Your definitive source to filming locations and all things Hollywood!
I am so excited for today’s Los Angeles magazine post, in which I compiled a guide to 21 memorable locations featured on the show Parks and Recreation. You can check it out here. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Don’t forget to check out my latest Los Angeles magazine post – about Vroman’s Bookstore and its latest onscreen appearance in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
One location that I had always wondered about, but never put much time into tracking down was the charming bungalow where lovelorn preschool teacher Sarah Nolan (Diane Lane) lived in the 2005 romantic comedy Must Love Dogs. Then, this past May, a fellow stalker named Linda challenged me to find the place and just a few days later I got an email from Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, with an address. He had seen Linda’s challenge and decided to do a little digging and, lo and behold, found the locale. Thank you, Geoff!
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Geoff was able to find the residence thanks to an address number of “1181” that was visible above the front porch in several scenes. Figuring that the pad was most likely located in Pasadena due to its Craftsman-style architecture, he began searching 1100 blocks in the area and it was not long before he found the right spot.
I was not at all disappointed when I finally saw the house in person. The place is just as adorable and picturesque as it appeared to be onscreen.
In real life, the 1921 dwelling features four bedrooms, one bath, 1,874 square feet of living space and a 0.32-acre plot of land. It was last sold for $280,000 in October 1997, which means that the people who own it today owned it at the time that Must Love Dogs was filmed. Love that! Wish I could have spoken to them while I was there.
The exterior of Sarah’s residence popped up repeatedly throughout Must Love Dogs.
Sadly, the gorgeous interior shown in the movie was just a set.
I am absolutely in love with Sarah’s décor (hello, claw-foot tub!). The entire place just looks so cozy and inviting. You can read a great Hooked on Houses article about Sarah’s interior design style here.
I managed to find some photographs of the real life interior of the residence online and, as you can see, it looks quite a bit different than what was shown onscreen. Some of the set does appear to have been modeled after the actual home, though. The built-in buffet in Sarah’s dining room is very similar to the property’s actual buffet.
And her green tiled fireplace is also very reminiscent of the the real home’s fireplace.
Sarah’s bedroom looks nothing like the real life master bedroom, though.
The two kitchens do not resemble each other, either. You can check out the real one here.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Big THANK YOU to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for finding this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Sarah’s house from Must Love Dogs is located at 1181 East Elizabeth Street in Pasadena.
Be sure to read today’s Los Angeles magazine post – about the location of the fictional Chicago Lake Michigan University from Perception – here. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
During the lengthy process of researching the Melissa & Joey house (which many viewers seem to think has been used on another series – you can read my blog on it here), I came across a post on Julia Sweeten’s fabulous website, Hooked on Houses, about the residence where the Duncan family – dad Bob (Eric Allan Kramer), who is an exterminator, mom Amy (Leigh Ann Baker) and their kids, Teddy (Bridgit Mendler), Gabe (Bradley Steven Perry), PJ (Jason Dolley), Charlie (Mia Talerico) and Toby (Logan Moreau/Jake Cinoa) – lived on the now-defunct Disney series Good Luck Charlie. In the article, Julia mentioned that she had not been able to track down the property’s real life address, but that if anyone knew of its location to let her know. Well, Julia, challenge accepted!
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Upon first glance, I had a feeling that the Duncan house was located in the Pasadena area. A commenter on Julia’s article confirmed my hunch and another commenter clued me into the fact that while an address number of “358” was visible above the home’s front door in some of the series’ establishing shots, a different address number of “501” was shown painted on the curb in others. I was fairly certain that the “358” had been faked for the filming and that the residence’s actual address was most likely “501.” From there, finding the house was a snap!
The Duncan residence actually sits at 501 Palmetto Drive in Pasadena’s South Arroyo neighborhood.
The four bedroom, four bath, 5,045-square-foot Craftsman was originally built in 1903 and sits on 0.26 acres of land. The picturesque two-story abode (LOVE the double bay windows!) was last sold in April 1981 for $209,500. According to Zillow, it’s worth about $2.3 million today. Not a bad return on an investment!
The Duncan house, which was said to be located at 358 Edgewood Drive in Denver, Colorado on the series, looks much the same in person as it did onscreen, minus the mailbox and tire swing – and Bob’s exterminator truck.
The brightly-colored interior of the Duncan home was just a set that existed on a soundstage at Los Angeles Center Studios, where the series was lensed.
It is quite a point of contention among Good Luck Charlie fans that the layout of the interior did not at all match the home’s exterior, especially the front door which was drastically different in design and shape from the door shown in establishing shots.
