Scouting Buenos Aires

A favorite read of mine is Scouting NY.  The writer works as a film scout and his blog is a documentation of what catches his eye in New York.  In one post he writes:

As I was going down Grove St today, I passed a bus load of tourists gawking at the apartment used in the sitcom Friends, located on the corner at Bedford Street. Nope, I’m too jaded to even look up. As I watched them snap thousands of pictures, I began thinking how much I like exploring the outer boroughs, because there’s just so much more of the unique and unexpected.

That’s when I saw something that surprised even me. What’s unusual about this picture?

Visit the site to read his how he escapes the tourist trap, but keep in mind his job is to look for locations suited to film.  Someone in his same position walked down Grove St. in the early 90’s and flagged that Bedford corner as a means to establish shot for six friends at “a time in your life when everything’s possible” — that’s how the creators put it in their original pitch to NBC.

A film scout makes a career out of negotiating what is already known about a landscape with his clients’ more particular fiction.  Tricky business for someone too jaded to look up.  And you have to wonder, for someone so sensitive to cliché, is he just trading one image trap to manufacture another?  He might be responsible for the Friends tour bus of the future.  You could read a samsara cycle into that, and oh hey, the little joke behind Scout’s surprise is that the building hidden in the corner folds is owned by a bunch of Buddhists.

There are many surprises.  It’s a blog of surprises.  He’s not a factoid freak or an encyclopedist and I don’t think he cares to compare his knowledge of the city with anybody else as a point of contest, although those things are sort of fun and you can see it in the comments.  He’s upbeat about his discoveries and the photography is attentive, and I appreciate anyone who can bring people down a well trotted path and point out what’s beautiful.

This is all to say, I like his approach.

As a goodbye to the place I’m leaving behind, here’s a picture from my NY barrio: