The Standard Hotel

My friend Stephanie, who is even more obsessed with Sex and the City than I am, has a birthday coming up this Friday, so I decided to do a little post today in her honor. In Stephanie’s favorite SATC episodes, entitled “Escape from New York” and “Sex in Another City”, Carrie and the Girls take a little vacay to the West Coast. While there, they stay at the uber-trendy Standard Hotel on the Sunset Strip, and it is that location that I set out to stalk yesterday. So Steffi – this one’s for you! 🙂

The Standard Hotel was featured prominently in both of the L.A. episodes of SATC. The Standard’s rooftop pool shows up in several scenes – most memorably it is the location where Carrie discusses a rather painful bikini wax.

The lobby area – complete with its live performance art – is also shown several times.

But most memorable for me is the scene that takes place at the hotel’s front entrance – when Carrie is reprimanded for smoking.

The Standard Hotel is an ultra-trendy, ultra-modern hot spot, with a huge celebrity following. Originally opened in 1999, with celeb investors such as Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio (sigh!), the hotel was considered a less expensive alternative to the many other pricey West Hollywood hotels. The Standard is a truly unique hotel – it’s sort of like a W Hotel, only amplified to the power of a hundred. The Standard features ghost chairs and floor-to-wall-to-ceiling shag carpeting in the lobby, blue astro-turfed patios, live nude performance art showcased in a glass case behind the front desk, a roof-top pool/dessert bar, DJ’s spinning tunes nightly in the lobby, and, most famous of all, upside-down signage. The whole thing is not really my cup of tea, but if you are into modern decor and the avant-garde, I highly recommend stalking the place. Today there are four hotels in the Standard chain, with branches in Downtown L.A., Miami Beach and New York. The Downtown L.A. Standard was featured repeatedly in the 2005 movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

BIG THANK YOU to Mike, over at MovieShotsLA, for sending me the above screen captures!!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Standard Hotel is located at 8300 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. You can visit the hotel’s website here. A room there will run you $240 and up per night.

West Beverly?

A few weeks ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, sent me some screen captures from a Season One episode of the original Beverly Hills, 90210 series entitled “Fame Is Where You Find It.” In the episode Brandon “goes Hollywood” after landing a role on Brenda’s favorite television series Keep It Together. In one scene in the episode, Keep It Together’s star, Lydia Leeds, picks Brandon up from West Beverly High in her limousine during lunch. While watching the episode, Mike noticed that the high school shown in that scene did not look like Torrance High School, the real life locale which was used to portray West Beverly High during the first three seasons of 90210. Mike made it his mission to find out exactly what school was used in that scene.

I tried to help him out in this stalking mission, but as usual he was one step ahead of me. 🙂 It didn’t take long at all before Mike found some online photos of Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks and recognized it as the place that stood in for West Beverly in the “Fame Is Where You Find It” episode. I have visited and blogged about this location once before, but I just had to run right out to re-stalk it so that I could see the exact spot that was used in 90210. 🙂 And standing there at Notre Dame High, it was easy to see that, without a doubt, it was definitely the location used in the “Fame Is Where You Find It” episode. It is so strange to me that producers filmed Brandon’s limousine pickup at a different location than Torrance High School, especially since there were a few other scenes from that same episode that were filmed at Torrance High. What was it that caused producers to shoot this scene elsewhere when in ever other instance I know of, all exteriors of West Beverly were shot at Torrance? Were they looking for a specific look for that particular scene that Torrance just didn’t have? Did they run out of time and decide to shoot the brief limo scene at Notre Dame because it is about 20 miles closer to the 90210 studios than Torrance High School? Perhaps we will never know, but it is these little idiosyncrasies that absolutely fascinate me when it comes to filming locations – and that will keep me stalking day after day for years to come. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Notre Dame High School is located at 13645 Riverside Drive in Sherman Oaks. The exterior of the school’s chapel area was used for the filming of Brandon’s limousine pickup.

