Burbank is a funny place. It's a tiny city (about 17 square miles) that blends seamlessly into the neighboring cities. Head West and you're in North Hollywood. Head East and you hit Glendale and Pasadena. South takes you to Silverlake and Hollywood. North leads you to Van Nuys and Valencia. Burbank is full of movie studios, but you'd be more likely to see a movie star way over in Santa Monica. It hangs on the very edge of the San Fernando Valley, trying desperately to look like it's on the other side of the hill that separates it from the cool people. It renumbers and twists the Valley's neat, right-angled streets just to confuse visitors.
Most of the places and things on this page are in Burbank (I think), but I have used my powers of web page creation to cross the borders into the neighboring cities as I feel necessary. Clicking the pictures in the story will open a larger version in a new window.
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Your Tour Begins here at the airport, which also clearly shows the split personality of my city. It's not the Burbank Airport, it's the Burbank/Glendale/Pasadena Airport- even though it isn't anywhere near Glendale or Pasadena. Just to be even more confusing, part of the airport is located in North Hollywood, but you don't see that mentioned anywhere on the sign. I guess they ran out of space after the third city. |
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As you tour Burbank, you'll see that the city is chock full of entertainment production companies. The big two are Disney and Time/Warner/AOL/Whoever-They-Just-Bought. Some of the companies actually have some fun with their buildings- Especially Disney. The picture on the left is Disney's main building. It looks like it would fit right in on the lot at Disneyland, even though the structure is a little Dopey. |
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This is the Disney Animation building. Not many office buildings feature giant wizard hats. |
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Warner Brothers isn't quite as exciting, but they do have a Mount Rushmore of cartoon characters (and the cool, pre-Justice League cartoon Superman) painted on their most visible building, and they have huge signs for most of their shows posted on other buildings. |
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Then things get boring. Look at the building that holds NBC. The Tonight Show is filmed here, in a building that screams "I AM A GENERIC OFFICE BUILDING!" New York gets 30 Rock, and we get... THIS? |
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Nickelodeon has a small studio here. It's covered with characters from their cartoons, and it features a fountain that kinda looks like it shoots up geysers of slime (about as realistically as that "volcano eruption" in Las Vegas). |
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Everyone loves The Incredible World of DIC! There are a million other studios around here. I would have taken a picture of BET, but they keep moving their studios, so I have no idea where they are. |
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Just East and South of Burbank is Universal City, a mini-city hiding between North Hollywood, Hollywood, and Studio City. They've moved a lot of their stuff to Florida, but they still have a working studio here. They're also the only studio to make their tour into a theme park. |
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They also have a outdoor mall thingie called CityWalk that's full of almost-cool stores, sort of like a prefabricated Melrose. The only actual cool thing about CityWalk is that they've got a bunch of old signs from the Museum of Neon on display. Another Kong shot. |
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CityWalk also features one of the worst caricaturists I've ever seen. Is the black & white picture Calista Flockheart? Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Gwyneth Paltrow? Look how upset the little girls are to have their faces mutilated on paper by this guy! |