‘Curb’ finale features Claremont ‘courthouse’
Remember when HBO’S “Curb Your Enthusiasm” filmed at Pomona College, way back in March 2023? I’d almost forgotten it myself, and I was there.
Nearly 13 months later, the shoot ended up as a scene in the series finale. (Apparently it takes a lot of effort to produce a semi-improvised comedy.)
At the time, we looky-loos along Claremont’s College Avenue saw protesters waving handmade signs outside the stately Carnegie Building, which seemed to be standing in for a courthouse in Atlanta. That proved to be true.
As the finale April 7 revealed, series star and creator Larry David was heading to court after inadvertently violating Georgia election law. He had casually given an old acquaintance a bottle of water while she was waiting in line to vote.
This made him a flash point for voting-rights debates. Outside the courthouse, protesters chanted “Free Larry” or held signs reading “Justice for Larry,” while one counter-protester brandished a sign declaring “I Don’t Trust the Guy.” Ted Danson, a frequent “Curb” guest, was there in Claremont for the scene.
College Avenue is shown, as is Bridges Auditorium and the Carnegie Building. To disguise Claremont’s leafy, low-rise look, “Curb” had to get creative. Rob Lawrence posted screenshots on the Claremont Connects Facebook page. As Ron Scott remarked: “I like how they superimposed the Atlanta skyline behind Pomona College.”
Making Claremont resemble Atlanta must have blown the season’s entire special-effects budget.
This “Curb” episode was a metacommentary on the last, controversial episode of “Seinfeld,” which Larry David wrote. In that finale, Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer
are convicted of violating a Good Samaritan law by refusing to help someone. In “Curb,” Larry is found guilty of doing a good deed, which is very unlike him.
He goes to jail. But, aided by Jerry Seinfeld, he’s freed on a technicality and goes home.
The episode’s apt title: “No Lessons Learned.”
More ‘Curb’
Two related notes. Pomona College has been the scene of real-life activism lately over the war in Gaza, including a sit-down street protest last Thursday that briefly blocked College Avenue, only paces from the fake protest on “Curb.”
And the glimpse of Bridges Auditorium in “Curb” reminds me that in 2017, “Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza, and whose son was attending Pomona College, was interviewed onstage at Bridges. What are the odds that two “Seinfeld” figures would ever visit the same block of Claremont, even six years apart?
It was an entertaining talk, by the way.
“I’m a college dropout,” Alexander said at one point. “But I think it’s great that colleges invite me as an example to young people.”
History Day in SB
History Day at the Santa Fe, the event Saturday at the Santa Fe Depot in San Bernardino, seemed like a success to anyone present. Inland Empire history mavens from the desert and suburbia alike converged at the train station.
They bought books and posters, toured the depot’s San Bernardino History and Railroad Museum, listened to pioneer music, joined historical societies and made connections with like-minded folks.
I met Kelli Shapiro, whose new book, “Inland Empire and San Gabriel Valley Movie Theatres,” is a likely future topic in this space.
Most visitors glanced at my table and kept walking, which was to be expected. But subscribers from all four IE newspaper territories that run my column — Riverside, Redlands, Ontario and San Bernardino — stopped to say hello.
Some wished me a happy belated birthday. Most encouraged me to keep writing, said they rely on me to keep them informed and entertained — awww — or expressed their loyalty to our product. Among the diehards is Mark Johnson of Hemet, who assured me: “I will never stop taking the paper.”
A few folks said they recognized me right off. Said Peter Lenker of Redlands: “You’re better looking than you are in the paper, and you can quote me.” A second reader said the same.
In a somewhat contrary view, a third reader told me I look exactly the same in person as I do in the paper.
As long as I don’t look worse in person. That would be bad.
brIEfly
At the Riverside Art Museum through Sunday is “Icons,” an exhibit of collage portraits of such Black creative figures as Chuck Berry, Alice Coltrane, Isaac Hayes and bell hooks. Artist Rico Gatson lives in Brooklyn, but he grew up in Riverside in the 1970s and ’80s and graduated from North High, where he played on the football team. His mother lives in Moreno Valley.
“He was so proud: ‘I get to do a show in my hometown,’” curator Lisa Henry told me. “His whole family came to the opening in February. It was so fun.”