The house was also briefly featured, covered in snow (digitally, I believe), in the series’ 2011 made-for-TV movie, Good Luck Charlie, It’s Christmas.
While another Hooked on Houses commenter stated that they thought the Duncan house was used in the 1996 movie Space Jam, that information is incorrect. The Space Jam residence is located at 1002 Highland Avenue in South Pasadena, right next door to the home from Liar Liar (which I blogged about here).
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Good Luck Charlie house is located at 501 Palmetto Drive in Pasadena.
UPDATE – The Wonder Years is coming to DVD for the first time ever in October! The 26-disc boxed set includes all six seasons of the show, plus a cast reunion segment, over 15 hours of bonus footage, a collectible metal locker, two production booklets packed with behind-the-scenes information, a replica yearbook, and Wonder Years magnets. Sets can be pre-ordered here.
Fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, recently challenged me to find the old Victorian that Karen Arnold (Olivia d’Abo) and her boyfriend, Michael (who was played by none other than Friends’ David Schwimmer), moved into in the Season 4 episode of The Wonder Years titled “The House That Jack Built.” At the time, I had yet to hit that episode in my binge-watching of the series, so I scanned ahead and was pleasantly surprised to recognize the residence immediately. As it turns out, the home is located in South Pasadena and is one that I know quite well, due to the fact that it sat abandoned and run-down for over a decade before being fixed up. (Y’all know how much I love me some abandoned properties!) When I lived in Pasadena, I practically drove by the place on a daily basis, while on my way to and from the Harbor Freeway, and always wondered why such a beautiful dwelling had been left to deteriorate. I had even watched a music video being shot on the premises many moons ago (more on that later). For whatever reason, though, I had never blogged about the home, so I figured it was about time that I do so.
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In real life, the property, which is a South Pasadena Local City Landmark, is known as the Riggins House and it was originally built in 1885. Yep, it’s currently 129 years old! The five-bedroom, two-bath, 2,778-square-foot Queen Anne-style Victorian, which sits on 0.33 acres of land, was last sold in June 2005 for $1.2 million.
I never did learn the story behind the residence or why it was left in disarray for so many years. I think it has something to do with the 710 Freeway Project, though. (In the 1960s, the state of California purchased 500-plus homes – many quite large, beautiful and historic – in what is now known as the 710 Corridor with the intention of tearing them down to build a connector road between the 210 and 710 freeways. While some of the houses were leased out, many were left vacant from that point onward. Thankfully, the freeway extension project was squashed last October and the homes are now finally, finally being returned to private ownership.) Oddly enough, I preferred the look of the place in its run-down state, most likely because it reminded me of the “Thriller” house. Unfortunately though, I do not have any photographs of it from that time period.
According to An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles, Professor Thaddeus Lowe, who was best known for founding the Mount Lowe Railway and Citizen’s Bank of Los Angeles, lived in the Riggins House while his own (much larger – we’re talking 24,000 square feet!) house was being built a couple of blocks away at 995 South Orange Grove Boulevard. That residence, which was once one of the largest homes in the entire nation, was sadly demolished between 1927 and 1928.
In The Wonder Years “The House That Jack Built” episode, Karen decides to leave her college dorm in order to move into a large home with a “roommate,” whom she fails to tell her parents is actually her new boyfriend. Both the exterior of the Riggins House . . .
. . . and the interior were shown in the episode.
The residence subsequently showed up in several Season 5 episodes of The Wonder Years, including “Dinner Out;”
“Stormy Weather;”
and “The Wedding.”
As I mentioned above, I once watched a music video being filmed at the Riggins House – the 2003 video for the Beyoncé/Missy Elliot/MC Lyte/Free compilation song “Fighting Temptation,” which was featured on the soundtrack for Beyoncé’s then most recent movie, The Fighting Temptations. In a 2003 interview, Beyoncé stated that the Riggins House was chosen for filming because it reminded her of the Georgia-area residence where The Fighting Temptations was shot.
The interior of the Riggins House also appeared in the video.
You can watch “Fighting Temptation” by clicking below.
As I also just learned, the Riggins House was utilized as the Pyramid Corners, Oklahoma residence of the Torkleson family in the short-lived series The Torkelsons, one of my favorite shows ever! (Oh, Man in the Moon . . . ! ) In an odd twist, and for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom, imagery of the property was flipped in all establishing shots that appeared on the program, which ran from 1991 to 1992.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for challenging me to find this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Michael’s house from The Wonder Years is located at 919 Columbia Street in South Pasadena.
