The location: Family Planning Clinic.

Q. What is it supposed to be on the show?

A. A family planning clinic.

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. Near the Balboa Pier.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. In Episode 27 (of season one), "The Ties That Bind", where Theresa goes to the clinic to find out if she is pregnant. Seth and Ryan wait for her outside.

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. It is an unusual office space (formerly a doctor's office), next to a pier (but not in Newport).

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. Just above (and just east of) the Redondo Beach Pier.

On top of the parking structure at the Redondo pier, there is a small office complex that calls itself "Pier Plaza Business Park" (not to be confused with the Pier Plaza shopping area in front of the Hermosa Beach Pier). It is a labyrinth of small blue & white buildings topped with blue-shingled roofs. There are no shops here, just office space (and one restaurant on the southwest edge). You'll find, among other things, a branch of the Torrance Court here (if you need to pay for a traffic ticket) and doctor's offices. Many of the buildings are currently empty, so the producers just shot these scene in one of them.

The address on the building that housed the clinic is number 121. You'll find it upstairs, just past the west end of a footbridge. When you're standing in front of the door, you will be facing north (the door opens to the south).

The shots of Ryan and Seth leaning on a rail while waiting for Theresa to come out, were shot just a few yards to the east, at the west end of that same footbridge. (The boys are facing north and the camera is looking southeast.)

Also in the same office village, just a few steps away, you'll find the Sandy's beach front office, where Rebecca turns up in a later episode. His office was in building number 111.

And, of course, it's only a stone's throw to the Redondo Beach Pier, which is the main location where they film scenes that are supposed to be on the Balboa Pier, including the popular Pier Diner.

Click here to see a map of the Pier Plaza office village, with these filming locations marked.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A. I'm very familiar with the Redondo Beach Pier, and recognized those blue buildings immediately. The only problem was determining exactly which building it was. The small office village can be confusing to navigate, and most of the buildings look the same, so it took me a lot of walking around to finally pinpoint the exact door that Theresa comes out of (on the show).

I had two things to go on. One, it had a white, vertical stripe to the left of the door, on what appeared to be an otherwise blue building. But several doors matched that description. But the door used in the scene had another door (a pure blue one, probably leading to a storeroom), right next to it (to the left of the stripe). After lots of looking around, I finally found it upstairs, on the west side, just west of the end of a footbridge.

The shots of Seth and Ryan leaning on a rail, while they wait for Theresa, were easier to find, due to the unusual diagonal architecture near them - which turned out to be part of the end of the footbridge.