Be sure to check out today’s post for L.A.mag.com, about the U.S. Bank Tower from Independence Day. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
The California Bank Building from “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
Since we’re on the subject of Girls Just Want to Have Fun, I thought I would blog about another locale from the movie that I recently hit up – downtown L.A.’s California Bank Building, which masked as the Dance TV (aka DTV) studio in the 1985 flick. A couple of years back, Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, managed to track down the location via a helpful crewmember, but because nothing about the structure matched up to what was shown onscreen, I was never sold on it being the right place. So a couple of weeks ago, I set out to verify or invalidate the information. When I told Mike, from MovieShotsLA, of my query, his response was, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun? I thought we were done with that movie!” Oh, Mike, we will never be done with that movie! So I quickly got started on the hunt and, though it was quite a lengthy process, wound up discovering that the California Bank Building was, indeed, the right spot.
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The California Bank Building was designed in 1960 by architect Claud Beelman, who was also responsible for The Historic Mayfair Hotel from The Office and The Standard, Downtown L.A. from Fracture. The 300,000-square-foot structure originally served as the headquarters of California Bank. Standing at 18 stories and 267 feet tall, the property was the tallest commercial building in Los Angeles at the time of its inception. This was due in large part to the fact that a 1904 law limiting the height of buildings in Los Angeles to 13 stories or 150 feet was repealed in 1956, shortly before the ground was broken on the new structure.
In its original state, the California Bank Building featured a large, box-like three-story granite base. You can see some photographs of what it looked like in its early days here and here. Sadly, in 2008 the site underwent an extensive renovation that rendered it virtually unrecognizable from its former self. The straight vertical lines that once encased the façade giving it a sleek, towering aesthetic are now broken up by balconies. The edifice of the structure, which was renamed SB Tower, was also painted white and green.
Most jarring of all, though, is the fact that windows were cut into the granite base and a large mural painted over the exterior.
Those portions of the building did not appear in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, though. In actuality, only the entrance area and lobby were shown. But those, too, were rendered unrecognizable during the renovation. In the scene pictured below, Drew Boreman (Jonathan Silverman), best friend of Jeff Malene (Lee Montgomery), is shown selling DTV memorabilia while standing outside of the property, in an alcove that formerly led to the lobby area.
As you can see in my recent photograph of the building’s entrance pictured below, that alcove has been completely removed. So when I first viewed the location via Google Street View, I was convinced it was the wrong place. Never in my wildest dreams did I think the renovation would have included such a major restructuring of the ground floor! As it turns out, I was wrong.
Thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, I learned that Google recently made it possible to view Street View renderings from years past, so I toggled back to 2007 and 2008 and, as you can see below, the alcove was once, in fact, there and does resemble what appeared onscreen. Because the imaging is so grainy, though, I was still not 100% convinced. I needed more proof.
I was able to match a few things up to this historic image of the California Bank Building, though it still was not enough for me to write off on the location. In the image, you can see that a sign was posted on the wall of the alcove in the same place that a placard was situated in the movie (denoted with a pink circle below). The image also shows that the building had some sort of corner detailing on the outside portion of the alcove, which matches what appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (denoted with a pink arrow below).
Another detail that matched up to what appeared onscreen was the SB Tower’s address number. The number “600” was visible behind Drew in the movie and the SB Tower is located at 600 South Spring Street . Still though, I wanted more.
Finally, came the clue I was looking for. While re-watching the movie for the umpteenth time, I was able to make out a sign located across the street from the DTV studio that read “Mi Tierra Restaurant.”
I searched the July 1987 Pacific Bell Street Address Telephone Directory for an eatery by that name and only two listings came up. The first was for “Mi Tierra Restaurant No. Two” located at 1903 West Olympic Boulevard in Westlake. The second was for simply “Mi Tierra Restaurant” at 611 South Spring Street. 611 South Spring Street is located directly across the street from the California Bank Building! Further proof – at 613 South Spring, right next to Mi Tierra, is a listing for Golden Eagle Dry Cleaning Shop.
What was pictured next to Mi Tierra in Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Yep – a dry cleaning shop!
While I am distressed that the structure has changed so drastically and that I never got to see it in its original state, I am thrilled to now be able to say with absolute certainty that the California Bank Building was indeed DTV studio from Girls Just Want to Have Fun.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to Chas, from It’sFilmedThere, for finding this location. 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: SB Tower, aka the California Bank Building from Girls Just Want to Have Fun, is located at 600 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the property’s official website here.