When Juan Pablo Galavis and Chelsie Webster went bungee jumping off of Pasadena’s Colorado Street Bridge in the recently-aired Season 18 episode of The Bachelor titled “Soccer Date,” I found myself wondering, “How did I miss the filming?” Although it has been over a year now, I still have to remind myself that the Crown City is no longer home. (The Grim Cheaper is convinced that all the blonde hair dye I use has finally started to affect my brain. 
) I happened to drive under the famed bridge while visiting Pasadena last week and got to thinking that it would make for a good Valentine’s-themed post (even though, per Reality Steve, Juan Pablo and Chelsie do not wind up together), so I pulled over to snap some pics. (The GC also “loaned” me a bunch of photos he took of the structure years ago.)
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The Colorado Street Bridge was designed by the Kansas City, Missouri-based engineering firm Waddell & Harrington. Construction on the 1,467.5-foot-long, two-lane structure was completed in 1913. The bridge, which towers 148.5-feet above the Arroyo Seco, is an architectural marvel boasting 11 Beaux Arts arches, ornamental clustered light posts and an iron balustrade. Shockingly, the magnificent, curving span was almost demolished in 1953 following the completion of the adjacent Pioneer Bridge, which connects the 134 and 210 freeways. The site was saved thanks to a letter-writing campaign and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
Due to structural deterioration, the Colorado Street Bridge was closed to traffic in 1989 and a $27-million restoration project subsequently begun. The site was re-opened on December 13th, 1993 – the 90-year anniversary of its original completion.
The span is often referred to as the “Suicide Bridge” because more than 100 people have jumped to their deaths from it over the years, most during the 1930s in the midst of the Great Depression. While a wrought-iron suicide-prevention fence was installed at the time of the 1989 renovation, it has not halted the most determined troubled souls – thirteen people have jumped from the bridge since 2006 alone.
In the “Soccer Date” episode of The Bachelor, Juan Pablo first takes Chelsie to sample Venezuelan delicacies at Amara Chocolate & Coffee (located at 55 South Raymond Avenue in Old Town).
The two then head over to the Colorado Street Bridge where, after a considerable amount of hemming and hawing on Chelsie’s part, they embark on a tandem bungee jump.
The Bachelor is hardly the first production to make use of the picturesque site. The bridge has appeared in countless productions over the years – far too many for me to ever chronicle here. But I’ve compiled a few of the highlights. Way back in 1921, Charlie Chaplin featured the structure in his movie The Kid (which starred Jackie Coogan, grandfather of Keith Coogan, my girl Pinky Lovejoy’s husband.)
The Colorado Street Bridge showed up very briefly at the beginning of the 2005 romantic comedy Rumor Has It, in the scene in which Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Aniston) and Jeff Daly (Mark Ruffalo) first arrived in Pasadena.
The bridge was where Carl (Jim Carrey) bungee jumped – and took a phone call – in 2008’s Yes Man.
Jim Carrey actually performed the stunt himself for the scene. You can watch a behind-the-scenes video of it being shot by clicking below.
In the Season 4 episode of The Closer titled “Fate Line,” which aired in 2009 (and which I got to watch being filmed – you can read my set report here), horror film producer Sean Thompson died in a car accident underneath the Colorado Street Bridge.
In the Season 2 episode of The Mentalist titled “The Scarlet Letter,” which also aired in 2009 (and which I also watched being filmed – you can read that set report here), the Colorado Street Bridge masqueraded as the Sacramento-area bridge where the body of Kristin Marley (Kristine Blackport) was found.
The structure was where two sisters killed themselves in another 2009 production – the Season 1 episode of Lie to Me (a series I absolutely loved) titled “Depraved Heart.”
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Colorado Street Bridge, where Juan Pablo and Chelsie bungee jumped on The Bachelor, is located on West Colorado Boulevard, in between South Orange Grove Boulevard and North San Rafael Avenue, adjacent to the 134 Freeway, in Pasadena.
As promised, today’s blog is a continuation of my top ten favorite places in Pasadena. If you missed the first installment, you can check it out here. And now, on with the post! (Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for taking the above photograph of Pasadena City Hall. I swear, that guy takes THE BEST pictures. I was just telling him the other night that if I ever get rich, I am hiring him to take photos for my site fulltime. I’ll do the writing and he can handle the pics. We’d so be unstoppable! 
