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Seeing Stars: Where the Movies Were Shot (on Location)
1985
.GIF)
"To
Live & Die in L.A."
Filming Locations
.(part
2).
The check
cashing place, where they start chasing
two guys who come out of the building, was located at 1701 N. Main Street,
next to the L.A. riverbed and the train tracks, in a rough part of north
downtown L.A.
called Mission Junction (east of Dodger Stadium).
 *
- Rick Masters' warehouse,
where he kept his counterfeiting printing press
(and where he burns to death at the movie's end), is located east
of downtown Los Angeles, just west
of the Golden State (5) Freeway, at the south end of Moulton Avenue
(on the east side of Moulton), west of S. Avenue 21, on
the north
edge of the Taylor Junction railroad tracks.
The address of this parcel (which contains several warehouses) appears
to be 1920 Main Street.
The smokestack
which is visible behind the warehouse (in the photo below) is located
about 200 yards to the east, part of a light manufacturing parcel at 650 S. Avenue 21.
(In both photos, the camera is looking east/northeast.) *
[ Special
thanks to Chas Demster,
a fan who tracked down this particularly obscure location,
as well as many of the other locations in "To Live & Die
In L.A.". ]
- The Prison
yard, where Cody is attacked, is the Mens
Colony in San Luis Obispo. It's located
at Kern Ave & Los Angeles Ave.
(San Luis Obispo is about 200 miles northwest of Los Angeles.)
- Steve Jones's
house, where Jones (Jeff
Rice) is attacked (and possibly killed)
by Masters (Dafoe),
is located in
a blue-collar residential neighborhood on the Wilmington/San Pedro border.
The
house is located at the west end of a short dead-end street: at
1442 F Street,
in Wilmington;
it's the last house on the south side of F Street, just east of four
large oil tanks from a neighboring refinery.
[Side
note: 20 years later, the same house was used
as a location on the popular TV show, "The O.C.",
where it played the role of a party house in Long Beach.]
The
street is hidden away behind (west of) the Harbor (110) Freeway, between
Figueroa Place (on the east) and a large refinery (on the west). That's
just north of the L.A. harbor docks (and just south of Harbor College).
*
[
Warning: Wilmington has a reputation as gang territory.
I don't suggest a visit, but if you go anyway, exercise caution. ]
[
Warning: Remember that this is a private home. Do not
trespass on their property,
knock on the door, or do anything else to disturb the residents. ]
- The hospital
(called "Santa Fe Hospital"
in the film), where Cody pretends to have a sick relative (and where he
loses Chance), was actually the Queen of
Angels / Hollywood Presbyterian
hospital, at 1300 N. Vermont
Ave, in Los Angeles
(east of the Hollywood freeway, near Barnsdall Park).
- Chance goes
to a seedy topless bar,
where he gets information from Ruth (about a smuggler coming into town
on a train).
It was an actual nude bar, called "Shipwreck
Joey's", and was located at the northeast
corner of Figueroa Street & Harry Bridges Blvd.,
in Wilmington,
CA, across from the docks of the port of Los Angeles harbor. But it
no longer exists. The official address was 1331 W. B Street.
That bar is the same one that was seen in the movie "Fight
Club" as the main fight club location. Not long after the "Fight Club"
filming ended in 1999, the entire building was razed to the ground (along
with most of the buildings on that harbor strip - due to expansion of the
harbor). The address is now nothing more than a vacant patch of bare land
(although you can still see the oil refinery in the background.) *
- They kidnap
the Chinese diamond smuggler (coming in on Amtrack from San Francisco)
at a train station.
This scene was shot at the venerable Union Station,
located at 800 N. Alameda St.,
in downtown L.A. Chance pulls a gun on him inside the old train station,
then the action shifts to the outside of the station, where he forces his
captive into a car.
- While driving
away with the captive, he passes a building
labeled 1422 E. 6th Street,
in downtown L.A. It's there that he reaches the 6th
Street bridge (over the L.A. River and
train tracks).
It's under that
bridge (where 6th Street meets
Mesquit Street)
that Chance loses his temper, roughs up his captive, and smashes the
briefcase. *
- During the Big
Chase Scene, heading west on 6th Street,
Chance passes Southwestern Bag Co,
which is located at 1380 East 6th Street,
in downtown L.A.
*
At this point, he turns left (south) off 6th Street and
onto Mateo Street.
During the chase,
he also passes the warehouse of "Select Produce", at 1580 Jesse Street
(at Mesquit Street), in downtown. (That's just south of the 6th Street
Bridge.).
- Followed by
gunmen trying to kill them, they race a speeding
train and pull in front of it to elude
their followers.
The spot where they pull in front of the train was on the train tracks
on the west side of the L.A. riverbed, just
south of the 6th Street Bridge, in downtown.
They (and the train) were heading north. They then crash down into the
L.A. riverbed (also
just south of the 6th Street Bridge), and race back along the semi-dry
riverbed. *
- The final part
of the chase,
where they go the wrong way
up a freeway onramp, jumps abruptly from downtown L.A. to the Long Beach
area. More specifically, it was Terminal
Island (east of the Vincent Thomas
Bridge), near Henry Ford Avenue,
Ocean Blvd, and the
Terminal Island Freeway (the green bridge
which can be seen in the photo above).
- ( The
final credits show the viewpoint of a
passenger in a car, heading south down the Harbor
(110) Freeway, first past the Wilmington
refinery area where you'll find Steve Jones's
house, and then east over the Vincent Thomas
Bridge onto Terminal Island,
and across to Long Beach.)
1920's
- 1930's - 1940's
- 1950's - 1960's
- 1970's - 1980's
- 1990 - 1991
- 1992 - 1993
- 1994
1995 - 1996
- 1997 - 1998
- 1999 - 2000
- 2001
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- 2003
- 2004
- 2005
- 2006 - 2007
  
* Locations marked by an asterisk
(*) may be located in areas with high crime rates.
Exercise reasonable caution.
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