The Last Bookstore from “Gone Girl”
I love bookstores – and books. Actual books, not the digitized versions. You will never catch me reading on a Kindle. I like the feel of a book in my hands, the physical act of turning the pages and the smell. I love, love, love the smell of books. The Grim Cheaper always makes fun of the fact that I am constantly smelling my reading materials and when we watched the Sex and the City movie for the first time, he turned to me laughing at Carrie’s “I love the smell” line (video here). So me! So when I discovered The Last Bookstore in downtown L.A. a couple of years ago, it was love at first sight. Not only is the shop a virtual work of art, with interesting details looming around each and every corner, but it carries unique and intriguing tomes (new and used) that you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Oh, and the place is also a filming location. Yep, right up my alley!
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The Last Bookstore was originally founded by Josh Spencer in 2005 as an online emporium that he ran out of his downtown loft. The young entrepreneur had an extensive background in selling books, furniture, records, clothes and cars via eBay, but had decided to focus solely on literary sales. He dubbed his new endeavor “The Last Bookstore.” The name was chosen ironically. As Spencer explained in a Southern California Public Radio interview, “I’ve always been into science fiction and post-apocalyptic things, so I always wondered what a cool ‘last bookstore’ would look like for some future civilization.”
The shop’s website further states, “The name was chosen with irony, but seems more appropriate with each passing day as physical bookstores die out like dinosaurs from the meteoric impact of Amazon and e-books.” Thankfully, The Last Bookstore seems immune to such a fate. By late 2009, Spencer had outgrown his loft and decided to lease a small brick and mortar site on Main Street. By June 2011 (the very same year that the Borders chain filed for bankruptcy), Spencer had outgrown that location, as well, and moved to the much larger, 10,000-square-foot lobby space of the Spring Arts Tower. It was only months before he needed to expand yet again and in February 2012 he began leasing the building’s second floor. Today, The Last Bookstore encompasses over 16,000 square feet – and every last inch of it is spectacular.
The 12-story Spring Arts Tower was originally designed as the Citizens National Bank Building in 1914 by John Parkinson, the same architect who, along with his son, was responsible for Union Station, Bullocks Wilshire, Los Angeles City Hall, and the Security Trust and Savings Bank (now The Federal Bar).
The building’s grand former lobby features mosaic tiled flooring, sweeping 25-foot-tall ceilings, and towering pillars throughout. The Art Nouveau-style space would be beautiful on its own, but Spencer decided to treat it like a blank canvas onto which he could create a work of art. The result is nothing short of incredible.
The Last Bookstore, which is California’s largest independent bookshop, houses an inventory of 250,000 new and used books, with stacks as far and as high as the eye can see.
Thanks to its whimsical displays, though, it is easy to forget the space is a store. The site seems more like a museum or a movie set or a scene from Alice in Wonderland come to life.
Unique design elements can be found everywhere you turn.
Even the bank’s old vault is utilized as display space.
My favorite décor element, though, has to be is what is called the “Labyrinth Above the Last Bookstore.”
The Labyrinth is absolutely overwhelming in person!
The best part is that The Last Bookstore employees won’t tell you where to find it – you have to go on a hunt to track it down yourself, which the GC and I had a blast doing.
Despite its incredibly unique interior, The Last Bookstore has not popped up very often onscreen, though it was utilized in a rather illicit flashback scene in Gone Girl.
The scene was filmed in the shop’s main room, in the northwestern-most aisle as you first enter the store (though the photograph below was taken from the opposite angle from which the movie was shot).
As I mentioned in this post, the exterior of the Spring Arts Tower appeared in one of my favorite movies, 2004’s Little Black Book, though that was long before The Last Bookstore was founded.
The exterior of the building also appeared briefly in the the Season 2 episode of Castle titled “The Fifth Bullet.”
In a 2011 Los Angeles Times article, Spencer stated, “I think there’s always going to be a great market for books, but it’s definitely going to shrink to those who value and enjoy the ritual of browsing through books and holding books and turning pages. That’s gradually going to become less and less, as the generations pass. This might be the last generation, I think.” If his prediction does someday come to pass, I sincerely hope I am not around to witness it.
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 Last Bookstore, from Gone Girl, is located at 453 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the store’s official website here.
