2 Fast 2 Furious | Mana Wynwood — Where the Scramble Was Let Loose

When the police close the net, Tej opens a warehouse and turns loose a yard full of drivers who burst outward in every direction at once — the Scramble, the film's best idea. It was staged at the industrial site at 318 NW 23rd Street, in what was then a working district of cold stores, garment lofts and truck bays where a production could fill a block with cars and nobody would complain.

Wynwood is not that district any more. The site is Mana Wynwood now, a production and event campus at the edge of a neighbourhood that has become one of the most photographed few blocks in Florida. The warehouses kept their shape — long, flat-roofed, loading docks at the front, the wide aprons of asphalt the stunt drivers needed — but the walls are murals, repainted often enough that the street looks different from one year to the next.

Walk NW 23rd and 2nd Avenue on a weekday morning before the crowds. The roller shutters are up, trucks are reversing into the same docks, and for an hour the place is what the film borrowed rather than what it became.

Photo: Wynwood Walls, Miami, by Wally Gobetz (Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).