The Sunset Tower Hotel

One of my favorite places to visit in all of LA is the Sunset Tower Hotel, located on the legendary Sunset Strip in Hollywood. The Sunset Tower Hotel was built in 1931 by architect Leland A. Bryant for owner E.M. Fleming. The Art Deco building, which originally functioned as an upscale apartment house, was the very first earthquake proof property to be built in Los Angeles. While the hotel enjoyed some glory years during the hey dey of Hollywood, in the 1980s it fell into serious disrepair and was saved from demolition when it was purchased by London’s St. James Hotel chain. Peter de Savary, owner of the St. James chain, poured $46 million into restoring the Sunset Tower and renamed it the St. James Club. Since that time, the hotel has undergone several more renovations and name changes, until 2005 when it was purchased by New Yorker Jeff Klein, who restored the hotel to its original name and former grandeur.

During the hotel’s glory years numerous celebs called the Sunset Tower home, including Howard Hughes, Ava Gardner, Truman Capote, John Wayne, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Errol Flynn, Billie Burke aka Glinda the Good Witch, Mae West, Elizabeth Taylor, Conrad Hilton, gangster Bugsy Siegel – who was eventually evicted for running a gambling center out of his room, Frank Sinatra, Diana Ross, Tim Curry, my fave Marilyn Monroe, and Iggy Pop, who made a habit of jumping into the hotel pool from his apartment window. Today, the Tower is still popular with celebs. The hotel’s restaurant, the Tower Bar, is a favorite of Jen Aniston, who dines there regularly. Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, Posh Spice, Brian Grazer and Barbara Walters have also all been spotted at the Tower Bar grabbing a bite to eat. According to Wikipedia, during her pink-wig-wearing days, Britney Spears tried to book some rooms at the Tower. Hotel owner Jeff Klein reportedly said to the hotel manager “If that piece of trailer trash so much as enters my driveway, you are fired! She can’t come here with all my chic guests, she’ll ruin the place!” LOL Love it! It was during that same time period that the Bel Air Hotel also reportedly refused to rent rooms to BritBrit.

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The hotel’s poolside Terrace Bar, my fave place to grab a drink in all of LA, is also quite popular with the celebs. The first time I visited the Terrace, Kate Bosworth was there with her model boyfriend James Rousseau. I just had to go up to her, too, to tell her how much I loved Win A Date With Tad Hamilton. She ended up signing an autograph for me and seemed genuinely thrilled that I had such good things to say about Win A Date. Kate truly could not have been nicer and I can honestly say she was hands down the kindest out of all the celebs I have ever met. And her boyfriend was a total cutie, too!!!! 🙂 I took the above pic of her with my blackberry, but it didn’t come out very well. LOL

The legendary hotel has also been featured in countless television and movie productions, including The Player, Spinal Tap Goes to 20, Shadow Hours, Freaky Friday, Murder My Sweet, Get Shorty, Wayne’s World II , Strange Days, The Italian Job, and Rich Girls. In The O.C., the hotel stood in for Newport Beach’s Four Seasons Hotel which was owned by Ryan’s rival, Oliver, on the show. Only the exterior of the Tower Hotel was shown in The O.C. For the interior shots of the lobby and Oliver’s penthouse suite, a different hotel was used – one which I am still trying to locate.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Sunset Tower Hotel is located at 8358 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. I highly recommend stalking the Sunset Tower – the poolside Terrace Bar is a great place to grab a drink while enjoying one of the best views in all of LA.

Lynn Bracken’s House

Thanks to E.J. over at The Movieland Directory, I was able to do a bit more LA Confidential stalking this weekend. As I mentioned in a previous post, LA Confidential is one of my mom’s favorite movies of all time. She has always been in love with the houses and bungalows used in the movie and has requested several times that I stalk them for her. In fact, when my family first moved to LA she told our real estate agent that she wanted an “LA Confidential house” and that’s pretty much exactly the type of house we moved into. 🙂

So when E.J. gave me the address to Kim Basinger’s character’s house from the movie, I of course had to run right out and stalk it. Lynn Bracken’s house shows up several times in the film, especially the front door and front porch area, and from what I can tell from watching the movie, it appears that both the interior and the exterior of the home were used for filming. The house is a very cute little 1950’s style Spanish bungalow and it’s pretty easy to see why producers chose to use it in the movie as it looks like it came straight out of the 1950’s.

