Destinations

Where 'Lady Bird' was filmed in the USA

Greta Gerwig's masterful coming-of-age movie pays homage to her hometown
Where was Lady Bird filmed
Alamy

‘I want to go where culture is – like New York, or at least Connecticut or New Hampshire,’ says Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), just before throwing herself out of a moving car. Lady Bird’s problem is that she lives in Sacramento, home town of Greta Gerwig, writer-director of the poignant and heartwarming smalltown slice of life that was, whatever the Oscars said, 2017’s best film.

Lady Bird constantly writes off Sacramento, damning it as ‘the Midwest of California’. In this, she’s following movie tradition, where Nowheresvilles get a bad rap, either stifling like The Last Picture Show’s Archer City or downright sinister like Blue Velvet’s Lumberton. All the same, while no one’s arguing that California’s state capital is going to beat San Francisco or LA on beauty or cool, this film is very much a love letter to Sacramento.

California State CapitolAlamy

‘I felt like it had not been given its proper due in cinema,’ Gerwig has said, perhaps thinking of the aerial shot of the city in the titles of Sam Mendes’ American Beauty, used to affirm in no uncertain terms the pointlessness of modern life. Her affection is most clear in parallel scenes where Lady Bird’s mother (Laurie Metcalf) and then the character herself drive through Sacramento, passing local landmarks including the green-girdered Jibboom Street Bridge and White House-lookalike California State Capitol, and the Cookies Drive-in (rush for the ‘teriyaki chicken bowl, hot dogs and sandwiches’) and Pasty Shack (just… pasties). Later, there’s another nostalgic montage with neon signs for teen hangouts such as the Tower and Crest cinemas, Gunther’s Ice Cream Shop on Franklin Boulevard and Club Raven, a classic American bar on J Street.

Gerwig also places key events in real-life settings. Lady Bird and her mother squabble and coo over dresses in Thrift Town, on 410 El Camino Avenue to the north. She celebrates her 18th birthday with ‘One pack of Camel Lights and a scratcher and a Playgirl’ at American Market & Deli on 2331 North N Street, served by the real-life shopkeeper and lighting up in front of the store’s lurid peacock mural. Earlier, she waltzes and star-gazes with first boyfriend Danny in the Frederick N Evans Memorial Rose Garden in McKinley Park, to the east of the city.

Thrift Town

Danny’s grandmother’s house, where they go for Thanksgiving, is just where Lady Bird says it is when lying to class queen Jenna that it’s hers: on 44th Street, in the “Fab 40s”, the upmarket area where Ronald Reagan lived in his time as Governor of California. (The interior scenes, though, were filmed in another mansion down the road.) Later, LB and best friend Julie share life lessons after prom in the shadow of the Thirties-built Tower Bridge, painted gold by popular demand in 2001, the year before the film is set. It pops up several times but here it hogs the screen in a fashion reminiscent of Woody Allen’s adoration of the architecture of Manhattan.

Occasionally, Gerwig strays out of Sacramento and heads south towards Los Angeles. Lady Bird’s Catholic girls school, Immaculate Heart of Mary (or, inevitably, ‘Immaculate Fart), is a combination of Alverno Heights in Sierra Madre and South Pasadena High, while the supermarket where she pesters her brother and his girlfriend is Fields Market in West Hills. The New Helvetia coffee shop where she works and gets told off for flirting with Kyle (Call Me By Your Name’s Timothée Chalamet) is in fact Kaldi Coffee, situated in a former back in South Pasadena, while the family home is in Van Nuys.

Saoirse Ronan and Beanie Feldstein.

The only other acknowledged location is New York, where Lady Bird flies at the end of the film. Most memorable is First Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue, where she walks via Waverly Place and Washington Square Park and is drawn inside by the choir practice. It’s a wonderful scene, all the more powerful because all that grandeur only makes us think back to dusty, workaday little Sacramento.

Lady Bird is available to download now and is out on DVD from 2 July.

  • Behrooz Y. - Yelp

    Kaldi Coffee, where 'Lady Bird' works and gets told off for flirting with Kyle (played by Timothée Chalamet).

  • Press

    Actress Saoirse Ronan as Christine 'Lady Bird' McPherson.

  • Press

    Timothée Chalamet plays love interest Kyle.

  • Press

    On the steps of Kaldi Coffee.

TopicsOn locationUSAInspirationCalifornia