21 Jump Street|Poydras Street — The Limo Chase Through the CBD

The last twenty minutes belong to downtown New Orleans. A limousine, a motorcycle gang, gunfire that keeps failing to hit anything, and a car that will not explode no matter how many times it should. The chase runs through the Central Business District — Poydras, Baronne, Union, O'Keefe — streets that on any other day carry office workers to lunch.

Poydras Street is the widest boulevard in the CBD, a canyon of banking towers and hotel glass running from the Superdome down to the river. It was cut through the old faubourg in the nineteenth century and rebuilt into a corporate spine during the oil boom of the 1970s and 80s. Six lanes, a landscaped neutral ground, and sightlines long enough that a camera car can hold a shot for blocks.

That geometry is why the finale is here rather than in the French Quarter. The Quarter is narrow and crooked and full of protected buildings. Poydras and the grid around it can be closed on a weekend, filled with picture vehicles, and shot at speed. New Orleans took Louisiana's film tax credit and turned this district into a standing backlot for a decade, and this is one of the movies that used it.

It is open street, so there is nothing to buy a ticket for. Start at Poydras and O'Keefe and walk east toward the river; the Union and Baronne corners are a block either side.

Look up once at the towers. Then look at the pavement and remember that the entire climax of a film set in a made-up California town was shot standing right here.