“And Your 40s Are To Pay For the Drinks!”

Another day, another SATC  location.  🙂  One of the must-see locales of my NYC stalking vacation was the bar where Carrie Bradshaw and her personal assistant, Louise, drank Bellini’s and commiserated over their broken hearts in Sex and the City: The Movie.  The bar used in the film is called Bemelman’s and it is located inside the famed Carlyle Hotel on New York’s Upper East Side.  According to fave book Sex and the City: The Movie, the SJP flick was the very first production ever allowed to film inside the legendary bar.    It is at Bemelman’s that Carrie gives Louise this sage piece of advice: “Enjoy yourself – that’s what your 20s are for.  Your 30s are to learn the lessons.  And your 40s are to pay for the drinks!”  🙂  Love it!  🙂

Bemelman’s is named after the creator, illustrator, and author of the popular Madeline children’s book series, Ludwig Bemelman, whose murals adorn the bar’s many walls.  Over fifty years ago, the Carlyle Hotel commisioned Bemelman to paint large scenes of animals frolicking in Central Park on the walls of their lobby bar.  Instead of being paid for this feat, Bemelman and his family were given free room and board at the luxury hotel for a year and a half.   Not a bad deal!  🙂 Bemelman’s Bar has long been a favorite of both celebrities and native New Yorkers alike.   In fact, SJP is a longtime fan of the Carlyle in general.   She spent many an evening at Cafe Carlyle, the hotel’s cabaret restaurant, while dating then-boyfriend Matthew Broderick.  In fact, the two even spent their honeymoon at the Carlyle.  🙂  Currently Bemelman’s is a favorite stomping ground of Suri Cruise, who regularly attends the Saturday children’s tea with her famous mom. 

 

Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to grab a cocktail in Bemelman’s during this New York vacay – so many places to stalk, so little time.  😦  But I did pop my head in for a little looksie.  The cocktail waitress even let me take some pics at the bar area, even though photographs are typically not allowed.  From what I saw in the few minutes I was there, Bemelman’s looks like a very cool place to grab a drink and it’s easy to see why producers chose it for a little SATC  filming.  The bar is dark, intimate, cozy, and so very New York.  It even features a 24-carat gold leaf ceiling – I’m not kidding!   And to commemorate the filming that took place there in late 2007, Bemelman’s even named a drink after SATC’s  leading lady.  “The Bradshaw” is a mixture of Don Julio Blanco tequila, lime juice, cane sugar simple syrup, and X-Rated Passion Fruit Liquor.  The drink is, of course, pink and  is served in a martini glass dusted with pink sugar.  Love it!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Bemelman’s Bar is located at 35 East 76th Street, inside the famed Carlyle Hotel.

No Trespassing and the City!

Every December, while in New York, I make a pilgrimage to Carrie’s brownstone from fave television show Sex and the City.  Even though I have visited this location quite a few times over the years, I never, ever get tired of it.  To me, it is the quintessential New York location.   I was especially excited to stalk Carrie’s brownstone this year because I had read that the real life owners, tired of stalkers taking pictures on their famous stoop, had installed a large metal chain blocking access to their home.  I was dying to see if it was true.  And sure enough, it was!

My boyfriend and I were cracking up as we walked up to the house and saw the thick metal chain stretched across the entrance complete with a plastic “No Trespassing” sign.  I think it is absolutely hilarious that the owners did this because, for one, the chain and sign are a complete eyesore on what is otherwise an ADORABLE townhouse. I mean, the whole thing is just so un-Carrie!  The least they could have done would be to put up a cute little wrought iron gate to match the stair railing.  Come on, owners!  Carrie can’t live in a house with a sign like that – she’s a fashion icon for pete’s sake!   And secondly, I think the big ol’ sign only draws attention to the house rather than distracting from it.  LOL  I just don’t understand people!  I mean, if it were my townhouse I’d be standing out there all day, everyday shouting “Yes, this is Carrie’s apartment building and I live here!  I am the real-life Carrie Bradshaw!  Would you want to take a picture with me?  And I’d be happy to sign an autograph for you, too!”  It could be like a full time job!  🙂  LOL  I really hope that the owners aren’t so completely bent out of shape that they are not going to allow filming to take place there for the much-rumored SATC sequel.

