Bosch – Page 2 – IAMNOTASTALKER

March 15, 2019March 14, 2019

Olympic Coffee Shop from “Sharp Objects”

I’m not sure what it is about old school diners, but I sure have an affinity for them. My inclination maybe stems from memories of childhood road trips or weekend mornings spent at greasy spoons with my parents during my early years or my nostalgic nature in general. Whatever the cause, if I see a retro café onscreen, chances are I’m going to want to locate it. Such was the case with Gritty’s Coffee Shop, the supposed Wind Gap, Missouri eatery Detective Richard Willis (Chris Messina) frequented in Sharp Objects, the 2018 HBO miniseries based on the Gillian Flynn novel of the same name. Thankfully, the restaurant was a snap to find.

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While set in the Show-Me State, as I mentioned in this post Sharp Objects was largely filmed in Southern California. A Google search for “Gritty’s Coffee Shop” and “Los Angeles” led nowhere, though. Thankfully, I happened to spot an address number of “12912” posted outside of the restaurant while watching the sixth episode, titled “Cherry,” which made my search much more fruitful. As soon as I inputted “Coffee Shop,” “Los Angeles,” and “12912,” a slew of entries for an eatery named Olympic Coffee Shop located at 12912 San Fernando Road in Sylmar was kicked back.

One look at images of the place online told me it was the right spot and I promptly added it to my To-Stalk List.

Then, when I saw the eatery pop up in an episode of Bosch (Season 2’s “Gone”), which the Grim Cheaper and I were binging at the time, that very same week, I knew I had to get out there stat!

Olympic Coffee Shop was originally established way back in 1951 as James’ Drive-In.

It subsequently became Jim Bill’s Restaurant in 1957, then Demetri’s Coffee Shop in 1971, and finally Olympic Coffee Shop in 1984.

Other than its past names, I could not find much information about the place’s history online, which is surprising considering its longevity.

Unfortunately, the GC and I were short on time when we showed up to stalk Olympic Coffee Shop, so we could not dine on the premises. As fate would have it, though, the super-friendly owner happened to see us taking photos outside and welcomed us in for a quick chat and to snap all the pictures I wanted.

He also filled us in on the site’s extensive film resume.

According to him, the place is used in productions almost weekly, which, due to its perfectly preserved 1950s aesthetic, is not at all surprising.

What is surprising is that I had never heard of the place until Sharp Objects!

Olympic Coffee Shop appeared in three episodes of the miniseries. Along with the aforementioned “Cherry,” it also popped up in the episodes “Fix” and “Falling.”

The restaurant’s film history dates back much, much farther, though.

In 1978, it masked as Sybil’s in the comedy Every Which Way But Loose, but both the exterior . . .

. . . and interior looked quite a bit different at the time.

Lincoln Hawk (Sylvester Stallone) challenged his son, Michael Cutler (David Mendenhall), to arm wrestle some local thugs at the restaurant, when it was still operating as Demetri’s, in 1987’s Over the Top.

In the 2000 film Memento, Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and Leonard (Guy Pearce) discuss the faultiness of memories at Olympic Coffee Shop.

Luke Campbell (Dan Byrd) and Sylar (Zachary Quinto) narrowly escape from government agents at the eatery in the Season 3 episode of Heroes titled “Building 26,” which aired in 2009.

Train’s Patrick Monahan falls in love with a waitress named Kate (played by Anna Camp) at Olympic Coffee Shop in the group’s 2010 “Marry Me” music video, which you can watch here.

That same year, the restaurant was the site of a massive shootout in the Season 2 episode of NCIS: Los Angeles titled “Bounty.”

Donna (Catherine Keener) and Patrick (James Le Gros) run into Kathleen (Mikey Madison) at Olympic Coffee Shop at the end of the 2018 drama Nostalgia.

That same year, Johnny ‘Coco’ Cruz (Richard Cabral) has a rather terse reunion with his mom and sister at the café in the Season 1 episode of Mayans M.C. titled “Murciélago/Zotz.”

