Red Hook's Picture Cars Provides Cool Old Rides for the Movies

I was walking on Broadway near Lincoln Center when I saw a flatbed truck come to a quick stop at a red light. The truck was towing a yellow cab. I figured it had to be engine trouble, because the taxi looked to be in perfect condition?too good, in fact, for a New York City cab. Then I saw that the truck was from Picture Cars, a business that supplies movies and tv shows with vehicles.

Picture Cars is located down under the Gowanus Expressway in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Last week on a bright cool fall afternoon I walked down the Old World streets of Carroll Gardens, heading toward foreboding Red Hook, land of junkyards and truncated streets. I lost my bearings and had to find a way to get under the expressway. I stopped into a no-name deli with four rotting bananas and a couple of aging boxes of cereal. It had none of the great Italian deli meats you can find elsewhere in the area. Whatever this deli was, it wasn't earning its money selling food. Still, a pleasant middle-aged Italian woman gave me excellent directions.

I found Huntington St. and saw the glass storefront of Picture Cars. The street was empty except for a chocolate-brown 1973 Mustang that looked like Starsky and Hutch might jump out of it. You take out a pad and pen and start looking at cars on a Red Hook street, you'll draw a crowd right quick. A short Latino man who introduced himself as Junior asked if I was here to see Picture Cars. I asked if the '73 Mustang was one of theirs.

"No, a mechanic down the street owns that. Come on."

Junior led me into a big garage. On the walls were signs that read Bomb Squad, Mortuary, F.D.N.Y., N.Y.P.D., and the numbers for every precinct in the city. Junior told me they put them on different vehicles depending on what the shoot calls for. I walked past one yellow cab being worked on and wondered where they kept their stock. Then Junior took me to a huge metal door and pushed the UP button. The doors opened to a huge outdoor lot. The afternoon sun glanced off of scores of trucks, buses and cars.

"You see this one?" Junior took me over to a yellow cab that was an exact replica of a working hack?it even had a medallion screwed into the hood. "This cab was on Letterman last night. They call us all the time for cabs."

I asked if he was ever tempted to take one of the cabs out on the street and earn a little extra money.

"No. We better not. We had a cab out once and the Taxi & Limousine Commission cops pulled us over. They checked everything and then followed us to the shoot and checked with the movie people."

Junior told me that Picture Cars has been in business for 20 years. He's been working there for nine. He seems to like his job and took pride in it as he showed me around the lot. There were cop cars, taxis, buses, ambulances, news vans and just plain old regular 70s and 80s vehicles.

"These cars been in everything. Movies, tv, you name it. We worked for Die Hard with a Vengeance and The Thomas Crown Affair. Lots of them." Junior led me over to a Checker cab. I looked in and remembered when these dinosaurs once hogged the streets of Manhattan. Back by the fence were two other Checkers with green fenders. I asked Junior what they had been used for.

"Those were made up like that for, I think, a movie or tv show that they did in Baltimore. I think the cabs looked like that years ago. We can change any of these cars to look whatever way they need. They ask for it, we do it."

I asked Junior if they had any real old vehicles, like 1930s gangster cars. He said that most of the vehicles on the lot were made in the last 30 years. Picture Cars does the majority of their business in police cars, ambulances, buses and taxis. All the vehicles are road ready. Some ambulances were once used as real ambulances, but most of the others were bought and then taken to a man out in Queens who paints them and fills in all the details. Most of the cop cars were the older blue-and-white variety, with a few of the newer white ones. In the back of the lot was a black-and-white police car.

"That's for when they're shooting in a city with different police cars from New York. When we travel we have to put them in a panel truck because they don't want anyone seeing them on the highway."

Junior took me over to a huge emergency service vehicle with the old SWAT decal on it.

"This one is real. A real SWAT truck. It's from 1969."

He led me over to a chainlink fence and showed me the second lot of Picture Cars. Business was good here. I told Junior I was amazed that Red Hook had such an unusual operation.

"Lot of room here," he shrugged.