On an ironic side note, for the months leading up to my New York trip I had been jokingly suggesting to my boyfriend that he should propose to me on the top of Carrie’s stoop.  It’s a good thing he didn’t take my advice to heart, as his plans would have been seriously thwarted if he had.  LOL

Hopefully all of you SATC stalkers out there were able to snap a pic on Carrie’s stoop before the ugly “No Trespassing” chain went up.  I am very thankful that I was able to!  🙂  But I couldn’t help but wonder . . .

. . . do you think this could be why such a sign went up?  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It (but don’t trespass!): Carrie’s brownstone is located at 66 Perry Street in the West Village  in New York.

“Welcome Home, Baby”

Got home from New York on Tuesday afternoon and was already so homesick for my favorite city in the world that I had to immediately sit down and watch the Sex and the City  movie in its two and a half hour entirety to make myself feel better.   So today I thought I’d blog about one of the SATC  locations I visited while in the Big Apple.

While in New York I just had to make a pilgrimage to the Fifth Avenue building where Carrie and Big purchase their dream apartment in the SATC  movie.    The building shows up at the very beginning of the movie, in the scene when Carrie and Big go apartment hunting and discover “real estate heaven” in the building’s stunning penthouse apartment.  While Carrie walks around the space, musing about what it would be like to live in such an incredible apartment, Big says “Welcome home, baby.”   Oh how I wish I was being welcomed home at New York apartment, too!  🙂

 

The apartment building looks exactly the same as it did in the movie and while I was standing there I could almost picture Carrie running across the street to meet Big under the front awning.  🙂  I found the location of this building in the Sex and the City: The Movie  book, which features an entire chapter devoted to locations featured in the movie.  LOVE IT!  🙂  According to the book only the exterior of the Fifth Avenue building was used in the filming of Sex and the City.  The interiors were shot at a Spanish Style four story walk-up located on 62nd street.  You can actually tell in the above screenshots that the front doors of the interior shots do not match up with the real apartment’s front doors.  (The Fifth avenue building has a single exterior door, while the building used for the interior shots has a double door.  The iron work on both sets of doors does not match up, either.  LOL!)  Looks like I am going to have to stalk the building used for the interiors the next time I am in New York.  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Carrie and Big’s dream apartment is located at 1010 Fifth Avenue, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street.

Stalking the WB – Again!

After spending our morning at Sony Pictures Studio, Mike from MovieShotsLA, his fiance Jen, and I headed over to Warner Brothers Studio in Burbank to take their VIP tour once again.  I had heard that no two tours are ever alike at the WB and Mike and I wanted to see if that was really true.  And you know what?  It was!  This experience was COMPLETELY different from the first time we took the tour back in September of this year.  It was like seeing an entirely different studio.

Our tour started off the same way as last time, with a movie spotlighting the many productions that have been filmed on the WB lot.  Then we were whisked away to our golf cart to begin our backlot tour.  This time Mike and I both asked to be taken to specific places that we didn’t get to see on our last Warner Brothers excursion.  Mike was dying to stalk the New York City Street area, which was closed off during our last tour due to some filming that was taking place there.  My location request was to see the stoop Carrie sat on during her visit to the WB in the SATC episode entitled “Escape From New York”.  It is on this fake stoop that Carrie, after many failed attempts at smoking in L.A., lights up a cigarette only to have a security guard walk up and tell her to put it out.  “But this is New York!” she says, to which he replies  “No, Ma’am, it’s a set!”   LOL  LOVE IT!

Our tour guide, Matthew, pointed out Carrie’s stoop on the New York City Street right as we began our tour – it is located about ten feet away from the fire escape where the upside-down kiss from the first Spiderman movie took place.  For some reason the stoop didn’t look familiar to me, and “I couldn’t help but wonder” if our tour guide had made up the location to appease me and, in truth, didn’t really know where Carrie’s stoop was located.  Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong!  As soon as I got home, Mike emailed me a screen cap of the scene with Carrie smoking on the stoop and quite obviously our tour guide had been correct.  🙂  Turns out they really do know their stuff!  The fact that he knew the exact location of a scene that lasted only about 30 seconds in one brief episode of SATC  that was filmed over eight years ago absolutely amazed me.  I think the WB tour guides may even be better than me at this stalking stuff!  🙂