)
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6. Old Town Pasadena Historic District – If there’s one thing this stalker loves almost as much as stalking, it’s shopping. I absolutely hate being inside, though, so when I first moved to Pasadena and discovered Old Town’s historic shopping district, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
![Blo Out Lounge Pasadena (10 of 16)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Blo-Out-Lounge-Pasadena-10-of-16_thumb2.jpg "Blo Out Lounge Pasadena (10 of 16)_thumb[2]")
Old Town Pasadena, which is comprised of blocks upon blocks of fabulous boutiques, restaurants and specialty stores (like The Soap Kitchen, which makes the best lip balm I have ever owned), features stunning architecture, spacious courtyards and lots and lots of brick. It is hands down my favorite place to shop in all of Southern California. And because I used to live about a mile from it, walking there daily provided me with my only form of exercise. See, shopping can be good for you! The area also has a bit of a celebrity twist. In the 1940s, Old Town Pasadena fell into serious disarray and became a haven for criminal and drug activity. Thankfully though, in the early ‘90s, the site’s potential was realized by several real estate developers and businessmen who set about revitalizing the district and wound up turning it into what is now one of L.A.’s most popular shopping and dining venues. One of the men who was involved in that revitalization was none other than producer Garry Marshall, although he ended up backing out after the project almost bankrupted him. He talks quite a bit about the venture in his fabulous book My Happy Days in Hollywood.
![Blo Out Lounge Pasadena (15 of 16)_thumb[4]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Blo-Out-Lounge-Pasadena-15-of-16_thumb4.jpg "Blo Out Lounge Pasadena (15 of 16)_thumb[4]")
The area also sees quite a bit of filming. In fact, just the other day I learned that the Urban Outfitters in Old Town was featured in the 2004 movie National Treasure, in the scene in which Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage), Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger) and Riley Poole (Justin Bartha) go shopping for new clothes.
![Blo Out Lounge Pasadena (14 of 16)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Blo-Out-Lounge-Pasadena-14-of-16_thumb2.jpg "Blo Out Lounge Pasadena (14 of 16)_thumb[2]")
![ScreenShot6966_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ScreenShot6966_thumb2.jpg "ScreenShot6966_thumb[2]")
The center of Old Town Pasadena is located at 1 Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. You can visit the district’s official website here.
![Blo Out Lounge Pasadena (11 of 16)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Blo-Out-Lounge-Pasadena-11-of-16_thumb2.jpg "Blo Out Lounge Pasadena (11 of 16)_thumb[2]")
7. The Starbucks at Lake & Green – Not the closest Starbucks to my former apartment, but my most-favorite one and easily the best in all of Pasadena. I would walk about a mile out of my way each day to visit this particular branch, that’s how much I love the place. At most Starbucks locations, the wait is atrocious and items are invariably out of stock – there is one in particular in the Pasadena area that shall remain unnamed (753 S. Arroyo Parkway) that is constantly out of whole milk and it drives me up the wall. This particular store, though, has GOT IT DOWN! I can honestly say that in the six years I frequented the place, I never had to wait longer than five minutes from the time I walked through the front door to the time I walked out, drink in hand. I love, love, love this Starbucks. The GC would often try to get me to stop at other Sbux outposts that happened to be on the way to wherever we were going on that particular day, and every single time he got his way and we ended up at another store, we would get stuck in some god-forsaken line and lose about ten minutes time. Men! I became such a regular at Lake & Green that when one of my favorite baristas, Eve, won Partner of the Quarter for her district, I was invited to the event, as were a few other customers. That’s just the way the Lake & Green store is. It is like the Cheers bar of Starbucks stores – where everybody knows your name. My favorite Starbucks is located at 82 South Lake Avenue in Pasadena.
![Starbucks Lake and Green (1 of 3)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Starbucks-Lake-and-Green-1-of-3_thumb2.jpg "Starbucks Lake and Green (1 of 3)_thumb[2]")
8. Betty Nails & Spa – Anyone who lives in L.A. knows that most nail salons there are conveyor-belt type places that can be found on pretty much each and every street corner. Some are even downright skeevy. Not Betty Nails & Spa, though. As soon as I walked in for my first visit, I immediately felt comfortable and welcomed. The place was clean and laid-back, the stylists friendly and the prices extremely reasonable. What I liked best, though, was the fact that the manicurist took her time. In all of my visits there, I never felt like they were trying to rush through the process to move on to the next customer. They also never tried to upsell me. Quite the contrary, actually – the first time I asked for a callus removal (Cat, from the Pasadena Blo-Out Lounge, had told me how fabulous callus removals are and she was right!), I was told that I really did not need one. The best part about Betty’s manicures and pedicures, though, are the massages. Sigh! After I discovered Betty’s and became a regular, I recommended the place to my mom and she subsequently became a regular, too. When she moved to desert, she would often lament to me that she could not find a nail salon that she liked nearly as much that didn’t cost an arm and a leg – which doesn’t bode well for me now that I live there, as well. Needless to say, my nails – and hair – will be suffering due to my move. 
