On June 28, 2011 a couple things happened in my life. One was less than interesting, as it was my birthday. Which I really am indifferent to, and frankly want to ignore...especially since I woke up with a slight scratchy feeling in my throat that day, and its since progressed into some type of cold/fever... which I am currently pushing thru to get this blog done. On the bright side. I also uncovered the official location of the Dead Like Me restaraunt "Der Waffle Haus". Yeah I know, lots of fans had the impression it was all in studio...and for episodes 2 thru the duration of its run, it was. A soundstage that MGM ran. But for the pilot episode, it was a different place. An on location place. When I originally realized this, several years ago (not when it first came on air... I joined in after its 2 season run was already done) I picked up on some details immediately. 1- There was a KFC across the street. 2- Trolley buses go by there...something that most of Vancouver & its outskirts DONT have. Theres probably a dozen or so trolley bus routes in Vancouver. 3- It was on a major street. Something that was at least 2 lanes across each direction. For a couple years, I had given up finding it. I had googled all the KFCs in Vancouver and none of them seemed to stand out as a possible match. Yesterday, I was again drawn into this mystery by a simple notification from facebook telling me the Dead Like Me page on there had been updated. Like several others I was drawn in to talking about the show again in the various posts on the board. A post about where Georgia got torpedoed by the toilet seat drew me in. I responded to tell those in the thread where that spot was...then follow up posts had people asking about the location of Der Waffle haus. As usual, the simple answer that it was a studio location was brought up, once again, I knew that was infact false for the pilot. I was determined, like I have been several times prior....to prove the Der Waffle Haus was an On Location spot somewhere. I re-watched the pilot, especially the parts where they were in the DWH. The night scene verified my old assumptions of there being a KFC close & a trolley bus going by. It was however, when I watched the daytime scene where they had "banana bonanzas all around" I clued in.... I'VE BEEN THERE! In fact, I for awhile, was a semi-regular there. How I didnt notice a hotel in the background on the day shoot in my previous attempts I dunno. The original KFC that was tip 1 back then has long since been closed & re-opened as a Starbucks. I was 99.9% sure this was the locale....now only to prove it. I hopped on the bus (a trolley bus funny enough) & took the 10-12 min bus ride thru East Vancouver to my destination. As soon as I got off the bus, I knew it....now, to get some photo proof. I walked inside, and sat down. My lack of immediate material to guide me made me sit 1 booth off from where I assumed If only I had the common sense to watch a clip on youtube on the blackberry I had in my pocket before sitting down. The booths still had the blue seats you see in the pilot. Where the daytime scene is done is almost right inside the door. In the pilot it was behind a wall...which till a couple yrs ago, actually used to still be there...but has since then been taken down. There was 2 sets of booths, I picked the wrong set lol. As I perused a menu I was already familiar with, I asked the waitress if anyone had been working here over 7 yrs, she said she had. I asked her if they filmed anything in here back then, she said "we've had several things done here". My 1st hope for solid confirmation was dashed. I proceeded in photographing different angles & things, like the Starbucks, the hotel across the street, a trolley bus going by & of course, 1 of the booths...which I thought at the time was THEIR booth for the daytime scene...but as it turns out, was not, but shows a part of it to the side where Roxy & Georgia would have sat. I walked around mostly empty restaraunt after my meal looking for where the night scene was shot...as it turns out, I wasnt even close. Like the daytime shoot, I missed the night time shoot table by 1 table. I will likely go back when I am feeling better & get shots of the proper locations....but for now, the mystery thats befuddled an entire fanbase for years, where is "Der Waffle Haus" has been found. I welcome you to the diner "Tom & Jerry's" at the corner of Hastings St & Kaslo St in Vancouver... just 1 block west of the entrance for the PNE. I used to eat here a fair bit when the prices were cheap. For quite awhile, its had the same name...certainly been T&Js since before DLM shot there. Its changed gimmicks several times over the years, not that long ago, it was an "everything on the menu under $10" place, and for its price...was adequate. Then, they started pushing the prices up. Now the menu has gone up anywhere from 20-70% on some items, but the quality hasnt matched the raise in price. For nostalgia. Sure, go there just to say you have been. The staff is friendly enough. The food just isnt up to the average price of $15 that it now has. Sadly, they dont have a banana bonanza on the menu....maybe if enough people go in & order it, it will exist. I spent a LOT of hours digging this info up over the years. Its sad that it actually was a place I have frequeneted probably 50+ times over the years since then. I used to do occasional google searches to see if someone else had a clue, and no one ever got it...yet everyone asked about it. It was my own personal birthday gift to myself....and hopefully, some of you die hard fans will enjoy it too.
