New York – Page 5 – IAMNOTASTALKER

July 25, 2016July 22, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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

July 22, 2016July 21, 2016

The Inspiration for the “Annie” Orphanage

My movie obsession began at a young age. I can pretty much pinpoint it to 1982 when Annie premiered. I was hooked on the musical from the start. I watched it over and over and over, eventually wearing out the VHS copy that my parents bought me. Its locations have also served as a longtime fascination. Ever since taking my second Warner Bros. tour in 2008, I have known that the Hudson St. Home for Girls, aka the orphanage in the film, could be found in the studio’s backlot, on Hennesy Street to be precise. The façade and the area surrounding it were created by Annie production designer Dale Hennesy specifically for the film. What I didn’t know up until a couple of years ago, though, was the fact that Dale based his design of the Hudson St. Home for Girls on two real New York buildings. I learned this bit of information from the Annie Official Movie Souvenir Program which I picked up at the Hollywood Show while meeting Annie herself, Aileen Quinn, in 2012. As you can guess, I immediately started chomping at the bit to track the buildings down.

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Of the orphanage’s inspiration, the Souvenir Program states, “Roughly a year before filming on the street [Hennesy Street at Warner Bros.] actually began, Academy Award-winning production designer Hennesy traveled to New York and combed the Lower East Side for the key structure in the Annie script – the orphanage. He found two he liked. One was on Mott Street, just south of Houston, and was now a four-unit apartment building. The other, near Sixth Street and Avenue B, was actually a former Children’s Aid Society home, built in the late 1880s. Making a movie in that area would have been difficult and expensive, so it was decided to build on the lot rather than film on location. The orphanage would combine elements of both buildings, and would be flanked with copies of typical New York structures in their area.” The studio rendering that Dale created is pictured below.

For all of the trouble he went to creating the Hudson St. Home for Girls, very little of the final product was actually shown onscreen.

As you can see above and below, only very tight shots of the orphanage, mainly focused on the doorway area, were featured in Annie.

Thankfully though, I was extremely familiar with the Hudson St. Home for Girls façade from my many visits to the WB, so I knew exactly what to look for when I started tracking down the New York buildings that served as its inspiration.

The building said to be located near Sixth Street and Avenue B, I pinpointed in a snap. I simply headed over to Google to do some Street Viewing of the area and found exactly what I was looking for at 630 East Sixth Street. The picturesque structure at that site features a distinct peaked roof, four levels of angled bay windows (each flanked by a pair of arched windows), and an entrance with a heavy portico situated to the side, all of which match the Annie orphanage to a T. To top it off, further research informed me that the property did, indeed, used to be a Children’s Aid Society school, as was mentioned in the Souvenir Program. Voilà!

The Sixth Street School, as the locale was originally known, was constructed in 1888. Funding for the site, which was designed by Calvert Vaux (the architect and landscape artist who co-designed Central Park) and George Kent Radford, was provided by Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt. In 1932, the school was transformed into a men’s homeless shelter. It has since gone through several different incarnations including a women and children’s shelter, a church, and a social services facility. Today, it serves as a home for those suffering from AIDS and is known as Pencer House.

In 1999, the building’s handsome exterior underwent a restoration process led by Harden + Van Arnam Architects, the result of which is stunning.

You can read a more in-depth history of the site here.

The second building that served as inspiration for the Hudson St. Home for Girls, which the Souvenir Program described as being “on Mott Street, just south of Houston,” was also a snap to find. I simply headed to Google Street View once again to take a look at the block of Mott Street located immediately south of East Houston Street and spotted the right place within minutes at 256 Mott. As it turns out, the site was also once a Children’s Aid Society school known as the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School.

The Children’s Aid Society actually built twelve such schools in the 1880s and 1890s, all employing the same Victorian Gothic style. Only six remain intact today. Lucky for me, the Annie buildings are two of those extant structures. The purpose of the Children’s Aid Society schools was to teach trades to homeless and poverty-stricken children in the hopes that they would be able to provide for themselves in adulthood.

The Fourteenth Ward Industrial School was also built in 1888 and was also designed by Vaux and Radford. The funding was donated by John Jacob Astor III in honor of his wife, Charlotte, who had passed away the previous year. Today, the structure, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, serves as a residential building.

