Dexter Filming Locations: Prado's Beach Festival

             

The location: Miguel Prado's Beach Festival.



Q. What is it supposed to be on the show?

    A. A public festival at the beach.


Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

    A. On the beach, in Miami.


Q. When did we see it on the show?

    A. In Episode 3 (of season 3), "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".

    Miguel Prado, who seems determined to win Dexter over as a friend, comes to the station and invites him to have a beer with him on the beach, and says he has already cleared it with Rita.

    When Dexter and Rita show up, there's a full-fledged Cuban festival underway at the beach (complete with food booths and a stage full of samba dancing girls), and Prado is working the crowd and enjoying the free beer that comes as a perk with his office of Assistant District Attorney.

    Rita strikes up a conversation with Prado's wife, while Prado introduces his brother, Ramon, to Dexter. (Ramon makes some negative comment about the way Dexter's department his handling the case of his murdered brother.)

    Miguel gets Dexter a beer, and as they wander through the Latin-themed festival grounds, they discuss Rita's pregnancy, then the conversation turns to Freebo. Prado wants Dexter's assurance that Freebo is really dead - and gets it.

    Miguel assures Dexter that he did the right thing - and that "it will never be forgotten".


Q. What is it actually in real life?

    A. A stretch of beach and park land - but nowhere near Miami.


Q. Where can I find it in real life?

    A. This was filmed on a parking lot next to a beach & park, near another Dexter location, the taqueria (where Debra first met Anton).

    It's where the west end of the beach at Long Beach meets the east end of Marina Green Park, just south of Shoreline Drive.

    The lot is south of the 600 block of Shoreline Drive in Long Beach, north of Shoreline Marina, a few steps west of the sandy beach, and east/northeast of Linden Ave.

    This parking lot is a long one, and runs for almost half a mile along the south/southeast side of Shoreline Drive, from Shoreline Village (on the west/southwest) almost to Ocean Avenue (on the east/northeast), between Shoreline Marina (on its south edge) and Marina Green Park (on its north edge). They staged the festival in the far east end of the lot, just to the west of where the beach sand begins.

    Marina Green Park is a narrow, grassy lawn that runs along the north side of the parking lots that lie east of Shoreline Village.

    Those big rocks you see (in the 4th photo from the top of this page) mark the border between the parking lot (on the west) and the start of the beach (on the east).

    To get there, take Shoreline Drive to Linden Ave. and turn south/southeast into the parking lot. Once in the parking lot, turn left (east/northeast) and drive a short ways to the very end of that parking lot.


    I shot the photos below in 2009


    The photo above (looking southeast) shows the east end of the parking lot where they staged the festival - with the beach in the background.


    These are the big rocks seen next to Dexter and his kids when Prado comes over and introduces his brother, Ramon.


    Here is an aerial photo of the area. And here is a map link.

    The area is very close to where they filmed several other scenes for Season Three, including the taqueria and the scene where Dexter & Miguel sat on the beach (following an incident with Ramon). And it's a very short drive from Shoreline Village, where the "Dexter" crew has filmed multiple scenes, for all three seasons.



Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

    A. This one wasn't quite as easy as you might think. At first glance, I thought it was probably down near the Belmont Pier. But then I began noticing a few items in the background: the buildings on Ocean Avenue, the green grass you see now and then, an oil island off shore - there's even a brief, blurry glimpse of the blue whale mural on the Long Beach Convention Center (once you realize what it is). So it became clear that they were somewhere near Shoreline Village.

    But the real key here are those big rocks on the beach - where Prado first approaches Dexter and where he introduces him to Ramon. Those are a dead giveaway. I got a good up-close look at them when I was investigating another location from this season, the beach taqueria, so I recognized the rocks when I saw them, and everything else fell into place.  That green grass was the Marina Green Park.




 
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