Painted rowhouse storefronts along Eighteenth Street, and the corner where How Do You Know sent Reese Witherspoon into a cab.
What Adams Morgan looks like
Three and four storey rowhouses line Eighteenth Street. Their ground floors are painted red, turquoise and cream below upper floors of patterned brick. A grey conical turret marks one corner, printed shop signs stacked over a narrow entrance below it. A few doors up, a pale blue front holds a green awning over one storefront and a roll down security gate pulled halfway across the next.
At , the strip crosses under the neighborhood's own lettered sign, hung from a black canopy over a corner storefront now sealed behind cardboard. A few blocks north on , a bakery with a lit sign over its door sits below a plain second floor window, reached by its own street level entrance.
White and cream brick apartment buildings line the side streets, four and five storeys tall with columned porticoes over the front steps and iron fire escapes zigzagging up the rear elevations. On a Mediterranean Revival house with a tiled roof and a stone balcony sits behind a young tree, a utility van usually parked at the curb.
holds a curved Streamline Moderne building in cream stucco, built as a grocery in 1947 and still one today. A few blocks over, a limestone church stands behind an iron fence, its Corinthian portico closed off by construction fencing while the steps are worked on.
Shot in Adams Morgan
How Do You Know shot along Eighteenth Street and on Adams Mill Road, using the corner at Columbia Road for a breakup scene and a bakery storefront as the entrance to a rented apartment. Paul Rudd stopped to talk with the crowd that gathered on the block during the three days of filming.
How Do You Know, 2010
James L. Brooks shot a breakup scene here for How Do You Know, sending Reese Witherspoon's character into a cab while Paul Rudd's character watched from the sidewalk in front of what was then a coffee shop. That storefront has stood empty since 2025, its windows covered in cardboard, but the crossing and the buildings around it are unchanged. Street View
Milwaukee Avenue's storefronts hold the same stacked painted signboards over red and cream brick buildings, with bars and restaurants filling the ground floors much as they do on Eighteenth Street. The Flatiron Building at Milwaukee, North and Damen gives a comparable turret corner for a camera to work around. Wicker Park's six way intersection is wider than Eighteenth Street, so a tighter frame keeps the extra lanes and the elevated Blue Line out of shot. Try searching painted signboards over brick storefronts now.
Valencia Street in San Francisco, California
Valencia Street runs through the same mix of Victorian storefronts painted in bright colors, with restaurant awnings and hand painted signs stacked over narrow shopfronts block after block. Balmy Alley's murals sit two blocks over, giving a second wall of color within an easy relocate. San Francisco's steeper cross streets and overhead cable car wires give the city away in a wide shot, so keep the frame along Valencia itself. Try searching painted Victorian storefronts and murals now.
Camden High Street holds a similar run of independent shopfronts in bright paint, with bars and market stalls drawing evening crowds the way Eighteenth Street does. The market gates near the Lock look distinctly British in a wide shot, so a tighter frame on the high street itself holds the illusion better. Right hand traffic and black cabs give London away immediately, so keep double decker buses and road markings out of frame. Try searching independent shopfronts and market stalls now.
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