Until about six years ago, Claudia Bloom led a pretty typical life on Manhattans Upper East Side, watching her sons basketball games at the 92nd Street Y, shopping at Fairway and biking in Central Park. But after her son left for college, Ms. Bloom, a weekend surfer, decided to embrace the scene full time, so she moved to Arverne, a neighborhood near Rockaway Beach, Queens. Soon thereafter, she started a new company, Rock Locations.
This is how the business launched, Ms. Bloom said. I walked into the surf shop on my corner, which is where I bought my board from, and I was talking to the owners, and I looked around the store, and I said, The shop is so cool, has it ever been in a commercial?
It hadnt. Ms. Bloom, who knew something about the entertainment industry as a former actor and casting director, immediately saw the untapped visual potential of the Rockaways. So, she decided to add location scout to her résumé. Now she represents 56 businesses and 39 homes (plus three houseboats and a sailboat) in the area, matching them with potential clients like television and film producers, photographers, book publishers and nonprofits anyone looking for a particular urban beach vibe.read more
How a Rockaways Location Scout Spends Her Sundays
