Downtown Los Angeles – Page 2

January 28, 2019November 5, 2019

The Millennium Biltmore Hotel’s South Galleria from “The West Wing”

The Millennium Biltmore Los Angeles is a rare bird when it comes to filming locations in that virtually every square inch of it has appeared onscreen – and I’m talking in multiple major productions! This factoid fascinates me and I thought it would be fun to cover in an in-depth article, so a few years back I pitched the idea to my editor at Discover L.A. who told me to run with it. Though I chronicled ten areas of the vast hotel in the column, which was published in 2016, due to length concerns there were a few spots I had to leave out including the South Galleria, an ornate hallway that was most famously featured in Pretty in Pink. I had planned on writing about the beautiful space on my own site as a follow-up to the article shortly thereafter, but never got around to it. Then, last week, while watching an early episode of The West Wing (which the Grim Cheaper and I just started binging and are absolutely obsessed with!), I spotted the Galleria and decided it was high time I finally dedicate a post to it.

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The South Galleria, which is situated along the southwest edge of the Biltmore, connects the hotel’s South Grand Street entrance to its Main Galleria and provides access to the Heinsbergen Room, the Regency Room, and the Biltmore Bowl.

The gilded hallway, inspired by the opulent Roman villas of ancient Pompeii, boasts an intricate Beaux Arts-style vaulted ceiling featuring bucolic frescoes hand-painted by muralist Giovanni Smeraldi.

The dramatic space is also flanked by elaborate friezes, carved columns, and sweeping archways.

The gilded gates situated on its south side . . .

. . . lead to an equally grand stairwell that heads down to the Biltmore Bowl and the Regency Room.

Being that the South Galleria is situated in a tucked away area on the side of the hotel, it would, sadly, be quite easy for visitors and guests to spend ample time at the Biltmore and not even realize the impressive space exists. If you happen to find yourself on the premises, do not make that mistake. The striking hallway is not to be missed!

In the Season 1 episode of The West Wing titled “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet,” which aired in 2000, the South Galleria portrays Washington D.C.’s Old Executive Office Building (now known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building), where President Jed Bartlet’s (Martin Sheen) speech to the United Organization of Trout Fishermen is moved at the last minute due to some unforeseen rain.

Producers cheated a bit with the locale in the scene by shooting from both ends of the Galleria in order to make it appear as two different hallways that the President has to walk down on the way to deliver his speech. The West Wing does love a good lengthy walk-and-talk segment!

John Norman Howard (Kris Kristofferson) gets into a fight with the paparazzi during the Grammy Awards at the top of the staircase/escalator leading down to the Biltmore Bowl in the 1976 version of A Star Is Born.

In the 1986 classic Pretty in Pink, Andie (Molly Ringwald) trepidatiously ventures alone down the South Galleria on her way to her Senior Prom (which was held in the Biltmore’s famed Crystal Ballroom) . . .

. . . only to find her BFF Duckie (Jon Cryer) waiting for her at the other end.

Though Richard Alleman asserts in his book New York: The Movie Lover’s Guide that “James Caan, as the novelist in Steven King’s Misery (1990), celebrated his latest best seller” at Tavern on the Green, I discovered that information was incorrect while doing research for my June 2018 post about the famed NYC eatery. In actuality, at the end of the film, Caan’s character, Paul Sheldon, shares a celebratory lunch with his agent, Marcia Sindell (Lauren Bacall), at none other than the South Galleria, which was dressed to look like an upscale Big Apple restaurant.

The South Galleria also posed as a restaurant in Atlas Shrugged: Part I. In the 2011 drama, it served as the spot where Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling) confronted Francisco D’Anconia (Jsu Garcia) about his shady copper mine investments.

But the South Galleria’s noted onscreen appearances don’t end there! The space also pops up as a Beirut hotel hallway in the Season 7 episode of The Mentalist titled “Orange Blossom Ice Cream,” which aired in 2014.

And Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) and Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) have a terse conversation in the South Galleria during an awards ceremony in the Season 1 episode of The Morning Show titled “A Seat at the Table,” which aired in November 2019.

Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) is also shown walking down the Biltmore Bowl staircase on her way to the ceremony in that same episode.

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 Millennium Biltmore Los Angeles is located at 506 South Grand Avenue in downtown L.A. You can visit the property’s official website here. The South Galleria, from the “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet” episode of The West Wing, can be reached via the hotel entrance situated just north of and adjacent to Coffee on Grand at 530 South Grand Avenue.

December 21, 2018August 24, 2020

The Majestic Downtown from “The Holiday”

The Holiday has definitely been on my brain as of late. I wrote about two of the houses used in the 2006 film for the December issue of Los Angeles magazine and recently got to tour Thorne Hall at Occidental College, the setting of one of its most poignant scenes. So I figured it was only appropriate to dedicate a post to another of the movie’s locales, DTLA’s SB Spring building, more specifically its lower level former bank space known as The Majestic Downtown, which masqueraded as the supposed London office of The Daily Telegraph newspaper in the flick. I have blogged about this spot twice before, once in 2010 for my own site and then again in 2014 for L.A. mag. The last time I did some stalking of it, though, an event was being set up and the friendly security guard manning the front door happened to invite me inside for a closer look! I have yet to share the photos I snapped that day, so I decided it was definitely time for a third go-round.

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SB Spring was originally erected in 1924 as the headquarters of the Hellman Commercial Trust and Savings Bank.

Commissioned by Isaias Hellman at a cost of $2.5-million, the Beaux Arts-style structure was designed by the Schultze & Weaver architecture firm.

Featuring an Indiana limestone façade with sweeping arched windows and doors and terra cotta carvings, the 12-story building originally housed offices on the upper levels . . .

. . . and a two-story Spanish Revival-style bank on the ground floor boasting 40-foot-tall hand-painted coffered ceilings, marble columns, stairs and flooring, intricate bronze chandeliers, and a large mezzanine. You can check out a photo of what the grand space looked like during its early days here.

Soon after construction of the property was complete, Hellman Commercial merged with Merchants National Bank and then was taken over by Bank of America shortly thereafter. The 250,000-square-foot structure became the financial institution’s Los Angeles headquarters and, as such, was known largely as the “Bank of America Building.”

When B of A moved its headquarters to a new location on Flower Street in 1972, the upstairs offices of the Spring Street building were leased out to various companies. The ground floor bank, however, remained in operation until its doors were finally closed due to a decline in business in March 1988.

Developer Barry Shy purchased the structure in 2009 and converted the upstairs offices into a 174-unit loft-style apartment building known as SB Spring.

Thankfully, the bank space, now a special events venue known as The Majestic Downtown, has been left largely intact over the years, making it the perfect spot for filming. And locations scouts have definitely taken note!

In The Holiday, The Majestic Downtown is where Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) works as a newspaper writer.

It is during the paper’s Christmas party at the beginning of the film that Iris learns her total cad of an ex-boyfriend, Jasper Bloom (Rufus Sewell), has proposed to the girl that he cheated on her with.

SB Spring has appeared in countless productions in addition to The Holiday. So many, that it would be impossible to chronicle all of its onscreen appearances here, but below are a few of my personal favorites.

Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze) has Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg) fill out a signature card under a fake name at the bank in 1990’s Ghost.

The Majestic Downtown masks as the Fourth Reich Bank of Hamburg where Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) provides his financial records in an attempt to secure a dinner reservation at L’Idiot restaurant in the 1991 comedy L.A. Story.

The site portrays Edge City Savings & Loan, where Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey) works, in the 1994 comedy The Mask.

Robbie Hart (Adam Sandler) applies for a job there in the 1998 romcom The Wedding Singer.

In 2001’s Heartbreakers, Max Conners (Sigourney Weaver) and her daughter, Page Conners (Jennifer Love Hewitt), attempt to withdraw money from their accounts at the bank, but are thwarted by the IRS.

Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner) saves a party at The Majestic Downtown by performing the Zombie Dance from Thriller in the 2004 comedy 13 Going on 30.

And, yes, I did, of course, imitate Jenna doing a Thriller move while I was there, but unfortunately the lighting in the building was extremely low, so my photo did not come out. (Many of the images I took that day suffered the same fate, unfortunately.)

The exterior of SB Spring masquerades as Belle en Blanc bridal salon in the 2011 comedy Bridesmaids.

Me doing my best Helen (Rose Byrne) out in front. Too bad the shop’s ornate intercom isn’t actually there in real life.

Though the interior of the salon was a studio-built set, it is outside of SB Spring that the scene’s most memorable moment took place.

It is there that Lillian (Maya Rudolph), ahem, loses her sh*t in the middle of the street.

Had to do it! (Though I accidentally posed a bit too far to the north.)

SB Spring plays Capitol Trust Bank, where Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and the gang attend a Homeland Security counterterrorism drill, in the Season 2 episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine titled “Windbreaker City,” which aired in 2014.

In 2018, the exterior of the bank popped up in the music video for the Lil Dicky/Chris Brown song “Freak Friday,” which you can watch here.

And E.B. Jonathan (John Lithgow) unsuccessfully attempts to secure a loan there in the hopes of saving his practice in the Season 1 episode of the new HBO series Perry Mason titled “Chapter 4.”

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Majestic Downtown, aka The Daily Telegraph newspaper office from The Holiday, is located at 650 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the venue’s official website here.

December 3, 2018August 24, 2020

The Dutch Chocolate Shop from “Castle”

I am an extremely excitable person. A visit to Disneyland, randomly running in to a friend, a surprise sale at a favorite store, unexpected access to an off-limits filming location – all can send me into a tailspin. Such was the case last week when the Grim Cheaper and I were driving to stalk the former Dutch Chocolate Shop – a stunning oft-used locale in downtown L.A. that typically sits hidden away behind an unsightly metal rolldown door. As I ventured past the site looking for parking, I saw that the door happened to be open and got so excited I nearly careened the car into oncoming traffic. After calming down (slightly) and securing a parking spot, I ran back to the store, hyperventilating all the way, and was met by the extremely friendly man that runs it, who, lo and behold, invited us inside! More hyperventilating ensued (obvs). Still, days later as I sit here and write this, I cannot believe I actually got to see the inside of the place. As Yelper Andrew W. recently noted, the Dutch Chocolate Shop is “the Holy Grail of downtown Los Angeles’ – heck, maybe all of Los Angeles’ – historical and artistic sites.”

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I was first made aware of the Dutch Chocolate Shop when writing my post about The Magic Castle in October. While doing research on the historic Hollywood club, I came across a mention on IMDB that it had portrayed the headquarters of the Greatest Detective Society in the Season 8 episode of Castle titled “G.D.S.” I headed right on over to Amazon to download and scan through the episode, but one look at the cavernous space shown onscreen and I knew IMDB had gotten it wrong. The locale was most certainly not The Magic Castle. I was absolutely captivated by it, though, and promptly started trying to track it down, which I did fairly quickly thanks to Castle Wiki. As the website informed me, filming had taken place at a former chocolate shop, of all things, once located at 217 West 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Situated on the ground floor of a rather non-descript (and now graffiti-covered) 1898 building, the confectionary was the brainchild of E.C. Quinby, P.W. Quinby, and W.M. Petitfils of the Chocolate Shop Corporation.

The group leased the four-story structure in 1913 and renovated the street level space to the tune of $40,000. Architecture firm Plummer & Feil was commissioned to carry out the redesign.

The architects secured Pasadena artisan Ernest Batchelder to wallpaper the interior of the Dutch Chocolate Shop (or “the Chocolate Shoppe” as it was sometimes referred to) with his famous tilework, including murals which were to be Dutch in theme.

Per Big Orange Landmarks, “The Shoppe was to serve as a prototype for a whole chain of soda parlors, each with a different European country as its theme. For whatever reason – some say it was the high cost of Batchelder’s work – this never came to pass, and the 6th Street location was the first and last Chocolate Shoppe.”

Ernest’s fees might have been high, but the owners certainly got what they paid for because the finished product is absolutely stunning, with groined arches, tiled pillars, and 21 bas relief murals all depicting imagery of life in Holland.

The space, which is extremely reminiscent of Grand Central Terminal’s Whispering Gallery, is exquisite.

According to a commenter on Curbed Los Angeles, Feil instructed Ernest to fashion the tiles to look like chocolate bars. While a sweet (see what I did there) anecdote, I do not believe it to be true being that not only did Batchelder regularly utilize dark brown hues in his work, but per a different Curbed article and a Los Angeles Conservancy reference manual, the shingles’ current shading is actually an unintentional discoloration caused by shellac.

The Dutch Chocolate Shop, which operated as a confectionary, a soda fountain and a lunch/dinner restaurant, opened to the public in 1914.

You can see what it looked like in its early days here and here.

Though beautiful, the Dutch Chocolate Shop was not successful in the long run and by the early 1920s it was shuttered. The tiled space changed hands several times in the years that followed before being transformed into Finney’s Cafeteria in 1947. The eatery proved highly popular with the downtown set and remained in operation for almost forty years, until it, too, closed its doors in 1986 and was subsequently sold to an investment group.

For some inexplicable reason, the former Dutch Chocolate Shop was transformed into an arcade of sorts in 1997 – its vaulted rooms divided up by stalls, its gorgeous tiling covered over with particle board, and stacks of wares piled in every available nook and cranny. You can see some photos of its tragic appearance from that time period on Big Orange Landmarks. The space then became an electronics/pager store, as the signage hanging outside still attests to.

In 2012, the site, which is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, rather fortuitously wound up in the hands of former furniture dealer Charles Aslan. As reported in a Los Angeles Times article from that year, “The funny thing was that Aslan hadn’t come to the building for Batchelder. The exuberant businessman, born in Singapore, had only recently learned who Batchelder was.” After removing the plywood covering the former arcade’s walls and accidentally unearthing the virtually pristine historic murals and tile work, though, an idea took shape – to revitalize the entire structure by opening an upscale hot chocolate bar on the ground level, a restaurant on the second, artist studios on the third, and a tile manufacturing shop on the fourth. Again, from the L.A. Times – “Soon this man who once sold over-the-top factory furniture from an open lot on La Cienega Boulevard was expressing his devotion to the Pasadena artisan who epitomized the handmade. ‘The whole building is going to be Batchelder,’ Aslan said proudly of the 25,000-square-foot, four-story structure he has leased for the next 13 1/2 years.” Sadly, his intentions to reinvigorate the once grand space have not yet come to fruition. The roadblocks are mainly due to the structure’s lack of a rear exit, which is needed in order to secure a large enough certificate of occupancy to accommodate a restaurant of any sort. Though the building looks to have been put on the market for a brief time in late 2017, there weren’t any takers and current plans for the Dutch Chocolate Shop site seem to be uncertain.

Today, it sits vacant and, outside of the occasional filming, closed up . . .

. . . but thankfully well-preserved.

The “G.D.S” episode of Castle, which aired in 2016, made spectacular use of the Dutch Chocolate Shop. One look at the images below and it should be clear why I became so obsessed with the place.

Interestingly, “G.D.S.” was not the first Castle episode to utilize the site. In 2012, the Dutch Chocolate Shop masked as “the lair of an evil laser-gun-making genius” named Benjamin Donnelly (Armin Shimerman) in the Season 5 episode of the series titled “The Final Frontier.”

The exterior of the building also appeared in the episode.

The Dutch Chocolate Shop’s filming history far predates Castle, though.