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: Olympic Coffee Shop, from Sharp Objects, is located at 12192 San Fernando Road in Sylmar. The café is open daily from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

February 11, 2019November 5, 2019

The Millennium Biltmore Hotel from “A Star Is Born”

It’s not everyday you’ll find photos of a public restroom on my site. It’s not everyday you’ll find me stalking one either. But a couple of years ago, the Grim Cheaper and I were granted an extensive private tour of the Millennium Biltmore Los Angeles that included a visit to the hotel’s Regency Room men’s lavatory. Our guide thought we would want to see the space thanks to a bit of cinema history that exists there. (More on that in a bit.) Flash forward to last week – while scanning through the 2018 A Star Is Born prior to writing my recent post on East Hollywood bar The Virgil, I was shocked to see the very same bathroom (well, the women’s version, at least) pop up in an opening scene and decided I just had to chronicle it here. When I sat down to write the post, though, I discovered that the entire Biltmore property – not just its bathroom – has ties to three of the A Star Is Born movies. So I figured a more all-encompassing article about the hotel was in order.

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The Biltmore’s Regency Room was originally part of the Sala De Oro ballroom, which was constructed during the hotel’s 1928 expansion. You can see what the stunning venue looked like in its early days here and in its current state below.

The grand space, surprisingly located on a sublevel of the hotel, ran 140 feet long and 107 feet wide and boasted three open stories, an insane vaulted ceiling, a large mezzanine, box seating for 46 groups, a stage (built on hydraulics that allowed it to be raised and lowered), a dance floor, a check room with a capacity for 100 guests, and its own kitchen. So stunning was the massive hall that it was chosen as the site of eight different Academy Awards ceremonies.

In 1934, management decided to change things up by turning the ballroom into a hopping nightclub named the “Biltmore Bowl.” Architect Wayne McAllister, who also gave us Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank, was brought in to revamp the room. And revamp it he did. He moved the stage, making it the central focal point, and also, oddly, split the venue into two levels, a two-story upper floor and a single-story lower floor. You can see what the upper level looked like during its heyday here and here.

Sadly, the nightclub was gutted by a fire in the 1950s and subsequently renovated, at which time the grand ceiling and elegant stage were removed. But the split levels remained, with the top floor becoming a ballroom that retained the Biltmore Bowl name and the sub-level becoming an exhibit hall initially dubbed the “Rex Room” and later the “Regency Room.” The gilded, gated entrance to both spaces is pictured below.

The Biltmore Bowl underwent a re-do again in 2001, during which the venue’s tiered seating was removed and its decorative aesthetic shifted to match that of the rest of the hotel.

The Regency Room, which is largely unchanged from its 1950’s post-fire state, is much less opulent than its upstairs neighbor, as you can see below.

In fact, the only ornamentation the space really has is some decorative grillwork, which is leftover from its days as part of the Sala De Oro ballroom.

The ornate ceiling in the Regency Room’s foyer is also original to the Sala De Oro.

Today, the Regency Room boasts 17,000 square feet of space – and a set of famous bathrooms.

At the beginning of A Star Is Born, Ally (Lady Gaga) breaks up with her boyfriend via phone from a stall in the Regency Room women’s bathroom, which is said to be the restroom of the hotel kitchen where she works.

Though I did not see the women’s bathroom during my tour, I was shown the very similar-looking men’s room.

It was there that Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and his pals tied up and threatened Police Commissioner Jacobs (Pat McNamara) in the 1999 drama Fight Club.

Our tour guide highlighted the space not only because of its onscreen cameo, but also because of some damage that occurred during the shoot, which she figured I would be fascinated by. And I was! Apparently, while Pitt and McNamara were filming the fight scene, the base of one of the pedestal sinks was splintered. For whatever reason, the chip was never filled in and the sink currently remains in its post-Fight-Club state, a little piece of filming ephemera left behind for the ages.

You can see said chip in the images above and below, as well as what an intact sink base looks like directly next to it.

