Footnotes to the TV series
All the stores, especially Le Chat Club
The park
The giant slinky on Klump Street (never seen on the show)
The one-hundred-year-old oak tree (never seen, is this the historic tree Lorelai saved?)
The life-size yarn person (never seen on the show)
Babette’s house, to see her gnome collection
LORELAI: I was kicked out of summer class for refusing to call the camp counselor Peaches because I thought the entire concept of the counselors choosing summer fruit names was stupid. So they called my dad and he came to get me and it was just the two of us alone in the car all the way from Maine with nothing to talk about but my camp failure. Luckily I had also flashed the swim team or even that subject would’ve gotten stale.
Maine is a New England state, the most north-eastern state in the US, the only state to have one-syllable name, and the only state that borders only one other US state (it borders New Hampshire, Canada, and the Atlantic Ocean). It is also the most rural of all the states of the US, with many farms. It is known for its rocky coastline, forests, smooth mountains, and picturesque lakes. It is famous for its maritime culture and seafood cuisine, especially lobster.
There are many summer camps for children and teens in Maine, and quite a few are exclusive and very expensive – only for the children of the wealthy and powerful, a few with a rigorous application process (one is known as “the Harvard of summer camps”), and a couple that require a uniform. It seems likely that Richard and Emily would have sent Lorelai to one of them.
It takes five to six hours to drive from Maine to Hartford. That’s bad enough, but Richard and Emily always vacation in Martha’s Vineyard during the summer. If Richard had to drive Lorelai back to their summer house in Massachusetts, the drive is even longer – six to seven hours. Considering that Richard might have had a fourteen hour drive that day to pick up his errant daughter and take her home, I can imagine he would have been in a very bad mood.
EMILY: You have to take your father …Tomorrow, for the whole day, just take him.
LORELAI: Take him where?
EMILY: I don’t care – the zoo, the mall, Rhode Island, just get him out of my house!
Rhode Island is a state in New England, the smallest state in the US. It takes its name from an island in Narragansett Bay, although most of the state is actually on the mainland. There are many beachside towns here, making it a common place for people to come for vacations, and there is a strong maritime culture. It would take about 90 minutes to drive to Rhode Island from Hartford.
The mention of Rhode Island may be a nod to animated sitcom Family Guy, which is set in Rhode Island, and which Daniel Palladino worked on.
RORY: Fine, but we have a real problem here.
LORELAI: Oh, you think I don’t know that? You think I sit around all day swapping witticisms with Robert Benchley at The Algonquin? No! I am thinking and worrying and using the computer, and I hate using the computer!
Robert Benchley (1889-1945), a humorist best known as a newspaper columnist and film actor. He began writing for The Harvard Lampoon while at Harvard University, before writing for Vanity Fair, and most famously, The New Yorker, where his absurdist essays proved highly influential. He made several appearances in films, and his 1935 film How to Sleep, won an Academy Award in the Short Film category.
The Algonquin Hotel is a historic hotel in Manhattan, which first opened in 1902. It had a reputation for hosting a number of literary and theatrical celebrities, including The Algonquin Round Table (or as they called themselves, “the Vicious Circle”). This group of New York writers, critics, actors, and wits met for lunch each day at The Algonquin from 1919 to 1929, engaging in witticisms which were disseminated across the country through their newspaper columns.
Robert Benchley was one of its most prominent members, and Lorelai is probably referencing the writer and critic Dorothy Parker, previously discussed. Dorothy Parker was a close friend of Robert Benchley, and one of the founding members of The Algonquin Round Table.
[Picture shows a painting of Dorothy Parker at The Algonquin Round Table by Carl Purcell]
LORELAI: I was thinking about opening a Coyote Ugly lemonade stand.
The Coyote Ugly Saloon is a bar which opened in New York in 1993, founded by Lilliana Lovell. It is known for employing female bartenders who entertain the crowd by dancing on tabletops, singing, and giving sass to patrons.
Since then other Coyote Ugly Saloons have opened around the US and internationally, and the bar has inspired a 2000 teen musical comedy-drama film called Coyote Ugly, starring Piper Perabo as an aspiring songwriter who gets a job at the Coyote Ugly Saloon [pictured].
