In the 2006 movie “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” main character Sean Boswell meets the local drifting community in a sweeping garage with a spiral ramp — but that garage wasn’t anywhere near Japan. It was thousands of miles away, in an abandoned mall in the South Bay area of greater Los Angeles.
And now, after sitting vacant for more than 25 years, that mall is being demolished.
Since shutting down in 1999, Hawthorne Plaza in Hawthorne has served as the backdrop for other films as well, appearing in the 2014 thriller “Gone Girl” and Steven Spielberg’s 2011 science-fiction film “Minority Report.” The mall was also the setting for Taylor Swift’s 2017 video for the single “…Ready for It?” But after a July 31 court order from the city of Hawthorne declared that demolition at the property should begin no later than Aug. 14, wrecking crews are underway, Patch reports…