The Biltmore’s 25,000-square-foot basement kitchen, which I did not get to stalk during my tour, makes a couple of appearances as Ally’s workplace in A Star Is Born, as well.

That very same kitchen also appeared as the kitchen of a Radisson hotel in East Lansing, Michigan in the Season 4 episode of The West Wing titled “College Kids,” which aired in 2002.

It can also be seen in the Season 4 episode of Bosch titled “Rojo Profundo,” which aired in 2018. As I said in my recent post on the hotel’s South Galleria, every single area of the Biltmore has been utilized in multiple major productions!

The hotel’s loading dock, which leads directly down to the Biltmore Bowl and Regency Room, also pops up a couple of times in A Star Is Born – first in the scene in which Ally leaves work to head to her gig at Bleu Bleu and then later when she and Ramon (Anthony Ramos) get picked up by Jackson Maine’s (Bradley Cooper) driver to go to one of his shows.

The loading dock pops up in the “College Kids” episode of The West Wing, as well.

As I mentioned earlier, the Biltmore had ties to A Star Is Born long before the latest version was filmed. In the 1937 original, Vicki Lester (Janet Gaynor) and Norman Maine (Fredric March) attend an Academy Awards ceremony at what is said to be the Biltmore Bowl.

I am unsure if filming actually took place in the ballroom or on a studio-built set, though.

My hunch is that a set was utilized being that not much of what was shown onscreen matches early photographs of the Bowl. The wide shot of the room featured in the movie (pictured below) also looks to me like a matte painting of some sort.

I can say with certainty that the Biltmore Bowl was the site of the Grammy Awards in the 1976 version of A Star Is Born. You can see some behind-the-scenes photos of the segment being shot here.

Esther Hoffman (Barbra Streisand) and John Norman Howard (Kris Kristofferson) even head up the escalators situated adjacent to the South Galleria in the scene. It is on the escalator landing that Howard punches a paparazzi.

The Biltmore Bowl is also the site of the Leadership in Journalism Awards gala in the Season 1 episode of The Morning Show titled “A Seat at the Table,” which aired in November 2019.

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 Millennium Biltmore Los Angeles, from A Star Is Born, is located at 506 South Grand Avenue in downtown L.A. You can visit the property’s official website here. The Regency Room and its bathrooms are situated underneath the Biltmore Bowl on the south side of the hotel and can be reached via the South Galleria. The kitchen from the film is also located in the basement of the hotel. Unfortunately, neither area is open to the public. The loading dock can be found just south of Coffee on Grand at 530 South Grand Avenue.

January 4, 2019January 3, 2019

Harry Bosch’s House from “Bosch”

I contemplated chronicling the best movie and television productions I discovered in 2018 as my first post of the new year. Had I done so (and I still might later this month), Bosch would have topped the list. As I mentioned in my recent write-up on Demitasse café, the Grim Cheaper and I started watching the Amazon original series just a few months ago and were immediately hooked. A police procedural with a sarcastic and fabulously deadpan leading man set in Los Angeles – what more could this crime-obsessed, L.A.-loving stalker ask for? The locations used are seriously phenomenal, by the way – none more so than the cantilevered hilltop home of titular character Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch (Titus Welliver). The pad couldn’t be more quintessentially Los Angeles if it tried. So I, of course, ran right out to stalk it shortly after viewing the first episode.

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Bosch is based upon a bestselling series of novels by author Michael Connelly. I have never read any of the books, but have been able to piece together the various info written about Harry’s house in them thanks to a detailed forum on MichaelConnelly.com. In the novels, Detective Bosch is said to live on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the Hollywood Hills, though his specific address varies from “next to” 7203 Woodrow Wilson in 2010’s The Reversal to 8620 Woodrow Wilson in 2018’s Dark Sacred Night. Per a commenter on the forum, Connelly has apparently stated that Harry’s pad doesn’t exist in real life, but that the site where he placed it in his stories is a burnt-out foundation of a former cantilevered residence that the author stumbled upon in 1992. Additional commenters did some massive legwork on the subject and surmised that the location of said foundation is 7207 Woodrow Wilson Drive. And they’re right – I came across a video of Connelly showing the exact spot where he imagined the home (a still of which is pictured below) and compared it to Street View imagery of that address (again, pictured below) and, sure enough, it’s the spot! You can check out some photographs of the foundation and the land it sits on here.