Not only did Matthew know where Carrie’s stoop was located, but he also pointed out that the administration building where our tour began is the very same location where Carrie attended the studio meeting with Matthew McConaughey in the same SATC episode.  AND the gate where she entered the studio for that meeting is the very same gate we were taken through at the beginning of our tour.  🙂  Let me tell you, Matthew really knows his stuff!  🙂

Next our guide took us up and down New York Street, which was amazing to see!  Countless movies have been filmed there, my personal favorite being the 1982 movie Annie. So I was super excited when we were shown the orphanagewhere Little Orphan Annie lived before being rescued by Daddy Warbucks (pictured above).  The orphanage looks a bit different now, as it has been dressed and remodeled for different productions through the years.

Other locations on New York Street include Ross’ apartment building from Friends,

the salon from You Don’t Mess with the Zohan,

the restaurant where Jack Nicholson has a heart attack in Something’s Gotta Give,

and Jack Nicholson’s therapists office in As Good As It Gets.

New York Street was extremely cool – literally every single building there had been used in a famous television or movie production.  So much so, in fact, that I can’t even remember all of them!!  Next time I need to take along a notebook to write everything down.  🙂

After New York Street we headed over to a small office building which had just been used in the filming of Without a Trace earlier that morning where it stood in for a motel.  The episode was supposed to take place in Autumn, so the prop department had brought in fall leaves to place all over the ground.

Then we were driven by one of the studio’s commissaries, which our tour guide told us had stood in for a college campus restaurant where Rory Gilmore and her father eat lunch in an episode of Gilmore Girls.

Next we were driven by another set of offices which just recently were used as the high school in the Sarah Conner Chronicles.

After that our tour headed to the WB lagoon/swamp area which has been used in countless, countless productions including Million Dollar Baby (where a shack next to the swamp stood in for a roadside cafe), ER (the scene where George Clooney saves a boy from drowning during a rainstorm was filmed inside the lagoon) and Fantasy Island (the lagoon ws the location where the boats bringing weekly visitors were docked).

Next to the lagoon is a fairly new set named Warner Village, which was built after the WB’s Wild West Town was torn down.  Warner Village is a small street of middle America style homes very similar to the Wisteria Lane set over at Universal Studios.  Homes on this street have been used in everything from The George Lopez Show to Cold Case to this year’s An American Carol. Inside the Warner Village homes are production offices for television series and movies which are produced on the lot.

After visiting Warner Village, we headed over to the ER hopsital set.  Even though we had seen this set on our last WB tour, it still held a new experience for us.  This time the entire hospital exterior was decorated for Christmas and covered in snow, which was really exciting to see.  In actuality, the snow is made from the shavings of plastic water bottles, but even up close it looked extremely real.

During this tour, we were allowed to venture inside the Emergency Room facade of ER to snap some pics.  The vending machines pictured above are fake, by the way.  In reality, they are high quality photographs of real vending machines pasted onto carboard stands.  They were so realistic, though, that I actually had to go up and touch them before I would believe that they weren’t real.  🙂

After the ER set, we were driven by a small park-like area where some Ghost Whisperer filming was taking place.  AND we even got to see Jennifer Love Hewitt for about half a milli-second as she hopped into a waiting van.  JLove was super cute – at least she seemed so in the very brief moment we saw her.

Next we headed to a prop warehouse where everything from furniture to artwork used in various Warner Brothers productions is stored.  The most famous prop piece located there?  One of the Sam’s pianos from Casablanca, which is actually on loan from an art collector who stumbled upon the piece at an auction a few years back.  The art collector liked the look of piano, bid on it, and apparently got it for quite a steal as the previous owner didn’t realize its cinematic significance.  It wasn’t until the new buyer got home that he noticed a piece of paper with a Warner Brothers stamp and a serial number tacked to the inside of the piano.  When he contacted Warner Brothers to ask about it, the serial number led them to discover the movie in which the piano had been used.  And, lo and behold, it was one of the most famous films in history. 🙂

Mike, Jen and I had a blast on our second Warner Brothers Tour and it is definitely true what they say – it’s never the same tour twice.  I HIGHLY recommend taking this tour – even if you have already been on it previously.  : ) I can’t wait to go back myself for yet another WB adventure!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Warner Brothers Studios is located at 3400 Riverside Drive in Burbank.  Tours run every 30 minutes Monday through Friday from 8:20am to 4:00pm.  Advance reservations are recommended.  Tickets cost $45 per person.  You can learn more about the tour here.

