Insider footage of New York City’s most peculiar and exotic locations is about to become a lot harder to access.
Nick Carr, New York’s favorite location scout, is heading West, and pulling the plug on one of our favorite blogs, Scouting New York.
In a post the 33-year-old blogger and location scout released on Tuesday morning, Carr announced that he would be moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in directing and screenwriting.
"Last year, my latest script started getting an extremely positive response, earning the attention of a manager. It quickly became apparent that if I want to make a serious attempt at this, I need to be in Los Angeles," Carr wrote.
Fresh out of Columbia University and pining for a point-of-entry into the movie industry, Carr accepted his first position as a location scout on the set of War of the Worlds approximately a decade ago, he wrote on his blog.
The pay was small ($100 a week, according to Carr’s post), but over the years, Carr’s knowledge of production and New York City locales grew — and he shared it with anyone with an Internet connection.
From the smallest graveyard in Manhattan to the abandoned palace at 5 Beekman St., Carr provided blog guests with an all-access pass to some of the city’s most interesting and otherwise inaccessible locales.
"My time in New York taught me how to really look at and experience a city," Carr said.
"You can walk with your head down, or you can look up, and see so much going on. My experience in New York really taught me to open my eyes."
Media outlets took notice of that. In the past five years alone, Carr and his blog have been featured everywhere from NPR’s “All Things Considered” and WNYC, to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
But what Carr put on the site was less important than the reactions they generated, Carr said.
"Once I wrote about an old converted hotel, the Valencia, in Queens," said Carr.
"All these people wrote in to share their experiences, and what it meant to them. That's what made the website so special, that people would find each other, remember each other, interact and share their experiences."
Site fans are responding to Carr's news accordingly. Upon announcing that he will be putting an end to Scouting New York, Carr has received dozens of messages wishing him well and saying that he will be missed.
Before you get too upset about the end of an era, though, know this: Carr has already launched a new website, Scouting Los Angeles, which will follow the same format as its New York predecessor.