In Blue Neon Night: Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles, a special limited edition DVD released in 2004 in which, as Amazon notes, the author “provides an insider’s tour of the places that give his stories and characters their spark and texture,” a house located at 7143 Woodrow Wilson is shown to be Harry’s and Connelly describes it as such, “Bosch’s home was fourth from the end on the right side. His home was a wood-frame, one-bedroom cantilever, not much bigger than a Beverly Hills garage. It hung out over the edge of the hill and was supported by three steel pylons at its mid-point.”

When it came time to start shooting the series in November 2013, producers found an even more perfect embodiment of that Blue Neon Night description at 1870 Blue Heights Drive in Hollywood Hills West.

Sitting high atop a hill, the architectural stunner, which was built in 1958, boasts 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1,513 square feet of living space, and a 0.26-acre lot.

Per Zillow, it is currently worth a whopping $2,130,000.

The striking pad first popped up in Bosch’s pilot and has gone on to appear in pretty much every episode since. It is the rear of the residence – its cantilevered side, which stands on a cliff overlooking the Sunset Strip, Culver City and beyond – that is regularly shown on the series.

The street side of the house, which is much less spectacular than the rear, was featured briefly in Season 4’s “Devil in the House.”

While situated on a private cul-de-sac, that side of the property can be viewed from a portion of Blue Heights Drive that is open to the public – though there is not much to see.

Just west of the home’s front entrance, though, in an area that is also publicly accessible, is an open expanse of land where views matching those of Harry’s pad can be gleaned.

And let me tell you, those views are absolutely incredible!

I mean, come on!

Last one, I promise.

We know – thanks to this video – that the actual interior of the Blue Heights Drive residence was utilized in Bosch’s pilot. And I am fairly certain that a few additional early episodes were shot on location inside the home, as well (quite possibly all of Season 1). At some point, though, a set re-creation was built on a studio soundstage that has since been used for all subsequent seasons.

How does a cop afford such a stellar pad, you ask? Per the storyline of both the books and the series, Paramount made a movie based upon one of Harry’s cases, for which he was paid handsomely.

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: Harry Bosch’s house from the television series Bosch is located at 1870 Blue Heights Drive in Hollywood Hills West. The best views of the structure can be seen from the 1600 block of Viewmont Drive and the 8800 block of Hollywood Boulevard.

January 2, 2019December 31, 2018

Grand Central Market from “Bosch”

Happy 2019, my fellow stalkers! I was originally going to write about a different locale today, one that was sadly lost in the Woolsey Fire, but decided it would be best to start the year off on a happier note. So instead I’m covering a quintessential Los Angeles spot that I have stalked countless times, but somehow never blogged about – DTLA’s Grand Central Market. The bustling food emporium/retail grocery mart is a virtual city landmark, though I only visited it for the first time while on jury duty in 2007, a full seven years after I moved to Southern California! Upon stepping inside the vibrant marketplace and poring through the rows upon rows of diverse food vendors – an activity that was recommended as part of jury orientation – I was immediately enthralled. The Grim Cheaper and I subsequently popped by countless times in the years that followed to grab a bite to eat or do some specialty grocery shopping, but it was not until spotting the place in a Season 4 episode of Bosch recently that I realized I had yet to dedicate a post to it. So here goes.

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Grand Central Market is situated on the ground floor of what is, interestingly enough, two adjacent buildings. The Homer Laughlin Building, which fronts Broadway, was designed by architect John Parkinson for Homer Laughlin, founder of the Homer Laughlin China Company, in 1897. Eight years later, Harrison Albright was commissioned to build an adjoining structure, facing Hill Street, to enlarge the property. My photos below show the secondary edifice, known as the Laughlin Annex/Lyon Building. Upscale department store Ville de Paris became the first tenant of the two building’s massive street level space, which opens to both Hill and Broadway.

