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Julie and the Phantoms has a lot of fantastical elements, but it canonically takes place in a real city. This has a lot of implications in terms of characters’ backstories given the information we have about homes and schooling. I love doing research, handy considering it’s literally my job, so here is me presenting and compiling some facts so you don’t have to.
Julie and Los Feliz
Los Feliz is a neighborhood in Central Los Angels. It is bounded on the north by Griffith Park, the northeast by Atwater Village, on the southeast by Silver Lake, on the south by East Hollywood, and on the northwest by Hollywood and Hollywood Hills. It is nowhere near the beach, a fact which will become important when we start discussing Reggie. It is 2.61square-miles with an approximate population of 36,900+ people. The population is pretty ethnically diverse: 57.6% white; 18.7% latino; 13.5% Asian; 10.7% Blacks, and 6.6% “other,” whatever that means. The household annual median income is $50,793, which is solidly middle class. On the other hand, the area is also home to some Hollywood big wigs including Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman, and Mel Gibson, among others. It’s also home to Madonna and Katy Perry, plus a bunch of other musicians.
The area has a diverse and active nightlife with a number of bars and restaurants, mostly on Hillhurst Avenue between Los Feliz Boulevard and Prospect Avenue, and on Vermont Avenue between Franklin Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. Eats and Beats isn’t a real place, but it’s an entirely plausible one.
The Molina family lives in a beautiful craftsman home, likely built in the 1910s or early 1920s. This date is based in part on style and in part on the chief Carlos suspects of haunting their house who lived there in the 1920s. Based on a Zillow search, if they had decided to sell their home, they could have sold it for anywhere between $2 million and $4 million depending on how many bathrooms they have. 75.5% of Los Feliz residents are renters and the fact that they own their home indicates that they are probably fairly well off.
Ray canonically works as a photographer or possibly as a camera man. The average event photographer in California makes $96,097 annually according careerexplorer.com. According to the same website, a studio cameraman makes on average $50,000 annual, but can make as much as $154,000. We don’t know what Rose did for a living. I’ve seen several stories where is is a music teacher. Average salary for a public school teacher in Los Angeles is $66,699 according to salary.com. She could have also been a studio musician playing for film scores or as back up for recording artists. She could have been a composure or music could have been her hobby and she did something completely different for a living. Up to you really.
Since Julie and Flynn canonically went to elementary school together, it’s a safe bet that she lives there too. Depending on where they live, they either attended Los Feliz Elementary School or Franklin Avenue Elementary School. They would have attended Thomas Starr King Middle School before heading to high school.
Los Feliz High
In real life, the high school in Los Feliz is called John Marshall Senior High School. Its school colors are dark blue and light blue and the mascot is the Barristers (cause John Marshall was a Supreme Court Justice). Obviously this is not the case in the show, but whatever. In real life, the student body is primarily drawn from Los Feliz, Atwater Village, East Hollywood, Koreatown, Elysian Valley, and Silver Lake. I say primarily because it is home to several magnet programs, including a Studio & Stage program, which draws students from all over the Los Angeles Unified School District. This is also true in the world of Julie and the Phantoms and is, in fact, the music program she is part of. The application is competitive, but, as a resident of Los Feliz, she would have still been able to attend the school proper after being kicked out of the special music program. Like Flynn says, she just would have entirely different classes and wouldn’t interact much with her old classmates.
As I mentioned, the magnet Studio & Stage program draws students from all over the school district. But this doesn’t explain why Carrie, who canonically lives in Malibu, is able to attend as Malibu is part of the Santa Monica–Malibu Unified School District. Whatever. What is reality anyway? Unless she and Trevor moved out there recently, she would not have attended elementary or middle school with Julie or Flynn. If they were indeed friends growing up, it would more likely be because Trevor and Rose stayed in contact after the night the boys died. Depending on where in Malibu Carrie lives, a drive from her house to school is between 35 minutes to an hour depending on route and traffic. Without a car, Julie and Flynn would have either had to take an Uber or a bus to get there. There are no direct bus lines and the trip can take over two-and-a-half hours. No wonder Carrie was so surprised when they showed up and Julie was so pissed with the boys for making her go all the way out there. It does beg the question though as to how Carrie expected her classmates to get to the after party at her house following the school dance, but, you know, there were so many unrealistic things about that dance we’ll just ignore it for now.
