Adventureland|Jodi B's on Ardmore Boulevard — The Date That Gets Seen

On screen it is called the Velvet Touch, and it is where James takes Lisa P. on the date that will cost him everything, because Frigo is sitting a few tables away and Frigo cannot keep anything to himself. In life it is Jodi B's, 2600 Ardmore Boulevard, a low brick restaurant and bar on the old Lincoln Highway in Forest Hills, about fifteen minutes east of downtown Pittsburgh.

The location scouts were not looking for charm. Ardmore Boulevard is the kind of road that used to be the way out of the city before the parkway took the traffic: car lots, a bank branch, an auto-parts store, a hill of houses rising behind. A restaurant here in 1987 would have looked more or less as it does now, which is why the crew barely had to touch it. That flatness is exactly what the scene needs. The date is supposed to feel like an event to James and like nothing at all to the room.

Jodi B's still runs as a neighborhood place with a bar on one side and tables on the other, the sort of room where a booth is a booth and the specials are on a board. Sit facing the door, the way Frigo would have. You will understand instantly how small the distance is between a private evening and the whole park knowing by Monday.

Photo: Ardmore Boulevard, Forest Hills, Pennsylvania, Wikimedia Commons, freely licensed.