New “L.A.” Mag Post – The “Perfect Strangers” Building
Be sure to check out my latest post for L.A.mag.com today, about the apartment building from Perfect Strangers. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
The “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” Police Station
Once in a while a filming location comes along that blows my mind. Today’s post is about one of those locations. Recently, fellow stalker Chas, of the It’s Filmed There site, texted to let me know that he had just tracked down the police station from fave movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I was shocked to learn not only that the place still looks exactly the same today, almost thirty years later, but that it is located in L.A.! (For those not in the know, Ferris was set in Chicago and, aside from a few SoCal locales, largely filmed in the Windy City.) So I ran right out to stalk it while visiting L.A. two weeks ago.
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In real life, the site is not a police station at all, but the former Los Angeles headquarters of Hills Bros. Coffee. The structure, which was built in 1929 and designed by architect George H. Kelham, housed both a warehouse and second floor offices for the java company. It is those second floor offices that masked as the police station in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Today, the property belongs to the Southwestern Bag Company.
Sadly, I was not able to get inside to see the interior, but while doing research for this post came across these fantastic images online that were taken by location scout Nick Morley. I contacted Nick to ask if he would allow me to use some of his photographs for this post and he wrote back right away giving me the go-ahead! Thank you, Nick! You can also check out another set of pictures that show the building’s first floor here.
In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the police station is where Jeanie Bueller (Jennifer Grey) is taken after being picked up by the police for making a phony 911 call. It is also where she meets “Boy in Police Station” (Charlie Sheen) and says one of my favorite lines in movie history – “Why don’t you put your thumb up your butt!”
The scene was shot in the lobby area of the building’s second floor, right at the top of the staircase. As you can see in Nick’s photograph as compared to the screen capture below, the space looks exactly the same today as it did in 1986 when Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was filmed.
The office where Det. Steven Lim (Robert Kim) informs Katie Bueller (Cindy Pickett) about Jeanie’s fake 911 call is located adjacent to the second floor lobby area. In Nick’s photograph below it is shown from an opposite angle than the screen capture pictured.
It, too, looks much the same today as it did when the movie was shot.
Oh, what I wouldn’t give to get into that building! I would so love to pose for a pic on the stairs where Jeannie stood in the scene!
Chas actually found this location thanks to its appearance in a couple of other movies. While putting together a page about filming locations from Divergent a few months back, Chas tracked down the spot where Tris (Shailene Woodley) came into contact with her mother. As it turns out, that was the Hills Bros. Coffee building. Only the exterior of it was shown in Divergent, though.
Then while watching the 1987 action-comedy Beverly Hills Cop II a couple of weeks ago, Chas realized that the shaping, sizing and paning of the windows of the “Detroit” police station where Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) worked matched those of the windows of the building in Divergent. So he went searching for interior photographs of the Hills Bros. building and came across Nick’s page of images. Sure enough, what was shown in Nick’s pics matched the Beverly Hills Cop II police station.
Upon closer inspection, he realized that the staircase and lobby area from the Beverly Hills Cop II police station were an exact match to those from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. So he then compared screen captures from FBDO to Nick’s photographs and confirmed that the two places were one and the same!
The Hills Bros. Coffee building has actually appeared in countless productions over the years. The north side of it masked as a – yep, you guessed it! – police station in the 1988 thriller Jack’s Back.
In fave movie License to Drive, which was also released in 1988, Les Anderson (Corey Haim) falls asleep during driver’s ed class and dreams about speeding around in a Ferrari with his crush Mercedes Lane (Heather Graham). At one point, Les lights a cigarette for her, throws the match out the window and starts an explosion. That bit was shot in the alleyway that runs along the western side of Hills Bros. Coffee.
In 1990’s Child’s Play 2, Hills Bros. Coffee masked as the social services office where Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) was sent after his foster father was killed.
The interior of the building – as well as that famous staircase – was also utilized in the film.
Hills Bros. Coffee served as a police station once again in 1992’s Unlawful Entry.
Thanks to The Rockford Files Filming Locations blog, I learned that the building was used as the Bunker Hill Division of the Metropolitan Police Station in the series’ 1996 made-for-television movie “If the Frame Fits.”
Hills Bros. Coffee masked as a police station yet again in 1998’s The Negotiator.
In the Season 1 episode of Angel titled “She,” which aired in 2000, the building stood in for both an ice factory and a private security firm office.
Hills Bros. Coffee regularly masqueraded as Ojai Foods on the television series Brothers and Sisters, which ran from 2006 to 2011.
It also popped up in the 2011 movie The Muppets.
