A. A tire shop & garage.

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

A. In Magnolia, Louisiana ("Right off the 79", according to Audrey, of the Magnolia Chamber of Commerce).

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. We saw it in Episode 1 of Season 3 ("Bad Blood")

We see the garage when Sam Merlotte goes there to track down his long-lost family, and in particular his brother, whom he has learned is named Tommy Mickens, the son of Sam's biological parents, Melinda & Joe Lee Mickens.

Sammy is supposedly working at Cornejo Tires.

Sam pulls into the lot, gets out of his car, and walks over to a young man who is putting a tire on a car.

The name tag on his overalls reads "Tommy", but when Sam asks if he's Tommy Mickens, he denies it, insisting that his last name is Harmon, and that Tommy Mickens quit "about 6 or 7 months ago" and said he was leaving town - with no forwarding address.

Tommy goes on to say that Tommy Mickens was "a real piece of sh*t, if you ask me".

Sam replies that, from what he's hearing, "pretty much all the Mickens are".

Tommy claims that the "other" Tommy was the only Mickens he ever met.

Still suspicious, Sam says he might come back to buy some tires there on his way out of town, and Tommy says he'll give him a good deal on them, if he does.

He tells Tommy that his name is Sam Merlotte, and walks back to his truck.

Q. What is it actually, in real life?

A. A tire shop/garage.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. This place is actually named Cornejo Tires (that sign is real), but it's nowhere near Louisiana.

You'll find it at 16493 Sierra Highway, in an isolated part of east Santa Clarita, California.

That's about 37 miles north of Los Angeles, and about 10 miles east of Magic Mountain theme park.

(Careful, there is more than one Cornejo Tires in the area. The others in Newhall and Vernon.)


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




Here is a Google StreetView Panorama of the garage:

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

A. This one was fairly easy.  They used the real name of the garage during the telephone call with the woman from the Magnolia Chamber of Commerce, and then showed the sign with the same name, as Sam pulled into the station.

Of course, if could easily have been a fake sign. So, the first thing I did was to Google for "Cornjeo Tires", and I immediately found more than one of them.

I used Google StreetView to look at each one, to match them to the screenshot, and hit pay dirt on my second try, in Santa Clarita.