANK YOU to my friend Katie for providing the images below.)

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Arnold’s Turtle, aka the inspiration for Central Perk on Friends, was formerly located at 51 Bank Street in New York’s West Village. The site was most recently home to Hamilton’s Soda Fountain & Luncheonette, but is currently vacant.

July 13, 2016July 12, 2016

The “Sex and the City” McDonalds

Today’s location is a bit of a fail and a lucky twist all in one. My mom always says to trust in the universe – and she’s right. Things happen for a reason. This locale – easily one of my most-wanted ever – is proof of that. I am a pretty simple girl when it comes to most things, especially food. I’ll take McDonald’s over a fancy restaurant any day. So when Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov) and Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) dined at an NYC Golden Arches outpost in the Season 6 episode of Sex and the City titled “The Ick Factor,” I practically swooned – and vowed to stalk the place someday. The road to tracking it down was fraught with quite a few twists and turns, though, and even involved stalking an incorrect location (pictured above).

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In “The Ick Factor,” Carrie becomes overwhelmed by Petrovsky’s many extravagant romantic gestures. One night, after he recites a Joseph Brodsky poem to her, she asks if she can read him her kind of poetry and then shares a passage from Vogue about a sleeveless hot pink Oscar de la Renta dress.

The next time the two see each other, Alek has a surprise for Carrie – tickets to a Metropolitan Opera opening . . . and the sleeveless hot pink Oscar de la Renta dress. Now, while Met tickets would leave me fairly cold, any guy who bought me a designer dress for no reason at all would be A-OK in my book.

All does not go as planned for the couple, though, as a funny thing happens on the way to the opera. While walking through the courtyard of Lincoln Center, Alek asks Carrie to dance . . .

. . . and she proceeds to faint. When she comes to, she tells him, “It’s too much. I’m an American. Ya gotta take it down a notch.”

So the two forgo the opera and instead head to McDonald’s for a meal of Chicken McNuggets, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and Supersize fries. Mickey D’s in a designer dress? Now that’s my kind of date!

While standing at the counter awaiting their order, Carrie gets swept up in the romance of it all and tells Petrovsky that she is finally ready for that dance. As I said, swoon! The moment was, hands down, one of my favorite scenes of the series and I wanted nothing more than to dance in the same spot Carrie did – while wearing a designer dress, of course.

Try as I might, though, I just could never seem to find that McDonald’s. Enter my friend Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, who I mentioned my query to in 2010. Per usual, he went above and beyond to help me, even going so far as to contact the NYC Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting. A very kind woman there told Owen that while she was unsure of which McDonald’s was used in the production, he was welcome to come in and go through the permits. Owen made an appointment to do so, but a few days later he heard from the woman once again. As fate would have it, she had found the information we were seeking on, of all places, HBO’s official Sex and the City website! Now I had visited that website many times, especially its filming locations section, but had stopped doing so once I purchased Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell in 2004, as the book has all of the same location information chronicled. What I didn’t realize what that the HBO website updated its locations page at some point, adding “The Ick Factor” McDonald’s. D’oh! As you can see below, according to HBO, the Sex and the City Mickey D’s (Location #14) is said to be at 57th and 6th. (The actual address, which Owen later dug up, is 45 West 57th Street in Midtown West.)

Upon relaying the information, Owen also notified me of the bad news that the eatery had been shuttered in 2007, which meant no dancing on the premises in a designer dress for me! During its tenure at 45 West 57th, McDonald’s leased all three floors of the 8,500-square-foot spot (paying a whopping $800,000 a year to do so!). When the burger chain vacated the site, it was gutted and divided into three different units. The bottom floor was taken over by an organic café named Danku. Prior to opening, the space underwent an extensive $1-million renovation. Danku did not last long, though. By January 2010, it, too, had closed its doors and a fresh&co outpost eventually moved in. Despite the heavy alterations and numerous changes in tenancy, because it was a location that meant so much to me, I added the address to my NYC To-Stalk List and was beyond excited to finally see it in person this past April.