I had always assumed Grand Central was a more recent addition to the Los Angeles landscape, established sometime in the 1990s or thereabouts, and was shocked to discover while researching for this post that it actually opened its doors on October 27th, 1917, just a few months after Ville de Paris relocated to a different location downtown. More than one hundred years later, the market is still a DTLA staple.

Stretching a full city block, the 30,000-square-foot emporium initially housed 90 vendors and catered to the wealthy Angelinos living just up the road in Bunker Hill, who accessed the market via Angels Flight situated right across the street. Today, the locale plays host to more than 25,000 visitors each day – area businessmen and women, tourists and locals alike, all looking for a unique bite to eat or specialty ingredient to take home.

Grand Central Market has been rehabbed a few times throughout its history – first in the 1960s, then in 1990, and then again, to the chagrin of many locals, in 2013. Regardless of the revamps, the site is doing better than ever today. In fact, Bon Appétit magazine named the entire place one of the best new restaurants of 2014! Boasting 38 stalls, the locale offers such varied fare as German currywurst, Japanese bento boxes, fresh oysters, and handmade Salvadorian pupusas. You’ll also find staples like handcrafted bread, gourmet coffees and teas, and artisanal cheeses.

Bright, vibrant and colorful, GCM serves as the heartbeat of downtown. As such, it is no surprise that the site has wound up onscreen in numerous L.A.-set productions.

In the Season 4 episode of Bosch titled “Ask the Dust,” which aired in April 2018, Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) walks through the Broadway entrance of Grand Central Market and is then shown exiting the Hill Street side on his way to Angels Flight, where the murder of a prominent lawyer has recently occurred. Only the outside of the locale is shown in the scene, though.

Back in 1974, Grand Central Market was the site of a lengthy chase and shootout in the comedy/action flick Busting.

Eddie Moscone (Joe Pantoliano) convinces Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) to track down accountant/embezzler Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin) over breakfast there at the beginning of 1988’s Midnight Run.

In 1991, Huell Howser chronicled Grand Central Market in the episode of California’s Gold titled “L.A. Adventures,” which you can watch here.

Gy. Sgt. James Dunn (Keenen Ivory Wayans) takes refuge in the emporium at the end of the 1997 thriller Most Wanted.

Seth (Nicolas Cage) and Dr. Maggie Rice (Meg Ryan) shop for produce there in the 1998 drama City of Angels.

Sam Dawson (Sean Penn) does the International House of Pancakes quiz with a random stranger – and mistakenly gets arrested for solicitation – at Grand Central Market in I Am Sam, though very little of the place can be seen in the 2001 drama.

Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) are very, very briefly shown grabbing pupusas there in the 2016 favorite La La Land.

And in 2018’s Will & Liz, Grand Central Market is the spot where titular characters Will (Nathan Wilson) and Liz (Christine Tucker) go on a date.

Though several sites claim that GCM was also featured in National Treasure, that is incorrect. The 2004 adventure flick’s market scene was actually lensed about 3,000 miles away at Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, as I blogged about 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: Grand Central Market, from the “Ask the Dust” episode of Bosch, is located at 317 South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the emporium’s official website here.

December 7, 2018December 6, 2018

Nick’s Cafe from “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”

It is not everyday that a one-minute clip gets me hooked on an entire television series, but that is exactly what happened with Brooklyn Nine-Nine. A few months back, my friend Kate texted me a hilarious highlight from a Season 5 episode in which Detective Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) leads a group of criminals in a rousing acapella rendition of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” during a police lineup. I had never heard of the show at that point, but, let me tell you, as soon as the first strains of “You are my fire . . . “ hit my ears, I was done for! Any procedural that incorporates boy band music into its storyline is guaranteed to be a surefire favorite with me! The Grim Cheaper and I started watching the series that very night and have been binging it ever since. Not only is the acting superb and the dialogue laugh-out-loud funny, but (bonus!) it is shot in L.A., which means plenty of stalking for me. One of its locales, the small Chinatown eatery Nick’s Cafe, I first spotted in Season 3’s “House Mouses” and then again just a few weeks later on yet another series we are obsessed with, Bosch. So I decided I just had to run out and stalk the place.