I must admit that when we first arrived at the house, I didn’t immediately recognize it. The way the movie was filmed was somewhat deceiving and the layout of the house appears much different in person than I’d remembered it looking onscreen. In the movie, Russell Crowe spends many hours in his car staked out in front of Lynn’s home watching her greet and say goodbye to her many “houseguests”. But in real life the front door is located on the side of the home and is not immediately visible from the street which made me not entirely sure I was stalking the correct house. But when I got home and popped in my LA Confidential DVD it was easy to see that the two houses matched perfectly! 🙂 Thanks, EJ!

I highly recommend stalking Lynn’s house if you are at all a fan of LA Confidential or 1950’s California architecture.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Lynn Bracken’s house is located at 501 Wilcox Avenue, right where Wilcox meets Rossmore, in Los Angeles. It is just around the corner from the American Idol and SYTYCD apartment which is located at 445 N. Rossmore.

Marilyn’s Room at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

UPDATE: Catch the Hollywood magic of Marilyn Monroe in a new play based on the famed actress! BarrysTickets.com has Marilyn Monroe theater tickets get yours today!

I know I have blogged about the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel quite a few times in the past, but what can I say? Every time I go there I discover something new! A few weeks ago while doing some Hollywood stalking with my mom, we took a little lunch break at the Tropicana Bar next to the Roosevelt Hotel’s pool. While we were there I happened to ask the pool security guard if he knew where Marilyn Monroe’s former room was located. Not only did he know where it was, but it turns out we were sitting directly beneath it! 🙂

For about two years, shortly before she became the world’s most famous starlet, Marilyn lived in a poolside suite at the Roosevelt. At the time MM was fresh from her first divorce and her modeling career was just taking off. According to the security guard, Marilyn’s room is one of the largest rooms in the entire hotel, with a huge wraparound balcony overlooking the pool. A mirror that hung in Marilyn’s room during the time she called the Roosevelt home now hangs in a mezzanine hallway just off the hotel lobby. Marilyn must have truly loved the Roosevelt, as she doesn’t seem to want to leave. Rumors persist that the hotel is still haunted by her ghost to this day.

As I have said many times before, the Roosevelt is one of my very favorite places in all of LA. I highly recommend stalking it if you have the chance. You can even spend the night in the Marilyn Monroe suite, which is apparently the hotel’s most requested room. 🙂 Looks like I need to plan a little overnight stalking trip!! 🙂 The Tropicana Bar is a fabulous place to grab a drink and a bite to eat – they have GREAT food and the staff could not be friendlier!! But be prepared, the menu is pricey. It is worth every penny, though, as it is one of the hippest spots in LA and is pretty much celeb central. The poolside bar is one of Lauren Conrad’s favorite places to hang out and it has even shown up in a few episodes of The Hills. 🙂

In other Marilyn news, I just finished an absolutely fascinating book about Marilyn’s life called The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe . If you are at all an MM fan, I highly recommend reading.

You can read my other posts about the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel here and here.

UPDATE:

Marilyn Monroe fans visiting the L.A. area will be excited to hear that tickets to a new stage show chronicling the starlet’s life are currently available at Barry’sTickets.com.  Marilyn – the Story of the Silver Screen Goddess, A Dance Musical, comes to Los Angeles from London’s West End and recounts the tragic behind-the-scenes life of the world’s most iconic blond.  The musical, which was choreographed and directed by the Oliver and Evening Standard award-winning director Peter Schaufuss, provides audiences a glimpse of the private world Marilyn rarely shared with the public – the world of a woman who achieved every success imaginable, except for true happiness.  The show features a cast of fifteen remarkable actors and showcases fifteen lively song and dance numbers including Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind”, which the singer originally wrote in honor of Marilyn in 1973, “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” from the hit movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” from the 1960 movie Let’s Make Love.  Don’t miss Marilyn – The Story of the Silver Screen Goddess, A Dance Musical.   

