A mock memorial for “Breaking Bad’s” Walter White found a permanent home near Vernon’s Speakeasy.
WHEN ONE OF THE CREEPIEST early sequences in Vince Gilligan’s recent Apple TV series, Pluribus, unfolds in the parking lot of an Albuquerque strip mall, many local viewers instantly recognized actress Rhea Seehorn (Better Call Saul) standing in front of Vernon’s Speakeasy. But the worlds of Gilligan’s imagination collide even further at this Fourth Street location: Just around the corner lies a granite memorial to a certain chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin. After Gilligan’s first Duke City–set series, Breaking Bad, reached its explosive finale in 2013, hundreds of fans held a mock funeral for protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston) at Albuquerque’s Sunset Memorial Park, complete with an engraved headstone. Inscribed “Beloved Husband, Father, Teacher & Entrepreneur” and with a full-haired portrait of White, the stone stood among real graves until grieving families called for its removal. Co-organizer Michael Baird apologized and secured a more tourist-friendly home for the headstone on a wall near his restaurant, Vernon’s Speakeasy, at the Village Shops at Los Ranchos. “After all these years, we still have people from around the world stop by to see it,” says Vernon’s general manager Santo Militello. He adds that Gilligan gave special permission to create the homage, but not everyone got the memo: “Last year, Bryan Cranston was here having dinner for his anniversary and had no idea until we told him!”…