OK, you have decided you're going to visit Los Angeles to follow the Blade Runner trail. Good. It's not a bad town. It's where I live, you know.
Anyway, I will be having you visit not only the actual locations used by the movie, but also places evocative of the movie. There's lots of 'em here. If you want to stick with the actual locations used in the film, you will be able to get done with this in a couple of days. If you want to really dig into the spirit of the movie, however, this will require a few days.
You will have to make reservations with the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in order to see "New York Street" (the area turned into future LA in Blade Runner) at Warner's Burbank studio facilities. It's not a bad tour...certainly a better view of what a working movie studio is like than the Universal Studios experience, which is very tarted up for the tourist trade. It's also a chance to see a couple of actual BR costumes...maybe. There are some in the Warner collection, and a friend of mine who took the tour last time saw them at the Warner Museum. However, there are no guarantees they will be on exhibit when you go. The curators of the Warner Museum like mixing things up, changing exhibits, etc. ( http://www2.warnerbros.com/vipstudiotour/ )
Some of the other guided tours I suggest also advise making reservations in advance. It's a good idea.
A suggestion would also be to find yourself a base of operations. There are really skuzzy hotels in Downtown LA, and there are some nice ones. Unless you really want that "replicant on the run" experience, I suggest you check into one of the nice ones. The Miyako Inn and The New Otani in Little Tokyo are good choices, as are the Westin Bonaventure , and The Standard.
If you really want to splurge, The Biltmore has lots of history behind it and is genuinely a luxury experience.
A place that's a bit more atmospheric and grungy around the edges is The Figueroa. It's quite a bit above the "skuzzy hotel experience" I'm warning you about. A plus: it has this Arabian Nights feel that's pretty cool.
Another atmospheric and slightly grungy around the edges place is the Kawada. The Kawada has advantages in that it's really, really close to the neighborhood of the Bradbury Building, the Million Dollar Theatre and the 2nd St. Tunnel, and some of the places that weren't actual shooting locations, but are evocative of the BR spirit.
Upon arrival at LAX, my suggestion is to take the Flyaway bus to Union Station. This way, you can start your visit to LA at one of the actual filming locations of Blade Runner. The area that was used to serve as Police Headquarters was unused in 1980-82 when BR was filmed, and it's still unused. It's behind a barrier, but you can look and imagine it as the Police Headquarters.
The current LAPD headquarters, Parker Center, is a 1950s-era monstrosity which took lumps from the Sylmar quake of 1971, the riots of 1992, and the Northridge quake of 1994. The LAPD is building a new headquarters right across the street from the City Hall, but that's not going to be ready for a while. The old Hall of Justice was the pre-'50s headquarters of LAPD. It still stands, albeit vacant and with an uncertain future. It was used as a jail up until the early 1970s and had as one of its last tenants Charles Manson during his trial.
I digress though. We'll get to City Hall and another very BR-esque building later. While you are in Union Station, get yourself a Metro daily pass. It's $5 and will allow you to use the Metro Rail rail lines (good!) and the Metro buses (serves utilitarian purposes but is not very pleasant) all you want for a given day. The Metro Red Line will get you within striking distance of all the Downtown LA hotels I mentioned.
It will also get you to the Gold Line, which will take you to Chinatown and to Pasadena, and the Blue Line, which goes all the way down to Long Beach, home of the HMS Queen Mary, a '30s vintage steamship which has been a houseguest of the City of Long Beach since the 1960s. The Red Line stretches to North Hollywood, home of the funky NoHo theatrical district, passing by Universal Studios and Hollywood along the way. The Metro Purple Line, which eventually will go all the way to the ocean in Santa Monica, will take you to one of the BR locations we will visit on the tour: the Wiltern Theatre.
OK, so you've checked into your hotel, you've seen the first of the actual locations, although you might want to return to Union Station again before you leave LA to examine it more closely. What to do now? You might want to visit one of the most important areas of Blade Runner filming: the area surrounding the Bradbury Building, the Million Dollar Theatre, and the 2nd St. Tunnel. If you're game, we'll proceed.