And in the Season 1 episode of How to Get Away with Murder titled “Smile, or Go to Jail,” Hills Bros. was used extensively as the police station where both Annalise Keating’s (Viola Davis) new client, Paula Murphy (Ana Ortiz), and murder suspect Rebecca Sutter (Katie Findlay) were being held.
The interior of the building also appeared in the episode. There’s that staircase again!
The building is featured as a Los Angeles police station circa 1932 on the HBO series Perry Mason.
Hills Bros. Coffee also apparently popped up in the Season 1 episode of Castle titled “A Chill Goes Through Her Veins” (though I could not track it down to make screen captures for this post) and in several episodes of CSI: NY (though I am unsure of which episodes specifically).
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Chas, of the It’s Filmed There website, for finding this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Ferris Bueller’s Day Off police station is located at 635 South Mateo Street in downtown L.A. The address of the building is also sometimes listed as 642 Mateo Street, but that address is incorrect and would be located across the street from where the building actually stands.
St. Vincent Court from “The Mentalist”
I cannot wait for the Secret L.A.-themed February issue of Los Angeles magazine to hit newsstands! The City of Angels is chock full of tucked-away gems and I absolutely love discovering them. The Grim Cheaper and I just stalked one, in fact, that is also a filming location – St. Vincent Court, which appeared in a recent episode of The Mentalist. I first discovered the tiny and incredibly unique alleyway while on a Watson Adventures’ Downtown L.A. Movie Locations Scavenger Hunt with Mike, from MovieShotsLA, back in November 2010. So I recognized it immediately when it popped up on The Mentalist and ran right out to re-stalk it while in L.A. last week.
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St. Vincent Court is so named because it stands on the site of what was Los Angeles’ first college, Saint Vincent’s College. The school was originally founded in 1865 at the Lugo Adobe House. Two years later, it moved to a two-story building on 6th Street, between Hill and Broadway, in downtown L.A. St. Vincent Court, which is actually a small alleyway, was known as St. Vincent Place at the time and served as the main pathway onto the campus. In 1887, the school relocated to a new venue and the property subsequently served as a military compound. Then, in 1906, it was chosen to be the location of the very first Bullocks department store. The new store was constructed on the corner of 7th and Broadway, adjacent to St. Vincent Place, which was used as a pass through and for deliveries. Bullocks soon purchased the building located across the alley and built an air bridge to connect the two structures. The alley became dirty and dingy, as alleys tend to do, though, and in 1956 Bullocks and the City of L.A. teamed up to give the small space a facelift. Façades and false fronts were built, awnings installed, a café and flower shop added, and the alley’s name changed to St. Vincent Court. The site was dedicated in 1957 and became a California Registered Historical Landmark that same year.
St. Vincent Court is situated behind a rather unremarkable breezeway and is virtually hidden from view. Despite the signage out front announcing its existence, one could easily walk by without even realizing it is there.
From the outside, it looks like any other of the city’s non-descript alleys. Step inside, though, and you’ll find that it is anything but.
Inside, the place looks like Disneyland.
The fake balconies;
ornate overhangs;
whimsical signage;
elaborate doorways and windows;
and sidewalk seating . . .
. . . . all add up to give the alley an amusement park/movie set/fake European/old world-feel. To say that St. Vincent Court is unique is a vast understatement. The place is like a Hollywood backlot that has been randomly plopped into the middle of downtown.
Despite some recent opposition to outdoor seating in the alley, mid-week St. Vincent Court is typically bustling with hungry downtowners seeking authentic European and Mediterranean-style meals at lunchtime.
In the Season 7 episode of The Mentalist titled “Orange Blossom Ice Cream,” Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) and Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) went undercover in Beirut in order to capture a terrorist. No filming actually took place in the Middle East, though. Instead production simply headed to . . . downtown Los Angeles. The hotel where Patrick and Teresa stayed in the episode was none other than the Millennium Biltmore.
Two of the Biltmore’s hallways were used in the episode . . .
. . . but I am fairly certain that Jane and Lisbon’s suite was just a set built on a soundstage at Warner Bros. Studios where The Mentalist is lensed.
For outdoor filming, production head to St. Vincent Court. The alley was first shown in the scene in which Patrick was taken to meet with terrorist Jan Nemic (Mark Ivanir).
Nemic’s lair was actually the back side of the Los Angeles Theatre.
Later in the episode, Lisbon and Jane dined on some manakish at a local Beirut eatery.
The restaurant scene was filmed at the Sevan Garden Kebab House, which is located at the northeastern end of St. Vincent Court. Unfortunately, I did not get any photos of the place’s interior. You can check some out here, though.