As you can see, the five-unit, four-story property boasts a peaked roof, angled bay windows flanked by arched windows, and a porticoed door situated off to one side, just like the Hudson St. Home for Girls façade and the Sixth Street School.

Unfortunately, it was undergoing a restoration of some kind while we were there and portions of its façade were covered over with plywood.

You can read a more in-depth history of the building here and here.

I was absolutely thrilled to see, while making screen captures for this post, that Dale Hennesy chose to use 256, the real life address number of the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School, as the address number of the Hudson St. Home for Girls.

Interestingly, not only did the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School serve as inspiration for the Annie orphanage, but it is also a filming location! The building is where Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) and Suze (Krysten Ritter) lived in 2009’s Confessions of a Shopaholic.

And it served as Audry’s (Adrienne Shelly) apartment in 1989’s The Unbelievable Truth. (I apologize for the horrible screen captures below which I got off of YouTube.)

On a side-note – I find it surprising that the peaked roofline of the Annie orphanage, which Hennesy took such care to re-create from both of the inspiration buildings and which is so significant to their architecture, never appeared onscreen. The screen capture below shows the closest we get to seeing it in the movie.

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 Fourteenth Ward Industrial School is located at 256 Mott Street in New York’s Nolita neighborhood. The Sixth Street School is located at 630 East 6th Street in the East Village. The façade of the Hudson St. Home for Girls from Annie can be found on Hennesy Street at Warner Bros. Studio, which is located at 3400 West Riverside Drive in Burbank. Tour information can be found here.

July 20, 2016July 19, 2016

Ashley’s Apartment from “Just My Luck”

I do not have the best taste in movies and am the first to admit it. Case in point – Just My Luck, a 2006 Lindsay Lohan romcom that I absolutely love. Have I lost you already? If so, it’s understandable. But I find the film adorable. I’ve seen it about a hundred times and never tire of it. Part of the appeal is the fact that it takes place – and was largely shot – in New York. (Some filming also took place in and around New Orleans.) Prior to heading to the Big Apple in April, I did some research on the flick and was thrilled to discover the location of the Parisian-style building where Ashley Albright (Lohan) lived. As it turns out, the gorgeous property has appeared in quite a few productions over the years

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Thankfully, Ashley’s apartment was an easy find – the real life address number of the building was visible in the movie’s opening scene.

43 Fifth Avenue, as the property is known, was originally constructed in 1905 by architect Henry Andersen.

The 11-story structure, which originally operated as an apartment building, became a cooperative in 1978.

The pre-war site boasts 42 units (each with 10 1/2 foot ceilings!), a marble lobby with bas-relief sculptures, a two-story mansard roof, bay windows, wrought iron balconies, a 24-hour doorman, and, my personal favorite, a dry moat that lines the perimeter. The property is absolutely gorgeous and it is not hard to see how it wound up onscreen multiple times.

You can see photographs of the lobby area, as well as some of the units here.

The building next door (which was featured prominently in 13 Going On 30) is currently under construction and, unfortunately, some equipment was set up in front of 43 Fifth Avenue when we showed up to stalk it which kind of marred our view.

Numerous luminaries have called 43 Fifth home over the years including Marlon Brando, Jennifer Jason Leigh, fashion designer Roland Leal, novelist Dawn Powell, and screenwriter Noah Baumbach. One particular unit, #9E (which you can see photos of here), has had two big-name celebrity inhabitants – both Julia Roberts and Holly Hunter lived there at different points in time.

Way back in 1914, Chevalier Giacomo Fari Forni, Italian Consul General to New York, lived in the building. On October 14th of that year, a terrorist group known as the Black Hand put a bomb in the property’s boiler room with the hopes of killing Forni. The Consul General was not in New York when the explosive was detonated, though, and remained unscathed. William Waters, one of the building’s employee’s, was not so lucky. His skull was fractured in the blast. Several first floor apartments were damaged, as well. You can read more about the events of that day here and here.

43 Fifth Avenue only shows up briefly in Just My Luck as the spot where Ashley lives before she unwittingly transfers her luck to stranger Jake Hardin (Chris Pine) via a kiss at a masquerade ball, at which time she becomes unlucky, her apartment floods and she is forced to move in with friends. Like I said, my taste in movies isn’t the greatest.