Way back in 1918, Sheila Moore (Dorothy Gish) got a job there in The Hope Chest. Sadly, I could not find a copy of the movie with which to make screen captures anywhere, but photos from it appear on both Wikipedia . . .

. . . and The Daily Mirror website.

In the 1980 drama The Hunter, Ritchie Blumenthal (Eli Wallach) convinces bounty hunter Papa Thorson (Steve McQueen) to bring in fugitive Tony Bernardo (Thomas Rosales Jr.) while eating lunch at what was then Finney’s Cafeteria.

The Dutch Chocolate Shop site masks as The Museum of Human Misery: Hall of Low-Grade Crappiness in the Season 2 episode of The Good Place titled “Rhonda, Diana, Jake, and Trent,” which aired in 2018.

And it masquerades as a secret cellar beneath the Sisters of the Divine Path convent in the Season 5 episode of Lucifer titled “Detective Amenadiel,” which aired in 2020.

According to the nice man who runs the place, the locale was also utilized in a Shania Twain video, though I was unable to figure out which video in particular.

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 Dutch Chocolate Shop, from the “G.D.S.” episode of Castle, is located at 217 West 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the space is closed to the public and typically hidden from view.

September 28, 2018September 29, 2018

California Market Center from “Cruel Intentions”

For such a quintessentially “New York” movie, quite a lot of Cruel Intentions was shot in L.A., which I’m only just now discovering. A few of the more prominent West Coast locales include the modern pad where Blaine Tuttle (Joshua Jackson) lived (it’s actually the Benton House in Brentwood), the Rosemont Estate’s ornate indoor pool (that can be found at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles), Penn Station (downtown L.A.’s 7th Street/Metro Center Station in real life), and, as I recently learned thanks to my friend Owen (of the When Write Is Wrong blog), the office of Sebastian Valmont’s (Ryan Phillipe) therapist, Dr. Greenbaum (Swoosie Kurtz), which is really California Market Center, also in downtown L.A. I headed right on out to stalk the site on a sunny Saturday morning shortly after Owen told me about it in June, but what I did not realize is that the wholesale fashion mart is closed on weekends. So that particular mission was thwarted. I wasn’t able to re-stalk the place until mid-September and, this time, I made sure to hit it up on a weekday.

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The California Mart, as it was initially called, was established by New York lingerie manufacturers Harvey and Barney Morse. Upon moving to L.A. and working the SoCal fashion trade in the 1930s, the brothers discovered there was a need for a centralized spot where retailers could look for and secure merchandise. As Edna Bonacich and Richard P. Appelbaum explain in their 2000 book Behind the Label, “Buyers would come to Los Angeles with their checkbooks in hand, yet wind up spending days wandering through the sprawling Los Angeles basis in a sometimes futile search for suitable manufacturers. The Morse brothers saw an opportunity.” The duo purchased a plot of land for their new marketplace on East 9th and South Los Angeles Streets in 1952 and the complex’s first building was completed in 1963.

The mart’s second building was constructed in 1965 and the third in 1979. All three were designed by the Victor Gruen Associates architecture firm.

The result of their efforts is a sprawling 1.8-million-square-foot marketplace that the L.A. Times dubbed “the heartbeat of the Los Angeles apparel industry” in 1987.

The Morse family continued to own the California Mart until 1994 when it was lost to foreclosure. The site was soon snapped up by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, who set about refurbishing the interior and increasing tenancy. In 2000, Equitable Life sold to Hertz Investment Group for a cool $90 million. Though the company renamed the vast plaza “California Market Center,” many still refer to it by its original moniker.

In 2005, the complex was acquired for $135 million by Jamison Realty Inc. They subsequently sold it last June for a whopping $440 million to New York-based real estate company Brookfield, who are planning to renovate the space and make it more publicly accessible. (Perhaps keeping it open on weekends might be a good start. Winking smile ) Bert Dezzutti, the head of Brookfield’s Western region, recently told the Los Angeles Times, “We want to open it up literally and figuratively to the street and to pedestrian flow to invite people into space that is somewhat blocked off and difficult to access now.” I really hope their punch list doesn’t include altering the market’s fabulous lobby.

The gorgeous atrium-like space . . .

. . . is capped by a magnificent glass ceiling that is not only stunning to look at, but allows copious natural light to flow in and provides beautiful views of the mart’s three modernist-style buildings.

The 13-story complex currently houses numerous meeting venues and event spaces, more than 1,200 apparel showrooms, a theatre, a print shop, a food court, a fashion school (Otis College of Art and Design), a bank, a large parking garage, and some of the nicest public restrooms in all of downtown.

You can check out some more photographs of the market here.

Cruel Intentions made spectacular use of the complex’s lobby.

It is there that, in the 1999 drama’s opening scene, Sebastian leaves his latest therapy session just seconds before Dr. Greenbaum learns that he has not only seduced her daughter, Marci (a pre-American Pie Tara Reid), but has posted nude photographs of her online.

Dr. Greenbaum catches up with Sebastian in the market’s atrium and proceeds to scream at him from the second floor.

In typical Sebastian fashion, while Dr. Greenbaum is ranting and raving, he meets a cute girl and informs her that he is taking her to lunch.

The California Market Center lobby looks exactly the same today as it did onscreen 19 years ago. To say I was ecstatic to finally be seeing it in person is an understatement. And while I was a bit nervous that the powers that be would yell at me for taking photographs of the space, I am happy to report that all of the security guards and employees I spoke with could not have been nicer.

As Owen later discovered and informed me, an actual CA Market Center suite was also used in the scene as the interior of Dr. Greenbaum’s office.

As you can see in the screen capture as compared to the Google aerial image of the buildings located just north of the complex (both of which are pictured below), the view from the doctor’s windows match that of the actual mart.

California Market Center also popped up in the Season 4 episode of Starsky and Hutch titled “The Groupie,” which aired in 1978, as the spot where Det. Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (David Soul) and Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) went undercover as a swimsuit buyer and a fashion photographer, respectively.

The mart’s real life interior also appeared in the episode, but it looks quite a bit different today than it did onscreen 39 years ago.

Stay tuned on Monday, folks, for the start of my annual Haunted Hollywood postings! I can’t wait!

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

Big THANK YOU to my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: California Market Center, aka Sebastian’s therapist’s office from Cruel Intentions, is located at 110 East 9th Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the center’s official website here. The property is only open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., so plan accordingly.

August 1, 2018August 1, 2018

7th Street/Metro Center Station from “Cruel Intentions”

We all have those movie scenes – the ones so dramatic, so full of romance or even so disturbing (like this, for example) that, for better or worse, they remain ingrained in our memories. Two of my favorites happen to be from the same film and, oddly, it’s a film I don’t even like – 1999’s Cruel Intentions. The first, as mentioned in my recent post on the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, is the scene in which Annette Hargrove (Reese Witherspoon) implores Sebastian Valmont (Ryan Phillippe) to take himself less seriously by making adorably silly faces. The other is the escalator scene. Ladies, you know what I’m talking about, amirite? For those who haven’t seen it (and if not, I urge you to check it out ASAP), here’s a rundown – after a major argument, Sebastian shows up at what is supposedly Penn Station in New York to surprise Annette. As she heads up an escalator upon debarking her train and sees him waiting for her at the top, she says “I’m impressed,” to which he responds, “Well, I’m in love.” Hearts of teenage girls everywhere broke wide open for Phillipe while watching the scene – mine included. So when I recently learned via The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations that the 7th Street/Metro Center Station in downtown L.A. portrayed Penn Station in the bit, I just about fell over from excitement and immediately added the site to my To-Stalk List. I made it out to the station a few weeks later and was thrilled to see the place looking virtually frozen in time from its onscreen stint almost twenty years ago.

