Q. What is it supposed to be on the show? A. A street or highway running next to the water. Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show? A. In or near Miami, Florida.

A. We see the street  in Episode 4, of Season 1. 


This is a short scene, only lasting around 30 seconds.

Gio picks Debra up in his Corvette, outside her house, then we see the two driving the Miami streets in the convertible alongside the water. 
 
Deb is impressed by his (then) cutting edge ‘90s technology, and she uses his large car phone to call Harry and leaves a message saying she’s staying at her friend’s house. She then asks how fast the car can go, and he accelerates quickly.
 
The scene then cuts to Gio’s high-rise condominium.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. This driving scene was shot with the car heading south on the west side of Collins Avenue, in Miami Beach, Florida, on a short, half-mile stretch of highway between the 5100 block of Collins and the 5400 block, with most of the action on the west side taking place in the 5300 block. 
 
( Note that following the death of Margaritaville singer Jimmy Buffett, some stretches of Collins Avenue in this area have been renamed the Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway in his honor. ) 

When you see water, the camera is looking west, across Lake Pancoast, towards the wealthy homes on La Gorce Island.

When you see tall hotel buildings in the background, the camera is looking east.

Among the hotels glimpsed in the background, while they are driving, are the Alexander Hotel (5225 Collins Ave) and the Seacoast Hotel (5151 Collins Ave).

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

A. This took a very long time for me to finally track down.

When I first saw this scene, my hunch was that they had filmed it on Bayshore Avenue, in Long Beach (north of 2nd Street, where Bayshore Ave parallels Naples Island across the bay. ( See a StreetView  )

At first glance, it seemed like a perfect match, with the road they are driving on featuring a strip of green lawn on the right side, next to a blue channel of water that separates that lawn from more land across the water, where are some expensive-looking homes.
 
There were even a few boats docked along their side of the road.

But later, when I checked out the smaller details, they simply didn’t match. Most noticeably, all of the trees along that grassy strip on Bayshore are palm trees, while the scene in Dexter shows a different kind of tree lining that strip. Plus there were items, such as a bus shelter, that simply don’t exist on Bayshore Ave.
 
I was forced to conclude that this was definitely was not shot in Naples, despite the similarities.

I realized that the scene was almost certainly shot in Miami, probably around the same time that they filmed the scenes of Gio’s condo.

However, never having been to Miami, I didn't  know the town well enough to know where in that beach city those driving scenes were filmed.

So I moved my search to Miami, using StreetView and Google Earth to try to find the spot.

But between Miami, Miami Beach, and assorted islands in the bay, there is an incredible amount of shoreline in Miami where the scene might have been shot.

I looked at countless roads running along the various shores, but failed to find it, and eventually put my search on hold.

But I picked up the search again after I finished doing the locations of the 5th episode, and this time I focused on shoreline streets that had homes located across the water from them.

The only street I could find that came close was Collins Ave.  But the problem there was similar to the problem in Naples: almost all of the trees on Collins Ave are tall palm trees, while the trees seen in the scene are a different type of tree.

But while looking at Collins Ave from above, via satellite photos, I happened to notice that the trees looked somewhat larger on a particular stretch of Collins. So I switched to StreetView for a closer look at that portion of Collins, and was relieved to finally spot some familiar landmarks that I had noticed in the scene, beginning with a rack of bicycles, and then quickly discovering the bus shelter and other items from the scene as I moved south. The view of the expensive homes across the water also matched what we see in the scene  And this StreetView matches the final shot as the Corvette accelerates out of frame. 

Then all I had to do was identify the tall buildings on the other side of the street, that were seen in the background when the camera faced the other way (which turned out to be the Alexander Hotel and the Seacoast Hotel ). But that was relatively easy,   since those hotels were clustered together across from the other landmarks.

Here is a matching StreetView from Google:

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

 
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