Only the exterior of the building appeared in the flick. Interiors were shot on a soundstage in Louisiana.

43 Fifth Avenue was also used in the 2004 comedy How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, which not so coincidentally was directed by Donald Petrie, who also directed Just My Luck. The property showed up a few times in the flick, most famously in the scene in which Ben Barry (Matthew McConaughey) arrives at Andie Anderson’s (Kate Hudson) apartment to take her to a party and she walks out wearing an unforgettably stunning yellow dress.

In the 2000 comedy Small Time Crooks, 43 Fifth served as the apartment of David (Hugh Grant). (I apologize for the poor quality of the screen shots below – I got them off of YouTube.)

Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) lived in the building in the 2010 dramedy Please Give, though very little of the exterior was shown.

43 Fifth’s ornate lobby made an appearance in the film, as well.

The building also popped up in A Kiss Before Dying, but I could not find a copy of the flick with which to make screen captures for this post. And while it was supposedly featured in both Deconstructing Harry and Everyone Says I Love You, as well, I scanned through both movies and did not see the structure anywhere.

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: Ashley’s apartment from Just My Luck is located at 43 Fifth Avenue in New York’s Greenwich Village.

July 18, 2016July 16, 2016

The “You’ve Got Mail” Breakup Restaurant

Locations from the movie You’ve Got Mail have been well-documented online on countless sites. I chronicled quite a few of them on mine – in a December 2007 post, as well as in follow-up posts that you can read here and here. One spot that hasn’t been mentioned anywhere and one that I was desperate to find was the café where Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) and Frank Navasky (Greg Kinnear) so amicably broke up in the 1998 comedy. So I got to work in tracking it down shortly before heading out to NYC in April.

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While scanning the breakup scene for clues, I spotted a (rather blurry) neon sign reading “Monsoon” posted on the window of the storefront across the street. Figuring it was most likely an eatery of some sort, I did a Google search for “Monsoon,” “restaurant,” and “Upper West Side” (since the vast majority of the movie was shot in that area of the city), and the first result kicked back was for Monsoon Vietnamese Cooking at 435 Amsterdam Avenue. Though that spot is now shuttered and looks a bit different today, I was able to toggle back to the 2007 Street View image of it and the red patio area shown matched perfectly to what was seen in You’ve Got Mail.

A current view of that site is pictured below. As you can see, not only has it been cleaned up significantly, but the entire patio area has been removed. The space is now occupied by a Thai eatery named Spice.

I then used Street View to see what restaurant was located across the street from the former Monsoon site. At present, there is an American/Irish bar in that spot named St. James Gate.

Toggling back through the years, I could see that St. James Gate took over the space in 2008 and that, prior to that, it was the site of a different eatery, one that I could not make out the name of. So I did a deep Google search of the place’s address – 441 Amsterdam Avenue – and was able to discern that the location’s previous occupant was an American Nouveau/Mediterranean restaurant named Louie’s Westside Café, which originally opened on the premises in 1986. Eureka! As you can see below, despite the change in tenancy, little else of the structure has been altered since St. James Gate moved in.

Some further research on Louie’s pulled up the review pictured below. Looks like I should have just used Yelp from the get-go to find this locale!

Louie’s Westside Café was originally established by a woman named Louie Sloves and in its early days boasted a scant 11 tables with seating for 35. Despite the small size and lack of a liquor license, it managed to become a local favorite.

Louie eventually expanded the space and installed a full bar and a glass-enclosed patio. You can see photos of what Louie’s Westside Café looked like when it was still in operation here, here, and here. I was floored to see that, though the décor is now different, the basic layout of the restaurant remains the same.

Louie’s Westside Café popped up towards the end of You’ve Got Mail in the scene in which Kathleen and Frank admit to each other that they are in love with other people – Frank with Sydney Anne (Jane Adams) and Kathleen with “the dream of someone else.”

In the scene, they sat in the southwest corner of the restaurant, in the area pictured below.

The brick beam visible behind Kathleen in the scene is still there.

Though we did not have time to eat on the premises, the employees at St. James Gate could not have been nicer and invited me in to take all of the photographs that I wanted.

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: St. James Gate, aka Louie’s Westside Café, aka the You’ve Got Mail breakup restaurant, is located at 441 Amsterdam Avenue on New York’s Upper West Side.