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7th Street/Metro Center Station is located beneath Figueroa Tower on the corner of South Figueroa and West 7th Streets in downtown’s Financial District.

Completed in 1988, the 24-story structure, originally known as Home Savings Tower, mixes Chateauesque and post-modern styles.

The station’s entrance can be found at the building’s southwest corner, beneath a gorgeous mural titled “City Above.”

Painted by Terry Schoonhoven in 1991, the imagery of the colorful piece appears to change drastically as riders journey up the escalators to the street or down to the subway.

The depot itself, the first subway station to open in Los Angeles since the city shut down subterranean transportation in 1955, debuted in February 1991 to much fanfare. The site’s lower level, which was behind schedule, opened two years later.

Very little of the terminal can actually be seen in Cruel Intentions. Thankfully, an elevator is visible behind Sebastian at one point which helped me pinpoint the exact spot where filming took place.

In the iconic scene, Annette and Sebastian reunite on the station’s first level mezzanine, at the set of escalators that abut the elevator just past the turnstiles near the 7th & Figueroa Street entrance. That area is pictured below.

The escalator that Annette rides up in the segment actually moves downward in real life, so it was a bit hard to get a matching shot of her POV. The image below is the closest I got.

Despite the directional switch, thanks to the fact that the camera pans down in the scene, stepping onto that escalator made me feel like I was actually living out the movie. I swear I could almost make out “Colorblind” playing in the background.

The segment also features a blurred view of the station’s ceramic tile art installation titled The Movies: Fantasies and The Movies: Spectacles, hand-painted by Joyce Kozloff, as Annette and Sebastian inevitably kiss. Sigh!

Amazingly, the escalator bit wasn’t an original element of the Cruel Intentions storyline. Per a script I found online dated February 10th, 1998 (which is about four months before filming began), the train station scene initially lacked dialogue and simply consisted of Annette disembarking from a train at Grand Central Station to find Sebastian standing in the busy concourse waiting for her. She runs to him and they kiss. End scene. I would love to know what motivated the change. Did the director take one look at 7th Street/Metro Center Station’s escalator layout and become inspired? Being that locations typically serve as my inspiration, I’d like to think that was the case.

Cruel Intentions is not the only production to have made use of 7th Street/Metro Center Station. Lt. Sam Cole (Tom Sizemore) ventures out of the depot at the end of the Season 1 episode of Robbery Homicide Division titled “Hellbound Train,” which aired in 2003.

In the 2004 thriller Collateral, Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Max (Jamie Foxx) run into the station and onto a train in an attempt to escape from Vincent (Tom Cruise).

That same year, the site appeared in two episodes of 24. It is at 7th Street/Metro Center Station that Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and his team set up a stakeout to catch Arthur Rabens (Salvator Xuereb) in Season 3’s “11:00 A.M. – 12: 00 P.M.” . . .

. . . and “12:00 P.M. – 1:00 P.M.”

The entrance to the station also appears in the Season 6 episode of 24 titled “7:00 A.M. – 8 A.M,” which aired in 2007 . . .

. . . though interiors were shot about 15 miles away at North Hollywood Station located at 5391 Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood.

Both the subway’s Figueroa and 7th Street entrance . . .

. . . as well as its other entrance at West 7th and South Flower Street make brief appearances in the 2009 family comedy Hotel for Dogs.

Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) investigate the death of a subway maintenance worker at the station in the Season 3 episode of Castle titled “Murder Most Fowl,” which aired in 2010.

The depot and its 7th & Flower entrance also pop up in Castle’s Season 7 episode titled “Kill Switch,” which aired in 2014.

Taylor Swift dances at 7th Street/Metro Center Station (barefoot, no less!) in her 2018 music video for “Delicate,” which you can watch here.

The station’s 7th & Flower entrance masks as the entrance to New York’s Chamber Street Station in the Season 1 episode of For the People titled “Rahowa,” which aired in March of this year.

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: 7th Street/Metro Center Station, aka Penn Station from Cruel Intentions, can be reached from the bottom level of the Home Savings Tower, which is located at 660 South Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles. The escalator that appeared in the movie is situated just beyond the turnstiles at that entrance, in front of the elevator. Be advised, you will need to purchase a TAP card and buy a fare to access the area featured in the scene.

April 2, 2018November 21, 2018

The Los Angeles Theatre Alley from “Coyote Ugly”

You won’t typically find me frequenting back alleys in downtown Los Angeles. But there is one that I just can’t get enough of. My good friend Mike, from MovieShotsLA, pointed it out to me many years ago during a daylong DTLA stalking venture. While driving through the Theatre District, he pulled over near what looked to be a nondescript alcove off West 6th Street and pointed upwards. I literally gasped as my eyes locked upon the towering red marquee reading “Los Angeles Theatre” situated on the back wall of the small urban enclave. It was easily one of the most cinematic vistas I had ever seen! So I was not surprised when Mike informed me that the passageway had been featured onscreen in 2000’s Coyote Ugly, which up until that point I assumed had been shot solely in New York. Mike, of course, knew better. I snapped a ton of photos of the alley that day and have been back several times since, always stopping for a peek when I find myself nearby. Somehow though, I failed to ever blog about it. Cut to last month when I received an email from fellow stalker/Emergency! expert Richard Yokley (you may remember him from this post and this post) asking if I had ever stalked the Los Angeles Theatre alley and informing me of several of its other onscreen cameos. I decided right then and there that I had to dedicate a post to the site pronto!

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Modeled after San Francisco’s now defunct Fox Theater, the Los Angeles Theatre was originally built in 1931 for film exhibitor H.L. Gumbiner. The grand venue was designed in the French Baroque style by S. Charles Lee (who also gave us Temple Israel of Hollywood) and cost over $1 million to complete. And we’re talking 1930’s dollars! To say the site is opulent would be a gross understatement. I had the privilege of seeing it up close and personal a few years back thanks to the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Broadway Historic Theatre and Commercial District Tour. And, let me tell you, it is sensational! From the 80-foot-tall façade . . .

. . . to the gilded two-story lobby . . .

. . . to the elaborate 2,000-seat auditorium . . .

. . . to the oval ballroom – the locale is one of the most captivating in all of L.A.!

I mean, even the bathrooms are dazzling!

It is the theatre’s side alley that sets my heart aflutter, though.

The juxtaposition of the grit of the alley with the glamour of the marquee is just so strikingly cinematic!

Not to mention picturesque!

I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

The space almost looks like a manufactured set piece created on a backlot street at a Hollywood studio. But I assure you it is real.

Situated along the Los Angeles Theatre’s north side, around the corner from its main entrance, the alley is largely tucked away from view. One can easily drive right past without realizing it is there.

So why, you ask, was a large marquee installed in a relatively hidden alcove that would not seen by most patrons venturing through the venue’s front doors on Broadway? I could not even fathom a guess, but, thankfully, found an explanation on the Historic Los Angeles Theatres website.

As I learned, another movie palace, the Paramount Theatre, formerly stood directly across the street from the alley at 323 West 6th Street. (It was torn down in 1960 and the International Jewelry Center was eventually erected in its place.) The Paramount’s main entrance provided a great view of the enclave, so Gumbiner, ever the businessman, decided to install a marquee there in the hopes that it would draw the attention – and patronage – of his competitor’s clientele. Original plans for the space called for a much more elaborate façade with a porticoed doorway and columns flanking the marquee, as you can see on the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation’s Facebook page and the Historic Los Angeles Theatres website.

For whatever reason, though, only the marquee portion of it was completed – which I think makes the site even more dramatic and eye-catching.

Considering its compelling ambience, it is not surprising that the alley has popped up onscreen.

In Coyote Ugly, the locale masks as the entrance to New York’s Fiji Mermaid club.

