The Fast and the Furious, 2001
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
Los Angeles: Flights: Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Trivia
Echo Park itself is featured in the Roman Polanski classic Chinatown
The Fast and the Furious location: ‘Toretto's Market’: Bob’s Market, Bellevue Avenue, Echo Park, Los Angeles
Rob Cohen’s Los Angeles-set street-racing movie belts along with the power and speed of a rice rocket. It opens with Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) testing his car in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium, 1000 Elysian Park Avenue.
Cohen wanted to emphasise the overlooked neighbourhoods of Los Angeles and sets the world of Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) in a picturesque and popular area of Echo Park, north of downtown Los Angeles.
The Fast and the Furious location: Vin Diesel’'s house: East Kensington Road, Echo Park, Los Angeles
Toretto’s house is 722 East Kensington Road, and ‘Toretto’s market and diner’, where O'Conner insinuates himself into the community, is the nearby friendly local grocery store Bob’s Market, 1234 Bellevue Avenue at Kensington Road.
The ‘Racer’s Edge’, the garage at which O'Conner works, is an anonymous red-brick building at 1046 North Orange Drive, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood and, no, disappointingly there’s no car on the roof.
The Fast and the Furious location: the ‘Racer’s Edge’: North Orange Drive, Hollywood, Los Angeles
The motorbike gang scenes were shot in the Little Saigon district of Orange County, way to the southeast of Los Angeles. The white statues are the Vietnamese Cultural Court, 9221 Bolsa Avenue, Westminster, while the Asian gateway is a couple of blocks east at 9631 Bolsa Avenue.
The first big car rally filmed on Prairie Avenue, between 120th Street and 118th Street, just south of Imperial Highway in Hawthorne.
The Fast and the Furious location: O'Conner and Mia at Cha Cha Cha, Silverlake, Los Angeles
Mia Toretto (Jordana Brewster) and O'Conner enjoy a date at Cha Cha Cha, 656 North Virgil Avenue at Melrose Avenue in the Virgil Village district of Silverlake. This lively eaterie is also where Steve Martin and Clare Danes enjoy a first date together in the 2005 romance (based on Martin’s own novella) Shopgirl.
The Fast and the Furious location: O’Conner and Dominic stop off: Neptune’s Net, Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu
O'Conner and Dominic stop off at Neptune’s Net, 42505 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. This great unpretentious biker/surfer hangout was previously seen in classic surf movie Point Break.
The final race, with the train, is on Terminal Way, Terminal Island. The ‘Race Wars’ rally was filmed at San Bernardino International Airport, East Third Street at Del Rosa Drive, San Bernardino.
O'Conner is arrested at Seventh Street and Valencia Street, downtown Los Angeles. There is no ‘El Gato Negro’, which was nothing more than a set built on a vacant lot in El Segundo.
In an homage to Bullitt, O'Conner chases the bikers down the slope of Micheltorena Street in Echo Park (where you can find the mansion of both Scream 3 and Halloween H20) and on to Glendale Boulevard.