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Some pics of Twilight Saga Wolfpack cast while in Vancouver for filming Breaking Dawn 1 and 26/26/2011 Here are some pics of various Wolfpack members for the Twilight Saga, as they were in town for Breaking Dawn 1 & 2 this past spring.
Due to a computer problem a few months ago, a lot of my older blogs got passed over for awhile....so now I am catching up, and tada...for you Twilight Wolfpac fans...heres some of the pics I had for their past shoot here. Kiowa Gordon, Julia Jones, Alex Meraz, Bronson Pelletier & Booboo Stewart are featured in this lot. Earlier this past spring, the cast of the Twilight Saga series returned to their unofficial home, Vancouver, BC to finish off the epic series. The filming of Breaking Dawn I & II was completed up here & of course, that meant a plethora of old familiar faces...and some new ones.
A computer crash I had back in April prevented me from posting some of this stuff more recently....so better late than never, right? Below is a mixture of some of the cast I came across while they were in town. Joe Anderson "Alistair", Tracey Higgins "Senna", Casey LaBow "Kate", Judi Shakoni "Zafrina" & Guri Weinberg "Stefan" rolled into Vancouver to join the likes of Jackson Rathbone "Jasper" & the rest of the regulars like Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Kellan Lutz, Peter Facinelli & Ashley Greene. Dont forget you can get autographs of many Twilight Saga stars in my gallery to the left marked "Twilight autographs" or click on this link http://canadagraphs.weebly.com/twilight-autographs.html So below is a few pics of the newcomers to the franchise...along with veteran Mr. Rathbone. So, back in March/April, I shot some pics of the CW show Hellcats on their final day of location shooting for the season. As it would turn out... it was the final day of location shooting for the show EVER.
At the time, I had this blog earmarked to be posted shortly before the season finale came around....then, my computer died. For a little over a month I was computerless. By the time I got a new computer, I had dozens of other projects backlogged & more coming & my old material, such as this stuff, unsorted. So, this blog got passed over for awhile. Then came the news the show had been cancelled. A shock to me by the way. This demotivated me in putting out this blog a bit longer as I didnt see the need anymore since the show wasnt coming back. Now that my schedule is considerably slower, I have a chance to get some of my backlogged work caught up. So here it is Hellcats fans, the LAST PHOTOS I ever took from the Hellcats cast while they were here for the show. Heather Hemmens, Matt Barr, Robbie Jones, Ashley Tisdale & Sharon Leal pictured. I do have some other pics still to process from other days of shooting that depending what interest this blog has, I may eventually post this summer. By now, regardless where you live in the world, there is 2 things you know about Vancouver from Wednesday June 15, 2011.
1st is - Our beloved Canucks lost game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals in convincing fashion 4-0 to the 2011 champions, the Boston Bruins. 2nd of course- is what the city got the majrity of the attention in the worldwide media for. The riots. In 1994, we had a riot after losing a game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals as well. In that riot, I was much more near the epicentre, so much so, I walked around a corner onto Robson that night to see tear gas cannisters not far down the road & riot cops maybe 1/2 a block away. Early the next morning I came back thru the downtown core to see the wreckage that time and at the time couldnt believe how much glass & debris there was. I was sure, this could never happen here again, after all, the Cops would be prepared if it did happen again now. Cue up, 2011. The team again loses. This time, the city had a large viewing party in the middle of the downtown streets for people to come and watch it at. Estimates put the crowd at over 100,000 people in a 4-6 block area. Shortly after the game ended, violent acts started breaking out. These acts, seemingly happened with little to no build up, suggesting they were planned hooliganism by a specific bunch of individuals. Storefronts were smashed in, some stores were looted, everything from electronics to tuxedos to cans of Pringles were stolen. Cars were turned over, some set on fire, including Police cars. Fights broke out around the area as drunken morons clashed with drunken retards. I missed all of the major commotion. I was busy doing my primary job, getting autographs...which had I known how that was going to play out, I would have eagerly left it to document thru video & photgraphs the stupidity of some people. Knowing my mentality, I would probably have been hospitalized lol. I'm too stubborn to just sit back & watch people intentially cause havoc. So its probably for MY best interest I was sidetracked till it was too late. of course, there was still things going on at Rogers Arena that were worth documenting. A man fell from the Georgia Viaduct to the ground outside the ticket windows of the arena, maybe 40 to 60 feet. If it werent for an awning a few feet above the ticket windows that broke his fall, his injuries likely would have been fatal. As it is, he had major head injuries, but from what I have heard & read, he did survive his self inflicted disaster. The man attempted to jump from 1 side of an overpass to another, with several feet in between, he failed to make the jump successfully & crashed down to the ground below. A little later on, I noticed while out in a