The ugly orange stairs

It's been too long, I've been too busy. Between graduation at Duke (you don't know privilege until you've seen men in $1K suits and $800 shoes swilling Miller Light and $2 Chuck in a parking lot acting like they were hobnobbing at a country club - no working class, no middle class, no upper middle class, just plain old Southern and New England money rich. One-of-these-things-was-not-like-the-other...), and Bay to Breakers (naked men, lots of costumes, kegs in shopping carts, and a 12K in 1 hour 23 min finish, it was TOTALLY RAD; crepes too, can't forget about the crepes...).

So, to welcome myself back, I've decided to shelve (for now) the privilege and naked man talk and instead turn to this:



For those unenlightened who don't watch the show, this staircase, and the twin tower office buildings it stands in front of, has been prominently featured in the last several episodes of Heroes. Supposed to be "Kirby Square" in NYC, it's actually the City National Plaza in downtown LA, and was my professional home for two years. Now, I'm all about suspension of disbelief (so if you want to keep the illusion, stop reading now), but they literally filmed almost every scene in the last 4 weeks in the same plaza, street in front of the plaza, parking lot, and 1 suite in the North tower. Literally, the suite Micha was being held at and some of Linderman's office space and the facility Molly was being held at was like, 2 rooms. I know TV and movies are all about dressing up sets and making them believable as different locations (porn, of course, having cornered the market on this one: new lamp, move the plant over, change the bed spread, voila! new set), but having spent so much time and recognizing so many of the places (which is really just one or two places re-shot from slightly different angles) makes the whole thing unbelievable for me. Not that it's ruined the show or anything, but you hit a point where you've see so many freaking NYC scenes in downtown LA that it just gets old when you recognize the same 2 blocks used again and again. They filmed a bunch of 24 scenes at Union station and at my metro stop. I would regularly come in around 6:45 (I worked at 7), to see movie crews lined up with "New York" cabs on the street in order to recreate NYC.

Maybe, and this is my Cali pride talking, just maybe, they could have set it in LA?