Way over on West 59th Street between 10th and 11th is this great little Parks Department rec center, dwarfed on all sides by ultra-modern glass-curtain highrises. Once a bath house, the rec center now houses a public pool. What I especially love about this building are the two aquatic sculptures in the upper corners. In…
I was taking pictures on an empty side-street in Queens near the East River when I suddenly noticed these five guys staring at me from the back of a truck. Haha, OK, it’s obvious in my pictures that it’s just a very high quality photo, but at the time, thinking I was alone, it definitely…
Note: this building is now gone. This building, at Metropolitan and Kent, always has some pretty great (and frequently changing) graffiti, but I especially love the enormous hand that showed up several months ago. It makes me laugh everytime I pass by it. There’s something so direct and obvious about it – “Here’s the door,…
You know you’re going to school in New York City when this is the view out one side of the building… …and this is the view out the other. -SCOUT
There are certain places in NYC that people rave about as being “so unique” and “must see.” I’m trying to think of good examples, but the only one that’s coming to mind is Magnolia Bakery, bakers of cupcakes whose recipe consists entirely of ludicrous amounts of sugar, butter, and flour. Don’t get me wrong, they’re…
Back to Manhattan, where I found myself scouting less and less frequently (it costs way less to shoot in any of the other boroughs). I started in the Lower East Side, or LES if you’re feeling lazy. I love the building ad for S. Beckenstein Fabrics, complete with arrows pointing to the door that takes…
I really don’t know Red Hook. I’ve been down once or twice before for shoots at the shipping docks, but I’ve always thought of it as a no-man’s-land. Among other reasons, there isn’t a subway anywhere in the area (the water taxi is the fastest option to the city), which pretty much kills it as…
One of my favorite streets in Greenpoint, where I was scouting today, is Guernsey St. btw. Meserole and Norman. The street is lined with gnarled trees that are all bent over toward the middle, creating a canopy. It’s more impressive in the summer when it’s in bloom, but still pretty neat regardless. I’ve taken about…
I spent the earlier part of today trolling through the factories of East Williamsburg/Bushwick looking for interesting blocks that could stand-in for an industrial section of Manhattan. One of the great parts about walking through these otherwise deserted stretches of Brooklyn are the smells. There are lots of factories making various food products, and different…
In my opinion, Tribeca is one of the more boring places to live in New York – everything seems to close early, almost as an extension of the Financial District, which is too bad because there’s a lot of fantastic old buildings that have been converted into lofts and office space. Some people still have…