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A veritable city institution, Nick’s Cafe (not to be confused with Nick’s Coffee Shop & Deli on Pico) was founded way back in 1948 by Navy vet Nick Viropolous.

In an unusual move, Nick chose to operate the place sans a name for the four decades that he owned it. As longtime waitress Lois Fuentes recalled in a 1995 Los Angeles Times article, “We went 41 years without a name. People would call it the Corner Cafe, the Ham House, all sorts of things. Nick was afraid if he gave it a name it might bring in more people. ‘Then you gotta hire more help,’ he’d say.”

The Ham House moniker, which is still sometimes used today, came about thanks to the bone-in ham, sliced to order, that Nick displayed daily on the eatery’s U-shaped counter.

Amazingly, the original counter is still intact today, seventy years after the restaurant first opened!

In the mid-90s, Viropolous sold the eatery to two LAPD homicide detectives who finally gave the place a name – Nick’s Cafe, in honor of its founder. The duo also installed a train track around the perimeter of the ceiling with a running model train that would circle the diner during open hours. Those tracks remain on display today (you can see them in the photos below), though the locomotive cars no longer operate.

Considering the profession of the new owners, it is not surprising that Nick’s became immensely popular with local police following the change of hands. As such, the restaurant has since been featured on numerous detective shows. But more on that in a bit.

In 2009, the cafe was taken over by a man named Rod Davis and it is still going strong today, largely thanks to the fact that little has been altered over the years. Not only is much of the décor original, but many of Nick’s recipes are still in use today.

I opted for a grilled cheese sandwich during my visit and it was honestly one of the best I’ve ever had. Granted, a grilled cheese is pretty hard to mess up, but the one served at Nick’s is stellar, with perfectly buttered toast and thick layers of two different kinds of cheese.

Most hours of the day at Nick’s are standing-room only, due to both its popularity and small size – the only available seating is at the counter, which is lined by a scant 25 stools, though the outside patio can accommodate an additional 25.

In the Season 3 episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine titled “House Mouses,” which aired in 2016, Jake convinces fellow detectives Hitchcock (Dirk Blocker) and Scully (Joel McKinnon Miller) to take over his drug case by buying them lunch at Nick’s.

The restaurant’s filming history far pre-dates Brooklyn Nine-Nine, though.

In 1997, Nick’s was the setting for the Depeche Mode video “It’s No Good,” which you can watch here.

Kensi Blye (Daniela Ruah) and Marty Deeks (Eric Christian Olsen) visit Nick’s Cafe while investigating a terror suspect in the Season 3 episode of NCIS: Los Angeles titled “Patriot Acts,” which aired in 2012.

That same year, on yet another procedural, Detective Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy) counsels Officer Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie) about not getting emotionally attached to cases while standing in line at Nick’s in the Season 4 episode of Southland titled “Risk.”

The diner is the site of an armed robbery in DJ Snake and Justin Bieber’s 2016 “Let Me Love You” music video, which you can watch here.

Fellow stalker Geoff, of the 90210Locations website, informed me that the same year Ian Gallagher (Cameron Monaghan) and Lip Gallagher (Jeremy Allen White) lunched outside of Nick’s in the Season 7 episode of Shameless titled “Swipe, F***, Leave.”

As I mentioned earlier, Nick’s also appeared on Bosch. In Season 3’s “Clear Shot,” which aired in 2017, Detective Santiago Robertson (Paul Calderon) discusses a recent case with Terry Drake (Barry Shabaka Henley) at the eatery.

