Low rise MiMo apartment buildings and motor hotels in pale stucco and breeze block, and the pool where the Jonas Brothers shot Cool.
What North Beach looks like
North Beach runs along Collins Avenue in two and three storey garden apartment buildings, their fronts in pale stucco with decorative concrete breeze block screens and curved corners. A handful of taller hotel towers break the roofline on Collins Avenue itself, while the side streets stay low.
, the row of small motor hotels facing the beach between 73rd and 75th Streets, still has jalousie windows and neon channel lettering from the 1940s and 1950s. Part of the block sits behind construction fencing as it is rebuilt into a condominium and hotel project, though two of its Art Deco buildings are being restored rather than replaced.
Collins Avenue's commercial stretch mixes a folded blue roof over the IHOP near 69th Street with the teal trimmed entrance of a 1950 Bank of America branch a few blocks north. The travertine faced Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints sits on Indian Creek Drive, and the shuttered stands on 71st Street beside the open air .
West of Indian Creek Drive, Normandy Isles and trade the grid for broad curving parkways lined with royal palms, their low apartment buildings set on the city's standard fifty foot lots. Indian Creek itself runs behind the beachfront blocks, a narrow waterway with docks and sailboats along it.
Shot in North Beach
The Jonas Brothers shot the pool scene for their video "Cool" at the on Normandy Drive, then moved to the hotel row on Ocean Terrace for the video's dance sequence. Pitbull's video for "Fun" was shot along the same stretch of Ocean Terrace, and the city's own film office credits training scenes from Baywatch to the same strip.
"Cool," Jonas Brothers, 2019, and "Fun," Pitbull, 2015
Both videos used this stretch of small oceanfront hotels between 73rd and 75th Streets rather than one address. Several of the block's Art Deco buildings, including the one pictured, are being restored as part of the block's current redevelopment rather than replaced.
"Bad Boys for Life," 2020
Miami Beach film permits placed the production at the Broadmoor for interior and exterior fight scenes with simulated gunfire and other effects. Will Smith was on set outside the hotel during the April 2019 shoot.
What North Beach can double for
Wildwood Crest, New Jersey
More than fifty motels from the 1950s and 1960s survive in the Wildwoods Shore Resort Historic District, the largest concentration of this postwar motor hotel style in the country. Their curved corners and boomerang shaped canopies match the vocabulary Ocean Terrace uses on a smaller scale. Wildwood Crest's motels sit back from a wider beach and boardwalk, so tighter frames along the street read closer to Ocean Terrace than a wide establishing shot would. Try searching curved corner motor hotel now.
Palm Springs, California
Palm Springs' garden apartment complexes use the same decorative concrete breeze block screens and flat rooflines as the MiMo buildings here, especially around the Racquet Club Garden Villas. Both grew out of the same postwar resort building boom. The desert setting and mountain backdrop give it away in any wide shot, so this works best for tight courtyard and facade frames rather than street establishing shots. Try searching breeze block garden apartments now.
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