Hey guys,
today we are in lower Manhattan and the
first thing I am going to show you today,
is a place called Courtlandt alley. Now
this is possibly the most famous alley in New
York City.
Whenever a film is being made, this is
the alley that they will use if there's
a scene that
features an alley. Now we are going to
take a walk all the way down here,
but just give you some idea, if you
ever watched
Boardwalk Empire, the scene where
Maggie goes to visit her family, well
they were stood across the street from
where I am right now,
but this is the alley that she came to
meet her brother and her sister.
So she would have pulled up actually
right where I am right now,
like right here, but I can't step on the
road obviously.
But just yo give you some idea, some of
the other films that have been here,
Crocodile Dundee was filmed here, the Chinese film, Mojin - The Lost
legend, Men in Black 3 was filmed down
here, NYPD Blue, you've got commercials,
music videos, Nine and a Half Weeks
had a scene filmed down here,
and Law and Order, that's amongst
many, many films that have been filmed
down this alley here.
So if you ever watch a film and they're
in New York and they shoot it down an
alleyway,
nine times out of ten it's going to be
down this alley right here.
Now the list is endless of the amount of
films that have been
shot down here, and what we're going to
do is we're going to take a walk down,
just to see the peace and serenity. Now
as you can see it's absolutely packed in
Manhattan today,
but you watch when we walk down this
alley, it's gonna go dead quiet.
Now in the scene in Boardwalk Empire, if
you remember, there was
washing lines going from building to building,
and probably not this block, probably the
next block along is where most of them are going to be shot.
Well as you can see we were.....
now this is actually what makes me
laugh, these are one of the
loading docks, and I often wonder
how do they fill the loading docks
here.
You know, I mean they make do for a good lunch counter as well.
Now there is some construction going on
down there,
hopefully there's a pathway for me to go
down.
Take a walk across the street and see,
yeah, it looks like I can go down there.
Now if I didn't say the name of it, it's
Courtlandt Alley.
It's got the old cast iron window
shutters there,
really old fire escapes.
Imagine one of them clunking you on the head!
Now a really interesting building right
here on the corner.
This building here used to be the Mudd
Club
back between 1979 and 1983.
And this was kind of like the
downtown
portion of studio 54.
The amount of people that walked through
these doors right here is incredible.
It used to be, it wasn't just the one
floor where the Mudd Club was, this is
where the disco was,
but all the way up they would have art
galleries
and different shows going on up there.
Oh in fact look, it's even got it right
there.
So hopefully you can
get a good view of what I'm doing there.
That gives you some of the idea of the
people that
came here, I believe that the B-52s opened this club.
And people like David Bowie, Roger
Daltrey,
The Ramones, Talking Heads filmed here.
The people I mentioned they actually
came here not performed,
Andy Warhol, just an eclectic
mix of people
used to hang out in this really
wonderful club right here.
Now it does go all the way back,
so the Mudd Club would have been like you know, all the way down to that door there.
If you look online for some pictures
from the Mudd Club, you will see some
wonderful eccentric characters.
So like I said you had Studio 54,
this was like the kind of punky area
instead of Studio 54.
So you would have Blondie down here.
Anyway, that was the Mudd Club,
and we're pretty much at the end of Courtlandt Alley here, so it's a
somewhat shorter video today.
But, it's the most famous alley in New
York City,
and I would be remiss if I didn't go
ahead and film that for you.
Now as you know I do like building architecture.
So let's have a quick look and see if
there is anything special on this
building here.
Well,
not sure if you can see that face right
there,
in fact there's one right on the side there as well.
Now most people who come to New York
City they miss out on a lot of
architectural building
statues. Obviously you're looking
straight ahead,
you don't necessarily want to be looking
up one or two flights, but, if
you are ever in New York give it a shot,
have a look up and you'll see some
amazing architecture there.
Anyway, that's the video for today guys, I hope you enjoyed that,
and we'll be back real soon with the
next video.