The Standard Hotel

     

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

         

         

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

        

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

         

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

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

Making My Job a Little Easier!

For my birthday my boyfriend bought me the new Sex and the City: The Movie book  and I was totally floored to open it up and find a whole chapter devoted to filming locations from the movie!  Takes a bit of the guesswork out of stalking, but it will make things so much easier on my next trip to New York.  🙂  The book is GREAT!  I absolutely LOVE IT!  There are tons of pictures, gossip, and trivia inside and I am having so much fun flipping through it.  The only location not named in the filming locations chapter in the book is the Mexican restaurant the girls go to during Carrie’s “honeymoon”.  It does mention, though, that it is located in Simi Valley, so it looks like I’ll be stalking all Mexican restaurants in the Simi Valley area for the next few months.  🙂 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: You can buy your very own Sex and the City: The Movie book here.

Miranda and Steve’s Garden Wedding

In keeping with the SATC theme of this week, I thought I’d do a post about a location that my boyfriend actually dragged me to!  At the time I had no idea it was a filming location, let alone a SATC  filming location, so sadly I didn’t take many pictures while I was there.  When I was in New York two years ago, my boyfriend and I happened upon what looked like a huge brick castle in the middle of Greenwich Village and he insisted we go inside to explore.  It turns out the building was not a castle at all, but a former New York City courthouse and detention center.  A bit of trivia – the detention center once held famous prisoner Mae West!  I must admit that while I am usually not into touring museums or historical buildings, this location was a really fun one to stalk.  🙂 

Jefferson Market Courthouse functioned as the Third Judicial District Courthouse from 1874 to 1945, at which time it fell into disrepair and was headed for demolition.  Thankfully, New Yorkers protested against the demolition and the property was turned into the Jefferson Market Branch, New York Public Library.  The building is now a National Historic Landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places.  The detention center that was attached to the Courthouse was demolished in 1974 and replaced with a community garden called the Jefferson Market Garden.  That garden was the location of Miranda and Steve’s nuptials on Sex and the City.  According to a Villager article, thanks to that episode of SATC, the garden has turned into a  frequent wedding venue.  Besides being used in the SATC, Jefferson Market was also featured in David Duchovny’s movie House of D.

The Library is very cool to stalk, as it is still set up like an ancient courthouse.  There are winding staircases, wood paneled rooms and even a dark, creepy dungeon that now houses the computer room.  🙂  When you step inside the library, it feels as if you are stepping back in time. 

 

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The Jefferson Market Garden is located next to the Jefferson Market Branch, New York Public Library at 425 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village.  The former courthouse is open daily to the public.

New York Public Library

Finally saw Sex and the City: The Movie  on Sunday!  I literally could not sit still in my theatre seat until the movie began I was so excited!!  I must say the movie was not as good as I hoped it would be.  😦  There were parts I absolutely LOVED and times when I felt like I was visiting with my old friends Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha, and I for sure laughed and even cried.  But overall I felt the movie missed its mark.  It just lacked that SATC  magic that was present in the TV show.  Especially the ending.  I think the Series Finale of the show which aired back in 2004 was a much more satisfying send off for my favorite foursome than the movie was.  I need to curl up on my couch and watch the Finale on DVD again to make me feel better.  🙂

Anyway, in the movie Carrie and Big plan to get married (don’t worry I am not giving anything away here) at the New York Public Library, in the same building that “houses the world’s greatest love stories”.  The New York Library is an absolutely beautiful building and I highly recommend a stalking visit there.  The library was dedicated on May 23, 1911 and has been a popular New York tourist attraction ever since.  The lobby of the Library is breathtaking with sweeping white marble staircases and vaulted ceilings.  The second floor is covered in dark wood paneling with gorgeous paintings lining the walls and a huge mural covering the ceiling. 

The New York Public Library was also featured prominently in the movie The Day After Tomorrow  as the location where Jake Gyllenhal and his friends take refuge from the storm.  It also showed up in the movies Spiderman, The Thomas Crown Affair, King Kong, and the Jen Aniston movie Picture Perfect, among many others.  Update – my good friend Nat was highly dissapointed in me because I forgot to mention Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which filmed at the library!  In the movie Holly Golightly and Paul run into the library, right past the Lions, and look up his book in the card catalog.