Broadway
Unlike that really, really famous Broadway, in New York City, there isn't any legit theatre here anymore. However, many of the theatres, best known as old-school movie palaces, started out as Vaudeville circuit theatres. In the 1920s and 1930s, Broadway was the place for movie premieres, not Hollywood Boulevard or Westwood Village. Since the 1950s, Broadway has increasingly had more and more of a Latin sabor, (flavor) to where it is now really the main street of Latino Los Angeles. Every year around the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo) they hold Fiesta Broadway, where the street is cordoned off and becomes one big multiple block party.
The Million Dollar Theatre
You see a glimpse of it through the pillars the BR production crew erected outside the Bradbury Building, and you never forget it -- as well you shouldn't. This was a legendary movie palace, built by Sid Grauman of Chinese Theatre fame. It was built in 1918 for the then lordly sum of (yes, I'm putting my pinky to my mouth when I type this) ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Nowadays one million dollars wouldn't handle the craft services budget of the average feature film, much less build a movie palace. It's closed now, but according to reports it will reopen soon. With a showing of the "Final Cut" of Blade Runner? C'mon. It will be cool. Do it.
The Bradbury Building
Across the street, you find a movie location favorite, and a continuing mystery. Did the architect of the building, for whom the Bradbury Building was his first and last work, have help from the Great Beyond when designing it? How the HECK do they keep those gorgeous old Victorian-era elevators working? Does J.F. Sebastian live on an upper floor there with the "friends" he made? Well, I can answer the last question...nope, he's not there, nor are his robotic/genetic pals. I think you have to be with a tour group to go anywhere else but the lobby of the building, but that's enough to get a nice look at the place. It's beautiful.
The 2nd St. Tunnel
Walk up a block, and look west. There you will see the tunnel where Deckard watched the playback of Leon blowing away Holden. It is one of the most filmed places in perhaps the most filmed city in the world. Are you in awe yet? You should be.
The sidewalk on either side of the tunnel usually has a few homeless people sleeping on it. Depending on your sensibilities, you might want to try walking it, you might not. It's still impressive from a short distance.
OK, those are the actual shooting locations in the immediate vicinity. Now we can look at some places which are evocative of the movie, and also where maybe we can get a bite to eat.
US Bank Building (Library Tower) and the Central Library
Although in a couple of years this building will be dwarfed by new buildings slated for being built Downtown, the US Bank Building, formerly known as the First Interstate Bank Building and known by locals by its construction name of "The Library Tower," the building was the tallest west of the Mississippi River and east of Hong Kong. However, it bears a suspicious resemblance to a particular building in BR...hmmm...
Hmm..look familiar? As seen from the top, the building looks suspiciously like the LAPD headquarters from the film. Yes, the LAPD HQ building is supposed to be much bigger, and it had pads for spinners, not helicopters. Still...another building in LA which looks suspiciously inspired by BR.
Oh yeah: if you can somehow get to the observation deck of the building, you can get an amazing view of the city.
The Grand Central Market
Stretching between Broadway and Hill between 3rd and 4th St., in fact right next to the Million Dollar Theatre, is the Grand Central Market, a semi-open bazaar of food stalls, green-grocers and other merchants that has been in full operation since 1917. In the early part of this decade, the market was refurbished, the vintage neon signs that had advertised some longtime merchants for decades were restored, and brand new neon signs were made for relative newcomers to the old mall. (Relative newcomers being people who had only had booths there since the '80s or '90s.)
The Market is open 7 days a week from 9 to 6. And yes, you can get sushi there. "Four pieces, two, two..." But you would have to walk to another booth to get noodles. No worries, though...the Chinese food booth is not very far away. This was no doubt one of the inspirations for "Ridleyville," the street of neon and multiculturalism where a lot of the action takes place.
Clifton's Cafeteria
You can almost see J. F. Sebastian going here with his furry friends to have a bite of comfort food. This was once a thriving chain of cafeterias throughout the LA area. However, changing eating habits, an aging clientele, and the ubiquity of places like Home Town Buffet have chased little regional chains like this out of business. I don't know how long this will hang on.
The whole place is designed to look like an encampment in a grove of redwood trees, and the dioramas are pretty neat. No you can't "pay what you can afford" like you could in the Great Depression, but it's still quite reasonable. The food is institutional, but not in a bad way. The location is at 6th and Broadway.
