Los Angeles plays host to many of the locations from ‘Back To The Future’ which starts off at Doctor Emmett Brown’s workshop where all the clocks go off 25 minutes early meaning Marty is late for school. What follows was an inspiration for me as a child as I took up skateboarding though being towed on the back of vehicles didn’t happen too often!
The workshop (below) was a temporary facade and can be made-out thanks to a diagonal stripe on the car park.
The Burger King (below) next to the workshop, which Marty skateboards past, is at 535 N. Victory Boulevard in Burbank.
The skateboard route continue through Courthouse Square at Universal Studios Hollywood and finishes at Whittier High School at 12417 E. Philadelphia Street in Whittier. This was of course used as Hill Valley High School and appears on screen a few times during the film.
Having failed his audition for ‘Battle of the Bands’ Marty skateboards down his home street past going through the famous Lyon Estate signs which by luck I saw at Universal Studios due to the failure of our tram which lead to a slight detour. The street in the picture below is Sandusky Avenue.
In reality though, Marty’s home (below) is a few streets away. The address for his home is 9303 Roslyndale Avenue in Arieta and is private property.
Marty agrees to meet the Doc at Twin Pines Mall (below) at 1.15am and the DeLorean time-machine is introduced to him. This was filmed at Puente Hills Mall at 1600 Asuza Avenue though sadly the JCPenney store has been replaced by a coat factory one. Whilst snapping away a cop wound down his window and said “Back to the future?” to which I replied “Of course” before he started going on about some event to mark the films 25th anniversary last year.
This location was the furthest out of the way for myself and Ethan but I felt it had to be seen as it played such an important part by way of being where Marty escapes from the hostile Libyan terrorists by driving at 88mph resulting in him being transported back to 1955.
On his entrance to 1955 Marty crashed into a barn and soon after that he discovers his 1985 street being built. All that exists is the “Lyon Estates” gates (below) and across the road from them is a sign saying its 2 miles to Hill Valley where the all-important clock tower is. The gates are at Universal Studios.
The clock tower (below) was damaged in a fire a few years ago and is no more but here is a photo I took of it back in 2002.
Having met his father George, Marty follows him and finds him up a tree (below)being a peeping Tom. The person he is spying on is his future wife Lorraine who is of course Marty’s mother. That house is at 1727 Bushnell Avenue in South Pasadena.
George’s house (below) is a few doors down the road at 1711 Bushnell Avenue.
Marty later tracks down the Doc who lives at The Gamble House (of Proctor & Gamble fame) which is a Japanese-influenced wood shingle house at 4 Westmoreland Place in Pasadena.
The film ends back on Marty’s street at Roslyndale Avenue where the Doc arrives from 2015 and utters the classic line to Jennifer and Marty “Roads. Where we’re going we don’t need roads!”. With that, the three of them shoot off into future (and the sequel film!) bringing my all-time favourite film to an end.
Bonus: Of course many of the above locations also featured in the two sequels ‘Back To The Future Part II’ and ‘Back To The Future Part III’. The tunnel below can be seen in the second film and is very close to Griffith Observatory (of ‘Terminator‘ fame) in Griffith Park and is where Marty recovers the Sports Almanac from Biff on his hoverboard.
María Magdalena de Habsburgo y Wittelsbach (Graz, 7 de octubre de 1589-Padua, 1 de noviembre de 1631) fue la esposa de Cosme II de Médici, gran duque de Toscana.
Era hija de Carlos II de Estiria, archiduque de Austria, y de María Ana de Baviera. El matrimonio con el gran duque tuvo lugar en 1608. Después de la prematura muerte de su marido, acaecida en 1621, se dedicó junto a su suegra, Cristina de Lorena, a la educación de sus hijos, en particular del futuro gran duque Fernando II. Obtuvo además como herencia el gobierno de la ciudad de San Miniato hasta su muerte y no paró hasta que la pequeña ciudad se convirtió en diócesis.
