Book A Guide To Favorite Spots From TV Shows
“I had so many out-of-town guests who wanted to go to the Cheers bar,” Fran Wenograd Golden said, explaining what led her to write the book “TVacations.”
Golden, a Boston-based travel writer, thought tourists would be interested in places connected with other TV shows and spent the better part of a year researching the locales of 150 TV dramas and sitcoms.
The book includes shows both old and new, from “The Honeymooners,” set in Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst section, to “Seinfeld,” with its backdrop of Manhattan’s upper West Side. The locations range across the country from East Middlebury, Vt., site of the inn seen in the opening credits of “Newhart,” to Snoqualmie, Wash., the setting for “Twin Peaks.”
The fact that most of the shows Golden writes about were actually shot in studios in Los Angeles doesn’t seem to have discouraged potential TVacationers’ interest in her book. It was published in March and has sold nearly 10,000 copies.
In Boston we’re accustomed to seeing lines of tourists waiting outside the Bull and Finch Pub, the inspiration for “Cheers.” The Beacon Street bar is our second most popular tourist attraction, after the USS Constitution. Who wants to see the Paul Revere House when they can take a turn in Norm’s seat at the bar?
Last year Golden’s family played host to a Japanese exchange student. “We asked her what she’d like to see in America, expecting her to say New York or Washington,” Golden recalled. “She said, ‘Iowa.’ Because of ‘The Bridges of Madison County.’ It’s not TV, but it is popular culture. I think it must be the lure of the familiar.”
People who succumb to that lure, who want to see for themselves what they’ve seen on TV or in the movies, will find Golden’s book useful. Some may want to tour Mt. Airy, N.C., to drink in the small-town atmosophere that inspired “The Andy Griffith Show.”
Others will be inspired to make the pilgrimage to Schuyler, Va., to visit the Walton’s Mountain Museum. Those planning to drive around Minneapolis looking for Mary Richards’ house from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” will find the correct address on page 146.