Luke’s Backstory
Luke grew up living within easy walking and biking distance of the Molina home in Los Feliz. This means he likely lived in Los Feliz too as none of the other nearby neighborhoods have the right demographics or typical housing stock to accommodate his white family’s ranch. He almost certainly attended John Marshall Senior High School or Los Feliz High School, or whatever the show calls it. It’s possible he attended the magnet program as it was there at the time, but it’s equally likely he attended as a regular student given his parents’ attitude toward his musical ambitions.
Alex’s Backstory
We know precious little about where Alex grew up. Clearly either Alex or Bobby lived in what is now the Molina house. My money is on Bobby as Alex never mentioned living there and his parents were never cool again after he came out. I can’t see non-cool parents letting Luke, their gay son’s band member, live in their garage. That’s just me though. Assuming the Molina house isn’t his old one, he could have live literally anywhere in the city and met Luke attending the music program at Los Feliz High. Or he could have grown up in Los Feliz and known Luke and Bobby since elementary school. Take your pick.
I should talk about Silver Lake at this point. As I mentioned, it is southeast of Los Feliz and it is, in a word, super gay. Since the 1930s, it has been home to gay bath houses, gay bars, and a prominent gay bookshop. In 1967, a raid on the popular Black Cat Tavern sparked a famous riot. Starting in the 1970s, it was the nexus of gay leather subculture. Los Globos, a popular gay club, was hugely important in the music and Ball scene and hosted the country’s first ever legal rave in 1989. Alex would have almost certainly been aware of the neighborhood’s reputation and probably visited there at least once.
Reggie’s Backstory
Reggie’s demolished home was on the beach. That means there is no way he lived in Los Feliz and it is unlikely he knew the boys before high school. That’s right, Luke, Alex, and Bobby were likely the original friend group with Reggie coming in later.
There are eight potential communities in Los Angeles county where Reggie could have lived: Malibu, Malibu Beach, Topanga, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey, and Playa del Rey. That said, Topanga has the wrong population density and topography to match what we see in the show and historically Playa del Rey mostly had apartments on the beach rather than houses. Malibu, Malibu Beach, and Santa Monica have their own school district, so, if you want Reggie to have attended the Los Feliz magnet program with the other boys, he could not have lived in either of those regions.
Personally, my bet is on Venice. Founded in 1905 as a beach resort town, it fell on tough times in the 1920s with the Great Depression and discovery of oil. Within a few years, there were literally hundreds of oil wells throughout the neighborhood polluting the air and water. Most of them were gone by 1970, but the last one remained open until 1991. By the 1950s, the area was known as the slum on the sea. The dirt cheap, if older, housing stock attracted a large number of post-war refugees, especially Holocaust survivors. Reggie mentions that his neighbors were the Meyersons, which is a fairly Jewish last name. Peters isn’t necessarily, but Jewish Reggie certainly makes for a neat head canon.
Anyhow, during the 1980s and 1990s, Venice was considered a rough neighborhood. In the early 1990s, V-13 and the Shoreline Crips were involved in fierce battles over the sale of crack cocaine. Venice is also considered the birthplace of skateboarding in the United States in the 1960s and 70s. During the 1970s and 80s, it was also home to a big punk rock scene, which fits Reggie’s overall punk aesthetic. In the early 2000, the area began to gentrify. The city redid the boardwalk and tore down the old Pavilion to build a new skate park in 2009. A bunch of tech companies started setting up shop and drove property values through the roof. The sale and redevelopment of Reggie’s old neighborhood fits this pattern to a T.