Se interesó por la ciencia y procuró a sus hijos una gran educación, eligiendo como preceptores a algunos científicos discípulos de Galileo Galilei.
Nacida deforme y retrasada, fue recluida en el convento de las Monjas de San Esteban llamado de la Santissima Concezione, en 1619, pero no tomó nunca los hábitos.
John F. Kennedy Drive, formerly known as Riverside Drive, was a route into Hill Valley in 1985. It had many businesses including Burger King, Toys "R" Us and a printing service. Adjacent to the Burger King was Doc's garage, the remnant of his former property of his mansion. In 1955, properties along the road were primarily residential.
When Marty McFly asked the Baines where Riverside Drive was, Sam Baines said it was on the other side of town from their house, a block east past Maple Street, which Marty knew to be John F. Kennedy Drive in 1985, named after the former United States president. However, Sam had never heard of the man — retorting "Who the hell is John F. Kennedy?" (despite the fact that Kennedy was already a United States Senator in 1955, he was not yet a household name).
It is unknown if this road is near a river due to its former name.
Behind the scenes
North Victory Boulevard in Burbank, California was the filming location of this street in 1985, while its 1955 counterpart was Westmoreland Drive in front of the Gamble House.
The Gamble House garage, and the "1640" sign, front North Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena.
Marty skateboarding on John F. Kennedy Drive with a Toys "Я" Us visible in the background.
Toys "R" Us, officially trademarked as Toys "Я" Us, was a toy store chain headquartered in Wayne, New Jersey, United States.The backwards "Я" was the most distinctive part of its logo. The "R Us" name has been imitated by many other businesses, such as Tiles R Us. The company operated a store in Hill Valley, California.
Marty andando en patineta en John F. Kennedy Drive con una "Я" Us de Toys's visible en el fondo.
Toys "R" Us , oficialmente registrada como Toys "Я" Us , era una cadena de jugueterías con sede en Wayne, Nueva Jersey, Estados Unidos. La "Я" al revés era la parte más distintiva de su logotipo. El nombre "R Us" ha sido imitado por muchas otras empresas, como Tiles R Us. La compañía tenía una tienda en Hill Valley , California .
On his way to school, Marty skateboards past a nearby Burger King restaurant and, with the help of a passing truck, makes his way up north on Victory Boulevard.
“Back to the Future” fans will visit the Burger King restaurant on Victory Boulevard in Burbank on Oct. 21, 2015 -- precisely where and when Marty McFly on his skateboard hitched a tow from a pickup truck.
Burbank is a city in the southeastern end of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located 7 miles (11 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, Burbank had a Census-estimated population of 102,755 as of 2023.[8] The city was named after David Burbank, who established a sheep ranch there in 1867. Burbank consists of two distinct areas: a downtown/foothill section, in the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains, and the flatland section.
The history of the Burbank area can be traced back to the Tongva people, the indigenous people of the area, who lived in the region for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans.[11][12][13] In the late 18th century and the early 19th century, Spanish explorers and mission priests arrived in the Los Angeles area. The city of Burbank occupies land that was previously part of two Spanish and Mexican-era colonial land grants: the 36,400-acre (147 km2) Rancho San Rafael, granted to Jose Maria Verdugo by the Spanish Bourbon government in 1784, and the 4,063-acre (16.44 km2) Rancho Providencia created in 1821. This area was the scene of a military skirmish which resulted in the unseating of the Spanish Governor of California, and his replacement by the Mexican leader Pio Pico.[14]
David Burbank purchased over 4,600 acres (19 km2) of the former Verdugo holding and another 4,600 acres (19 km2) of the Rancho Providencia in 1867. Burbank built a ranch house and began to raise sheep and grow wheat on the ranch.[15] By 1876, the San Fernando Valley became the largest wheat-raising area in Los Angeles County. But the droughts of the 1860s and 1870s underlined the need for steady water supplies.