Out in front of the library are the famous marble Lions named Fortitude and Patience who have guarded the library entrance ever since its opening in 1911.  Designed by Edward Clark Potter, the Lions are now the offical mascots for the NY Library and a book has even been written about them called Top Cats: The Life and Times of the New York Public Library Lions.  I absolutely love the Lions and make it a point to visit them every time I am in New York.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The New York Public Library is located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.  If you are visiting New York in the Summertime, be sure to hit up Bryant Park right behind the Library.  Bryant Park is absolutely beautiful in the Spring and Summer and they have a great restaurant called the Bryant Park Grill Outdoor Cafe.   

Getting Carried Away!

Break out the cosmos and the couture because today is the big day – the day Sex and the City: The Movie  opens!  Let me tell you, I could not be more excited!!!  Hopefully I can manage to drag my boyfriend out to see it tonight, but I have yet to even broach the subject with him.  Anyway, I thought I’d do a little SATC  post today in honor of the big premiere.

My family’s favorite restaurant in NYC is a little place called Lumi on the Upper East Side.  My parent’s discovered the place about 4 years ago while out and about in New York and it’s been a favorite ever since.  So I was absolutely floored last fall when I saw some paparazzi photos of the SATC  movie being filming right in front of Lumi!  In December, while we were in Manhattan, we of course ate at Lumi and I asked one of the waiters for some insider SATC  info.  He told me he was sworn to secrecy about the details, but that SATC did indeed film at the cafe and that Mr. Big and Charlotte were in the scene.  Supposedly Charlotte’s water breaks during their meal together and the two rush off to the hospital in a taxi.  CANNOT WAIT!

Next time you are in NYC be sure to hit up Lumi.  The food is INCREDIBLE, the service is spectacular and nothing tops their bellini’s! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Lumi is located at 963 Lexington Avenue, at 70th and 71st Streets.  For more information, you can visit their website.

 

Leaping Off Into The Great Unknown

Last week, I made a pretty big life changing decision and quit my job.  I have decided to pursue acting (and, of course, stalking) full time – no more having a day job and fitting my acting pursuits around it.  From now on I am going to pursue acting 100 percent.  🙂  I am extremely excited, but at the same time absolutely terrified!  I told a co-worker the other day that I felt like I was jumping off a cliff into the vast unknown.  So it was pretty apropos that I spent this weekend doing just that – leaping off a board 30 feet in the air while learning the flying trapeze!

My good friend Nat had a birthday party this past Saturday at the Circus Center in San Francisco and we spent the entire afternoon trapezing and learning various other circus skills.  I was extremely excited about the party, because ever since I saw the Sex and the City  episode where Carrie learns to trapeze, I was dying to try it myself.  In the SATC episode, Carrie repeatedly attempts to try a “catch” move, but she just can’t seem to let go of the bar to reach for her partner.

I really didn’t think I’d be afraid to trapeze, being that I am not afraid of heights.  But, let me tell you, when I started climbing up that 30 foot ladder, my knees started shaking and I became completely freaked out!!  I so did NOT want to jump.  But even though it was completely scary, I took the plunge and sailed through the air – three times!  I never got to put my feet up on the bar and hang backwards like Carrie eventually did on SATC, but I was pretty proud of myself nonetheless.  And even though I was petrified, I absolutely loved every minute of it!  Which gives me a lot of hope for this new chapter in my life. 

 At the end of the SATC  episode, when Carrie finally tries the “catch”, she misses and falls, but realizes that she has a great safety net – her friends – who will always be there to catch her.  I, too, have a great safety net – my friends and family – which makes this huge leap into the unknown just a little less scary.  🙂

 

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: TSNY (Trapeze School New York), where Carrie learned to trapeze, is located in the Lower West Side of Manhattan, in the Hudson River Park, on West Street at Houston Street, on top of Pier 40.  You can visit their website here.  Circus Center San Francisco is located at 755 Frederick Street.  While not a filming location, if you are in the area, I HIGHLY recommend going!  The staff could not have been nicer or more patient with all of us amateurs.  Circus Center is an awesome place for a party! You can visit their website here.