A. A residential home.

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

A. In Miami, near a housing project.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. In Episode 2 (of Season 2), "Waiting To Exhale".

An after-dark house party is underway.
Christmas lights have been strung across the front of the house, and a crowd of party-goers are spilling outside.

Dexter has staked out the house, waiting in the alley across the street for gang killer 'Little Chino' to walk into his trap.

However, it's Dexter who has blundered into a trap, and when 'Little Chino' shows up (and Dexter fails to pull the trigger), it proves to be an ambush, as several of Chino's gang members jump out and attack Dexter.

Dexter flees, on foot, back to the housing project (where 'Little Chino' dumped the body of his last victim), and evades the pursuing gang members by hiding under the street in a storm drain.

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. An actual house, in a modest neighborhood, but far from Miami.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. The house is actually at 575 Sepulveda Street, in San Pedro (not to be confused with Sepulveda Boulevard).

It's a residential home, on the south side of Sepulveda, the front house of a triplex property, just a few yards east of N. Grand Ave.

It's located one street south of the church where they filmed Paul's funeral).

It's about a mile southwest of where the Vincent Thomas Bridge spans the harbor channel.

The alley where Dexter waits to ambush 'Little Chino' is right across the street from the party house, on the north side of Sepulveda Street. (The short alleyway runs right past west side of the church.)

After being ambushed in the alley, Dexter flees back to the housing project and hides down a storm drain to escape his pursuers. The scene makes it seem like the housing project is just a few yards away, but actually, the housing project is more than a half mile southeast of Little Chino's house.

The storm drain where Dexter escapes Little Chino's gang members is located in the housing project, right in front of the same white building where they earlier filmed the police discovering the woman's body, on the west side of N. Palos Verdes Street, in the 100 block, between 1st & 2nd Streets.

( Exercise reasonable caution in the housing project area - it has a history of gang activity. )


( Another scene was shot near Little Chino's house.  The end of the tagger chase was shot in front of the apartment house next door. )


I shot the photos below in Sept. 2008

[ Warning: This is a private home.  Do not knock on their door, trespass on their property,
or do anything else that might disturb the residents. ]






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

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

A. This was a hard one, in part because it was a night scene, and not that many details were visible.

But worse, the scene made it appear as if the house were just a short sprint from the housing project, so I concentrated my search in that immediate area.  Suffice it to say, I wasted a lot of time scouring those nearby streets without finding the house.

Finally, I embarked on a more aggressive search.  First, I sketched out (on a sheet of paper) the house, the alley, and every detail that was visible in the scene, to create a visual image that I would recognize when I saw it. I could tell, for instance, that the house was at a corner where an alley ran across an actual street. It was on the left side of that alley, with a wood fence running on its right side. And there was a taller building (what appeared to be an apartment house) next to it, on the other side of the alley.

There are a lot of alleys in that part of San Pedro. But fortunately, not all of them run through to the other side of the street.

So, using aerial maps, I first marked every alley that crossed a street (eliminating those that didn't), then began inspecting each corner, one by one, using aerial photos, eliminating each one as I discovered it wasn't the right house.  After a long hunt, I finally found it, a half mile away from the housing project.

( I wasn't surprised, though, to find it located right next door to the church. I've found that the "Blind Decker" company likes to film several scenes in the same area... No doubt, it saves time and money. )