The Jonathan R. Scott tract, forming eastern Burbank along San Fernando Boulevard, called here the "Camino Real"
A professionally trained dentist, Burbank began his career in Waterville, Maine. He joined the great migration westward in the early 1850s and, by 1853 was living in San Francisco. At the time the American Civil War broke out, he was again well established in his profession as a dentist in Pueblo de Los Angeles. In 1867, he purchased Rancho La Providencia from David W. Alexander and Francis Mellus, and he purchased the western portion of the Rancho San Rafael (4,603 acres) from Jonathan R. Scott. Burbank's property reached nearly 9,200 acres (37 km2) at a cost of $9,000.[16] Burbank would not acquire full titles to both properties until after a court decision known as the "Great Partition" was made in 1871 dissolving the Rancho San Rafael. He eventually became known as one of the largest and most successful sheep raisers in southern California, and as a result, he closed his dentistry practice and invested heavily in real estate in Los Angeles.[15]
‘Back to the Future’ fans plan retro tour for Oct. 21, 2015
“Back to the Future” fans will visit the Burger King restaurant on Victory Boulevard in Burbank on Oct. 21, 2015 -- precisely where and when Marty McFly on his skateboard hitched a tow from a pickup truck.
(Raul Roa / Burbank Leader)
By Chad Garland
Oct. 14, 2015 7:56 AM PT
When Marty McFly traveled 30 years into the future at the end of “Back to the Future,” he would arrive, in the sequel, just before 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 21, 2015 — in a world where they famously wouldn’t need roads and where skateboards didn’t need wheels. That date is now just a week away.
At the beginning of the film, McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, starts off at Doc Brown’s lab next to the Burger King at 545 N. Victory Blvd. in Burbank. Late for school, the skateboarding McFly grabs onto the back of a pickup truck pulling out of the restaurant’s drive-thru for a little extra speed.
Thirty years later, we don’t have hover boards or even Nikes with the power laces the film imagined, and the flying car hasn’t really taken off as projected. But, Burbank still has the Burger King, one of several locations in Southern California a group of “Back to the Future” fans and enthusiasts plan to visit next week to celebrate the original film’s 30th anniversary.
The restaurant was damaged in a kitchen fire in late August. It’s undergoing repairs and will reopen soon, the company said via email this week, though an exact date has not yet been determined. That won’t deter the fans, according to Ken Kapalowski, who is organizing the fan celebration “We’re Going Back 2015.”
“Yes, they had a grease fire and should be ready to open soon,” Kapalowski said Monday in an email. “Either way we will be there with the original manager that was on site back in the ‘80s during filming.”
While the town in the movie is known as Hill Valley, and much of it was shot on a backlot at Universal Studios, where much of the fan celebration will also take place, the Burger King restaurant happens to be one of two Burbank locations used in filming.
A bit later in the film, McFly and his band, the Pinheads, perform Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love” in the gym at McCambridge Recreation Center. A character played by Lewis interrupts to tell them they’re “just too darn loud.”
Mike Graceffo, recreation coordinator at Burbank’s Verdugo Recreation Center, said he was working for the city at the time that scene was filmed, and though he wasn’t at McCambridge, “I distinctly remember when they did film that.”
“It’s always neat” when something is filmed in the city, Graceffo told Times Community News, but growing up and living in Burbank, “you sort of get used to it in a way.”
The fans organized a 25th anniversary celebration in Burbank in November 2010 using the recreation center as one of its locations. Recreation Supervisor Jenny Griffin said she remembers working with the event organizers back then, including many Canadians who traveled to California for the event.
“The coolest thing was they brought all the DeLoreans,” she said, referring to the gull-winged, stainless steel sports car model upon which Doc Brown built his time machine.
And while fans prepare to celebrate the film yet again, one of the sequel’s predictions for the future — a Chicago Cubs World Series win — may yet come true. The Cubs defeated the St. Louis Cardinals to win their National League division playoff series Tuesday and will play either the Dodgers or the New York Mets for a berth in the World Series.
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