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel is located at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard in downtown Hollywood. Marilyn’s room is located directly above the Tropicana, the Roosevelt’s poolside bar.

A Joint Stalking Adventure

This past weekend, I finally had the pleasure of meeting Mike from MovieShotsLA in person! Mike and I decided to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, by getting some stalking in during our meeting. 🙂 So we met up on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica to grab some coffee and to stalk the Owen Wilson movie Drillbit Taylor. Drillbit Taylor was filmed all over Santa Monica, and the Third Street Promenade, an outdoor shopping district, was featured frequently in the movie, so it was the perfect place to meet. My boyfriend and I had a great time hanging out with Mike and his fiance and as Bogart once said, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 🙂

About two years ago, I actually saw Drillbit Taylor being filmed inside the Johnny Rockets on the Promenade. Johnny Rockets was used for the scene where Drillbit meets the boys for lunch and makes them pick up the tab. They sit at the table near the door in front of the window. Besides Johnny Rockets, the outside of the Promenade’s Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf was used several times in the movie, although producers added a lot of foliage to the exterior so it looks quite different in person. For interior shots of the coffee house, I believe they used a different Santa Monica Coffee Bean location – the one located on Ocean Park Boulevard.

On a side note, Adam Ho who played the “Hendrix Kid”, the guitar playing boy in Drillbit Taylor, actually grew up playing guitar on the Third Street Promenade. For those who have never been there, the Promenade has long been a haven for street performers. My boyfriend, who used to work nearby, often saw Adam as a young child playing the guitar on the Promenade. How ironic that he’d one day end up in a movie which was filmed in the very spot where he got his start. You can see pictures of Adam performing on the Promenade here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Johnny Rockets from Drillbit Taylor is located on the Third Street Promenade, at 1322 Third Street, in Santa Monica. The Coffee Bean that was used for exterior shots can be found just down the block from Johnny Rockets at 1312 Third Street. The Third Street Promenade was also featured in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure as the location where Pee Wee’s beloved bike was stolen and in the movie Freaky Friday as the street where Jamie Lee Curtis goes shopping. The Coffee Bean used for interior shots in Drillbit Taylor can be found at 3150 Ocean Park Boulevard in Santa Monica, right near 31st Street.

The New Peach Pit

Over the years there have been several locations used around LA for the filming of the Peach Pit on my fave TV show, Beverly Hills, 90210. And now there is one more location to add to the already long list. My buddy Mike over at MovieShotsLA gave me the scoop on last week’s filming of the new 90210, which is scheduled to premiere on the CW this fall. Apparently filming of the new Peach Pit took place at the Kokomo Cafe (formerly the Eat Well Cafe) on Beverly Boulevard. So, of course, I dragged my boyfriend right out to stalk it!

As we pulled up to the address I was literally shaking with excitement. I had heard that the Peach Pit signs were still up from last week’s filming and the 14 year old in me was absolutely ecstatic at the thought of seeing them in real life! But alas it was not to be. The Peach Pit signs had already been removed and the Kokomo Cafe signs put back up by the time we arrived. It was still very cool to be there, though! The Kokomo Cafe looks NOTHING like the Peach Pit of the old days – this one is much more modern, with a sleek purple and black interior. The exterior is completely different, as well. The new Peach Pit is located in the corner space of a Spanish style building with large potted plants and wrought iron balconies. Supposedly producers are building an exact replica of the new Pit on a soundstage for future filming. One thing that hasn’t changed at the 90210 gang’s old hangout, though? Nat! Apparently Peach Pit founder Nat (played by actor Joe E. Tata) has signed on to be a part of the new 90210. YAY! Now if they can only get Luke Perry on board!!! 🙂

You can see a picture of the Kokomo Cafe all decked out with Peach Pit signs here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The new Peach Pit can be found at the Kokomo Cafe located at 7385 Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. Both the interior and the exterior of the cafe were used for the filming of the new 90210. The restaurant looks like a pretty cool place to grab a bite to eat. Apparently many stars were fans of the Kokomo Cafe’s former Farmer’s Market location and such celebs as Drew Barrymore and Denzel Washington were spotted dining there.

