@karlauerbach Haha, yup, same background here. I grew up thinking it was normal to recognize the streets and settings in most TV shows and movies.
I know what you're talking about very well, plus my family was a Hollywood family. Finding a movie star in the living room chatting with my father was not unusual and I thought nothing of it -- Susan Hayward, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, etc. I thought nothing of it. I went to school with their kids and child stars like Bill Mumy. Growing up in Hollywood is inconceivable to people in the rest of the country.
My high school was the scene for a movie, too. I don't remember the name of it. Something about a mad bomber. My house was the set for Charles Durning's film "Stand Alone". My kids got a big kick out of it. It was the first time they saw how movies are made. An episode of I Dream of Jeannie was also shot there. Our house I grew up in overlooked the 20th Century lot, dominated by the set for My Fair Lady. My friends and I used to dumpster dive behind Desilu and retrieve discarded film from the cutting room floor from the original Trek series. Haha. We had boxes full of it and I wonder what it would be worth today.
It's fun to grow up like that but it's weird as an adult to realize that everyone else has a completely different idea of movies and what they see on TV. It's impossible to relate.