Where is Glass Key from 'Road House?' Here are 7 famous fictional Florida towns
When Jake Gyllenhaal's former UFC fighter Dalton steps off the bus to clean up the rowdiest bar in the Florida Keys in the new reimagining of the 1989 classic cult movie "Road House," it sure looks like he's standing in the Sunshine State.
But the Glass Key in the movie now streaming on Amazon Prime doesn't exist. Nor do a lot of famous Florida towns that never actually were.
Here's a look at some of the most famous fictional Florida places.
1. Glass Key: 'Road House,' 2024
In the remake of the classic Patrick Swayze movie, "Road House" takes place in Glass Key, Florida. A "nondescript Key, south of Marathon," according to the film's promotional material.
But while it certainly looks familiar, none of the 800 Florida Keys are named "Glass Key."
WHERE IS IT: A character in the movie directs Gyllenhaal "just up the highway, past mile marker 77," which puts it just south of the Lignumvitae Bridge in Islamorada.
WHERE WAS IT FILMED: Nearly all of the movie was filmed in Punta Cana and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, although aerial shots of the beloved local landmark Fred the Tree are prominently featured.
2. Coronado Beach: 'Florida Man,' 2023
In the 2023 Netflix show "Florida Man," disgraced former Philidelphia cop Mike Valentine returns to his hometown of Coronado Beach to chase after a mobster's girlfriend on the run. The "dramedy" show pays homage to several bizarre Florida Man tropes. Problem: There isn't a Coronado Beach.
There used to be. Coronado Beach was founded in 1885 but was incorporated into the city of New Smyrna Beach, Florida, about 30 minutes south of Daytona Beach, in 1946. It still exists as an NSB neighborhood, a high school and a historic marker.
WHERE IS IT: Basically, it's a somewhat more crime-filled New Smyrna Beach with some scattered scenes from Miami and South Beach. The beach access and The Breakers Restaurant on Flagler Ave. in NSB are featured in establishing shots early on and at one point mentions the nearby city of Port Orange.
WHERE WAS IT FILMED: Mostly Wilmington, North Carolina, with some scenes shot in other NC locations.
3. Vice City, 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City' (2002) and 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories' (2004)
For many people, their biggest Florida experience was tearing around the fictional Vice City at high speeds, stealing cars, shooting thugs at an alarming rate, and building their criminal empires in the video game "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," the fourth main game in the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto series from Rockstar Games set in pretty much Miami.
"New York is busy and bustling, a real merchant city, whereas Miami is a party town, all sun and sea and sex, but with that same dark edge underneath," Rockstar producer Leslie Benzies said in a 2012 interview.
Apparently, people liked committing crimes in almost-Miami. "GTA: Vice City: was the best-selling video game of 2002 and won numerous awards. "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories" followed two years later.
WHERE IS IT: Miami and Miami Beach.
WHERE WAS IT FILMED: The city was mentioned in the first "Grand Theft Auto" but these versions were clearly modeled after 1980s Miami architecture and nightlife. According to a 2012 retrospect in CraveOnline to celebrate the game getting ported to iPhones, the team watched the 80s show "Miami Vice" regularly as they were developing the game.
4. Miranda Beach, 'Body Heat' (1981)
One of the steamiest, sweatiest movies ever was supposed to be filmed in New Jersey. But after a strike caused a delay the erotic film noir thriller "Body Heat," starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner in her movie debut, was moved to the fictional Miranda Beach in South Florida and into cinematic history. Lawrence Kasdan, making his directorial debut, sent scouts down to the Sunshine State and found Lake Worth Beach, then just Lake Worth.
"I liked the little town feeling on the street, y'know? It was like the little town in my head. And I loved the waterway," Kasdan said in a 2000 interview with The Palm Beach Post, referring to a stretch of the Intracoastal south of Lake Worth. "We have a few shots of the waterway."
South Florida is all over "Body Heat" and Hurt's sleazy character is a proud FSU grad. If you wander around Lake Worth Beach you can still see some landmarks. Fun fact for this famously hot and steamy movie: it was shot in the winter and the actors were freezing during most of it.
WHERE IS IT? Okeelanta County in the movie is just Palm Beach County in disguise.
WHERE WAS IT FILMED? Lake Worth Beach, then just Lake Worth, stood in for Miranda Beach, with some scenes shot in Hollywood. The exteriors of the mansion in the equally fictional "Pinehaven" were shot in Hypoluxo, about 5 miles south. Other scenes were shot in Palm Beach with the final scene shot in Hä'ena, Kaua'i, Hawaii, according to IMDB.
5. Gulfhaven, 'Cougar Town' (2009-2012)
Jules Cobb, a newly divorced single mom in her 40s played by "Friends" star Courteney Cox, jumps back into the dating scene in the west-coast Florida town of Gulfhaven in the sitcom "Cougar Town." The show which ran on ABC and then moved to TBS, left that premise early on but they were stuck with the name.