July 15, 2016July 14, 2016

The British Consulate from “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”

Much of my free time as of late has been spent tracking down missing locations from Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Ever since writing my post on the apartment where Terry Dolittle (Whoopi Goldberg) lived in the 1986 comedy, I have been just a wee bit consumed with finding other spots featured in the flick. So much so that I even purchased director Penny Marshall’s 2012 autobiography in the hopes that it might shed some light on the subject. One locale that I did not need to put any effort into tracking down was Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, aka the building that portrayed the New York British Consulate in the movie, which fellow stalker Mick managed to pinpoint in February 2014. He had been searching for the place for a while and, on a whim, emailed screen captures to a friend in the hopes that he might recognize it. It turned out to be a fortuitous move because the friend wrote right back saying, “Hey, that’s on my street!” I was floored when Mick relayed the news and ran right out to stalk the site while in Manhattan in April.

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Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum originally served as the private residence of wealthy industrialist/philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who purchased the land on which the structure now stands in 1889. At the time, the area was rather rural, which gave Carnegie ample space to built a large estate flanked by a sprawling garden. He hired the Babb, Cook & Willard architecture firm to design the dwelling, asking them to create “the most modest, plainest, and most roomy house in New York.” If what’s pictured below is modest and plain, I can’t imagine what Carnegie considered grandiose and ornate!

The 64-room, 4-story (that does not include the three-level basement!) estate was quite innovative for its day, boasting an Otis passenger elevator, a steel frame, and a central heating and cooling system, among many other luxurious amenities.

I am in love with the mansion’s gilded glass and copper canopy, which always catches my eye during viewings of Jumpin’ Jack Flash and was no less striking in person.

Today, the property, which has been dubbed the “Carnegie Mansion” or the “Carnegie Hill Mansion,” houses a massive collection of design artifacts including textiles, furnishings, clothing, lighting fixtures, and jewelry that once belonged to sisters Amy, Eleanor and Sarah Hewitt. The collection was originally displayed at the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, which was established in 1897 at Cooper Union college located at 7 East 7th Street. The museum was shuttered in 1963 and the Hewitt sisters’ assemblage was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1967. It was then moved to the Carnegie Mansion in 1970, at which time the property underwent a renovation before being opened to the public as Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 1976.

In 2011, the site was shuttered for an extensive three-year, $91-million renovation and expansion. It re-opened in 2014 as Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, one of the most cutting-edge and technologically-advanced institutions of its kind. You can read about a few of the property’s most unique innovations here.

The Carnegie Mansion popped up as the Manhattan British Consulate numerous times in Jumpin’ Jack Flash.

Most notably, it was the site of the Queen’s Anniversary Ball that Terry crashed in rather conspicuous fashion (i.e. dressed up as Diana Ross while lip-synching “You Can’t Hurry Love”).

Only the exterior of the Carnegie Mansion was shown in the movie. Scenes involving the interior of the British Consulate were filmed at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash is hardly the first production to make use of the Carnegie Mansion. Way back in 1955, it appeared in Daddy Long Legs as the Pendleton House art gallery.

The property was the site of the car crash at the beginning of the 1976 thriller Marathon Man.

The estate played the home of Martha Bach (Geraldine Fitzgerald), Arthur Bach’s (Dudley Moore) grandmother, in the 1981 comedy Arthur.

In the 1988 film Working Girl, the Carnegie Mansion masked as the Union Club, where Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) and Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) crashed a wedding.

The Carnegie Mansion was also shown briefly in the 1993 comedy For Love or Money.

And in the Season 1 episode of Gossip Girl titled “Much ‘I Do’ About Nothing,” the Carnegie Mansion was where Lily van der Woodsen (Kelly Rutherford) and Bart Bass (Robert John Burke) got married.

The ceremony scene was shot in The Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden, the museum’s enclosed rear garden which is open to the public daily, free of charge. Bart and Lily’s reception did not place at the Carnegie Mansion, but at the Madison Room of the Lotte New York Palace hotel.

The Carnegie Mansion is also said to have made appearances in 1973’s Godspell and 1976’s The Next Man, but I was unable to find copies of those movies with which to make screen captures for this post.