At the time that Owen notified me of his find, I had no imminent plans to head to New York and was also knee-deep in the middle of wedding planning, so I took HBO at its word and did no further investigating. It was not until I sat down to write this post early last week that things started to go awry. While doing research on the 57th Street McDonald’s, I came across some images of what the interior and exterior looked like shortly after Mickey D’s moved out and very quickly realized it was not the right spot. The most glaring tell was the fact that the 57th Street space featured a large floor-to-ceiling window on its western side (as you can see here). That window is still intact and is pictured in my photograph below. Such a window would have been visible behind Carrie in “The Ick Factor” (in the area noted with a pink rectangle), but, as you can see, that is not the case.

The flooring and tile work behind the counter (both of which you can see in this image), doors (which you can see here) and window casings (which you can see here) at the 57th Street McDonald’s were also vastly different from what appeared on Sex and the City. Not to mention, the 57th Street site boasted a large stairwell near its entrance (you can see it here and here). Those stairs should have been visible on SATC in the area denoted with a pink rectangle below, but were not. No doubt about it, HBO listed the wrong location on its site.

Feeling elated over the fact that the right McDonald’s might still possibly be in operation, I immediately headed on over to Google and pulled up a listing for every single outpost located on the island of Manhattan. I spent countless hours on Street View looking for one with front doors and window casings that matched what appeared in “The Ick Factor,” but came up empty-handed. Then the following day, in a very fortuitous turn, I decided to write about Terry’s (Whoopi Goldberg) apartment from Jumpin’ Jack Flash. In the post, I mentioned an old NYC eatery named La Tablita. While researching that restaurant, I came across this West Side Rag article and immediately froze when I saw the top image. It was of a recently-shuttered McDonald’s, said to be at 81st and Broadway, that had the exact doors and windows I had been looking for.

I quickly ascertained that the address of the McDonald’s was 2271 Broadway and started searching for interior photos of it. I found several on Foursquare and what they showed matched the SATC McDonald’s perfectly! As you can see below, the tiling of the front of the counter (pink arrows), the tiling of the wall behind it (turquoise arrows), and the flooring (blue arrows) all correlate to what appeared in “The Ick Factor.”

The doors (turquoise arrows) and window (green arrows) were also a perfect match, as was the triangular mirrored panel (pink arrows) visible behind Carrie in the scene.

I was most excited to see that the half wall located next to the front counter was the spitting image of the one from “The Ick Factor.”

So there you have it, the long complicated story of the Sex and the City McDonald’s. Though I am saddened that the restaurant is closed, I am thrilled that it has now at least been found – and in such a fortuitous way. Had I not attempted to write about the 57th Street outpost the day before blogging about the Jumpin’ Jack Flash apartment, I would have come across that West Side Rag image and thought nothing of it – and the correct McDonald’s might never have been located! As my mom always says, things happen for a reason. Though Owen does believe that HBO owes me an apology and I tend to agree. So HBO? I’m waiting.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The McDonald’s featured in “The Ick Factor” episode of Sex and the City was formerly located at 2271 Broadway on New York’s Upper West Side.

May 25, 2016May 24, 2016

Stuyvesant Square Park from “Sex and the City”

At the risk of this blog becoming solely Sex and the City-based, here I am yet again with yet another locale from the hit HBO series. For those of you non-SATC fans out there, don’t worry, I will be chronicling NYC sites from other productions soon. I will also be interspersing New York spots with ones in L.A., as well, to break up any sort of location monotony. For today, though, it’s all about SATC and SJP. I bring you Stuyvesant Square Park, a spot I have long wanted to stalk thanks to its appearance in the Season 5 episode of Sex and the City titled “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number.”

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In the episode, which originally aired in 2002, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) meets a cute author named Jack Berger (Ron Livingston) while at her publisher’s office on the eve of the release of her first book. Her publisher suggests that Berger take Carrie under his wing and share with her the ins and outs of the book world. So the two head out to a park to chat, McDonald’s sack lunches in hand. I loved absolutely everything about the scene – Carrie and Berger’s chemistry and easy banter, the picturesque park surroundings, the McDonald’s meals (I’d take McDonald’s over a fancy restaurant any day!), and (especially) Carrie’s dress, shoes and hair. So I, of course, became obsessed with tracking down where filming took place.

The endeavor turned out to be pretty easy thanks to a sign reading “Stuyvesant Square” that was visible in the background of the scene.

