Albuquerque, New Mexico is enjoying quite the little pop culture tourist boom thanks to Breaking Bad. In early drafts, Vince Gilligan set the show in Riverside County, California, but the switch to Albuquerque has been more than a tax-break boon. Its unique blend of western desolation and quirky architecture is part of the show’s aesthetic. With the help of a Flickr account and a painstakingly complete list of locations with map coordinates, a user named Kung Fu Jack Knife (probably an alias, like Heisenberg) compiled a highlight reel of significant shooting locations around Albuquerque. They’re all structural locations within the city—finding the barren exterior locations for the private meeting scenes sounds like a daunting task—but it’s a nice tour of important buildings. You can see everything from Twisters (which stood in for Los Pollos Hermanos), to the White, Schrader, and Pinkman residences, and even the strip mall where Saul Goodman does business.
breaking bad locations from tim harrison on Vimeo.