Betty Nails & Spa is located at 766 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.
![Betty nails Spa (1 of 1)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Betty-nails-Spa-1-of-1_thumb2.jpg "Betty nails Spa (1 of 1)_thumb[2]")
9. El Portal – Our favorite Pasadena-area Mexican eatery. El Portal is a family-owned and operated place that specializes in Yucatan cuisine and has been awarded Pasadena Weekly’s “Best Mexican Restaurant” more times than I can count. The Grim Cheaper has long been addicted to their shredded beef tacos and while I typically do not have a hard time sticking to my carb-free diabetic-friendly diet when dining out, whenever I am at El Portal I canNOT resist their cheese quesadillas! They are like my kryptonite. I do not know how one can make a quesadilla stand out from others (I mean, aren’t they just tortillas and cheese?), but no other quesadilla that I have ever sampled even compares to the ones at El Portal. They are that good! El Portal’s champagne, unfortunately, wasn’t, though. The restaurant used to serve a very sweet brand of sparking wine that I was not at all a fan of, so one day I decided to ask El Portal’s owner, Abel Ramirez, if he would ever consider stocking a different variety. I mentioned that the rather inexpensive Freixenet brand was one of my favorites (my best friend actually calls me “The Freixenet Girl”) and the very next week when we sat down at the bar, our favorite bartender popped a Freixenet split down in front of me! How incredible is that? I just about fell over I was so excited. The bartender also later told us that the restaurant has been selling quite a bit more champagne now since they made the switch, which I was over the moon about. For the best quesadillas in the world, head to El Portal, which is located at 695 East Green Street, inside of Arcade Lane, in Pasadena. You can visit the restaurant’s website here.
![El Portal Pasadena (1 of 1)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/El-Portal-Pasadena-1-of-1_thumb2.jpg "El Portal Pasadena (1 of 1)_thumb[2]")
10. Our Former Loft – The GC and I have both long been obsessed with New York loft-style architecture, so when we toured the one pictured below while looking for our first apartment together in 2008, we signed the lease immediately. We absolutely LOVED living in what we took to calling “our perfect little loft”, despite the fact that it was only 750 square feet. And while we did end up desperately needing more space as the years went on, it was truly heartbreaking to leave the place and not a day goes by that I don’t miss it.
![Our loft (1 of 5)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Our-loft-1-of-5_thumb2.jpg "Our loft (1 of 5)_thumb[2]")
![Our loft (5 of 5)_thumb[3]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Our-loft-5-of-5_thumb3.jpg "Our loft (5 of 5)_thumb[3]")
![Our loft (3 of 5)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Our-loft-3-of-5_thumb2.jpg "Our loft (3 of 5)_thumb[2]")
![Our loft (4 of 5)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Our-loft-4-of-5_thumb2.jpg "Our loft (4 of 5)_thumb[2]")
Especially the floor-to-ceiling brick wall.
![Our loft (1 of 1)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Our-loft-1-of-1_thumb2.jpg "Our loft (1 of 1)_thumb[2]")
One thing I will NOT miss about our loft, though, is the tiny closet, which I actually had to split with the GC! For a hyper-organized clotheshorse like myself, sharing such a small closet was miserable.
![Our loft (2 of 8)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Our-loft-2-of-8_thumb2.jpg "Our loft (2 of 8)_thumb[2]")
As you can see, because the closet was so small and because I have so many clothes, the result was a rather disorganized storage system, which was enough to drive the Monica Geller in me crazy on a daily basis. I get an eye twitch just looking at the pictures below.
![Our loft (4 of 8)_thumb[3]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Our-loft-4-of-8_thumb3.jpg "Our loft (4 of 8)_thumb[3]")
![Our loft (5 of 8)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Our-loft-5-of-8_thumb2.jpg "Our loft (5 of 8)_thumb[2]")
![Our loft (6 of 8)_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/www.iamnotastalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Our-loft-6-of-8_thumb2.jpg "Our loft (6 of 8)_thumb[2]")
So when we decided to move to the desert, I stole a line from Carrie Bradshaw and told the GC, “Just get me a really big closet!” Which he did, and which my dad, who is quite the craftsman (he constructed the bookshelves, ladder and butcher block pictured in the above photographs of our loft), custom-built for me. The original closet, as it came with our new apartment, is pictured below.