City Hall
Every first Saturday of the month, the LA Conservancy takes people on a walking tour of one of Los Angeles' most recognizable icons: City Hall. This is the famous building you see on LAPD badges and in the TV and movie versions of Dragnet. (Including the one with Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks, sacrilege though it may be.) During business hours I think you can still get a look at the place and maybe even get up to the observation deck. For decades, it was the tallest building in Downtown, but even dwarfed by buildings like the US Bank Tower it still impresses. And if my memory serves me right, the view from the observation deck is still spectacular on clear days.
The Caltrans District 7 Building
No building in Downtown LA screams "Influenced By Blade Runner!" more than the Caltrans building on 100 S. Main St. It is massive, hulking, huge, metallic, shot through with neon and incandescent light, and shrouded on one side by photovoltaic cells that provide a fraction of the energy needs of the building. You can imagine this in the cluttered skyline of the Los Angeles of November, 2019. The architect is Morphosis, one of the most renowned modern architectural firms and second only to Frank Gehry in regards to transforming the landscape of the city.
Little Tokyo
I'm a shameless Otome (female Otaku) and have loved this little chunk of Los Angeles since childhood. The place deserves an entire day or two entirely to itself, but an afternoon or evening of walking around the enclave of kawaii (cuteness) and sugoi (coolness) is great.
If you are an Anime/Manga fan there are several places, like Kinokuniya Books in Weller Court and Jungle Anime in the arcade right next to the Japanese Village Plaza, to get your fix. Drugs would be cheaper, true, but not as fun.
Frying Fish is a Conveyor Belt Sushi restaurant, one of the last remaining imports of these places in Los Angeles. We had a whole bunch in the early 1980s but when the New Meiji fast food chain died we lost most of them. Oiwake is a buffet kind of place where you can also Karaoke until you lose your voice or until closing time. And Koraku is a noodle shop that has withstood the test of time, serving really, really, good noodles and Japanese family restaurant food since the 1950s. They are open very, very late. Back in the Punk Rock days I used to go get some noodles at Koraku after seeing a band at Al's Bar. (no longer with us, alas!) A lot of people prefered the Atomic Cafe, (again, no longer with us) but this was my special after-hours place. Koraku is at 314 E 2nd St., Los Angeles, CA 90012.
Why Little Tokyo on a Blade Runner tour? Well, it's got that whole Blade Runner flavor. It's a bit of an Asian culture transplanted to Los Angeles. So is Chinatown, but somehow Little Tokyo has a less artificial feel than the Chinatown we are stuck with. (More on that later.) Blade Runner wasn't quite spot-on in that Chinese and Japanese culture haven't become the predominant cultures here: instead, we are and remain a very Latino town. However, it is here and in Chinatown (and if you can get there, towns in the San Gabriel Valley like Monterey Park) where the vision of the future seen in the movie has some appearance of becoming real. And finally, I love this place. That's all. End of story.
The Ennis House
This one you might have to hop a cab to get to instead of take the Metro. The house is currently closed to tours because it took major damage in the Northridge Quake of 1994, and was further damaged in the record-breaking rainy season of 2005. It has taken until this year before enough money could be raised to preserve this national treasure. Now (Summer 2007) the whole house is shut down so that the needed repairs and restoration can finally be made. However, you still can look at the house from the outside.
The Ennis House is here:
2655 Glendower Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027-1114
As you can see from the map, this is off of Vermont Avenue. Take the cab to the house, get some pictures or whatever from the street, then hop back in the cab and tell the cabbie to take you to your next destination:
The Wiltern Theatre
You wouldn't think the Wiltern was Taffy Lewis' Snake Pit Bar. But apparently the Snake Pit sequences were filmed there before the theatre was rehabbed and returned to its original glory. The Wiltern is now considered one of the finest venues of its type for live music in the city.
Concerts at the Wiltern tend to be pricey, and are managed by a spin-off company of ClearChannel, if that makes any difference to you. It is unclear also whether you would get any access to the place during times there aren't any concerts there...at least you can pay to get a "VIP Tour" of the Kodak Theatre, where they hold the Academy Awards every year, during times when the theatre is not in use.
However, if you want to see one of the finest examples of Art Deco architecture in Los Angeles, and you really want to see every single Blade Runner location you can, then go visit the Wiltern.
The Metro Purple Line has a stop right by the Wiltern that will take you back to your Downtown LA base of operations.