In the episode, Carrie and Berger were sitting in the southwest corner of Stuyvesant Square Park, near the intersection of East 15th Street and Rutherford Place, in the general vicinity of the area pictured below.

After finishing their lunches, the two then exit the park through the gate located at East 16th Street and Rutherford Place . . .

. . . and proceed to walk south down Rutherford. It is there that Berger drops the bomb on Carrie that he has a live-in girlfriend.

Stuyvesant Square Park, also known simply as Stuyvesant Square, turned out to be quite the picturesque stalk! The serene site, which is bisected by 2nd Avenue, is comprised of shaded benches, sparkling fountains and meandering pathways, surrounded by a bevy of handsome and historic New York buildings. All that greenery and brick make for some glorious scenery!

The park has quite an interesting history. The tract was originally part of an 120-acre farm owned by Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of the New Netherland colony. In 1836, Peter’s great-great-grandson, Peter Gerard Stuyvesant, sold a 4-acre parcel of the farm to the City of New York for $5 with the intention that it be used as a public park.

The land sat untouched for several years, though, causing Stuyvesant to file a lawsuit against the city to force development in 1839. It still took quite a while, until 1847 in fact, for landscaping of the site to begin and Stuyvesant Square Park finally opened to the public in 1850.

In 1847, during the development process, a large cast iron fence was installed around the perimeter of the park. Amazingly, it still stands today and has the distinction of being New York’s oldest cast iron fence.

In the 1930s, Stuyvesant Square Park was renovated by landscape architect Gilmore David Clark. Though it was rehabbed once again in 1982 and is currently undergoing some restorations, the space looks much the same today as it did when Clark completed work on it in 1937.

Sex and the City is hardly the only production to have made use of the park’s beauty.

April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) – wearing an amazing white dress – walks by Stuyvesant Square Park after picking up travel documents in the 2008 drama Revolutionary Road. The brief segment was shot on Rutherford Place, just north of East 15th Street.

It was at the park that Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) met with Patrick Scully (Jeff Binder) in the Season 5 episode of Damages titled “But You Don’t Do That Anymore,” which aired in 2012. (I cannot get over how different the park looks during the winter when there are no leaves on the trees!)

A large portion of White Collar’s Season 5 storyline centered around a priceless stained glass window located at a church across the street from Stuyvesant Square Park. As such, the park popped in a couple of episodes, most notably in 2013’s “No Good Deed,” in which Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and Mozzie (Willie Garson) masqueraded as repairmen in order to steal the window.

Stuyvesant Square Park was also where John Reese (Jim Caviezel) took a cell phone call from Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman) and discussed the fact that all hell was breaking loose in the city in the Season 4 episode of Person of Interest titled “The Cold War,” which aired in 2014.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Stuyvesant Square Park, from the “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number” episode of Sex and the City, is located at 2nd Avenue and East 15th Street in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of New York.

May 18, 2016January 29, 2017

Famous Original Ray’s Pizza from “Sex and the City”

The Grim Cheaper and I used to visit New York at least once a year. Prior to this recent trip, though, we had not been to Manhattan since October 2009! Being separated from my favorite city for almost seven years was quite a hard pill to swallow. During that time, I accumulated a ridiculously large list of must-see Manhattan filming locations that were chronicled in various files in my office and on my computer. Because our recent trip was booked very last minute, I did not have much time to plan my itinerary, which was especially frustrating to someone as hyper-organized as I tend to be. Adding to the haphazardness of my planning was the fact that some of my files seemed to be missing. One locale that I vividly remembered tracking down was a pizza parlor that appeared on Sex and the City. I couldn’t find a mention of it anywhere in my notes, though, nor could I for the life of me remember the name of the place, what episode it had appeared in, or even what the scene involving it entailed. So I went back to the drawing board and began the hunt for it all over again.

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I cannot tell you how many Google searches I did using the terms “Sex and the City,” “episode” and “pizza” to try to stir my memory. After what seemed like days of scouring the internet, I finally came across a mention of a scene in Season 2’s “The Caste System” in which Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) grabbed a slice of pizza with then boyfriend Steve Brady (David Eigenberg). So I popped in my SATC Season 2 DVD and, sure enough, it was the right episode! I was even further floored to discover that a logo reading “Famous Original Ray’s Pizza” was visible on a cup in the scene. From there, despite the fact that there are several “Famous Original Ray’s Pizza” locations dotted throughout the city, finding the right one was a snap.