I asked my dad to base the design on Emily Schuman’s closet (from fave website Cupcakes and Cashmere), which you can take a look at here. The result is pictured below and, while it is still not completely finished, I could NOT be happier with it. I feel like I’ve died and gone to closet heaven! I keep calling it my Barbie Dream Closet and literally can’t get enough of it. I think it is safe to say that I will be spending the vast majority of my time in there, just gazing around in awe. 
Although two of my very favorite area locales, I purposely left The Huntington Library and the Walsh house from Beverly Hills, 90210 out of this post because both are featured quite prominently on My L.A. Must-Stalk List, which you can read here.
You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
While the Grim Cheaper and I are absolutely loving our new apartment and desert locale, I am, of course, feeling quite nostalgic about Pasadena, the fabulous city that I called home for over thirteen years. There are so many things that I am going to miss about the place – even my former building’s Ugly Naked Guy. Well, I’m not going to miss him, per se – just the fact that my building had one and that I once shared that small similarity with the Friends gang. But that is a different story for a different time (and it’s a doozy, let me tell you!). For today and Monday, though, while caught up in memories of my beloved Rose City, I thought I would go a little off-topic by blogging about my ten favorite places in Pasadena. None have a filming or celebrity angle, necessarily, but I hope my fellow stalkers will enjoy this walk down memory lane nonetheless. So without further ado . . .
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1. Lula Mae Gift Shop – My very favorite store in the entire world! While planning for this post, I made a list of all of the places that I needed to take photographs of and Lula Mae was one of them. Then I realized that the two pictures below (which my dad took last year of me with Marci, Lula’s owner, and Julia, a longtime employee) perfectly encapsulate what the shop is all about. Walking into Lula Mae is like walking into a giant hug and what I love most about the place – besides the fabulous merchandise, which is truly one-of-a-kind – is the people who work there. There are honestly no words to describe how much I am going to miss Marci and Julia (as wells as Alison and Reyana). The Lula ladies have all become my good friends and saying good-bye to them was the hardest part of leaving Pasadena for me. I bawled for a full two blocks after I left the store that evening and still haven’t fully recovered. Ironically enough, Marci was the one who gave me the last push I needed to move. The GC and I had been going back and forth over the decision for weeks and one day Marci said, “Well, what are you going to regret more? Leaving Pasadena or not being with your parents?” We gave notice to our apartment building just a few days later. Marci is one of the most amazing people I have ever met – she is the absolute embodiment of Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) from You’ve Got Mail. In fact, I am convinced that Nora Ephron met Marci one day while writing the screenplay for the 1998 flick and then based the character off of her.
Lula Mae was where I would go whenever I needed inspiration, a good laugh, a cheering-up, some girl talk, or a fabulously unique gift. LA Weekly awarded the site “Best One-Stop Shopping” in 2011 and had this to say, “You know that friend of yours who always upstages the $10 bottle of wine you pull out of your purse when she shows up at parties with the most adorable, clever little trinket wrapped perfectly in a colorful vintage gift bag? Well that smug b*tch probably has been shopping at Lula Mae for years now.” That smug b*tch was me. Friends learned long ago to stop asking where I purchased a certain card or gift because the answer was invariably “Lula Mae”. When I told my parents we were moving to the desert, the first words out of my mom’s mouth were, “But what are you going to do without Lula Mae?” Not joking. The store was that much a part of my life. In fact, the GC asked if Marci factored our move into her 2013 revenue projections. LOL I honestly don’t know how I will survive without my weekly (oh, who am I kidding) daily Lula dose. 
It’s the most adorable store I have ever visited in my life (the place even has a shop kitty!) and I cannot more highly recommend a visit. Lula Mae is located at 100 North Fair Oaks Avenue in Old Town Pasadena. You can visit the store’s website here.
2. Vroman’s Bookstore – My very favorite bookstore. Because I love Vroman’s so much and shop there so often, I have written countless posts about the place over the years. Consequently, in the hopes of sparing y’all any redundancy, I will keep this blurb brief. Let me just say that Vroman’s is the type of place where you can walk in and say, “I heard about this book and I can’t remember the title or who wrote it, nor what it is even about. I know it has to do with a bookseller and that it takes place in a past era and the cover is a mustard yellow color and has a Sherlock Holmes-looking guy on it.” And they will know exactly the book you are talking about. I walked in the other day and said just that and, sure enough, it wasn’t two minutes before I had the novel I had so poorly remembered, The Shadow of the Wind, in my hands. The picture below was taken back in 2011 on a day when Parks and Recreation was filming at Vroman’s. You can read my post about that filming here. Vroman’s Bookstore is located at 695 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. You can visit their website here. Be sure to check out their Special Events page as celebrity authors stop by regularly for signings.
