When you live and work in New York, you spend a huge amount of time on tv and movie sets. Most of the time the sets are abandoned by the shooting crews, but very frequently tv or movie magic is happening as you are walking by.

Why is New York so overrepresented on screen? Part of it is because it's New York. But it's also because the city government is also very friendly to the moving picture industry.

When I worked on a website for Kenneth Cole, I learned an interesting factoid: the real name of this fashion powerhouse is Kenneth Cole Productions. It turns out that in the early days they abused a perk that the city gives to movie people: ability to park their huge trailers in places where normally only city services vehicles can linger. Cole applied for a permit to shoot a movie called "The Birth of a Shoe Company", parked a huge truck in front of a hotel where a major shoe show was taking place, and proceeded to sell enough shoes while cameras were rolling (sometimes even with film) to start a company.

While watching a movie or a show set in New York I get a lot of "oh, hey it's" and a lot of "hmm, where's that?" moments. Sometimes a movie or a show becomes more memorable just because its locations are so familiar to me.

Let me give you some examples about how cinematically impregnated my environs are. Take, for instance 30 Rock. I spent 7 years working in two buildings that are behind 30 Rock, and every little thing in, under and over Rockefeller plaza is seared in my brain. Also, I have the same last name of one of the actors (is Jane Krakowski a relative? Probably not).

The 47-50th Street/Rockefeller Center subway station that I got out at almost every day for those 7 years (unless I missed a few stops while reading or sleeping) is the one featured in a key scene in Darren Aranofsky's "Pi". The Brighton Beach bus stop in "Requiem for a Dream" - one of my first American jobs was right there, handing out fliers for a gypsy psychic. One of the buildings where I worked, 1211 Avenue of the Americas was very subtly featured as Sideshow Bob's prisoner number in a Simpson's episode.

Sterling Cooper corporate headquarters are famously located at a non-existing 405 Madison Avenue. On the other hand 415 Madison Avenue is a very real building where my wife used to work.

When I go to and from work now, I pass a grating which John McClane ripped off in one of the Die Hard movies to jump on the top of a moving train. The building where I work? Well, it doubles as the Massive Dynamic headquarters on "Fringe". They do a lot of shooting at the floor where I work. You can see our big conference room called "Jail" in a number of commercials. You know, Doctor House, he's supposed to stay in New Jersey, but one time he slept on "my" couch at the office after shooting a commercial there. The butterflies of doom from Fringe also live in "Jail".

Ironically, the only famous person who went to my hight school is Larry David, the co-creator of a certain show about nothing set in New York, but shot in LA.

New York is like a hot girl in high school. One that's easy to love, easy to hate, and easy to pretend that you don't care about at all (since she does not notice you anyway). New York is beautiful, ugly, cruel and kind -- all at the same time. They are both high  maintenance and high rent.

My high school experience was surprisingly non-traumatic. I never tried to pretend to be someone I'm not, to hide my geekiness and foreignness.  Strangely enough  that made me feel like I actually fit in, even though  I probably did not.  And while I "missed my chance" in high school, my love affair with New York City is going strong.

Side Note: my high school's only famous alumni is Larry David, creator of Seinfeld and the inspiration for the character of George Costanza.

Tourists to New Yorkers are what geeks and nerds are to jocks.  This highly insensitive sign in front of the currently inaccessible to the public lobby of the Woolworth Building.

I spent the last 14 years in New York, but to this day I have not lost the feeling of being a tourist. I constantly carry a brick of a camera with me (mostly in my bag, but often on a strap around my neck) and  gawk at the skyscrapers. Most of my co-workers avoid Times Square like the plague because of all the slow moving tourists. I, on the other hand, feel at home there.

If the tourist is the lowest of New York's inhabitants, there's even more gradation. New York is not just Manhattan. There are 4 other boroughs plus Long Island and New Jersey, denizens of which can only reach Manhattan via a bridge or a tunnel and are collectively known as "the bridge and tunnel crowd" .  The moniker is not precise --  there are four other ways to reach the city the I know of:  ferry, water taxi, helicopter taxi, and Roosevelt Island Tram.  I am a proud bridge and tunneler as well.

One of my first jobs in Brooklyn was circular delivery -- those annoying little advertisement newspapers that you find wedged into your door or mailbox.  I spent a lot of time methodically crisscrossing  Brooklyn's street grid, visiting many different neighborhoods.  I used to mark the street map that I visited to make sure that I covered the area that I was supposed to cover. I wonder if they use GPS to insure that the delivery men cover their area now. There are few things that I like more than walking Manhattan's streets, watching people and arhitecture and taking pictures.

I am thinking of two projects. First - visiting every single street in Manhattan with the help of GPS. I believe that this was done already, as well as my ongoing (but mostly unpublished NYC Tarot photography project). But secondly, I want to take a series of photographs from the middle of Manhattan's street intersections - there's something about the view of NYC's streets from the intersections that fascinates me, and it's a view that few people explore.