Scouting Ny

I love Manhattan cemeteries like Marble, in part because of how annoyed they must make developers -- these are multi-million dollar plots of land permanently dedicated for rotting remains.

I notice the owls every time I cross the Williamsburg Bridge. As it happens, the principal of the school saw my previous post and generously invited me to visit the roof. I took a ton of pictures.

Polanski brilliantly uses the city to induce a heavy sense of claustrophobia: despite being in such a teeming metropolis, Rosemary is trapped for most of the film in the her dusty old apartment.

You may have seen it from the road in Garrison, NY: a fairy tale-like castle poking out from the trees at the top of a mountain. It may have been L. Frank Baum's inspiration for the castle in the Wizard of Oz.

I don't look back nostalgically on the grittier New York of the late 1970s. As I never experienced it first hand, I believe it's dangerous and naive to romanticize something the city has worked to rise up from.

When we last left off, Travis Bickle was cruising through Times Square. We then catch him uptown as he makes a drop off at the Hotel Olcott at 27 West 72nd Street.

Finding the locations used in Taxi Driver turned out to be incredibly difficult; the film documents a city that has since been demolished, rebuilt, spit-shined, and stamped with a seal of approval.

Nearly every location in my new film subject has been demolished or completely renovated since the movie was made over 30 years ago.

Recently, I've been scouting New York looking for Detroit (don't ask), a search that ultimately led me to northern Jersey and the White Mana Diner -- originally created for the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing.

Next time you're heading over the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn, be sure to check out the public school on the south side. PS 110's roof is covered in owls.

A full shot-by-shot dissection to see what New York once was and what it has become -- by way of Ghostbusters scenes.

Reliving the magic of Ghostbusters through pictures of New York, then and now.

On a trip to Brooklyn's Borough Hall, a mysterious plastic rock captures my eye. Is it for passing along top secret notes, or is there a more insidious purpose?

Whenever a film or TV show needs to film in a prison location, the go-to place to scout is a decommissioned jail at the Nassau County Correctional Facility.

Could this be a new trend? After all, Manhattan is completely out of ground space.

Roosevelt Island's Main Street has to be one of the most depressing places in New York City. Lined with ugly, box-shaped brown buildings that block out the sun, it seems to exist in perpetual darkness.