The Breaking Bad house had to build a fence

3828 Piermont Drive NE in Albuquerque is a low tan ranch house with a gravel yard and a basketball hoop. A family has lived there since 1973. For five seasons it was the home of Walter White.

The production shot the exterior and, unusually, a great deal of the interior in the real house, working around the owner. She has said she never watched much of the show.

Then came the pizza.

In one episode Walter, at the end of a bad day, hurls a whole pizza onto the roof of his house. Bryan Cranston landed it in one take, entirely by accident, and the shot went in. Fans decided this was a ritual. People began driving to Piermont Drive with pizzas and throwing them at a stranger's roof at all hours. Others took gravel from the driveway as souvenirs. Some knocked and asked for tours.

The showrunner eventually recorded a public plea asking people to stop, in blunt terms, pointing out that a real person lived there and none of this was funny.

The family installed a six foot wrought iron fence. There is now signage. Police have been called more than once.

The house is still on the tour route and buses still slow down, and most visitors are perfectly polite, photographing from the street and leaving. The gravel level in the yard has stabilized.

There is a lesson in this that keeps repeating with famous houses, from Amityville to Astoria to Winnetka. A location becomes a shared possession in the mind of an audience while remaining, in fact, someone's kitchen.

The Whites moved out in the finale. The actual owners never did.