3. The Slaw Dogs – I discovered this place (thanks to Marci from Lula Mae) about two years ago and it became such a favorite that before long I was dining there a good four or five times a week. The eatery serves the. best. hot. dogs. ever. And this is coming from a true frankfurter connoisseur. The dogs are so good, in fact, that when I took my friends Beth and Kim, who were in town visiting from Ohio, they actually later dreamed about their meal! Yes, The Slaw Dogs has the power to enter your dreams! And the establishment even serves champagne! What more could a stalker ask for?
Pictured below is my regular order – a turkey dog with melted cheddar cheese and ranch dressing. I am salivating just looking at it right now! To stay diabetic-friendly, though, I don’t eat the bun. For those of you who aren’t diabetic, The Slaw Dogs serves a variety of carb-loaded options, including a Mac and Cheese Dog (with macaroni and cheese, bacon, grilled onions, and Dijon mustard), The Picnic Dog (with homemade potato salad, BBQ sauce, onion rings, and a dill pickle spear), and the TNT Super Dog, aka “The Good Timer” (with beer chili, cheddar cheese, bacon, pastrami, French fries, grilled onions, and a fried egg, all wrapped in a giant tortilla). There are also vegetarian options and salads, for those who prefer a healthier meal. If you’re in the area, skip Pink’s (the lines are long and the dogs just average) and hit up The Slaw Dogs instead. Several celebs have even been known to stop in on occasion, including Wentworth Miller, whom I once dined next to. The eatery has a few locations, but the Pasadena outpost can be found at 720 North Lake Avenue. You can visit The Slaw Dogs website here.
4. The Pasadena Blo-Out Lounge – I discovered this place in all of its white marble and pink-accented glory in June 2011 and never looked back. And while the GC likes to say, “You pay someone to wash your hair!”, what I am actually paying for is a professional blow-dry. Because the Blo-Out Lounge prices are so incredibly reasonable, I was able to buy a monthly membership and get my hair done every four or five days. (Yes, I know – I am spoiled!) The Lounge was a lifesaver for me because I have extremely curly and extremely thick hair. Blowing it out on my own takes a good two hours and is a huge pain in the butt, so, before discovering the Lounge, I would often just leave it curly and pull it back in a clip. After becoming a member, though, everyday became a good hair day. So much so that Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, once called me up to ask if I had gotten a makeover at some point before meeting her. She had been going through my old celebrity photographs and, apparently, I used to be a hot mess. LOL My answer, “No, I just discovered the Blo-Out Lounge.”
Not only did the Lounge change my hair-life, but the stylists who work there all became my close friends. Even if I went back to wearing my hair curly, I would still want to visit the salon regularly just to hang out. I honestly do not know what I am going to do now that I live in Palm Springs. I can say this, though – the Lounge will be my VERY FIRST stop on every single visit back to L.A. And while I have my favorites [Noelle (who is pictured), Cat, Yvette, Arlyn and Dinga], ALL of the girls who work at the Lounge are fabulous and, in almost two years time, I have NEVER received a single bad blow-out. The Pasadena Blo-Out Lounge is located at 62 North Raymond Avenue in Old Town Pasadena. You can visit their website here.
5. Vertical Wine Bistro – Sadly, while the GC and I had dined once before at Vertical (I blogged about it here), we only just discovered the wonder that is their happy hour about six weeks prior to our move. I can easily say that Vertical Wine Bistro has Pasadena’s BEST happy hour, hands down! The prices are reasonable, the food spectacular and the servings huge. We love the place so much that it became our regular Friday night spot. It was also where we chose to eat dinner our last night in Pasadena. Because we had only been dining at Vertical habitually for a short time, we did not know any of the bartenders very well, but, amazingly, when one of them heard that we were moving the following day, she ended up purchasing our entire meal! She said that she and the other servers would often comment on how nice we were and how they wished more of their customers were like us! How AMAZING is that?!? It was the perfect way to spend our last night in Pasadena and made me love the eatery all the more. (Because I had blogged about the place before, I thought I had plenty of pictures of it and therefore did not take any new ones for this post. When I looked through my old photos, though, I realized that they had been taken on an iPhone and were of very poor quality. D’oh! So I had to “borrow” the one below off of the Vertical website.)
While the GC LOVES Vertical’s Sliders (I have to say that I even like them and I am NOT a hamburger fan), I am absolutely addicted to the Sautéed Mushrooms side order (pictured below). It is literally one of the best things I have ever eaten in my life. The Fried Calamari is also amazing! I canNOT wait to go back there the next time we are in town. Vertical Wine Bistro is located at 70 North Raymond Avenue in Old Town Pasadena. You can visit their website here. The restaurant’s happy hour is offered Tuesday through Saturday from 4 to 7 p.m. and all day on Sunday.