On a Jumpin’ Jack Flash side-note – I was floored to discover while scanning through the movie to make screen captures for this post that the police station featured in the flick is none other than the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off police station! How it took me this to recognize it is beyond me, but better late than never.

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

Big THANK YOU to Mick for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, aka the British Consulate from Jumpin’ Jack Flash, is located at 2 East 91st Street on New York’s Upper East Side. You can visit the museum’s official website here.

July 13, 2016July 12, 2016

The “Sex and the City” McDonalds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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

July 6, 2016July 1, 2016

Terry’s Apartment from “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”

I’ve made no secret over the years of my love for Jumpin’ Jack Flash. (You can read the posts I’ve done on the 1986 comedy’s locations here, here, here, and here.) Whoopi Goldberg is literally perfection in her role as zany New York bank employee Terry Dolittle and I pretty much go around quoting her and the other characters on a regular basis (“Get Larry, the heavy-set guard! Get Larry, the heavy-set guard!”). So when a fellow stalker named Mick emailed me in July 2013 to ask for some assistance in tracking down a few of the movie’s locations, I was eager to help. Somehow I got distracted, though, and never did any investigating. Then Mick contacted me again the following February and this time I got to work.

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One of the locales Mick was hoping to find was the apartment where Terry lived. So I popped in my DVD and was thrilled to see that there was a restaurant located on the ground floor of Terry’s building and that its name, La Tablita, was clearly visible on its awning.

An internet search for “La Tablita” and “New York” led me to an ad in a 1985 issue of New York magazine that listed the eatery’s location as 65 West 73rd Street. I headed right on over to Google Street View, popped in that address and, sure enough, it was the right spot!

The exterior of Terry’s apartment building was only shown a couple of times in Jumpin’ Jack Flash, but it was extremely memorable to me due to the unique glass block pop-out located next to the front door.

I was floored to see that virtually none of the property had been changed since filming took place there three decades ago. (I honestly cannot believe the movie will be turning 30 in October!)

Today, the La Tablita space serves as home to a hardware store. Other than a change in tenant, though, it, too, still looks very much the same as it did onscreen.

Terry’s apartment building is part of a set of neighboring row houses that were designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh, the same architect who gave us The Plaza Hotel, the Dakota, and the original Waldorf-Astoria, which was demolished in 1929 in order to make way for the Empire State Building. Construction on the homes began on July 20th, 1882. Terry’s building was completed on January 21st, 1885.

Of the 28 properties originally constructed by Hardenbergh, only 18 remain. They can be found from 15A through 19 West 73rd Street and 41 through 65 West 73rd Street. Sadly, the ten homes that once stood in between those two groups were demolished during the Great Depression in order to make room for a 16-story apartment building.

The row houses that do remain standing have been left largely untouched from their original design.

Terry’s building is one of the few that has been modified. The large glass block pop-out that was so memorable to me from Jumpin’ Jack Flash is obviously a later addition and not an original 1885 detail. Other than that, Hardenbergh’s design remains intact, though. You can read more about the history of the 73rd Street row homes here.

Only the exterior of the property was used in Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Terry’s apartment interior was a set built on a soundstage at 20th Century Fox Studios in Century City where portions of the movie were lensed. You can check out what a unit in the building actually looks like here. Apparently, the images are from the penthouse, which cracked me up as the place is teeny tiny. I mean, come on! That kitchen looks like it should be on a ship and the second bedroom is more like a closet. Sex and the City really led me astray when it comes to apartment sizing in New York. So did Friends and pretty much every other movie/TV show set in the Big Apple for that matter (outside of Wanderlust), including Jumpin’ Jack Flash! As you can see below, Terry’s apartment was huge compared to the building’s actual units.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Terry’s apartment from Jumpin’ Jack Flash is located at 65 West 73rd Street on New York’s Upper West Side.

May 27, 2016May 29, 2018

NoMo Kitchen from “The Other Woman”

My favorite movie of 2014 was The Other Woman. The romcom may have been heavily panned by critics, but I loved everything about it. The Grim Cheaper and I saw it in theatres shortly after it premiered and then I purchased a copy as soon as it came out on DVD and have proceeded to watch it copious times since. I’m addicted! The flick was lensed primarily in New York and its environs and I, of course, tracked down the vast majority of its locales immediately upon buying the DVD. (I chronicled a few of them in an August 2014 Los Angeles magazine post which you can read here.) The spot I was most anxious to stalk was the restaurant featured at the end of the movie. I finally got my chance while in NYC last month.