It is there that Violet Sanford (Piper Perabo) introduces herself to Kevin O’Donnell (Adam Garcia), who she thinks is the club’s manager, at the beginning of the film. As you can see in the screen captures above and below, the marquee was changed to read “East Broadway Theatre” for the scene.

As Richard informed me in his email, Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) and Gay Perry (Val Kilmer) retrieve a body from the Los Angeles Theatre alley – and share a rather passionate embrace there while trying to evade the police – in 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Richard also clued me into the alley’s appearance in the original Life on Mars pilot, which never aired, but can be viewed on YouTube here. Written by David E. Kelley, the unaired episode takes place in Los Angeles and centers on LAPD detective Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara) who, after getting hit by a car in 2007, wakes up to discover he is stuck in the year 1972. Apparently ABC requested a complete re-do of the show after viewing it. Not only were several roles recast, but the setting was moved from SoCal to New York. The series was then picked up and went on to air 17 episodes before being given the ax – prematurely I might add. My mom and I watched Life on Mars religiously and were heartbroken over its cancellation. As much of a fan as I was, though, I was completely unaware that the pilot had been reshot until Richard’s email. In the episode, Sam witnesses an arrest taking place in the Los Angeles Theater alley shortly after waking up in 1972.

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

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for originally telling me about this location and to Richard Yokley for reminding me of it and informing me of its other onscreen appearances.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Los Angeles Theatre alley, from Coyote Ugly, is located in between 314 and 318 West 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles.

March 16, 2018March 15, 2018

The “What Women Want” Coffee Shop

“If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard.” So says Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I should have heeded her advice because for years I have been searching for the coffee shop from the 2000 comedy What Women Want and as it turns out the answer to my query has been in a box in my closet since before filming even took place. Let me back up a bit and explain.

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A few nights after my parents and I moved to Pasadena in late February 2000, we grabbed dinner at the Il Fornaio restaurant in Old Town. Upon arriving, my mom spotted a notice on the front door stating that the Italian eatery was going to be closed the following day for a film shoot. We, of course, asked our server for further details and he explained that the shoot was for a Mel Gibson movie named What Women Want. So bright and early the next morning, my mom and I headed back over to the restaurant in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the goings-on. To our delight, we were allowed to sit on a bench right outside of Il Fornaio’s entrance (the very same bench the Grim Cheaper and I took our engagement photos on almost ten years later!) and observe pretty much everything. It was my very first experience being on a working set and I couldn’t believe my luck that it was happening within 72 hours of moving to L.A. The crew could not have been nicer to us, letting us hang out for hours. One even gifted me with the day’s call sheet which I’ve kept in a memento box ever since. Flash forward to last month. While helping me unpack after our recent move, my mom noticed how many celebrity autographs I have and suggested I frame them and display them via a gallery wall in my new office. (You can see the finished result here.) So, I promptly began digging all of my autographs out of my plethora of memento boxes and, while doing so, was shocked to come across the What Women Want call sheet. I had completely forgotten I had it! I didn’t think much about it and didn’t even unfold it to take a closer look, in fact, until a lightbulb went off in my head a few minutes later. Though a call sheet chronicles all of the information for a particular day of shooting (location details, call times, scheduling information, key phone numbers, parking maps, etc.), sometimes data for future filming is also noted. Knowing the odds were incredibly slim but with fingers crossed, I opened up the paper to see if the coffee shop scenes happened to be listed and, lo and behold, they were – along with an address, spelled out in black and white! The information I had been seeking for years had been right in my own backyard – or closet, in this case – the whole time! As the call sheet informed me, the What Women Want coffee shop scenes were lensed at 400 South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. (Though the sheet notes the address as “400 Main St” with no north or south designation, being that there is no structure at 400 North Main, it was easy to discern that filming took place at 400 South.)

I just about fell off my chair when I did a Google Street View search for the address and imagery of the San Fernando Building, a very popular filming location, came into focus on my screen. Not only had I stalked the historic site before, but I’d covered it on two separate occasions in articles for other media outlets. More on that in a bit.

The Italian Renaissance Revival-style structure was commissioned by wealthy wheat farmer/landowner James B. Lankershim in 1907 and originally consisted of 6 floors.

Considered the city’s grandest office building at the time of its inception, the luxe John F. Blee-designed property boasted a marble lobby with 22-foot ceilings, a Turkish bath, a café, a billiards room, and a penthouse which Lankershim called home.

In 1911, two additional stories were added to the top of the building by architect R. B Young.

Sadly, by the ‘90s, the property – and the neighborhood surrounding it – had fallen into disrepair. Enter Tom Gilmore of Gilmore Associates. In 1998, the visionary developer purchased the San Fernando, as well as three additional area buildings, and began rehabilitating them. Killefer Flammang Architects was hired for the extensive transformation process, during which the San Fernando office units were converted into 70 modern loft rentals with concrete flooring, open floorplans, tile bathrooms, and high-end kitchens.

The building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Historic-Cultural Monument, began leasing out units in August 2000 and by March of the following year was 93% occupied.

The San Fernando’s ground floor also garnered new tenants, in the form of high-end restaurants, cafés, studios, and shops . It is one of those spaces that was utilized in What Women Want.

The site pops up a couple of times in the movie as the spot where cocky ad exec Nick Marshall (Gibson) grabs his daily cup of joe – and regularly hits on barista Lola (Marisa Tomei).

Purported to be a Dietrich Coffee outpost in the flick (I am unsure of why the call sheet refers to it as a “Starbucks”), the coffee shop was not a real café at all, but a fabrication constructed inside of a vacant storefront for the shoot – a tidbit I learned years ago from the movie’s DVD commentary with director Nancy Meyers and production designer Jon Hutman.

Yep, you read that right! The What Women Want coffee shop was just a set, albeit an extensive one.

As noted in the commentary, the entire coffee shop was a build-out, even the lobby seen in the background. (Another interesting tidbit that I learned from Meyers’ commentary is that Frank Sinatra greatly influenced both the character of Nick and the movie as a whole. Not only was Nick’s apartment based on Sinatra’s apartment in Come Blow Your Horn, but Hutman incorporated orange, Sinatra’s favorite color, as an accent hue in all of the sets. One example is the directory sign visible below, which boasts an orange stripe across the top.)

So, if the whole What Women Want coffee shop was just a set, one that was completely dismantled after shooting wrapped, why was I so fixated on identifying it? I cannot really answer that question. Though I was fully aware that no part of the locale would be recognizable from the flick, I was still obsessed with tracking it down – and spent years trying to do so. I think possibly my intrigue was not in spite of the café being a set, but because of it. Uncovering the reality of the space’s aesthetic as compared to the fantasy that was shown onscreen piqued my interest. What can I say? The magic of Hollywood captivates me.

Today, the storefront where the What Women Want coffee shop was set up houses a Spanish/Mediterranean eatery named Bäco Mercat. (The space is denoted with a pink bracket below.) Founded by Josef Centeno in 2011, the popular restaurant is named for the baco-style bread that is utilized in its sandwiches.

Though Bäco Mercat occupies the entire southern half of the San Fernando Building’s ground level (as was the case with the What Women Want coffee shop), prior to that the space was divided into two separate units with a café named Banquette inhabiting the more northern storefront, as you’ll see in some screen captures to come.

The entrance doors Nick utilizes in the movie are situated on the northern side of Bäco Mercat.

Ironically, while re-stalking the San Fernando Building recently, I was so excited to finally be seeing the What Women Want café site in person that I failed to snap photos of the buildings across the street (the Hellman Building and the Farmers and Merchants Bank), which were visible in one of the coffee shop scenes and are the only recognizable elements that still exists from the film. Thank goodness for Google Street View! As you can see in the collage below, while the windows of the Hellman Building have changed a bit, the column of the Farmers and Merchants Bank pictured behind Nick is easily identifiable.

