San Marino is a tiny, affluent city nestled in the San Gabriel Valley which comes in at number 48 on the list of America's least-affordable places to live. Its homes were mostly built in the second quarter of the 20th century and are in a fairly wide variety of styles-- some are actually pretty low key. Monterey Park may've been envisioned as the "Beverly Hills of East L.A." by its planners, but surely San Marino has more right to the comparison than other Easterly cities and neighborhoods. It has often, on TV and film, subbed as the West Side, East Coast or just a nice, anonymous neighborhood in such timeless, Hollywood classics as Mr & Mrs. Smith, Monster-In-Law, One Hour Photo, American Wedding, Men In Black II, and television episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the Office, The West Wing and Alias. Despite the fact that in films and TV it is used to portray genteel, white neighborhoods, in reality most of the population is Chinese-American, which is why people jokingly refer to it as Chan Marino.
Gridlock in downtown Chan Marino
Although Father Of the Bride was set in San Marino, it was filmed, oddly, in Pasadena. I used to walk around San Marino and fantasize that I'd befriend a kindly, rich, old couple (or single person) who'd entrust me with their home after their passing. It really has some of the loveliest homes around Southern California with a distinct absence of hideous McMansions that tell you its inhabitants are mostly the very old-moneyed. Notice MTV's Cribs was not in the list of shows filmed there.
San Marino is also home to The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. The library houses 6.5 million manuscripts, including a lot of important books, like the Ellesmere Manuscript of Chaucer. It has famous paintings like Thomas Gainsborough's The Blue Boy and Thomas Lawrence's Pinkie. It's also got a lot of William Morris's things too.
The Gardens surrounding Huntington's former digs cover 120 acres and are divided into the Australian Garden, The Desert Garden, The Herb Garden, The Japanese Garden, The Rose Garden, the Subtropical Garden and the Chinese Garden... just to name a few. There's also an indoor rainforest, cloudforest and a peat bog which rather smells. Since they're pretty amazing, the gardens are frequently used as a filming locations. Footage shot there has been included in Mame, dynamic-Downey-duo The Carpenters' "Only Yesterday," the final scene of the underrated Beverly Hills Ninja, Mystery Men, Charlie's Angels, The Wedding Planner, The Hot Chick, S1m0ne, Anger Management, Intolerable Cruelty, Starsky & Hutch, Memoirs of a Geisha, National Treasure-Book of Secrets, CSI: Miami and Serenity.
The Edwin Hubble House is also located in San Marino. Hubble was a Missourian (there's a stretch of I-44 named after him... oh yeah, and some expensive, myopic telescope) who proved the existence of galaxies beyond our own, discovered an asteroid and a bunch of other stuff. When he died in the 1950s there was no funeral and what happened to his body is a mystery.
El Molino Viejo is oldest commercial building in Southern California surrounded by a modest but pretty nice garden. It was built around 1816 to grind corn and wheat for Mission San Gabriel. Now it hosts art exhibitions, summer concerts and tours. The enslaved Tongva built the structure and operated the mill under the direction of one superfreaky father, Jose Maria Zalvidea. He was known for his liberal lashings with a metal-tipped lash which he doled out not only to the slaves but also to himself. He also wore a belt with inwardly-directed spikes. Kind of makes you question the body-piercing set's commitment to masochism. A year after Mexican independence some new mill was built and the one pictured above became what is is today, El Molino Viejo.
Lacy Park, formerly Wilson Lake, dried up because of the famously thirsty local populace. It's free on weekdays and pretty much creepily empty with the occasional, unsupervised kid riding a training wheels-assisted bike past the curtained van which seems to always be parked on the north side.
Oh, and before you say "croquet" just know that there are no hard balls permitted, nor remote control toys, nor alcohol, grill-outs, loud music of any kind, no hip-hop at any volume (unless it's Kanye or Black Eyed Peas), no norteñas, rancheras, cumbias, reggaeton. The rules go on and on and on! They had to add a second sign beneath the first one. No firearms. No kidding.
The Rose Arbor is on the Western edge of the park. Pretty sweet, huh?
The rules and fee on the weekends at the park are meant to make sure that those who work for the families of San Marino don't come to Lacy park with their own families on the weekend. Basically, it's good enough for a nanny to walk her employer's kids through the park, but it's not good if she comes on a weekend and walks her own.