The show's co-creator, Sarasota native Kevin Biegel, placed Gulfhaven “in some mythical area beneath Sarasota, maybe even beneath Venice, a heretofore undiscovered town. It’s maybe what Sarasota was in the mid-1970s and then kind of translated 20 miles south.”
WHERE IS IT: The title sequence of the show zooms in on the map of Florida with a "Welcome to Cougar Town" sign right around where Venice would be, south of Sarasota. The location is a little fuzzy, though, since in one episode Cobb has to pick up her drunken assistant from a Miami nightclub and tells her son she'll be back in an hour from a drive that should take about 7 hours roundtrip. Details, details.
WHERE WAS IT FILMED: In Miami! Wait, no, sorry, on the Miami Street backlot at the Culver Studios in California. Biegel reportedly pushed hard (and unsuccessfully) for the show to be shot here. "I have an obscene love for this town," he said.
6. Palm Glade, 'The Glades' (2010-2013)
In the A&E show "The Glades," Chicago police detective Jim Longworth (Matt Passmore) moves to the Everglades area to work for the FDLE after getting shot by his captain. His expectations for an easier life after leaving Chicago for the sunnier clime of Florida don't last very long. (Spoiler!)
For once, this one was actually filmed in the Sunshine State.
“I’ve noticed a lot of shows that try to be set there without actually shooting there, and it’s always sort of rankled me a little bit,” Glades’ creator and executive producer Clifton Campbell told the Associated Press in 2010. “So I decided that I wanted to set a show there, not just in South Florida, but in my South Florida, the part of the world that I grew up in, that I think is just as stunningly attractive and interesting and weird and cool as South Beach.”
WHERE IS IT: Somewhere in South Florida.
WHERE WAS IT FILMED: Largely in a soundstage in the Pembroke Park area of Fort Lauderdale, but exterior location shots were filmed nearly every day, Campbell said. Some Tampa locations were shot for the pilot but money issues blocked any more, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
7. Delrona Beach, 'Sunshine State' (2002)
In a state with a Daytona, a DeLand, a Deltona and a Delray, is "Delrona Beach" any more unlikely? That's the setting for the 2002 movie "Sunshine State" starring St. Petersburg native Angela Bassett and Edie Falco, a powerful film about the lives of two women, race relations and corporate greed.
Delrona Beach, located somewhere in North Florida, is primarily white. In one plotline in the movie, a young Black orphan boy is found guilty of setting a parade float for the annual festival on fire and is sent to live with Bassett's character's mother in the also-fictional Lincoln Beach. Meanwhile, a woman running a motel and cafe left to her by her father in Delrona is dealing with regrets and offers to sell.
Filmmaker John Sayles was scouting for another project when he found Amelia Island and became fascinated by the history of American Beach, an area of beachfront property in Nassau County that Black businessman A. L. Lewis led his insurance company to buy. Lewis named it American Beach and established as a place where people of all colors could vacation in the segregated South.
WHERE IS IT: North Florida, roughly around the Amelia Island area.
WHERE WAS IT FILMED: Delrona Beach footage was shot on Amelia Island, about 30 miles north of Jacksonville, with some scenes shot in nearby Fernandina Beach. Some Lincoln Beach scenes were filmed at American Beach.
More fictional Florida spots
There are plenty more imaginary Florida locations in different forms of media.
Disney Springs: From the outside it just looks like a massive shopping complex at Disney World. But the imagineers at Disney changed and expanded the original Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village into its own (shopping-based) town with an entire backstory and artifacts on display, starting from its discovery in the mid-1800s and the gradual development of the four areas of the complex: Marketplace, The Landing, Town Center, and West Side.
Seahaven Island from "The Truman Show": The state where Jim Carrey's character Truman Burbank thought he was living in is never mentioned, but the tiny town where he was raised on TV in a bubble was largely shot in Seaside in the Panhandle. Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz grew up there, in Truman's house, he said in the HBO documentary "The Swamp."
Duma Key, from the Stephen King book: King's mentally shaky Minnesotan contractor moves to Florida on advice of his psychologist only to find (surprise!) strange neighbors and terrifying goings-on. The fictional Duma Key is somewhere between Sarasota and Venice, possibly very near King's own Sarasota County home on Casey Key.
Mayfair, from The Marcia Banks and Buddy Mysteries: This mystery series by author Kassandra Lamb is set in a fictional Central Florida town.
Persimmon Hollow, from the Persimmon Hollow Legacy series: A frontier Florida town that never existed, by author Gerri Bauer.
Tangerine, from the young adult novel of the same name: There is a Tangerine, Florida, actually, but it's not where author Edward Bloor put his version.
Apix: This one's fictional, but it didn't appear in fiction. In the late 1950s there was a small community west of Palm Beach Gardens known for producing fertilizer, only it never really existed beyond a few large plants and a ranch. Apix was created by the U.S. Air Force to hide secret research Pratt & Whitney was doing to develop liquid hydrogen as a fuel. "APIX" stood for "Air Products Incorporated, Experimental."
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Glass Key, Coronado Beach, Vice City: 7 famous fictional Florida towns