As is the decorative lip that runs across the top of the Hellman Building. (You can check out a historic image of the Hellman which shows the street level windows in their original form and as they appeared in What Women Want – before they were altered to run all the way down to the sidewalk – here.)

As I mentioned earlier, the San Fernando Building has a prolific film resume. In the Season 1 episode of Police Story titled “Fingerprint,” which aired in 1974, Allen Rich (Tim Matheson) attempts to evade the police by ducking into the structure.

The episode grants us a great glimpse of what the property’s interior looked like at the time.

In 1977, the San Fernando Building popped up in the Season 2 episode of Starsky and Hutch titled “Huggy Bear and the Turkey” as the site of The Pits bar, where Foxy Baker (Emily Yancy) seeks out Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas) and J.D. Turquet ‘Turkey’ (Dale Robinette) to help her find her missing husband.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve written about the San Fernando on two other occasions. I briefly covered the site and its appearance in the 1983 “Beat It” music video in this Discover Los Angeles article about Michael Jackson’s L.A. that I penned in 2016. While I originally thought that the video’s pool hall segments had been lensed at the Hard Rock Cafe where the bar scenes were shot, back in August 2013 set designer/builder Michael Scaglione, who worked on “Beat It,” was kind enough to give me copies of his original location sheets. As they detailed, filming of the pool hall bits actually occurred at Brunswick Billiard Academy, formerly located in the basement of the San Fernando. Though not much of the space can be seen in the video (which you can watch here) . . .

. . . you can catch some additional glimpses of it in this clip about the making of “Beat It” from Entertainment Tonight’s The Jacksons Exposed! special.

Brunswick Billiard Academy is also where Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) plays pool in 1988’s Bull Durham.

The movie provides us with much wider views of the pool hall than those featured in “Beat It.”

In the 1992 comedy Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Joe Bomowski (Sylvester Stallone) responds to a call about a jumper at the San Fernando, which is said to be located at 486 South Main Street.

The building’s actual interior was also utilized in the scene.

Dick Harper (Jim Carrey), Jane Harper (Téa Leoni) and Frank Bascombe (Richard Jenkins) discuss how to rob Jack McCallister (Alex Baldwin) while sitting in front of Pete’s Cafe and Bar, which formerly occupied the northern half of the San Fernando Building’s lower level, in the 2005 comedy Fun with Dick and Jane. Today that space houses PYT.

Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg) hides out – and almost gets arrested – in the San Fernando’s entrance while spying on Sarah Fenn’s (Kate Mara) meeting with Nick Memphis (Michael Pena) at the Barclay Hotel across the street in the 2007 action flick Shooter.

In 2009’s (500) Days of Summer, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel) shop twice at Old Bank DVD, which was formerly located next to Banquette on the San Fernando’s lower level.

You can just see the edge of Banquette in the second screen capture below.

In the Season 5 Rear-Window-inspired episode of Castle titled “The Lives of Others,” which aired in 2013, Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) spies on his across-the-street neighbors in the San Fernando Building via a pair of binoculars while holed up in his apartment due to a skiing accident.

A couple of scenes also took place on the sidewalk out of in front the building. (Why an address number of 500 was posted on the San Fernando for the shoot, I am unsure.)

That same year, Anton Zevlos (Jeff Griggs) dined with his family at Pete’s Cafe & Bar in the Season 5 episode of NCIS: Los Angeles titled “Iron Curtain Rising.” You can check out a photo of the eatery’s interior that matches what is shown below here.

As I detailed in this post for Los Angeles magazine, Kate King (Leslie Mann) calls her husband, Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), to remind him about a dinner engagement while standing in front of Bäco Mercat in the 2014 movie The Other Woman.

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 coffee shop from What Women Want was created inside of a vacant storefront at the San Fernando Building, which is located at 400 South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. The storefront now houses the restaurant Bäco Mercat. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

March 14, 2018April 19, 2018

Hop Louie from “I Love You, Man”

Los Angeles suffered numerous iconic restaurant closures in 2017 – Auntie Em’s Kitchen in Eagle Rock, Happy Trails Catering in Pasadena (I was particularly heartbroken over that one), and the Formosa Cafe in West Hollywood (though it is set to re-open this summer), just to name a few. 2017 also saw the final shuttering of historic Chinatown eatery Hop Louie. Though the kitchen and main dining room of the area landmark and onscreen stalwart shut down in August 2016, the lower level bar had remained in operation – and left Angelinos hopeful over the restaurant’s future. That all changed when the locale closed its doors for good last July. What is to become of the legendary site is anyone’s guess. I stalked Hop Louie way back in 2012 after becoming obsessed with it thanks to its appearance in I Love You, Man, but, sadly, never got to actually dine on the premises (more on that in a bit) and somehow failed to dedicate a blog post to the place. Then, last week, while doing some downtown L.A. stalking, the Grim Cheaper and I happened to drive through Chinatown and when my gaze caught sight of Hop Louie’s unique pagoda-shaped exterior, I decided it was high time I rectify that.

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Hop Louie’s eye-catching edifice, which towers over Chinatown, was originally constructed in 1941 to house a Cantonese eatery named Golden Pagoda Restaurant.

How it became Hop Louie is not really well-documented online, but from what I can gather the site was taken over in 1985 by restauranteurs Hop Louie Woo and Bill Ng, who met while working together at Latitude 20 in Torrance. The duo transformed the locale into a Cantonese/Mandarin eatery named after Woo. Though the fare was never especially noteworthy, the place quickly became a neighborhood staple due largely to its kitschy décor, generous servings, and reasonable prices. The cocktail lounge, situated on the lower level and known for serving stiff, inexpensive libations, was also a big part of Hop Louie’s draw.

Very little of the restaurant was changed throughout its thirty-year history, leaving patrons and online commenters to commonly refer to it as being “frozen in time.” The assessment was not at all far off – the place was a relic! A cigarette vending machine could even still be found on the premises as late as 2007.

Sadly, Hop Louie suffered from lingering profits in recent years, leading the owners to shut down the kitchen in August 2016. Though the bar was left open, everyone in the city, it seemed, mourned the restaurant’s demise, with Eater LA, LA Weekly, LAist, NBC Los Angeles, and TimeOut all lamenting the news.

Oddly, when the cocktail lounge shuttered a little less than a year later and the final nail was essentially put in Hop Louie’s coffin, the lights seemed to go out with no fanfare whatsoever. In fact, had it not been for a couple of mentions on Yelp and Instagram, I would not have even realized that the bar had closed and the historic restaurant was no longer.

When the GC and I visited Hop Louie in 2012, our experience left a bit to be desired. Upon entering, we headed upstairs to the dining area and I snapped the photos below along the way.

As we reached the second level and stood waiting to be seated, I took a picture of the dining room which apparently was a huge no-no because a man immediately ran over to us screaming and yelling that photos were not allowed. It was not the best way to be greeted, so, needless to say, we did not stay for a meal and the images above and below are the only ones I got of Hop Louie’s interior. You can check out some great shots of the inside of the place here, though.

You can also catch a glimpse of the restaurant via its myriad onscreen roles. In the 2009 comedy I Love You, Man, Zooey Rice (Rashida Jones) and Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) host their engagement party at Hop Louie.

In an interesting twist, though, one that I did not realize up until writing this post, only the exterior of Hop Louie was utilized in the engagement party scene. Though the eatery is referred to by name in the movie and said to be Peter’s favorite spot to bring dates, it solely appeared in a brief establishing shot. All interior filming took place at the Great Wall Chinese Restaurant located at 18331 Sherman Way in Reseda. You can see some photographs of that site here.

Back in 1978, when the locale still housed the Golden Pagoda, it portrayed the restaurant owned by Miss Choy (France Nuyen) in the Season 7 episode of Columbo titled “Murder Under Glass.”