“The Entertainment Capital of L.A.”

This weekend, for my birthday, my boyfriend surprised me with a day at Universal Studios Hollywood, which according to the entrance sign, is the “Entertainment Capital of L.A.” and is now just as expensive to visit as Disneyland – $70 per day! I must say that while I had a FABULOUS time on the Studio Tour (which lasts about 45 minutes), I was ready to leave the park by 1pm. LOL Besides the Studio Tour, Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride, and The Universal Experience attraction, there wasn’t a whole lot I wanted to see. I don’t know that I’d recommend spending the $70 to get into the park, unless you are a huge movie buff. For me, the Studio Tour alone was worth the entrance fee. 🙂

Even though it was a bit cheesy at times, I loved every single minute of the backlot tour!!! It was a blast and I could hardly sit still in my tram seat! The first stop we made on the tour was the entrance to Courthouse Square, from Back to the Future fame and, more recently, the location of the Universal fire. As we came upon it, my boyfriend said “Oh, that must be the War of the Worlds set.” I was like, “No, no – that was the real fire!” LOL I am happy to report, though, that the Clocktower that sends Marty back in time in Back to the Future was not harmed in the fire, despite news reports to the contrary. The Courthouse Square set is currently being used in the TV show Ghostwhisperer and it looks a bit different than it did when Back to the Future was filmed. The Courthouse is now made of brick and the clock is no longer there- it is currently in Universal’s storage area until Ghostwhisperer goes off the air, at which point they plan to re-attach it.

While the tram does go right by the fenced off, fire-damaged section of the backlot to give you and up close and personal view of the destruction, it unfortunately does not drive very close to the Courthouse or the New York Street sets, many of which are still standing. I was so looking forward to seeing that area of the lot, so I guess I am going to have to go back as soon as it is rebuilt and is part of the tour again! My boyfriend will be oh-so-happy about that. 🙂

Our next stops on the tour were a demonstration of a flash flood and rain storm, a drive through Old Town Mexico where the Tijuana episode of The OC was filmed and a drive through of the Old West set where the bar from Jessica Simpson’s These Boots Were Made For Walkin’ video is located. After that came the moment I had been waiting for all morning – the tour of Wisteria Lane from Desperate Housewives! Mia posted a comment on my previous Universal Studios post saying I probably wouldn’t be able to see the Wisteria Lane set as the area is usually closed for filming, but since it was during the summer, when most episodics are on hiatus, the street was open for us to view. YAY!

We got to see all the Housewives homes and they were all so much smaller than I had expected. Ironically my boyfriend said they were bigger than he imagined they would be, but I was just shocked at how tiny they were. To me they look like they were built on a 3/4 scale or something. Wisteria Lane is a little cul-de-sac which begins with Gaby Solis’ large yellow home (pictured above). The houses definitely look like sets – the flowers are all fake and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but they just don’t look like real homes. Possibly because of the size thing. Bree’s house (pictured at left) is by far the nicest and apparently was also used as the main home on the TV show Providence. I guess the first few episodes of Providence were filmed at a real house somewhere in LA, and subsequent episodes were filmed on the back lot. Looks like I have some research to do so I can stalk the real home! 🙂

Susan Meyer’s (Terri Hatcher’s) house was by far the tiniest of the street! I almost didn’t recognize it at first. It is a teeny, tiny yellow house with gable windows. In the picture to the left, though, it looks normal size. So wierd how cameras can do that! The magic of the movies! Wisteria Lane used to be known as Colonial Street where it was used in Leave It To Beaver, The ‘Burbs, Ghostwhisper, National Lampoon’s Delta House, The Munsters, Gremlins, and the Smashmouth Allstar video, as well as countless other productions. The exterior of the homes on Wisteria Lane change for each film shoot (with the exception of Bree’s house which looked exactly the same in Providence as it does in Desperate Housewives), so the houses at this time are not recognizable from other productions.