LORELAI: So it was the uniform, huh?
MISS PATTY: Aw, it’s the Biloxi Naval Base all over again.
Biloxi is a coastal city in Mississippi. There isn’t actually a naval base there – there’s a military base for the air force though. Miss Patty might be thinking of the Naval Construction Battalion Center in nearby Gulfport, about ten miles further down the coast – the cities are so close that they share the same airport, and other facilities, and the air force and naval bases are close together.
Both these military bases provided training to new recruits in the second half of the twentieth century, beginning in World War II. It’s possible that Miss Patty, who seems to have been a New Yorker before she moved to Stars Hollow, entertained the troops at one or both of these bases, perhaps during the Vietnam War, when she would have been in her early twenties.
RICHARD: Well, I was appalled. Prague has played host to some of the greatest composers in history. Mozart named a symphony after it, for heaven’s sake. So what did I do?
EMILY: I have tried so hard to forget this.
RICHARD: I stood beside them and their boombox and I hummed Mozart’s Prague Symphony as loud as I could. [starts humming]
Symphony No. 38 in D major (K. 504), was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, previously discussed, in late 1786. It premiered in Prague in 1787, during Mozart’s first visit to the city. Because of this, it is popularly known as the Prague Symphony. Mozart didn’t actually give it this name, and it’s not certain that Mozart wrote it in honour of Prague, although there is some evidence that he might have done.
RICHARD: So there we are, it’s a beautiful moonlit Prague night, and we’re strolling across the Charles Bridge when we come across this group of kids blasting this song …
Charles Bridge is a medieval stone arch bridge that crosses the Vltava river in Prague, Czech Republic. Its construction started in 1357 under the auspices of King Charles IV, and finished in the early 15th century. Originally called Stone Bridge, it has been referred to as “Charles Bridge” since 1870. It’s been restricted to pedestrian traffic only since the late 1970s, hence Richard and Emily stroll across it while teenagers could congregate listening to music.
Emily earlier talked about Prague as if she had never been, saying it was “supposed to be lovely”. Now we discover she and Richard had already been there on one of their traditional December trips.
LORELAI: Hey, did you ever see that I Love Lucy where she goes to Buckingham Palace?
RORY: Mom.
LORELAI: She tries to get the palace guard to break character. That was a funny one.
Buckingham Palace is the official residence of the monarch of the UK, located in the City of Westminster, the centre of London. It was originally a townhouse built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703, and acquired by King George III in 1761. It was enlarged during the 19th century, and became the monarch’s official home on the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. Used for state functions and extending hospitality to visiting world leaders, it has been a focal point for the British at times of national rejoicing and mourning.
I Love Lucy, previously discussed and frequently mentioned. The episode Lorelai is talking about is Lucy Meets the Queen (1956), set during the season when Ricky is on his tour of Europe, and Lucy is accompanying him. Lucy visits Buckingham Palace as a tourist, and tries to make one of the Queen’s Guard outside the palace laugh by cracking jokes. The guards at Buckingham Place are famous for remaining stony-faced on duty – they are meant to be fined £200 if they don’t. They will sometimes smile and pose for pictures with polite, respectful tourists, especially children.
RICHARD: Say, when was the last time we were on a roller coaster?
EMILY: Never.
RICHARD: Didn’t we ever go to Coney Island?
EMILY: That must’ve been your other wife.
Coney Island is a neighbourhood of Brooklyn in New York. Originally one of the Outer Barrier Islands, it became a peninsula in the early twentieth century when landfill connected it to Long Island. It became a seaside resort in the mid-nineteenth century, and by the late nineteenth century amusement parks had been built there.
The amusement parks began to decline after World War II, and by the 1950s were confined to a small area. At the time Richard and Emily would have been dating in the 1960s, Coney Island was considered crime-ridden and dangerous, so I don’t think Richard could ever have taken Emily there, and the last amusement park closed there in 1964, not to open again until the next decade. He might have gone there as a child though.
The amusement parks began to be revitalised in the early twenty-first century, and once more has many attractions. The famous roller coaster there is the Coney Island Cyclone, built in 1927, and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. Richard and Emily could have gone on it in 2001-2002 when it was part of Astroland, despite feeling as if Coney Island is something from another era.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 