In “The Caste System,” Steve treats Miranda to two large slices of pie at Ray’s, which they then eat while sitting on a bench outside. I had been mesmerized by the size of the pizzas upon originally watching the episode way back when, which is why I had wanted to track down the restaurant so badly the first time around. Walk-up pizzerias aren’t commonplace in California, nor are humongous slices that require two hands to eat, so I was dying to not only stalk the place, but to sample a slice of my own.

I mean, look at the size of those slices!

My wish finally came true during our third day in the city while hanging out with my friend/fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog. And the experience was everything I’d hoped it would be. Ray’s serves up some fabulous two-hands-required slices of pizza!

I was most thrilled, though, to see that despite the passage of 17 years (Seriously, 17 years! How is that possible?), the restaurant still looks very much the same today as it did when “The Caste System” was filmed in 1999.

Both the interior . . .

. . . and the exterior were featured in the episode.

Ray’s has quite the interesting – and confusing – history. At one point in time, there were countless iterations of Ray’s Pizzas dotted throughout the city. So many, in fact, that their presence was a running joke among Manhattanites – and even figured into a Seinfeld storyline. In Season 9’s “The Maid,” Kramer (Michael Richards) gets lost in downtown New York and calls Jerry (who played himself) for help. Kramer tells Jerry that he is standing in front of a Ray’s Pizza. The rest of the conversation goes like this – Jerry: “Is it Famous Ray’s?” Kramer: “No, it’s Original Ray’s.” Jerry: “Famous Original Ray’s?” Kramer (on the verge of hysteria) : “It’s just Original, Jerry!” You can watch the segment by clicking below.

The very first Ray’s – or should I say “original”? – which was dubbed “Ray’s Pizza,” was opened in 1959 by a Sicilian named Ralph Cuomo at 27 Prince Street in Little Italy. When asked why he didn’t name his restaurant “Ralph’s Pizzeria” while being interviewed for a 1991 The New York Times article, he told reporter John Tierney, “Ralph’s might have sounded, I don’t know, maybe too feminine. Besides, nobody ever called me Ralph. My family took the Italian word for Ralph — Raffaele — and shortened it to Rayfie or just Ray. All my life I was addressed that way.” A few years later, Cuomo opened a second Ray’s Pizza at 1073 First Avenue, which he subsequently sold in 1964 to another Sicilian named Rosolino Mangano. Rosolino quickly turned that single pizzeria into a virtual industry, establishing several additional eateries under the name “Famous Original Ray’s Pizza” in a short period of time.

The story doesn’t end there, though. In 1981, Mangano sold one of his outposts to New York native Gary Esposito. Gary went on to open five additional pizzerias under the name “Original Ray’s.” It was around that time period that copycat parlors, all using some variation of the “Famous Original Ray’s” name, began popping up across New York like a virus. To stop the insanity and to keep the integrity of his own chain intact, Gary tracked down the true original Ray (or should I say Ralph?), Cuomo, who sold him the rights to the Ray’s name. Esposito and Cuomo wound up joining forces by establishing a new company together in order to franchise additional Ray’s outposts. After some legal hassling, Mangano also joined the team and became vigilant about shutting down all non-licensed Ray’s sites. His efforts were largely successful and today there are eight licensed Famous Original Ray’s Pizza branches dotted across New York.

The Ray’s Pizza epidemic was also mentioned in the 2003 comedy Elf. Upon learning that Buddy (Will Ferrell) is to heading to New York City to find his father, Santa (Edward Asner) advises him on all things Big Apple. One of his tips is, “There are, like, thirty Ray’s Pizzas. They all claim to be the original, but the real one’s on 11th.” That’s actually incorrect, though. The 11th Avenue spot, formerly known as “Original Ray’s,” was an unaffiliated parlor opened by brothers Mario and Lamberto DiRienzo in 1973. That site was shuttered in 2011, thanks in large part to lawsuits filed by Mangano. Though it later re-opened under the name Famous Roio’s, the eatery closed its doors for good in 2013. The space that formerly housed it is now the site of a Chinese food restaurant. You can read a more in-depth history of the Ray’s Pizza battles here.

