Among the most obvious extra-visual Chicago references was to
Mayor Ozzie Cleveland (rather than Harold
Washington)...others may come back to me...the composition of
the gangs also suggested Chicago more than most
cities...
-----Original Message----- From: JIM DOHERTY [mailto:
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com]
Jack,
Re your question below:
> Wasn't "Hill Street Blues" based on LA (in
spite
> of the el that seems to dominate some of
it?)
> Isn't there a police station in central LA
on
> Hill Street?
Although the city in HILL ST BLUES was never named, dialog
specifically located it on the Eastern Seaboard. Some
establishing shots used parts of Chicago that weren't readily
identifiable as Chicago. I'm told other establishing shots
used Pittsburgh, PA, but I've never been there, and can't
confirm this.
The uniforms were similar to the kind then being worn in both
NYC and Chicago. The cars were Chicago and the exterior of
the Hill St Precinct was and old Chicago police station that
no longer exists.
The badges most closely resembled San Diego (though it's a
fairly generic design and many departments use it).
The technical advisor, Jesse Brewer, was an LAPD deputy
chief, so the organizational structure tended to resemble
LAPD with some exceptions. One exception was that, in LA
local station were referred to as
"divisions" (they are now called "areas") and a group of
divisions (or areas) was and is called a "bureau." In HILL
STREET's fictional city, a local station was called a
"precinct" and a group of local stations was called a
"division." This is the same nomencalture then in use (and
probably still in use) in NYC.
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 26 Apr 2002 EDT