parking lot at my friends car, smoke billowing off to the side of a building, and with Rogers Arena in the foreground, it seemed fitting to photograph this, as it was an event inside that very arena that brought out the losers who created the now visible smoke from burned out vehicles. I have seen countless pics of the fires, and the smoke from other angles, but with Rogers Arena in the pic, not sure there has been such a pic out there. After a few hours of unsuccessfully doing my job, then going for a verrry late dinner (which was actually very tough to do with the DT core essentially closed off) my friends & I, on word the cities bridges into the downtown core had been re-opened, after being closed to incoming traffic earlier to prevent potential troublemakers from joining in, decided to go in & see what type of havoc they had unleashed this time. We parked our car in a parking lot just off of Granville & walked along Granville. I first noticed tossed garbage can on the ground with litter around it, as I moved up the street it appeared more of the bedlam was in the distance, but as it turned out, the very next block was when I came across our first "wow" moment. At the corner of Nelson & Granville my friend & I were photgraphing damage to a Mega-Bite Pizza store when I noticed a car overturned around the corner. I told my friend instantly to come here. When I looked back after waving him over, I noticed a 2nd car, maybe 50-75 feet further up the road, also turned over. Ontop of it was a nerspaper box. We stayed around there photographing it for a bit, and got to watch the tow truck crew flip them back over so they could take them away. As we were leaving, we saw a Blenz Coffee shop that had their windows destroyed. There was staff still inside, clearly helpless to do anything against the mob of impotent priveleged mommas boys who can only act tough with their just as mentally challenged friends in tow. These ball-less pussies would shit themselves if they were by themselves because they would be too scared to do anything but piss themselves in & amongst all the insanity around them, but, with their eunich sidekicks, they suddenly are so "tough" & "bad" that they managed to beat up some windows at a coffee shop & pizzeria. As I moved up the street, again saw many stores with broken or cracked windows. An American Apparel store, already boarded up. As I got closer & closer to ground zero, more & more damage was evident. Almost every business from Robson to Georgia had some level of damage to their storefronts, and in some cases, the interiors as well. First store I saw was Future Shop's front doorway. The store itself has a massive metal sliding door upstairs that likely prevented or at the least hindered any looting attempts, but the downstairs doors? Completely wiped out. Metal tables had been used to force their way thru the front doors. The Sears had a window broken on the skytrain side that looked like someone had used it to as a way in or out of the store. Across the street at London Drugs, panes of glass were missing on their sliding doors, and other panes were severely smashed. On the other side of the street, perhaps the hardest hit store of all, The Hudsons Bay store. Windows on all 3 sides of the building decimated, doors ripped off the hinges, merchandise stands close to the windows stripped clean. Workers were already hard at work boarding up the damage & clearing out the majority of the glass. As I rounded the back side of the store, onto Seymoud street, I saw more windows destroyed & the most shocking of events, 3 different cars, burnt. Completely gutted by fire, so charred they were unrecognizable to likely even the owners. One had a ladder thru the front window that itself had been burned severely. Another had 2 newspaper boxes around them that you can clearly tell had been used on the cars earlier. On my way home with my friend, we came across a bit more damage, we saw some of the damage at the Bank Of Montreal as well as the remnants of where the 2 cop cars had been torched. Of course, these actions are horrible & reprehensable. Of course, anyone that has even a shred of common decency will turn in anyone they know who was involved. Of course, none of these ball less, spineless, gutless pussies will ever own up to doing any of it, because they're chicken shits who are scared of their own shadows when they arent with their friends. Sadly, and more pathetically, the ones that have girlfriends. I cant even imagine what type of diseased gutterwhore trashbag skanks you "boys" must have that would stand behind/beside you thru any of this. Their as big of pieces of shit as you all are. They are the epitome of dumb useless, two dollar no, fifty cent no, buy two get one free does any one have change for a nickel skank ass sluts. Of course, they are probably far more lippy than you & I am sure 1 of these ladies of the night will come in here & tell me how they, or their boyfriend & his 10 friends (who he doesnt do anything without, including you I'm sure) would kick my ass blah blah blah.... that is, they WOULD do that, if they knew how to read. I will certainly have another blog on the efforts of the real men & real women of our city who came down the next day to fix the stupidity that you mentally challenged inbreds caused. Last night was the Gala event for the 13th annual Leo Awards. The best of British Columbia's TV & movie industry gathered to hand out their top awards. This years event was held at the Hotel Vancouver, after a scheduling change prevented them from holding it at their usual place, the Westing Bayshore. With the change in venue came a few challenges.