Famous Original Ray’s Pizza was also featured in the Season 6 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit titled “Identity” as the spot where Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) interrogated two teens about the death of one of their fellow gang members.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Famous Original Ray’s Pizza, from “The Caste System” episode of Sex and the City, is located at 204 West 9th Avenue in Chelsea. You can visit the pizzeria’s official website here.

May 13, 2016May 12, 2016

Two Boots To Go West Pizza from “Sex and the City”

There’s nothing quite like a slice of New York pizza! Just watching characters eat a piece on TV or in a movie is enough to make me drool. So I, of course, had long been dying to stalk the Big Apple pizzeria that appeared in the Season 6 episode of Sex and the City titled “Great Sexpectations.”

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In the episode, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) head to a pizza place for a second dinner after not being fulfilled by their meal at Raw, the hip new “vegan non-dairy” restaurant where “nothing is cooked over 118 degrees.” It is there that Miranda tells Carrie about her love for her new “boyfriend,” TiVo. As she explains, “While I’m eating this slice of pizza, my boyfriend is home taping my favorite TV show. With TiVo, when there’s something I don’t enjoy, I just speed right through it. And he surprises me with things that he thinks I might like, which is how I got hooked on Jules and Mimi.”

I loved absolutely every aspect of the scene – from the opening close-up of the girls’ fabulous shoes to the way the camera panned upwards to their faces to the fact that they were standing at a tall table eating their slices, instead of sitting down. The whole thing just looked so appealing and screamed “New York” to me and every time I watched it, I thought, “Yes, I want to do that!”

Unfortunately, there was not a whole lot for me to go on in tracking this location down. Though some signage was visible in the background of the scene, it was not clear enough for me to make out any words or names. Then, a couple of years ago, I came across a mention of On Location Tours’ Sex and the City Hotspots Tour which stated that Two Boots To Go West Pizza in Greenwich Village was the spot where Carrie and Miranda enjoyed their non-raw meal. So I immediately added the site to my New York Must-Stalk List and, as fate would have it, happened to randomly walk right by it on my way to another must-see locale while I was in NYC last month.

The first Two Boots eatery was originally established by Doris Kornish, Phil Hartman (not that Phil Hartman), and John Touhey at 37 Avenue A in the East Village in 1987. The restaurant, named for the shoe-like shapes of both Italy and Louisiana, served Cajun/Italian fare, including a popular cornmeal crust pizza. Demand for the unique slices was so great that a second takeout location named Two Boots To Go was opened nearby in 1989. Additional branches continued to follow, including Two Boots To Go West at 201 West 11th Street in the West Village in 1995. There are now 15 Two Boots outposts dotted throughout Manhattan, as well as in Brooklyn, Connecticut, Baltimore, New Jersey, Nashville, and Los Angeles.

Sadly, we had just eaten lunch a few minutes prior to happening upon Two Boots To Go West (at a different SATC pizza place, which I will be blogging about soon), so we were not able to sample the slices, which is a shame because the pizza looked – and smelled – uh-ma-zing! I am so heading right on over to one of Two Boots’ L.A. branches the next time I am in town.

I did manage to pop in and snap a few quick pics while I was there, though.

Seeing the restaurant in person threw me a bit as it did not look as I had imagined it to. On Sex and the City, only one side of the eatery was shown and the shots were all fairly tight, so I envisioned it to be tiny. In real life, Two Boots To Go West is actually quite large.

I was so thrown by the layout, in fact, that not only did I think for a time that I might be at the wrong Two Boots outpost, but I also failed to to snap photos of the exact spot where Carrie and Miranda dined.

For “Great Sexpectations,” one of the eatery’s tall tables was brought to the center of the restaurant, directly in front of the pizza counter, and that is where Miranda and Carrie stood. In actuality, there are no tables in that spot, as that is where the line is typically situated. You can check out an image taken from the same angle that was shown on Sex and the City here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Two Boots To Go West Pizza, from the “Great Sexpectations” episode of Sex and the City, is located at 201 West 11th Street in New York’s West Village. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.