Q. What is it supposed to be on the show? A. Miami Beach. Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show? A.  In Miami Beach, Florida (most likely around Collins Ave or Ocean Drive). Q. When did we see it on the show? A. We see this scene  in Episode 6, of Season 1.  After the killer Levi Reed manages to walk free on a technicality, Dexter is seen stalking him through the neon haze of downtown Miami Beach. We watch as Dexter follows Reed and his date as they first cross a busy street. Dexter almost gets hit by a passing ice truck (an “Easter egg”  reference to the original show's first season).   He then follows them past a sidewalk bistro named Hidden Pearl, before crossing another  street, to where Reed has parked his car. While Dexter is still trailing them, he unexpectedly bumps into a Miami Metro coworker, Clark Sanders, at a neon-lit spot called Club Havana. Clark is surprised to see Dexter and is obviously nervous, because Club Havana is a gay club, and Clark is worried that Dexter will reveal his secret.

But Dexter has secrets of his own and isn't concerned about Clark's private life.

After a brief, awkward conversation, Dexter continues to follow Reed, ending up in an alley, where Dexter surprises the murderer while he's emptying his bladder, and knocks him out with an injection of M99, before loading him into his car's trunk.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. This scene was filmed in downtown Long Beach, California, around the corner of E. Broadway & Linden Avenue, in what is known as Long Beach's East Village Arts District.

• When Dexter first crosses the street, he is standing at the northeast corner of Broadway & Linden, and proceeds to walk west in the crosswalk, across Linden Ave.   [ StreetView ]
  

The ice truck that almost hits him is traveling south on Linden, and make a left turn to head east on Broadway.

The tall, art deco building seen behind them as they cross the street is, in real life, the Hotel Metropolitan, at 505 E. Broadway.   [ StreetView ]

• Once on the other side of Linden, Dexter walks past the (fake) sidewalk bistro, Hidden Pearl,  which was set up at the northwest corner of the intersection, at 449 E. Broadway.  [ StreetView ]
  
  ( In real life, this address is a coffee shop that has been known as both Pop's Java and Carmen's Cafe. )
  
  

• Dexter then follows Reed across another street. In real life they are walking south across Broadway, from the northwest corner of the intersection to the southwest corner.  ( Reed has parked his car on the south side of Broadway, just west of the intersection.  )  [ StreetView ]
  
  

• When Dexter bumps into Clark at the Club Havana, he is walking west on the south side of Broadway.
  
  This was actually just an empty storefront, located at 434 E. Broadway. The set designers simply put up a bright neon sign with the name of the fictional club, flooded it with color lights, and added a few tables and chairs out front.  [ StreetView ]
  
  

• Finally, the alley where Dexter lurks and eventually captures Reed Is located just west of the Club Havana spot, between 414 Broadway and 422 Broadway, on the south side of that street
  
  Oddly enough, the alleys in this part of Long Beach actually have names of their own, and this alley (which runs north and south) is called Frontenac Court.  Google maps label the section where Dexter nabs Reed as 199-155 N. Frontenac Ct.  [ StreetView ]
  

 [ This alley is actually seen twice In this episode . It is first seen when Levi Reed helps his girlfriend get into his parked car, and then goes off and urinates behind a dumpster, while Dexter watches from afar. In that scene, the alley is seen from the north, as Dexter peers into the alley from near its Broadway entrance.

But the same alley is also seen a second time, when Dexter surprises Reed while he is once again urinating in the alley. This time, the camera is deep in the alley, and is looking back north, towards the entrance.

The two different views look very different, and at first I thought they used two different alleys, until I closely examined the details and realized it was the same alley, merely shot from two differ-ent angles. ]

Here is a map I created of the path
Dexter takes while walking through this scene:

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

A.  This was another easy one, because the Long Beach Post  ran a story back in September of 2024, With the headline “LONG BEACH, TURNING DOWNTOWN STREET CORNER INTO 1990S MIAMI”, and featuring this photo:

 (The camera is looking west down the north side of Broadway.)
Here is a matching StreetView


So all I had to do was study the scene and then match up the various spots with the actual locations near that Long Beach intersection. That was time-consuming, but would have been a lot more difficult without the big head-start that the Post's article gave me.

 
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