Most of AMC’S Breaking Bad show is shot on location in Albuquerque. There’s one location in particular thats featured on the show called the Crossroads motel, affectionately nicknamed “The Crystal Palace” by characters on the show. The crossroads is dramatized as a hangout for both hookers and meth addicts alike. Everyday we’d pass the Crossroads off I-25 driving to different spots, and I got the idea to shoot an intro there. I wanted to shoot something that resembled the scenes from Breaking Bad and made it look like our residence in Albuquerque. Shooting any kind of a pre-planned intro to a video on a road trip is always tricky. Understandably, the riders are way more concerned with going out and filming as many clips as possible rather than waste time shooting something that doesn’t involve riding. On this day, we planned to take a day off riding and hit up some hot springs. So it was agreed we would try to shoot our introduction to the video before heading out of town the morning of April 20, 2015.
Similar to the show, there’s a lot of shady activity going on at the Crossroads. If you’re a Breaking Bad fan you might remember the meth-head hooker character known as Wendy. One particular episode focuses heavily on Wendy and her daily activities around the motel. The show uses time-lapses of the happenings at the motel intercut with her prostitution and meth habits. I was determined to copy a Breaking Bad shot for my own time-lapse. Only it was a shot of Adam Accardi’s Blue van pulling into the parking lot and unloading. As opposed to that of a hooker giving blow jobs for drugs. The motel is a tourist attraction, the #crossroadsmotel is littered with photos of people standing in the parking lot, selfies, etc so it didn’t seem like much of a big deal to shoot a few things there.