And in yet another police-related production, Ponch (Michael Peña) meets some local CHP officers at Nick’s in the 2017 comedy CHIPS.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Nick’s Cafe, from the “House Mouses” episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, is located at 1300 Spring Street in Chinatown. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. The eatery closes at 3 p.m. each day, so please plan accordingly.

November 2, 2018June 6, 2020

Demitasse Café from “Bosch”

I hope all of my fellow stalkers had a fun and safe Halloween. For this year’s festivities, the Grim Cheaper and I headed over to our neighbor’s house for an amazing party (the decorations were like nothing I have ever seen!) and had an absolute blast. Our 2018 costumes were, per usual, celebrity-inspired. Unusual is the fact that they were all the GC, which typically never happens. As of late, he has been rather obsessed with Spencer Pratt and his Snapchat feed, though, so when we started discussing costumes this summer, he mentioned that he wanted to dress up as Speidi. I wasn’t following either Spencer or his wife, Heidi, on social media at the time, but as soon as I took a look at her Instagram stories and saw that she regularly dons a set of black pajamas strikingly similar to a pair I already owned, I was all in!

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Creating the look was a snap. The GC purchased a tie dye t-shirt from Spencer’s company Pratt Daddy, a signet pinky ring from Amazon, and glued a hummingbird toy that belongs to our cats onto a handheld feeder also found on Amazon. For Spence’s ubiquitous crystal necklaces, he simply looped some suede twine around two actual Spencer Pratt crystals that he had gifted me for Christmas last year. The Make Speidi Famous Again hat had to be specially made since they are no longer offered on the Pratt Daddy site. To round out the look, he wore shorts and tennis shoes already in his closet. To portray Spencer and Heidi’s baby, Gunner, we utilized the same doll that played Shiloh when the GC and I dressed up as Brad and Angelina in 2006. I also reused my Emily Maynard wig, purchased a sling carrier on Amazon, grabbed my everyday house slippers, and, voila, our Spencer and Heidi costumes were complete! The GC completely ate the whole thing up, playing “Look What You Made Me Do” on his iPhone and holding crystals to his head all evening. It looks like I may be rubbing off on him when it comes to Halloween, finally! Winking smile And now, on with the post!

I love a good police procedural. And, as weird as it may sound (especially considering I couldn’t be a bigger scaredy cat if I tried!), there’s nothing I enjoy more than viewing Law & Order: SVU before bed. I don’t know what it is about that show – it’s like warm milk to me. Despite its rather grim nature, it is somehow calming. And while I could watch it every.single.night., the GC likes to change up our television viewing every so often. So, on the recommendation of my mom, I recently suggested we give Bosch, the Amazon series based upon Michael Connelly’s detective Harry Bosch novels, a try. Ten minutes into episode 1 and we were hooked. I love the show’s noirish roots, lead actor Titus Welliver’s constant deadpan delivery, and the locations. Oh, the locations! Set and shot in the City of Angels, Bosch makes spectacular use of real life L.A. locales, some iconic, some lesser known. I was thrilled to recognize one lesser known spot, Demitasse, while watching Season 2’s “Exit Time.” The Little Tokyo café is a longtime favorite of mine. Though I mentioned it in my 2015 guide to Los Angeles’ coffee scene, until I saw it pop up on Bosch, I did not realize it was a filming location. So I figured it was high time I dedicate a post to the place.

I first discovered Demitasse in October 2011 when I randomly walked by the corner shop on my way to stalk Kyoto Gardens. The unique contraptions displayed in the front window stopped me right in my tracks and I promptly ventured closer to get a better look.

As the posted sign informed me, the machines were actually Kyoto-style slow-drip iced coffee brewers, aka the “Kyoto Twins,” which “drip water onto coffee beds, allowing the water to slowly extract flavors from the coffee, leaving us with a rich, layered and complex iced coffee.” Intrigued, I headed right inside, where I ordered what turned out to be one of the best iced lattes of my life! Since that day, I make it a point to pop into Demitasse whenever I find myself nearby.

