Central Plaza's shophouses are roofed like pagodas and hung with paper lanterns, and Rush Hour used the Foo Chow Restaurant on Hill Street as the villains' hideout.
What Chinatown looks like
Broadway is the main commercial street, its single storey storefronts covered by green awnings with a pagoda roofed building rising just behind them. The crosswalk in front of them is paved with dragon medallions, and a steel arch strung with two gold dragon sculptures spans the road nearer Cesar Chavez Avenue.
sits one block west, a pedestrian courtyard lined with low shophouses under pagoda tile roofs. Paper lanterns hang on wires strung between the buildings. The alleys leading off the plaza carry their own names, Gin Ling Way, Mei Ling Way and Bamboo Lane. Camphor wood gates from 1938 and 1939 stand at the plaza's Hill Street and Broadway entrances.
runs off the plaza's northeast corner, a narrow pedestrian street lined with single storey shopfronts and benches along the pavement. Many of its storefronts now hold art galleries, their windows lit at night rather than shuttered. Farther north on Broadway, the outlines its own two storey pagoda roofline in red neon after dark. The Phoenix Bakery's sign, a painted figure holding a cake box, marks the block near the plaza's southern end.
A Metro A Line train runs on an elevated track above the blocks east of Broadway, downtown Los Angeles towers visible behind it. West of the plaza, Yale Street and Alpine Street are quieter, lined with apartment buildings and a low brick recreation center behind an open lawn.
Shot in Chinatown
Chinatown has been a location since not long after it opened. The Shanghai Gesture shot a Chinese New Year sequence here in 1941. Rush Hour used the Foo Chow Restaurant on Hill Street at Gin Ling Way as the villains' base, and the restaurant still displays a sign on its wall noting that the film was shot there.
Lethal Weapon 4
Broadway and Gin Ling Way. The chase jumps through a second storey window at 950 Mei Ling Way and continues across rooftops at 437 and 483 Gin Ling Way.
Starsky & Hutch, 2004
The opening robbery
In the film's opening scene, Hutch shakes down an illegal bookmaker fronted by a laundry called Wu Fat, at 935 Chung King Road. The block today holds art galleries rather than a laundry, and its storefronts are narrow and single storey, with hanging signs and string lights overhead.
The Golden Child, 1986
The Golden Child filmed a scene at the Alpine Recreation Center, a low brick building on Yale Street at Alpine Street. A banner over its entrance advertises youth basketball sign ups, and the building sits behind an open lawn facing the street.
What Chinatown can double for
Grant Avenue in San Francisco, California
Grant Avenue's pagoda topped storefronts and hanging lanterns read close to Central Plaza's shophouses, both built to sell a Chinese aesthetic to a general audience rather than growing up around one. Grant Avenue's buildings run three and four storeys, taller than anything in this Chinatown, so a wide shot gives the height difference away. A street level frame on a narrower alley like Gin Ling Way keeps the height mismatch out of the shot, and both streets carry the same strings of paper lanterns overhead. Try searching pagoda shophouses lanterns now.
NW 4th Avenue in Portland, Oregon
Portland raised its own ceremonial gate at NW 4th Avenue and Burnside Street in 1986, a paifang with a pair of stone lions marking a district that had already stopped being a working Chinese neighborhood by the time the gate went up. The blocks behind it now hold hotels and bars rather than shops with Chinese signage. The gate itself carries the only strongly Chinese ornament in frame, so hold tight on it and keep the surrounding storefronts out of a wide shot. Try searching ceremonial gate stone lions now.
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