To achieve a realistic environment, 60–70 employees from Rockstar North travelled to New York for research: first at the beginning of the project in March or April 2005 for a week and a half, and a smaller trip in 2007. Police officers who previously worked the beat drove the team around Washington Heights. A full-time research team based in New York handled further requests for information, such as the ethnic minority of a neighbourhood or videos of traffic patterns. Videos shot in New York were played on televisions at the Rockstar North offices "so while they worked they could look up and there was New York". Benzies claimed that the team took over 100,000 photographs on location in New York, though Garbut estimates that they took around 250,000. They also studied architectural plans for apartments, used satellite images to determine city block layout, researched sales figures for models of cars, and read books that detailed the city's infrastructure, including its subways, sewers, and garbage disposal. Hove Beach is based on Brighton Beach, which Sam Houser found "pretty incredible" and unusual; the name is based on the English city Brighton and Hove, made up of the former neighbouring towns Brighton and Hove. Houser appreciated that Brighton Beach was home to several Eastern Europeans due to the nature of the game's characters.