This is a game called Find The Scaffolding.
I’m going to use Google Street View to drop myself into a random part of New York City,
and then we’re going to, you guessed it, find the scaffolding.
Let’s start in the Financial District, because we’re big business bois.
Aaand, scaffolding.
And behind us… look at that, bonus scaffolding!
Alright, Upper East Side–wait for ittt… aaaand scaffolding.
Harlem: I actually don’t see any.
Wait… what’s behind that tree?
Could it be….
scaffolding!
You know what, let’s do all the boroughs.
Brooklyn: scaffolding.
Queens: scaffolding.
Bronx: scaffolding.
Staten Island: oh shoot; there’s no scaffolding.
Let’s try again.
Staten Island: still no scaffolding.
One more time–Staten Island: Alright, well, there’s no scaffolding but what did you
expect; it’s Staten Island, we’re lucky there are any buildings at all.
Don’t believe me?
Open up google and try it for yourself.
Seriously, go try it.
Just promise to come back and finish watching the video.
Or honestly, just promise to watch the ad.
Or, if you don’t want to play, just look at this map.
Each blue dot represents scaffolding, and as you can see, there are so many blue dots
it looks like a Smurf rave.
In fact, if you were to take all the scaffolding in New York and line it up end to end, you’d
get arrested immediately because civilians are not allowed to steal scaffolding to make
rhetorical points.
But if you managed to evade the cops, you’d find that there are 340 miles or 550 kilometers
worth of scaffolding in the Big Apple, enough to travel from New York City to this point
in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that’s 340 miles away from New York City.
So what’s going on here?
Well, first I should leapfrog the commenters and make a quick correction: technically,
these are not called scaffolding.
This is scaffolding; these things are called sidewalk sheds, because they’re on the sidewalk,
and I think they shed be burned in hell.
But why, instead of being in hell, are they all over the streets of New York?
Well, a lot of people might assume it’s because New York City is always building new
construction projects, which is true, New York is the #1 ranked metro area for new construction.
But that’s only part of the reason: Dallas is ranked #2 in construction, but drop yourself
in downtown Dallas and there’s not a scaffold in sight: just a giant eyeball statue to remind
everyone that God is always watching, and he’s disappointed in you.
In order to understand the real reason every street in New York looks like a level of Donkey
Kong, we have to go back to 1979, when Grace Gold, a seventeen-year-old freshman at Barnard
College, was walking near Broadway and 115th street and was tragically killed by a falling
piece of masonry from this building.
The city responded by passing Local Law 10 in 1980, later amended by Local Law 11 in
1998, which required that all buildings higher than six stories must have their facades inspected
every five years.
If they fail inspection, the building owner is required to repair the facade, and in the
meantime, install a sidewalk shed to protect people from falling debris.
The problem is, the law isn’t working as intended.
Buildings fail inspection all the time, basically because New York is chock-full of very old
buildings whose exterior masonry was done back when people were still using cocaine
to cure toothaches.
But you know what’s really expensive: repairing the facades of very old buildings with exterior
masonry was done back when people were still using cocaine to cure toothaches.
You know what isn’t that expensive?
Indefinitely leaving up a sidewalk shed.
You see, there’s no law limiting how long a sidewalk shed can stay up, and while there
are fines for not conducting facade repairs, they’re poorly enforced.
So for most building owners, it’s cheaper to just leave up the shed, pay the occasional
fine, and hope residents don’t mind paying $3,000 a month to live in a building that
they’ve never actually seen.
So, that’s exactly what they do.
That’s why a building like, for example, 409 Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, has been covered
with this sidewalk shed for 15 years.
In 2019, the Department of Buildings announced they’d be stepping up enforcement of fines
and taking legal action against buildings owners who delay necessary repairs, which
would theoretically reduce the number of sidewalk sheds.
And I think that’s great; in fact, why don’t we all stop by the Department of Buildings’
Manhattan office and thank them for trying to get rid of sidewalk sheds.
It’s right here at… oh.
Of course they have one, but don’t worry, it’s only been up for thirteen years.
While some city officials have proposed new laws to limit sidewalk sheds, basically nothing
has actually been done––likely in part because Local Law 11 has helped to create
a massive, $1 billion scaffolding industry in New York City.
But even if New Yorkers can’t get rid of the scaffolding, they can at least make it
look better, right?
Well, not really.
While there have been a few city-approved projects to let local artists paint sidewalk
sheds, most building owners will face a fine up to $10,000 if their sheds don’t maintain
the very specific artistic vision of noted short person Michael Bloomerg, whose mayoral
administration decided that all standard sidewalk sheds must be painted a very specific color:
“Hunter Green 1390,” produced by National Paint Industries of North Brunswick, NJ–a
color that’s likely used for the same reasons that Disney uses its famed “Go Away Green”
to paint infrastructure in the park they don’t want people to notice.
In 2009, though, City Hall held a widely publicized competition to develop better sidewalk sheds,
and the winner was this: the Urban Umbrella.
But, if you can believe it, it turned out this is more expensive than this, and given
that this entire problem stems from building owners trying to be cheap, basically nobody
wanted to pay four times more money to inconvenience people more stylishly.
Alright, now we’re going to do something exciting.
You’re about to be the first people to see the teaser for our upcoming Nebula Original:
HAI’s Crime Spree.
This is quite literally the craziest thing we’ve ever made, and it’ll be releasing
on February 16th, but I wanted you all to be able to see the trailer now because until
tomorrow CuriosityStream is running a huge sale where you get 42% off an annual subscription
at CuriosityStream.com/HAI, so it comes out to less than a dollar a month, and Nebula
is bundled into that for free.
Oh, also I’m on-screen in this, so if you want to keep the fantasy of the disembodied
voice, stop watching, but if not, here’s the teaser.
Once again, the prices at CuriosityStream.com/HAI are the lowest they’ve ever been with this
sale, which lasts until tomorrow night, so if you want to see this Nebula-exclusive series
when it comes out, make sure to head over there now.