Your Good Morning Good-Bye: A Little Piece of "Little Baghdad" Down in the Cedars

Justin Terveen

​As usual, friend of the show Justin Terveen was out and about shooting the city this week when he discovered that part of Little Baghdad in the Cedars is being torn down. And by Little Baghdad, I mean, of course, the small patch of Alma Street and Cockrell Avenue made to look like Nasiriyah back in '03, when NBC shot Saving Jessica Lynch on Jack Stadtman's property. (It would also appear, later, in a Lockheed Martin ad.)

A few years back, there had been some talk of turning that whole parcel into a movie set, but nothing came of it; last time I toured the lot during the summer, the foam and gunite covering one of the "mosques" had come loose, littering the intersection. (The boy, infatuated with the set, rescued a small piece.) The whole set hasn't been razed, but as Justin notes, "it's slowly but surely disappearing -- methinks LB's days are numbered." I've tried to reach Stadtman this morning, but with no luck.