#i really don't think it was included in the standard VILE curriculum

[nixariel]

San Francisco! A city that definitely has CS history as the home of Ivy, Zack, and the ACME Detective Agency in Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego (1994)—in addition to being the girlhood home of WOEICS!Carmen herself. So I was very glad to see that the new show managed to set at least one episode here.

First of all, Carmen's view of the Transamerica Pyramid (plus skyline) from her room puts her as staying somewhere north of the building, likely in the North Beach or Telegraph Hill neighbourhoods. (Although there is a hotel that’s basically next door, unfortunately it faces the west 'wing’ side rather than the flat north or south, which would suggest against it as a possibility.)

She then goes to San Francisco City Hall for the Children’s Foundation charity auction, from which the one-of-a-kind British Guiana 1c Magenta is stolen before it can be sold. While the CS!version was apparently donated by “an anonymous private collector”, the real-world stamp would have been owned by Stuart A. Weitzman at the time. He actually did purchase it anonymously in 2014, but revealed his identity in 2015 when he lent it out for display at the Smithsonian National Postage Museum in Washington, D.C. It was sold again in 2021 to its current owner, the Stanley Gibbons Group.

Sometime the next day, Mime Bomb waits in San Francisco’s Chinatown to hand over the stamp to Tigress. The Dragon Gate marks the south entrance of the Grant Avenue thoroughfare, but Tigress’ tracker doesn’t seem to match any street map I could find of the area.

However, judging by the lanterns overhead while he’s sitting and the dragon lamp posts visible after he starts to run, Mime Bomb is on Grant Avenue the entire time. As a side note, keeping a close eye on that cat statue’s coin slot while Carmen and Tigress are fighting suggests that Carmen’s switch had to occur sometime in the six-second window between Tigress landing on the table (”We have others, you know!”) and the two of them playing tug-of-war.

Mime Bomb is then captured by Chase back in front of the Dragon Gate and taken to A.C.M.E.’s extremely sketchy interrogation facility, which is probably in the Russian Hill neighbourhood given the steepness of the streets plus the view of Alcatraz.

Once released, he heads to Fisherman’s Wharf (oh hi there, random bystander to Mime Bomb’s left who looks awfully like V.I.L.E.’s counterfeiter! Aren’t you an interesting character model to show up in this episode about an extremely valuable piece of paper)

and is probably performing along the Bay Walk between piers 39 and 41, based on the greenery in the background here. That building on the left with a red stripe around its top is also the most likely place for Carmen to be watching from because a corner of the brown-roofed structure next to it is just visible as she leaves her rooftop observation post. (Should that corner be visible from this angle given their relative heights? No, but I am Making Allowances because thirty seconds ago there was a railing on that roof and the high-rises around the diamond-window building were in mirror-reverse)

Tigress leads the subsequent car chase from Fisherman’s Wharf to the Golden Gate Bridge, but the backgrounds are too generic to say much about her route. They do not look to be a clear match to the sites used for filming the famous San Fran car chase from Bullitt (1968), although the sequence as a whole does appear to be an homage. Coincidentally, the producer of Bullitt (Philip D’Antoni) then went on to film The French Connection (1971), another movie with an extremely famous car chase.

As another side note, both Tigress’ stolen car and the Rogue Vendetta car look to have manual transmissions, while Chase’s previous A.C.M.E. vehicle seemed to have been an automatic (so I would assume it’s the same here). That being said, knowing how to drive stick is not nearly as common in the States as it is in Europe (except for those who are race car drivers by background ;D).

Carmen and Tigress then have their face-off on top of the Golden Gate Bridge (with a very dramatic and not at all subtle circling spotlight helpfully provided by the Cleaners; are we sure these guys are on V.I.L.E.'s side?) and after successfully reclaiming the stamp, Carmen glides south-easterly back towards San Francisco.

Normally I would end things here, but something interesting popped up when I looked at the credits for this episode. Dawnn Lewis is listed as Chief’s VA for this episode... but Chief never actually made an appearance. All other S1 episodes only included Lewis when she had a speaking role. On top of that, Kari Wahlgren was credited for ‘Female Tourist’ and Liam O’Brien was credited for Boris (but not Vlad, who was equally on-screen this episode) when again, as best I could tell, these characters had no lines. The additional credits could just be a goof... but I do wonder if this episode had a deleted scene or two instead.

More trivia! (this time with Extra Maps™)

For interest’s sake I was trying to figure out where in Poitiers Cleo’s hôtel particulier might be, plus identify the train stations featured during Carmen’s trip to Paris—and I think I’ve figured (most of) it out.

First of all, Carmen is supposed to be fifty yards from the townhouse in this shot.

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