The most notable challenge was the red carpet set up on Georgia street. In the past, at the Bayshore, the carpet was set up along a very quiet and spacious sidewalk along side the hotels convention centre. This set up was great for everyone involved, as it was spacious & well lit with natural light when it is sunny. This year however, the red carpet was set up on the sidewalk of a mains treet that dozens of people use every minute. The carpet itself took up about 2/3 of the sidewalk, leaving a slim 3-5 ft ledge for fans & onlookers, uncredited media, autograph hounds & passer bys to navigate, with a lane of a busy thoroughfare just behind them. Thankfully for the awards there was no incidents with traffic hitting any people, despite many people, myself included, occasionally using the 1st lave of the street to walk in. The cast of "Sanctuary" was the front & centre draw of the television side of the awards for the mostpart. With the loss of "Stargate Universe" this year, the gang from Sanctuary made up a lot larger portion of this years TV representation. SGU did have 1 representitive there, Jennifer Spence, a nominee for Best supporting actress in a drama, but failed to win, losing out to Lucia Walters from "Life Unexpected" in their 1 & only nomination as well. Ryan Robbins did bring home a solo award for the Sanctuary cast in the Best Supporting male category. Many of the more notable Vancouver based shows won some awards as well. Fox sci-fi hit "Fringe" lead all TV shows in wins with 3 (tied with Sanctuary) for Cinematogray, Production design & best guest actor for Michael Eklund. "Supernatural" won for best visual effect. "Smallville" won for best program in its final season. "Human Target" won for best stunt co-ordinator. Smaller shows like "Blackstone", wich won 2 awards walked away with the more notable awards for TV acting. Carmen Moore won the best actress award. The best actor went to Callum Keith Rennie from "Shattered" In the movie side of the awards, "Gunless" walked away with 4 awards including best prgraom, cinematography, production design & stunt co-ordinator. "Altitude", "Transparency" & "Fathers & Sons" won 2 awards each, the latter taking home best supporting actor Jay Brazeau. Several movies snagged 1 award each, including "Life, Above All", "Amazon Falls" which April Telek took best lead actress, "Tucker And Dale VS Evil" which Tyler Labine took best lead actor & "Repeaters" which Alexia Fast took best supporting actress for. Other notable winners were Paul McGillion for best lead actor in a short drama movie "A Fine Young Man" (which lead the way with 4 wins in that section..including best program), Shirley Broderikc for best actress in a short drama "The Closer You Get To Canada". "Mighty Jerome" won 4 awards, including best documentary program. "The Haunting Hour" won 4 awards as well in best youth or childrens program, including best show & best performance for Richard Harmon. "Hiccups" had 5 wins, including best comedy program & best performance for Nancy Robertson, that was the most of anyone at the awards. Below are some pics of the presenters, nominees & winners as they arrived for the awards. Pictured "Blood & Chrome" & "Hellcats" star Ben Cotton. "The Listener" star Lauren Lee Smith, "Robson Arms" star Gabrielle Rose, "Intelligence", "Smallville" & "Alice I Think" star Michael Eklund, "Tucker & Dale VS Evil" & "Reaper" star Tyler Labine, "The Killing" & "Tucker & Dale VS Evil" star Brandon Jay McLaren with "Whistler" & "Tucker & Dale VS Evil" star Jesse Moss, "Wolf Canyon", "Harpers Island" & "Health Nutz" star Ali Liebert, "90210" star Dustin Milligan, "Smallville" star MacKenzie Gray, "Robson Arms", "Supernatural" & "Amazon Falls" star April Telek, "Stargate Universe" & "The 4400" star Jennifer Spence with "Kingdom Hospital" star Ben Ratner, "Twilight Saga Eclipse" "Kingdom Hospital" & "Dead Like Me" star Jodelle Ferland, "Charlie St Cloud" & "Whistler" star Amanda Crew, "Sanctuary" "Stargate SGI & Atlantis" star Amanda Tapping, "Sanctuary" "Dawsons Creek" & "Dead Like Me" star Robin Dunne, "Sanctuary" & "Dan For Mayor" star Agam Darshi. |
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