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At the end of The Other Woman (spoiler alert!), after exacting revenge upon their cheating husband/boyfriend Mark King (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), Carly Whitten (Cameron Diaz), Kate King (Leslie Man), and Amber (Kate Upton) headed to an absolutely gorgeous restaurant to celebrate.

The eatery’s setting was nothing short of magical and, even though it was only featured briefly in the movie, I became captivated by it while watching. Thanks to the On the Set of New York site, I learned that filming of the restaurant scene had taken place at Isola Trattoria & Crudo Bar located at 9 Crosby Street in SoHo. I added the information to my vast file of New York filming locations and did not do any further thinking on it until I started planning out itineraries for our April trip. Isola Trattoria was one of my must-see/must-eat-at locales and, upon Googling the restaurant’s name to see if reservations were suggested, I was heartbroken to learn that it had closed. I added it to my To-Stalk List regardless with the hope that I might be able to peek through a window and catch a glimpse of the place’s stunning interior.

Imagine my surprise – and elation! – when I arrived on the scene and discovered that the restaurant was not only still open, but that it looked exactly the same as it did onscreen! Thanks to the super friendly staff, I learned that the eatery had never actually closed, but had only undergone a name change, from Isola Trattoria & Crudo Bar to NoMo Kitchen.

NoMo Kitchen is located on the ground floor of the hip and elegant NoMo SoHo hotel, which was originally constructed as the Mondrian SoHo in 2011. The unique, dream-like schematic of both the hotel and restaurant was conceived by interior designer Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, who drew inspiration from the 1946 film La Belle et la Bete (a French adaptation of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale).

When the Mondrian first opened, the restaurant was a “sustainable seafood spot” known as Imperial No. 9. Helmed by former Top Chef contestant Sam Talbot, the 180-seat, 5,000-square-foot venue consisted of two sections – an interior dining room and a greenhouse-like space enclosed by a glass atrium. The stunning greenhouse is the area that appeared in The Other Woman.

By August 2012, the eatery had become Isola Trattoria. While the menu received an overhaul at that time, the striking dining area thankfully did not. Aside from swapping out Imperial’s odd patio-furniture-like tables and chairs for more sleek leather and wood combinations, the space was left untouched. It was also left unaltered during the transition from Isola to NoMo Kitchen (the name is a combination of the words “nostalgic” and “modern”) in 2015.

NoMo Kitchen still retains its breathtaking garden-like setting, with towering crystal chandeliers hanging from the peaked glass roof, a sprawling cream stone bar backed by handsome oak shelving, and massive amounts of foliage adorned with twinkle lights.

The site also boasts an adorable outdoor patio.

I half expected fairies to start flying around while we were exploring the place. It’s truly that magical!

NoMo Kitchen is easily one of New York’s most beautiful spaces.

So it is no surprise that it also popped up in an episode of The Real Housewives of New York City. In Season 8’s “Airing Your Dirty Laundry,” Bethenny Frankel, Carole Radziwill and Ramona Singer met up there and discussed Sonja Morgan’s “cheater brand,” Tipsy Girl.

Besides functioning as a working restaurant and filming location, NoMo Kitchen is also available as a special events venue. I can’t even image how gorgeous a wedding there would be!

On a side-note – and speaking of special events – while in New York, the GC, my friend Owen (from the When Write Is Wrong blog), and I happened to meet a woman named Man-Lai Liang who did us an enormous favor. I won’t get into specifics, but to say she hooked us up would be a vast understatement. I wanted to say a huge thank you to her for her incredible kindness and also give her a shout-out. Man-Lai is a New York-based special events coordinator, so if you are looking for help in planning your next Big Apple party, I urge you to contact her. You can visit her website here.

Big THANK YOU to the On the Set of New York website for finding this location!

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: NoMo Kitchen, from The Other Woman, is located at 9 Crosby Street, inside of the NoMo SoHo hotel, in New York’s SoHo district. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

May 25, 2016May 24, 2016

Stuyvesant Square Park from “Sex and the City”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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

May 18, 2016January 29, 2017

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

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

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

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

I mean, look at the size of those slices!

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

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

Both the interior . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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