How To with John Wilson

Hey.

Everyone in New York is going to die.

But sometimes the city tries to stop that from happening.

Many people worry about things that can kill them at eye level.

But you're probably more likely to be destroyed

by something above you.

This is why the city has installed

a sprawling network of temporary sidewalk shelters

to protect pedestrians from falling objects.

This is called scaffolding,

and almost everywhere you look in Manhattan,

you are guaranteed to see some form of it.

It's as common as a fire hydrant...

or a honking horn,

but most New Yorkers don't even seem to

give it a second thought.

So, do you have strong thoughts about scaffolding?

No, not at the moment.

I didn't understand why there was so much of it

in New York,

so I went on an expedition to figure out

why anyone would wanna cover up such a handsome city

in so much scaffolding.

There wasn't always this much scaffolding in New York.

the island of Manhattan was a lush, green paradise.

But ever since the Dutch came across the sea

and colonized this unspoiled virgin island,

New York has been a casualty to man's ravenous appetite

for over-development.

Once the original settlers tamed the bedrock,

the only other direction to build was upwards,

towards the heavens.

At this point, New York has some of the oldest,

tallest, uh, most historic buildings in the country.

But their toxic relationship with gravity

has, uh, turned them into a fatal liability.

In 1979, a young student was hit by a brick

that fell off the facade of a building and killed her.

This is the intersection where it happened, right here.

Her name was Grace Gold.

And they renamed the street after her, uh,

a few years later.

After she died, the city passed a local law

which basically says that every building in New York

has to have their façade inspected every five years,

whether the building needs it or not.

This turned New York City scaffolding

into an eight-billion-dollar- a-year industry.

And it doesn't seem like it's gonna be slowing down

anytime soon.

The average scaffold is made of a few simple elements.

Your main vertical pole is called the standard,

or sometimes the upright.

These are usually made of steel or aluminum.

And, um...

Uh...

The people that put up scaffolding

are affectionately known as "scaffies."

And they may do more to alter the landscape

than any other group of people in New York.

They are a polarizing bunch.

Uh... they seem like a vigorous and virile breed.

But there are also hierarchies, uh, within the business

that most people may be unaware of.

A scaffie is someone that actually erects

most of the structure.

A "groundie" is someone that yells at a scaffie

from the street to make sure they're doing the right thing.

The "plankie" is in charge of all the wood.

The "flagger" tells civilians where to walk,

uh, while the "beam boys" move the steel overhead.

The "foremen" make sure that everything is done

according to OSHA safety standards.

Every crew has a... A "hammer guy," uh, just one.

Or sometimes two. Two hammer guys.

Uh, the "roll-dog" drives the crew between job sites.

The "bathroom attendant" gives them a...

A pot to piss in.

The "sweetman" cools them down at the end of a long afternoon.

And Spot here, uh, grabs them the paper.

- (DOG BARKS) Atta boy.

And when they all work together,

this glorious ballet produces a majority

of New York's roughly 280 miles of scaffolding.

Because scaffolding is only meant to be temporary,

the people who put it up usually don't care how it looks.

At best, the design of most scaffolding

is aggressively neutral.

But a lot of people see this

as a divine opportunity to personalize it

and make it their own.

Outside of this building, they covered it in fake vines,

which makes it feel like you're waltzing

through some kind of Italian villa.

just about every culture has made scaffolding its own.

Many residents of New York have discovered practical ways

to make use of scaffolding.

This person turned it into a... a public fitness center.

This person is using scaffolding as an office.

This person, uh, turned it into a ba... a bathroom.

These people turned it into a bedroom.

- (PLAYING FLUTE) This person turned it

into their own personal concert venue.

When I asked him how to get to Carnegie Hall,

he said, uh, he didn't know.

I pass these guys every day,

and they're always playing backgammon

underneath the scaffolding...

day and night, in every kind of weather.

I even met someone who used scaffolding

on a romantic date.

He had scaffolding set up on the side of his house.

It was in Hawaii.

He left me outside when it rained.

That was interesting.

Like this? - Yep, yep.

But picture, um...

of course, without clothes.

Because, like I said, he was a nudist.

And, uh, that's the time he came in with the blindfold,

he used a whip on me.

And, um, he... he edged me while I was blindfolded,

then he'd just walk away.

And, um, session lasted about two hours.

And then he did finish me off,

and I squirted all over the floor.

I went to a museum in Queens,

and they had an art installation

that was entirely made out of scaffolding.

It was heavily decorated with, uh, waterfalls and stuff...

and even a bunch of hammocks

that people could relax on.

They even paid 22 dollars each

for the chance to admire it and interact with it.

I guess it doesn't take much to transform

such a common object into something extraordinary.

It's kind of like when a superhero puts on a cape

and for some reason, no one can recognize them anymore.

And when I left, I noticed that every single building

outside the museum had scaffolding up in front of it.

But nobody seemed to want to interact with this stuff.

Since the dawn of cinema,

scaffolding has offered a setting

for some of our wildest fantasies.

Countless action scenes have taken place

on or around scaffolding.

This includes pretty much every movie

that Jackie Chan has ever been in.

It seems like the poor guy just can't catch a break

whenever there's construction going on.

It's probably so popular because it's a modular set piece

that is stable enough to fight on

and makes sense in almost any environment.

It often transmits that whatever property they're on

is not worthy of respect,

and that any damage they do to the structure

is of no significance.

It's a great place for comedy too...

and drama.

It's industrial, yet romantic,

and its erotic qualities cannot be denied.

There are a lot of iconic buildings

that show up all the time in movies about New York City.

There's usually never anything obstructing them

in the establishing shots, but in reality,

all of these buildings are usually covered

by a bunch of scaffolding.

Here's the Flatiron Building in The Usual Suspects...

and here's what it usually looks like.

Here's the Plaza Hotel

in the background of Midnight Cowboy...

and here it is in real life.

Here's Tiffany's in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's...

and here... And there's scaffolding.

Here's 101 Park Avenue in Gremlins 2,

and it seems like it's one of the few buildings

that's untouched in real...

Nope, actually, there... There's scaffolding there too.

We cover ourselves in scaffolding all the time.

Uh, braces are scaffolding of the mouth.

A cast can be a scaffold for the limbs.

A brassiere is scaffolding for the breast.

These things give us structure, support, and protection.

We even have scaffolding in our bodies,

inside every cell.

Um, this is the scaffolding protein

- in pink here. Ah.

And this is the three different proteins

you might have positioned on it that need to work together.

Could we live without scaffolding proteins

- in our bodies? - No. No.