Once again, only the exterior was utilized in the shoot. Interiors were shot elsewhere.

In 1984, the Golden Pagoda popped up in the Season 2 episode of The A-Team titled “The Maltese Cow.”

As was the case with the previous two productions mentioned, only the exterior of the building appeared onscreen. Interiors were shot, I believe, on a set.

We finally catch a glimpse of Hop Louie’s interior in the 1990 comedy Sibling Rivalry, in the scene in which Marjorie Turner (Kirstie Alley) and her sister Jeanine (Jami Gertz) discuss Jeanine’s new love interest over lunch.

A fight between two rival kick-boxing gangs breaks out near Hop Louie’s entrance in the 1991 action flick Ring of Fire.

Haru (Chris Farley) goes undercover as a teppan chef at Hop Louie in order to spy on Martin Tanley (Nathaniel Parker) in the 1997 comedy Beverly Hills Ninja.

Once again, though, only the exterior of the site was utilized. Interiors were shot on what I believe was a set.

In 1998’s Lethal Weapon 4, Detective Lee Butters (Chris Rock) chases a waiter (Philip Tan) whom he mistakenly thinks is a bad guy through Hop Louie’s dining room.

The waiter winds up jumping out of Hop Louie’s second-story window onto the street below, where he is promptly arrested.

Furious (Ben Stiller) and his team head to Hop Louie to celebrate their first victory in 1999’s Mystery Men. Only the exterior of the site appeared in the movie. (Are you sensing a pattern here?)

Interior filming took place at The Prince, one of my favorite L.A. restaurants.

Hop Louie portrays three different spots in the 2007 comedy Big Stan. The exterior of the restaurant pops up in a couple of scenes as the outside of Master Cho’s Karate studio.

The main dining room is the spot where Big Stan (Rob Schneider) has dinner with The Master (David Carradine) and Lew Popper (M. Emmet Walsh).

And the lower level bar is where Lew meets Madame Foreman (Sally Kirkland).

In the Season 1 episode of Chuck titled “Chuck Versus the Sizzling Shrimp,” which aired in 2007, Hop Louie masks as Bamboo Dragon restaurant where Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) encounters international spy Mei-Ling Cho (Gwendoline Yeo).

G. Callen (Chris O’Donnell) parks on the side of Hop Louie while chasing a criminal in the Season 1 episode of NCIS: Los Angeles titled “Chinatown,” which aired in 2010.

In the pilot episode of Stitchers titled “A Stitch in Time,” which aired in 2015, Hop Louie masks as the Chinese restaurant that stands as a cover for the secret headquarters of the Stitchers agency.

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: Hop Louie, from I Love You, Man, is located at 950 Mei Ling Way in downtown L.A.’s Chinatown. The restaurant and bar are both currently closed.

September 6, 2017February 20, 2018

The Southern Hotel from Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” Music Video

The Grim Cheaper often accuses me of beating a dead horse. While I typically don’t agree with him, today’s post is pretty concrete evidence that he’s right, because here I am yet again with yet another article about the diner from Michael Jackson’s 1983 “Beat It” music video. Today actually marks the fourth time I’ve written about this particular locale, making it the most covered spot ever featured on IAMNOTASTALKER. (To be fair, I’ve also written about the Walsh house from Beverly Hills, 90210 – my very favorite filming site – on four occasions, though one of the posts was a mash-up of several places from the Fox series.) This location has also been the most puzzling I’ve ever covered. I am happy to report, though, that the mystery surrounding it has finally, finally been put to rest thanks to a reader named Dave, who sent me an email in early July that just about made me fall off my chair.

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For those who haven’t been following along since the beginning, my coverage of the “Beat It” café started back in March 2010 when I wrote about the Monte Carlo Restaurant located at 109 East Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles. I first came across the eatery via Google Street View while on a cyber-stalking mission to track down the locale and was struck by its resemblance to what had appeared onscreen. With its half-green/half-cream walls and curved counter, the Monte Carlo, which is still in operation today, looks like it was ripped straight out of the video. It is also located smack dab in the middle of Skid Row, where I knew “Beat It” had been lensed.

Despite those seeming connections, though, upon visiting the restaurant in person, I started to have doubts that it was the spot where MJ filmed. Not only is the Monte Carlo interior much smaller than that of the “Beat It” café, but an address number of 416 could also be seen in the video (it’s denoted with a pink circle below), which does not gibe with the Monte Carlo’s 109 address.

A sign reading “Special Café” was also visible in “Beat It,” as you can see via the pink arrows in both the screen capture and the photograph below, which was taken from Todd Gray’s book Michael Jackson: Before He Was King. (Please disregard the additional markings on the photo. They were added in reference to a since-solved mystery that my fellow stalkers were discussing in the comments section of my first Monte Carlo post). While it was entirely possibly the eatery’s name had been changed from “Special Café” to “Monte Carlo Restaurant” since filming took place, the discrepancy still gave me pause. So I opened the quest up to my fellow stalkers, asking for their opinions on the matter. Many chimed in, sharing their thoughts, but those thoughts didn’t lead to any sort of definitive conclusion. I re-stalked and re-blogged about the Monte Carlo later that same month in the hopes of clarifying things, but unfortunately, my second visit and post only provided more doubt and confusion – and more conversation amongst readers. Still though, no one was able to say with any sort of certainty whether or not we had found the right spot.

Cut to March 2013. An MJ fan named Justin, who had been following the hunt since the beginning, posted a comment on my original Monte Carlo post in which he shared a link to the 1955 photograph below. He came across the image via the USC Digital Library archives while searching for historic pictures of Skid Row and East Fifth Street and was floored to happen upon one of a restaurant with signage reading “Special Café,” located next door to a property with a 414 address number – all of which lined up with what was seen in “Beat It.” The windows and doorway of the eatery in the photograph were also a match to what appeared in the video.

Shortly thereafter, I learned how to search through old digitized Los Angeles phone records and found a listing for the Special Café at 416 East Fifth Street, which seemed to cement everything. Justin had solved the mystery! (Or so we thought – but more on that in a bit.)

As Justin informed me (incorrectly, as it turns out, but, again, more on that later), the café had been razed shortly after filming took place, much to my chagrin, and, after being utilized as a parking lot for close to three decades, a building was finally constructed on the site in 2013. I immediately ran out to stalk the locale and did a write-up on it, but, unfortunately, that post led to even more confusion thanks to the Historic Aerials website.

When I pulled up 1972 and 1980 views of the Special Café site while researching for the post, Historic Aerials showed that no building was located there during those years. Since I knew that the eatery was around from at least 1955 (the year the photograph Justin found was taken) to 1983 (the year “Beat It” was filmed), the building’s absence on Historic Aerials was absolutely mind-boggling! As my friend/fellow stalker David from Spain stated in the comments section of that post, “Oh my god, that’s a case for Mulder and Scully.”

Thankfully, Dave, an eagle-eyed fellow stalker from across the pond, figured things out. In his July email, he said, “Check out the attached image of the Southern Hotel, captured from the 1982 Charles Bronson movie Death Wish II. Compare it with your recent-ish photo of the site, paying particular attention to the red panels on the right hand side, i.e. the lower left of the Southern building. Everything should be clear! Do you see it?” Yes, I did see it – and just about fell out of my chair upon doing so!

As Dave’s email went on to explain, “The Special Café was never demolished as such – it’s still standing, and forms part of the main Southern building (which it always did). The storefront windows have been replaced with the red paneling and the door (or at least, a door) is still there, although it’s walled off with railings now.”

To say that I was in utter shock over Dave’s revelation would be an understatement. The Special Café site still stands? Say whaaa?

