After an opening sequence set in the Dominican Republic, the movie switches to L.A., as we watch
Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) chase a tattooed perp across several rooftops, leaping from roof to roof.

This rooftop chase scene was shot on the roof of an industrial warehouse building at the
southwest corner of Terminal Street & 7th Street, next door to the Wholesale Produce Market,
on the gritty east side of downtown  Los Angeles.

During this rooftop chase, the two men are running south across the roof.

It's a huge building, about as long as six football fields. Most of the rooftop chase was filmed near its south end.

Built in 1917, the 7-story building is part of a warehouse complex with the official address of 1396 E. 7th Street.
But that address actually covers several warehouse buildings on that same block.
This single building actually maps better to 701 Terminal Street.

When they appear to leap across a gap between buildings, they are fooling you with a little Hollywood magic.
That gap doesn't really exist. It was inserted later via CGI. If you study the rooftop in aerial photos, you
can see that the round air vent (which appears to be on one building) and the other rooftop structures
(which appear to be on a separate building) are actually all on the same long warehouse rooftop.

Here is a Google StreetView panorama of the warehouse from street level.

Once the chase leaves the roof and hits the ground, the producers fake us out again, and the actual location jumps six miles to the east, from the downtown warehouse district to L.A.'s Koreatown/Mid-Wilshire district.

When we first see this foot chase on the ground, they are actually running south
down the west side of Normandie Ave, just south of W 8th Street.

The bad guy then turns right (west) into an alley, scales a chain link fence, and falls into the middle of an open-air swap meet, where he turns and fires several shots at the pursuing O'Conner.

This scene was shot in an alley and a parking lot behind the storefronts that line
the south side of 8th Street (between Normandie Ave & Irolo Street)

During this part of the chase, you can glimpse signs for both China Express (at 3320 W. 8th Street) and
PC Arcade (at 3300 W. 8th Street). The swap meet was set up in the parking lot behind China Express.

Here is a Google StreetView panorama of 8th Street and that alleyway (behind the gate).

And here is a Google StreetView panorama of that parking lot behind China Express.

The foot chase finally ends when the bad guy runs into a brick apartment house, runs through the halls,
comes out through a window, and finds himself trapped on an upper floor balcony with no way down.

He waits to shoot O'Conner, but is surprised when O'Conner suddenly smashes through another window,
sending both of them plunging over the ledge, down onto a van below, where, with a gun in his face,
the bad guy suddenly decides to give up a name: David Park.

This is yet another screen trick. The guy running ducks into the back of that strip mall in
Koreatown, but once he's inside, the location cuts to a mile away, to The Stratford, a scuzzy hotel
at 2619 W. 8th Street, in Los Angeles. at the northwest corner of 8th Street & Hoover Street.

They shot the exterior scenes (pictured above) at the back (north side) of the hotel.

(We'll see this same building later, ironically, as David Park's place.)

Here is a Google StreetView panorama of the rear of the building.)

After he catches the guy, we see Brian enter an FBI building., where he tells his boss that the perp
gave him the name of a street racer who recruits mules for a criminal cartel. The name is David Park.

The exterior you see (above) is actually the Hall of Administration at the former Ambassador College, at 300 W. Green Street, in Pasadena, CA.

Ambassador College closed in 1997, so the building is now part of Maranatha High School campus.

Here is a Google StreetView panorama, showing the building, as seen from Green Street.

After Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) gets a phone call in Panama, telling him his girlfriend (Letty) has been murdered, we see an aerial fly-over shot (above) of a waterway., approaching a dock lined with cargo containers and freight elevators.

This shot is actually the industrial side of the Long Beach harbor, the far southern edge of that harbor, looking northeast across harbor docks & freight elevators, towards the Queen Mary dome and the Long Beach city skyline (both of which can be seen in the distance).

The cops stake out the cemetery, hoping to nab the fugitive Toretto when he comes to his girlfriend's funeral.
But he doesn't show. We see him later, watching from a distance, on a hill above the cemetery, next to an oil well.

Sunnyside Cemetery is right next to Signal Hill, CA, a small oil town, surrounded by Long Beach.  Signal Hill got its name because, long ago, members of the local Indian tribe used climb to the top of the hill to signal other tribes on Catalina Island (26 miles across the sea). In 1921, oil was discovered there, and the town became home to one of the richest oil fields in the world. That explains the proliferation of oil wells seen in the background...

Here is a Google StreetView panorama of the cemetery.

Next, we see the modest, wood-frame home of Toretto's sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), when her fugitive brother shows up in her garage at night, where she shows him the race car in which his girlfriend died.

She warns him that the cops are staking out the home, and that he shouldn't be there.

I was pleased to see that the producers used the very same home seen in the original "The Fast and the Furious", at 722 E. Kensington Road, in the Echo Park district, northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

It's on the east side of the street, between Sunset Blvd and the Hollywood (101) Freeway.

Here is a Google StreetView panorama of the house.

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

Later, Toretto drops off his sister (at night) after a visit to the crash site. While parked, he tells her that he found marks
on the road that could only have been made from nitro-meth, and that there is only one guy in L.A. who sells it.

That scene was shot on the north side Marion Avenue, just east of the northeast corner of Marion & Kensington, in Echo Park. His car is facing west when he's parked. When Toretto U-turns (after saying goodbye to his sister),
he heads back east up Marion Ave. (It's just a few houses south of his sister's home on Kensington.)

Here is a Google StreetView panorama of the corner where he drops her off.

Next, we see a quick aerial shot of a corner liquor store.

Brian O'Conner is sitting nearby in his parked car, eating a sandwich,
and studying police files on David Park.

That liquor store is actually Quick Stop Liquor, located at 5102 Hollywood Blvd,
at the southwest corner of Hollywood Blvd & Normandie,
in the "Little Armenia" section of east Hollywood.

Here is a Google StreetView panorama of the store.

Toretto then goes to the garage of the only mechanic in L.A. who sells nitro-meth. When the guy is reluctant to tell
him to whom he sold the nitro-meth to, Toretto dangles an engine over the guy's head until he changes his mind.
He tells Dom that he sold it to David Park. So now both Toretto and O'Conner are looking for the same guy.

In the photo above, we are looking southeast. Actually, the "garage" we're looking at is actually
the back side of a produce company, at 631 S. Anderson Street, in East Los Angeles.

It's located almost under the Whittier Street bridge, at the end of a long alley (of sorts),
just west of Anderson Street, which runs parallel to Anderson.

( Google StreetView doesn't go into the alley, so the best we can do is
show you the front of the building, and the same bridge overhead. )

O'Conner arrives at David Park's brick apartment house, only to find that Toretto is already there,
and is dangling Park by one leg out a fourth-story window. When O'Conner confronts Toretto,
he drops Park, forcing O'Conner to go to his rescue, giving Toretto time to make his escape.

This brick building is located at 2619 W. 8th Street, in Los Angeles.
at the northwest corner of 8th Street, Rampart Blvd and Hoover Street.

It's called "The Stratford Hotel", but don't let the name fool you. The bottom floor houses
a thrift shop, and the owner in 1990 was sentenced to jail time as a slumlord.

It's a few blocks west of MacArthur Park, and about a mile east of the foot chase.

(And speaking of that chase, we have seen this hotel before in this movie. They used the
back of the same brick building as the location for the scene where O'Conner
finally catches the guy he's chasing in that opening foot chase.)

Here is a Google StreetView panorama of the building.