21 Grams | 600 Central Avenue NW — The bar that was only a front

Not everything in 21 Grams is what it claims to be. Earnestine's, the bar where Jack Jordan drinks himself toward the truth, never existed. The production built its front on the 600 block of Central Avenue Northwest in downtown Albuquerque, hung a sign on it, shot what it needed, and took the whole thing down again.

Central Avenue is Route 66 — the 1937 alignment, which came straight west through downtown instead of swinging north to Santa Fe. That is why the street has the bones it has: two-storey commercial blocks, deep sidewalks, and neon on almost every corner, including the KiMo Theatre a short walk east at 423 Central, a 1927 Pueblo Deco cinema with terracotta buffalo skulls set into its facade. Interstate 40 took the through traffic in the 1980s and this stretch went quiet for twenty years. It is busy again now, and most of the old fronts survived the lull.

Walk the 600 block after dark and look at the storefronts at ground level. Several are still facades in their own way — older faces on buildings put to newer uses. The film borrowed that habit for a night. Nothing marks the spot and there is nothing to find, which is the interest of it: a real street that was easy to lie about.