He broke things down further, pointing out, “As per the Death Wish II screencap: the doorway/entrance to the Southern Hotel was originally on the right-hand side of the building and classed as No. 412, the Café – on the left hand side of the building – was No. 416, the storefront in the middle – aka the ‘Church on Wheels Heartreach Mission’ – which has now been remodeled into the main entrance to the Southern, would have originally been No. 414.”

In researching the Southern Hotel, I learned that it had been completely gutted in 2000 – taken down to the studs, “its bones on display like a clanky skeleton,” according to a Los Angeles Times article – before being transformed into a 55-room apartment complex for homeless veterans. Despite that remodel, though, the building, which was originally constructed in 1920, is surprisingly still recognizable from Death Wish II.

In the movie, architect Paul Kersey (Bronson) books a room at the Southern while on the hunt for the five men who killed his daughter and housekeeper.

As Dave informed me, Death Wish II isn’t the first Charles Bronson movie to feature the hotel. Ten years earlier, the actor, playing the role of Arthur Bishop, walked on Fifth Street just west of the Southern in the 1972 thriller The Mechanic.

Dave also filled me in on, sent me links to, and provided screen captures of a myriad of the hotel’s other onscreen appearances and pop culture connections. As he informed me, photographer Sam Cherry snapped a picture of famed author Charles Bukowski on Skid Row standing across the street from the Southern in 1970. You can see the hotel, as well as the Special Café, on the right-hand side of the image below.

Chester (Harvey Gold) and Cooper (Jason Miller) walk by the Southern at the beginning of the 1974 drama The Nickel Ride. The Special Café exterior can even be seen in the second screen capture below.

In the Season 3 episode of Starsky & Hutch titled “The Heroes,” which aired in 1977, Det. Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (David Soul) and Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) drive by the Special Café.

The eatery and hotel were also briefly seen in the Season 4 episode of Starsky & Hutch titled “Starsky vs. Hutch,” which aired in 1979.

When Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) and Adrian (Talia Shire) arrive at the Hotel Lorane (which, as Dave pointed out, is still intact!) in 1982’s Rocky III, the Southern is visible in the background.

The hotel is seen, briefly once again, in the opening montage of the Season 1 episode of Miami Vice titled “Glades,” which aired in 1984.

And in 1984’s Repo Man, the Southern and the Special Café are just barely visible from the window of Otto’s (Emilio Estevez) car during a driving scene.

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

Big, huge THANK YOU to fellow stalker Dave for finally putting an end to the “Beat It” café mystery, for doing all of the research for this post, and for providing the many screen captures! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Southern Hotel is located at 412 East Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles. Special Café, aka the diner from Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” music video, was formerly situated in the eastern portion of the building’s ground floor, but is no longer there. This locale is not in the best of areas, so if you visit, please exercise caution.

August 7, 2017August 4, 2017

Scorpion Headquarters from “Scorpion”

The Grim Cheaper and I tend to get hooked on a new series every summer. Well, truth be told, we get hooked on new series all throughout the year (The Goldbergs, Veep, and Vanderpump Rules come to mind). But during the summer months, we typically pick out a new-to-us show and binge-watch it nightly to avoid dreaded reruns. In 2014, that show was Revenge. In 2015, Scandal. Last year, it was Suits. And this year, it’s Scorpion, the CBS procedural that focuses on a group of geniuses who aid Homeland Security in solving crimes. The series, said to be loosely based on the real life of software specialist Walter O’Brien (played by Elyes Gabel), can definitely be cheesy and the storylines completely over-the-top at times (you often have to reeeeeallllly suspend disbelief), but we love it. It is the quirky cast of characters – Toby Curtis (Eddie Kaye Thomas), Happy Quinn (Jadyn Wong), Sylvester Dodd (Ari Stidham), Paige Dineen (Katharine McPhee), Ralph Dineen (Riley B. Smith), Agent Cabe Gallo (Robert Patrick) and Walter – who keep us coming back. Not to mention, the show has got some serious heart. I tear up over pretty much every episode. So while in L.A. recently, I was all about stalking a few of its locations, namely the Team Scorpion headquarters.

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For those who haven’t watched Scorpion, I’ll let Walter explain the team and their unique dynamic via his narration from each episode’s intro – “My name is Walter O’Brien. I have the fourth highest IQ ever recorded – 197. Einstein’s was 160. When I was 11, the FBI arrested me for hacking NASA to get their blueprints for my bedroom wall. Now I run a team of geniuses tackling worldwide threats only we can solve. Toby’s our behaviorist, Sylvester’s a human calculator, Happy, a mechanical prodigy. Agent Cabe Gallo’s our government handler. And Paige? Well, Paige isn’t like us. She’s normal, and translates the world for us while we help her understand her genius son. Together we are Scorpion.” (And let’s not forget their pet ferret, Ferret Bueller, which has to be the greatest name ever!) Traditional office space would never suit such a nontraditional team, so the group instead heads to a large graffiti-covered brick warehouse for work each day.

That warehouse is located at 1935 Bay Street in downtown Los Angeles. I found the address thanks to Gary, from Seeing Stars, who has a page on his site dedicated to locations from the series’ early episodes.

As you can see below, Scorpion headquarters looks much the same in person as it does on TV.

The 13,260-square-foot warehouse was originally built in 1925.

It is not hard to see why the building was chosen to appear on Scorpion – its rich coloring, urban layout and industrial design translate extremely well to the screen.

While researching this post, I came across a quote from series creator Nick Santora about shooting in Southern California. He said, “CBS was very supportive of keeping this show in L.A. I imagined it in L.A. and wrote it in L.A., and it just stayed in L.A. I was constantly waiting for the phone call telling us, ‘Hey, let’s go scouting in Louisiana, New Mexico, and Toronto,’ but that call never came. I’m thrilled because though I’m a New Yorker through and through, there are parts of L.A. that are undershot and very interesting visually. L.A. is an old city, and there are old buildings here. There’s great architecture that gets beat down by 110 degree weather, and Santa Ana winds that have been whipping sand against it for a century now, and it just looks great on film. I wanted to try to tell a story in this town.” His quote perfectly encapsulates the warehouse. Though gritty, rough and covered in graffiti, it looks stunning through a camera lens.

I mean, look at it!

The building is just begging to be photographed.

I mean, that alley! Yaaaaaaas!

I want to frame pretty much every image I took of the place.

As is typical with most TV shows, a different location was used as the Team Scorpion warehouse in the pilot. It can be found at 2270 Jesse Street in Boyle Heights. A full view of the exterior of the site was never shown in the episode, oddly. In the early scene in which Walter arrives at work, though he parks in front of the warehouse, due to the camera angle, we only see the building located just to the east of it, at 653 South Anderson Street. You can see a matching shot via the Google Street View image below.

The episode also provided a brief glimpse of the warehouse’s entry doors, which can be seen below via Google Street View.

The interior of the Jesse Street warehouse was also utilized in the pilot as the inside of Scorpion headquarters. As you can see in these real life photographs of the interior, not much was changed for the shoot.

When Scorpion got picked up, the production set up shop at MBS Media Campus in Manhattan Beach, where the interior of the Jesse Street warehouse was very closely re-created on a soundstage.

The warehouse rooftop, where Team Scorpion often hangs out, can also be found at MBS Media Campus.

It is actually a temporary outdoor set constructed when needed on the top level of the studio’s large parking garage, in the area denoted with a red X below.

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

Big THANK YOU to Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Scorpion Headquarters from Scorpion is located at 1935 Bay Street in downtown Los Angeles. When visiting, please exercise caution as the site is not located in the best part of town. The headquarters building from the pilot episode can be found at 2270 Jesse Street in Boyle Heights. The warehouse rooftop is a set constructed on the top level of the MBS Media Campus parking garage at 1600 Rosecrans Avenue in Manhattan Beach.