Warner Bros. VIP Studio Tour
OK, how to get there without having to deal with cabs: take the Metro Red Line to the Universal City station, then take either the 96 or the 155 Metro Bus to the studio. Yeah, it's a bus, not a train. It's not a long trip, and the buses come frequently. If you don't like the idea of taking a bus, the taxi ride is only 2 miles and change. Whatever. Anyway, the tours go Monday through Friday and leave every hour on the half hour, and cost $45 per person. And yes, you will get to see New York Street. Again, not positive whether you'll get to see any Blade Runner memorabilia, but then again Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is probably gearing up for the release of the "Final Cut" DVD, so chances might be good they still have those Blade Runner costumes out there to see. And you can chuckle at the poor schmucks who are paying more money to see the faked-out, yokel friendly version of Hollywood at Universal Studios.
After the tour, you might actually want to take that Universal City shuttle up the hill. The place where you catch the shuttle is directly across the street from the Metro Red Line station. But instead of forking out theme park bucks, you might just want to hang out at CityWalk for a while. There are genuinely good restaurants in amongst the tourist trap stuff, the movie theatres there are well-maintained so you might want to take in a movie if there's one you want to see, or maybe just play a few rounds of Virtua Cop 3 at Jillian's.
OK, that's basically a program for a four day trip to Los Angeles, complete with however much cost such a trip implies: meals, hotel, transportation, fees to get into attractions and tours.
Chinatown is really close to Union Station, and you could probably sneak in a meal at Sam Woo's Barbecue or Chow Fun before heading off to LAX via the Flyaway. The original Los Angeles Chinatown was displaced by Union Station, and the City of Los Angeles and set decorators from the Hollywood studios collaborated to help "New Chinatown" become a tourist attraction as well as a relocation zone for the not-too-thrilled Chinese-American families displaced by the building of the last great railway station in the United States. It's a tale reminiscent of how Latino families were pushed out of Chavez Ravine to make way for Dodger Stadium, and worthy of the intrigues in the movie Chinatown.
Of course, if you have more time to visit, I have merely scratched the surface of what is available to see in Downtown LA, let alone in the whole city. I purposely left off Hollywood proper, with the Hollyhock House and the Ennis House on the eastern edge of the community.
However, if you have a burning desire to visit Hollywood, there are plenty of guides on the Internet, so no need to buy those "Maps to the Stars' Homes" that are usually years if not decades out of date and fairly lame.
The only authoritative museum of cinema I can think of right now is the one maintained by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and they are in Beverly Hills, not Hollywood. Hollywood Forever Cemetery is perhaps the most authentic taste of Old Hollywood I can think of, because so many significant figures in the history of American cinema are buried there.
There has been talk as far as I can remember (and that's about 40 years or so, thankyouverymuch) of a real Hollywood History Museum, but so far there have been only tourist traps and wax museums with that distinction. If you followed my suggestion to take the Warner Studio Tour, you will have seen just about the closest thing to what people have been trying to get going at the Warner Museum. The Hollywood Studio Museum, which is in the restored Lasky/DeMille barn and right across the street from the renowned Hollywood Bowl, is also a repository for genuine Hollywood history.
An interesting side trip would be Culver City, to have lunch or dinner at Ben Ford's restaurant Ford's Filling Station. Ben is Harrison's son, and also recently looped some dialogue for the upcoming "Final Cut" of Blade Runner.
Culver City is also home to an office building, now owned by Sony Pictures, that has a weird sort-of resemblance to one of the two Tyrell Corporation pyramids. Only the building is much, much smaller than what they looked like on screen. However, that didn't stop me from referring to it as the Tyrell Building when I lived in the area.
However, getting to Culver City might be a bit tricky from Downtown without either a high-priced cab ride or a rental car. This will change when the Metro Expo Line is completed, but until then it's a pain.
I have been suggesting using public transit whenever possible, because it's just better for the environment. Do we really want to live in a world that is identical to, not just reminiscent of, the one in Blade Runner? Also, if you rent a car, there are also tradeoffs: you gain in freedom of movement, but you also have to fork over the simoleons for parking, and you have to fight LA traffic. This way, no parking expense, no lost stomach lining from LA traffic, no problem.
If you want more ideas about how to have a good time in LA, here are a few good resources:
S. Michelle Klein-Hass did this website. All original material on this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Anything that is not mine belongs to their respective creators. Blade Runner is a registered trademark of the Blade Runner Partnership. Ms. Klein-Hass has no connection with any of the mentioned venues or properties. Last updated 10/14/2007