Demitasse (which means “small coffee cup”) was the brainchild of Bobak Roshan, a 2008 USC Gould School of Law graduate who found himself more intrigued by java than statutes. Initially figuring he’d open a café post-retirement, his plans quickly shifted and, in 2010, he traded his law books for grounds. He found the perfect site to establish his coffee bar in a wedge-shaped spot that formerly housed a frozen yogurt shop on the corner of South San Pedro and Astronaut Ellison S Onizuka Streets.

Demitasse opened its doors to the public on August 15th, 2011.

The inspiration for the café’s horseshoe-shaped interior came from an unusual place. As Roshan explained to The Rafu Shimpo website, “This bar is actually heavily influenced by sushi bars. I was in San Francisco once at this place called Sebo. You sit up at the bar and you talk to the chef and he tells you about the fish and what you’re eating and why it’s fresh and where it comes from. I thought, ‘This is what coffee should be like. So we specifically designed [our bar] for making drinks and interacting with customers, so they can sit and watch us work and we can talk to them . . . and we’ve certainly become friends with a lot of our regulars.”

From the beginning, Roshan has utilized the Kyoto method of brewing. Of the complicated technique, The Rafu Shimpo website says, “The coffee siphon (also called the ‘vacuum coffee pot’) dates back to 1800s Berlin, but fell out of popularity in Europe around the mid-20th century. The ‘weird contraptions’ are now most popular in Asia, and Demitasse’s siphons, like much of their other equipment, comes from Japan. Brewing by siphon instead of with a standard coffee maker creates a smoother, more flavorful cup of coffee, taking out much of the body and leaving a drink almost as delicate as tea.” The process takes a whopping 8 to 16 hours to complete! The result is well worth it, though. The Kyoto Twins create some of the richest and creamiest brew I have ever sampled.

In a genius move, Demitasse also serves its iced java in special sake glasses made to keep the cubes separate from the coffee, ensuring that drinks don’t get watered down (one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to iced brew).

Though the place struggled a bit during its early days, it eventually caught on. So much so that Roshan opened up two sister outposts – one at 6363 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Grove and another at 1149 Third Street in Santa Monica. Today, the Little Tokyo branch is bustling most hours, which is not surprising. As I said in my 2015 guide to coffee in L.A., grabbing a java at Demitasse is a full-on experience! It doesn’t hurt that the café is situated along Astronaut Ellison S Onizuka Street, a quaint closed-to-cars block home to countless cute boutiques and shops.

In “Exit Time,” which aired in 2016, Harry Bosch pretends to run into Detectives Brad Conniff (David Marciano) and Julie Espinosa (Jacqueline Pinol) at Demitasse in an attempt to find out what they know about the murder of George Irving (Robbie Jones). Both the exterior . . .

. . . and interior of the café appeared in the episode.

Because the GC and I have only watched Bosch’s first two seasons, I did not realize until sitting down to write this post that Demitasse has actually been featured in no less than four episodes of the show! In Season 3, it popped up in “El Compadre” as the spot where Chief Irvin Irving (Lance Reddick) asked Jun Park (Linda Park) out on an official date.

Irving and Jun returned to Demitasse the following season in the episode title “The Coping.”

Jun meets reporter Laura Cook (Kristen Ariza) at the café to give her some off-the-record information in Season 4’s “Book of the Unclaimed Dead.”

And Demitasse pops up briefly in Bosch’s Season 6 premiere, titled “The Overlook,” as the spot where Captain Sarah McCurdy (Jennifer Hasty) briefs Harry and Jerry Edgar (Jamie Hector) on the Sovereigns.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Demitasse café, from Bosch, is located at 135 South San Pedro Street in Little Tokyo. You can visit the coffee shop’s official website here. Portal light installation can be found just up the block in the Weller Court shopping center at 123 Astronaut Ellison S Onizuka Street. Kinokuniya, one of my favorite book/gift stores, is on Weller Court’s second level directly above Marukai Market. And Kyoto Gardens from Her is steps away on the third floor of the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Los Angeles Downtown at 120 South Los Angeles Street.