Kate, who has battled a weight problem for most of her life, had originally planned to lose weight quickly via a gastric bypass operation. But when her boyfriend, Toby, has a heart attack and almost dies, it scares Kate out of the idea of undergoing surgery herself.

Instead, in Episode 13, she decides to go to "fat camp" (as she puts it –
her doctor calls it "an immersive weight loss experience")  to lose the weight.

The camp, in the Adirondacks, turns out to be a rather beautiful spot, a rustic, upscale retreat in the forest, and far less strict & regimented than Kate had expected.

While she's there, and away from her fiancé, she gets hit-on by an aggressive creep named Duke, who, It seems, routinely takes advantage of the obese, lonely women at the camp to score some easy action. When she rejects him, she finds out his parents own the place, and she is tossed out of the camp.



This  unique spot is located at
14400 Sunset Blvd, in Pacific Palisades, CA.



But no, this is not a fat camp in real life,
or any other kind of commercial center.

So what is it?

I had expected it to be another 'movie ranch' location, or perhaps Griffith Park, but this place turns out to be a private home, a sort of rustic compound made up of several residential structures on a large woodsy lot.

And it's a home with a very intriguing history behind it, a surprising story that involves a classic American rock & roll band, a beloved humorist, and one of the darkest, most sinister characters in U.S. history.


You can't see much of the property from Sunset,
due to a high wall and trees, only the wooden front gate.

So here is an aerial photograph of the compound:




It's a three-acre parcel, which is relatively huge compared to most residential lots. The main house has 7,900 square feet, with an estimated value of $13 million.



It's located right across the street from the much-larger Will Rogers Ranch (which is now a historic park), where Sunset Boulevard snakes its way west  through the foothills of Pacific Palisades on its way to the Pacific Ocean a few miles away.

Tucked between Brentwood on the east, Santa Monica on the south, and Malibu on the northwest, Pacific Palisades is a pricey part of Los Angeles, with the average home going for almost $3 million. This particular area is known as lower Rustic Canyon.



(Remember, this is a private home, not a public space,
so don't trespass or do anything to bother the current residents.)

As I said, there is a lot of history here.

The main log-cabin-like home on this estate was built in 1923 by none other than Will Rogers, a folksy wit who, back in the 1920s and '30s, was the most populzr man in the United States, appearing on stage, acting in movies, hosting a radio show, and he was even serving as the honorary mayor of Beverly Hills.

Forty five years later, in 1968, this estate became  the
home of the Beach Boys' drummer Dennis Wilson.



Dennis liked sex, drugs & rock & roll a little too much.

One day, he gave a lift to two girls hitchhiking on Sunset,
and they turned out to be followers of the soon-to-be
mass-murderer, Charles Manson.

Now, this was a year before those infamous 1969 murders, so at the time Manson was assumed to be just an eccentric, wannabe musician, or perhaps some kind of New Age guru. Wilson, having recently returned from a trip to India with the Beatles to study with the Maharishi, and no doubt attracted to Manson's bevy of young, female groupies (and their available drugs), let the group move into his compound on Sunset  for the summer, while Dennis & Charlie wrote songs together and Dennis introduced Manson to the likes of Neil Young,who thought he had real musical talent.

But the odd relationship didn't last long.  By August, Manson had threatened the safety of Dennis's children by giving him a bullet, so Dennis beat him up and threw him out.

(Will Rogers was famous for saying "I never met a man I didn't like."  But Will Rogers obviously never met Charles Manson.)

But it was too late.  Along the way, Manson met a few celebrities at Wilson's parties, such as the daughter of Dean Martin, and the son of Doris Day, Terry Melcher, who had become a record producer.  In 1969, when Manson felt slighted by Melcher,  he and his gang went to what he thought was Melcher's house in the Hollywood Hills, and murdered everyone they found there. 

Manson didn't know that Melcher had moved, and that the house now belonged to director Roman Polanski.

Among the people Charlie and his gang killed there was Polanski's wife, a young. upcoming actress named Sharon Tate, who was 8 months pregnant. She wasn't very well know nat the time, but the media latched on to the Hollywood connection, and the fact that it was with the bloody slaughter of a house full of rich people in a normally safe neighborhood, the Manson Murders became the biggest news story around.

(To clarify, the murders didn't happen at this home in Pacific Palisades. They happened in another home about five miles to the northeast, in the Hollywood hills.)


Oh yes, before I forget, there was one part of Kate's fat camp experience that wasn't shot there: the scene below where Kate's group went hiking in the woods.



The compound on Sunset is big, but it's not that big.
The photo above is Griffith Park, the Cedar Grove redwoods section.

The actual locations where TV's "This is Us" was shot.