After dinner, Jane and Lisbon head out to St. Vincent Court and hail a cab.
At the end of the episode, Lisbon and Jane are shown walking up the Biltmore’s stairs . . .
. . . and onto the hotel’s rooftop to share some orange blossom ice cream.
St. Vincent Court also appeared in the Season 1 episode of Moonlight titled “Out of the Past.”
Memphis Raines (Nicolas Cage) sped through the alley while being chased by cops in Gone in 60 Seconds
And Taylor Swift danced there in her “Delicate” music video.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: St. Vincent Court, from the “Orange Blossom Ice Cream” episode of The Mentalist, is located on 7th Street, in between South Hill Street and Broadway, in downtown Los Angeles’ Jewelry District.
Today’s “L.A.” Mag Post – About Ben’s Apartment from “National Treasure”
Don’t forget to check out my latest Los Angeles magazine post – about Ben’s apartment from National Treasure. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Los Angeles County Hall of Records
Today’s location is a serious fail on my part. For a couple of years now, I have had the Los Angeles County Hall of Records on my Haunted Hollywood To-Stalk list, not due to its filming history, but because I mistakenly thought the building was where Marilyn Monroe’s autopsy was performed in 1962. I finally stalked the Hall of Records while in L.A. a couple of weeks ago and added it to my blogging calendar. It was not until I sat down to write this post that I discovered my mistake – Marilyn’s autopsy actually took place at the similarly named Los Angeles County Hall of Justice. Whoops! (And yes, I really am that blonde! In my high school’s Senior newspaper, one of my best friends Scott bequeathed me “a clue.” I left him several years’ worth of memories and inside jokes condensed into a witty paragraph and he left me two words: a clue. I still haven’t gotten over that one, though his bequeath seems pretty fitting today. ;)) Because the Hall of Records has a series of rather spooky tunnels located beneath it, though, I figured the place was still Haunted Hollywood post-worthy, nonetheless.
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The Los Angeles County Hall of Records was designed by prolific architect Richard Neutra and his associate Robert Alexander in 1962. Neutra was also responsible for designing the Lovell Health House from L.A. Confidential, the Ohara House from The Holiday, and the Kaufmann House in Palm Springs.
The 15 story, T-shaped building was constructed out of glass, concrete, granite and terra cotta tiles.
Employing a similar system to one he used at the Kaufmann House, Neutra outfitted the south side of the Hall of Records with solar-activated aluminum louvers that would move throughout the day in order to keep the interior offices shaded. Sadly, those louvers, which are pictured below, have not been operational in years.
Ceramicist Malcolm Leland brought another unique element to the building’s façade. – an eight-story extuded terra cotta screen that covered the structure’s ventilation ducts. That screen is denoted with orange arrows in the photographs below.
The building’s original purpose was to house the department of the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk and its records (for which the property was named). To house those records, Neutra designed a a large windowless wing on the south side of the structure (denoted with orange arrows below). In 1991, the department and its records were moved to Norwalk, so “Hall of Records” is currently a bit of a misnomer. Following the move, the windowless wing was converted into office space for county workers.
Today, the Hall of Records is mainly occupied by the District Attorney’s office.
It is what is beneath the building that fascinates me, though. According to Atlas Obscura, eleven miles of underground tunnels run underneath the Hall of Records and its surrounding properties. The passageways connect the structure to the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, the Hall of Justice and the Stanley Mosk Courthouse. The tunnels are closed to the public, but are apparently fairly accessible. What I wouldn’t give to see them!
The Hall of Records is also a filming location. For 2011’s The Lincoln Lawyer, the building’s hallways masked as the hallways of the courthouse where Mick Haller (Matthew McConaughey) defended Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillippe).
You can check out photographs of some of the areas that appeared in the movie here.
The underground tunnels have also appeared onscreen. The scene at the end of the 2008 thriller Eagle Eye that was supposed to have taken place below Washington, D.C.’s Library of Congress was actually lensed in the Hall of Records tunnels.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Los Angeles County Hall of Records is located at 320 West Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles.
New “L.A.” Mag Post – About Baco Mercat from “The Other Woman”
Don’t forget to read my newest Los Angeles magazine post – about Baco Mercat from The Other Woman. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
New Scene It Before Post – About “The Mask” Bank
Be sure to head over to LAMag.com today to read my latest Scene It Before post – about Edge City Savings & Loan from The Mask. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.