One of the last stops on the tour is a plane crash set from Steven Spielberg’s movie War of the Worlds. This set was absolutely incredible! Steven took a real 747 airplane and destroyed it for the movie and let me tell you, it was HUGE! In the movie a plane crashes into the middle of a suburban neighborhood, destroying homes and cars in the process. I think it is so cool that this set was left intact for stalkers like myself to tour long after filming was completed and I wish more productions did that. Imagine if the set from Friends was still around and was open to the public for touring! How cool would that be??? 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Universal Studios Hollywood is located at 100 Universal City Plaza in Universal City. You can visit the park’s official website here. There is a VERY cool site called The Studio Tour that gives a comprehensive and detailed history of Universal Studios (as well as other LA studios) and productions that were filmed on the lot. LOVE IT!

Grease is the Word!

Grease has long been a favorite movie of mine, ever since I was a little girl, actually. I still have pictures of my friend Nat and I at eight years old dressed up in her mom’s wigs and 50s clothes acting out scenes from Grease in front of the TV. One of our favorite scenes to act out was Frenchy’s slumber party when Rizzo sings “Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee”. So when fave website Seeing Stars posted the address of the slumber party house I about died and dragged my dad right out to stalk it! 🙂

I was absolutely shocked to see that the house looked exactly the same as it did in Grease, which was filmed back in 1978. In reality, the house is not actually a single family home, but a tri-plex comprised of three different apartments. In Grease, it appeared to be just one home, but if you take a close look at the house in the movie, you can see that there are actually two front doors. 🙂

In the movie, the T-Birds show up to crash the Pink Ladies’ slumber party. They drive up in Greased Lightnin’ and park in Frenchy’s driveway, which runs along the side of the house. Rizzo decides she’s “going to get her kicks while she’s still young enough to get ’em”, climbs out Frenchy’s window and shimmies down the drainpipe on the side of the house. I am happy to report that the drainpipe is still there! 🙂 Later on in the movie, Sandy sings “Hopelessly Devoted To You” in the backyard of this home.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Frenchy’s house is located at 4524 Kingswell Drive in Hollywood, near Los Feliz. John Marshall High School, which was the high school in Boy Meets World, Growing Pains, Pretty in Pink, the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer, among countless other productions, is located a short distance away at 3939 Tracy Street in Los Feliz.

Amanda Peet’s Apartment Building from “A Lot Like Love”

One of my favorite romantic comedies of all time is A Lot Like Love starring Amanda Peet and Ashton Kutcher – and while I was watching it I absolutely fell in love with the building used as Amanda Peet’s apartment. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t seem to find this location by searching Google or any of my go-to filming location sites.

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For this location, I turned to the director’s commentary on the DVD.  Many times, during a DVD commentary, a director will mention in what part of town a scene was filmed, which helps to narrow locations down.  In this case, the director mentioned the exact street where her apartment was located- Vine St. in Hollywood- and from there I was on my way!

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My boyfriend and I drove south down Vine Street until we found the red brick apartment building near the corner of Fountain and Vine.  While it definitely looks better on the big screen, the building is pretty incredible in person.  The front doors happened to be open, so we ventured inside.

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It is amazing how quiet and peaceful the interior courtyard is, being that it is located only a few blocks from the busy corner of Hollywood and Vine.

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The courtyard is full of flowers and plants of all sizes and wrought iron benches and looks like an amazing place to spend a summer afternoon.  The courtyard is where Ashton sang his heart out to Amanda Peet towards the end of the film.  Her front door was the first door on the right hand side when you enter the courtyard.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Amanda Peet’s character lived in the Villa Elaine Apartment building, located at 1245 Vine Street in Hollywood.  Frank Sinatra, Orson Wells, May Ray, and Remy Zero have all called the building home at one time or another.  You can park in the Payless Shoe Source parking lot across the street and walk to the building.  If the front doors aren’t open, you can peek inside them to see the amazing center courtyard.