Stay tuned for My Favorite Pasadena Places – Part II, which will be posted on Monday.
You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
This past Monday evening, the Grim Cheaper and I sat down to catch up on a slew of television episodes that we had backlogged over the past week, one of which was The Big Bang Theory’s “The Countdown Reflection”. In the episode, which has to be one of the cutest of the entire series, Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) and longtime girlfriend, Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch), finally tie the knot on the rooftop of the building where Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) live. Well, as you can imagine, as soon as I finished watching the wedding scene, I became just a wee-bit obsessed with tracking down that rooftop. I was fairly certain that it was located somewhere in Pasadena as the Big Bang gang supposedly lives in the City of Roses and area locations appear regularly on the show. Heck, even my building was filmed once for the background of a driving scene back in 2010, although I was never able to spot it in an episode. And while Leonard and Sheldon’s address has been referred to a few times as 2311 North Los Robles Avenue, in actuality that location does not exist as Los Robles ends at the 2200 block. So thinking I would need some help with this one, I immediately texted fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write is Wrong blog, to ask for his assistance. And imagine my surprise when, at 7:30 yesterday morning, I received a text back from him with an address! Yay! When I asked how he had found the rooftop so fast, he replied, “Sheldon isn’t the only smart guy around.” 
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As it turns out, one quick Google search had led Owen to the YouTube video posted below, which pinpointed the rooftop’s exact location. So, as soon as I received Owen’s text, I headed right on over there to stalk the place, after first hitting up a Starbucks, of course.
As the camera pulls farther away, we are given an aerial view of Leonard and Sheldon’s building and the surrounding area. And while The Big Bang rooftop and the structure located directly below it do not match up to what appeared onscreen (thanks to some CGI magic), the rest of the surrounding buildings do, as you can see below. And while Owen suggested that I rent a plane to get some actual photographs of the rooftop, until I have the means to do so, Google aerial images will have to do.
I did manage to snap some actual photographs of the front of the building, though. Interestingly enough, while doing research for today’s post, I happened to come across a Big Bang Theory forum in which member “jcc551f9n” states that he or she is fairly certain that the interior of Leonard and Sheldon’s building was based on the Brookmore Apartments located at 189 North Marengo Avenue in Pasadena. Jcc551f9n says, “I lived in the building for two years and the inside looks like the exact replica of The Big Bang Theory apartments. Exposed brick, stairwell looping around the elevator, very similar front doors as the show. And the Brookmore Apartments elevator was always broken. Even the laundry room looks the same. A number of Caltech and JPL physicists live there as well as more than one aspiring actress.” Another commenter named “ottonomy” replied to jcc551f9n’s post stating that he or she also thought the Brookmore was the inspiration for the Big Bang apartment set. He or she says, “Hmm… The Brookmore Apartments were one of the first places I considered, when trying to guess where the apartment might be. You’re spot on about the stairs and elevator. I remember delivering pizzas there in the eighties. It was run down, and the halls were lined with addicts, prostitutes, and their dealers and pimps. The renaissance of Old Pasadena had changed it by the late nineties, when I started working as a locksmith and made frequent appearances there to open locked doors for people who were better at rocket science than at keeping track of their keys. It’s amazing how much the place has improved, though the elevator was indeed not working when last I was there.” So interesting! I stopped by the Brookmore yesterday to try to sneak a peak at the elevator area through the front door, but unfortunately it was not visible. What I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that building, though!
On a The Big Bang Theory side-note – I am just a wee-bit obsessed with series star Kaley Cuoco’s recent in-flight photo shoot for CBS Watch Magazine (which is like the best magazine, ever, by the way – if you do not already have a subscription, I highly recommend getting one). The shoot, which took place during an actual flight, intrigued me for two reasons – one because I am absolutely petrified of flying and am astounded that the crew was able to pull off an entire photo shoot while aboard a 777 jet en route from New York to London.
And two, because I absolutely fell in love with Kaley’s Louis Vuitton clutch, which I am fairly certain is vintage, being that I cannot find it anywhere on the LV website. Love it, love it, love it! Why this stalker’s eye is immediately drawn to anything in that classic, brown LV pattern, I will never know, but it is – like a magnet! Oh, Grim Cheaper, are you listening? My birthday is coming up!
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Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! 
Stalk It: Leonard and Sheldon’s rooftop from The Big Bang Theory is located at 215 South Madison Avenue in Pasadena.