[ Telephone ringing ] >> Good morning.

Greenwich.

No, we -- we're located at 56 Seventh Avenue South.

We're a block and a half south of Bleecker Street.

We're between Commerce and Morton.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you very much.

She's never gonna find the fucking place.

Doesn't even know where Bleecker Street is.

[ Laughter ] How can you not know where Bleecker Street is when you're in the Village?

If you don't know where Bleecker Street is, forget it.

[ Rock music plays ] I had a lady come in yesterday with a lock that was probably 150 years old.

Big giant mortice lock.

And -- and she was so unaware of what she had there, and -- and how rare it was.

I opened up the lock, there's some broken parts inside, and springs had to be made.

I quoted her a cheap price.

She thought it was too much money.

Her husband calls me up and says, "We're gonna buy a new one."

I said, "How are you gonna buy a new one?"

I said, "Use your brain.

Look at this lock.

You can't buy a new one."

But I said, "You know, good luck.

Go to Home Depot."

I said, "I'm sure they have one."

But these are intelligent people.

How can they be so fuckin' stupid?

[ Metal grinding ] As of right now, I think I have... I think it's 48 years I've been doin' this.

48 years' experience being a locksmith.

What I want is to leave something.

I gotta leave somethin' behind.

I don't -- I just don't wanna die and people say, "Oh, he's forgotten about in two years or a year or six months," even though I have a locksmith shop there for 31 years.

They could forget you.

I just wanna be known in the Village, that -- that I'm this locksmith who lived in the Village.

This is what he left behind.

This is what he did.

>> I've known Phil since he's probably 10 years old, and as a kid, he was always interested in tools, interested in mechanics and stuff.

And I was always playing with cars, so... He lived down the block from me, and after working on locks all day, we'd come home and work on engines and this and that.

And one way or another, he wound up in the locksmith business.

>> And... >> At first, he was, like, our lunch boy.

He'd send... My cousin would send him for lunch.

And what he'd eat for lunch, you could feed, like, six people.

And anything that anybody... the five, six, seven people that worked in the shop didn't eat, he would eat, so he's some piece of work.

And my cousin is very good at givin' nicknames.

So he automatically became The Alligator.

>> Yeah, yeah.

He was somethin'.

Gator's all right.

>> I don't know how many years ago he arrived, but it's one of the blessings that Greenwich Village got.

He's an important piece of the community.

He sometimes won't charge me for keys because he said, "How many years do I know you?

I can't charge."

>> Years ago, you used to have some guys who were real craftsmen.

You had pride when you fixed somethin' and you put it back together, and they said, "This lock, you can't get anymore and you need a new door."

Well, we'd make a lock.

Do what we had to do.

>> The future of keyless entry is biometrics.

So simply just put your finger on the terminal.

The door just open and close.

And here's the software that can actually give you the control to remote the door.

>> Well, the future of locksmithing is all electronic.

There used to be umbrella repair shops, right?

How many umbrella repair shops do you see anymore?

These are things that are gonna happen.

And it's okay.

I'm gonna get across the line before it happens.

I'm all right, you know?

Being a locksmith isn't... The way I do it is a dying art.

There are parts changes today.

They're not gonna take that lock off the door and fix it.

They're gonna take it off the door, throw it out, and put a new one on, which is okay.

But every now and then, quite often, especially when you're dealing with churches and old buildings, you can't do that.

You need a time machine.

'Cause you can't go out and buy a new one.

So then they need me to make it.

When I -- when I was going to junior high school -- it was the last thing I went to, was junior high school -- the principal told me that I was gonna be a burden to society.

There hasn't been a year in my life when I -- and it still -- I was 18 years old -- where I haven't employed at least two people and as many as 12.

I mean, it's no big fuckin' numbers.

I'm not -- you know, I'm not a giant company.

But that's a hell of a burden.

What people don't realize is there's five trucks out there and six employees that are out there doing work.

They look at the shop, they see this little shop, and they say, "Okay, he's cutting keys," which is fine.

'Cause I'll tell you what.

Uh, I love cutting keys outta there.

It's nice.

But I have to figure out parts, material, labor, their time, and bill all that stuff out.

I put a good 12 hours in on a Sat-- or Sunday.

That's what happens.

Six hours for the billing and about six hours is for bullshit.

I squeeze, in a very small amount of time, a lot.

Once you master certain things, you get bored with it.

And I was always looking for different things in locksmithing that could be more challenging.

I decided, I guess it was in the '90s, that I was gonna become, like, the best safe man ever.

Safe work is -- is related to locksmithing.

I mean, it's -- it is locksmithing.

It's just a different type of mechanism.

From a businessman standpoint, I said, you know, not many people do safes.

It'd be a good market to get into.

[ Rock music plays ] You gotta realize, the engineers that have developed this safe and figured out ways of having you not get into it, and here's somebody who comes along who went up to the 8th grade and opens it.

They gotta feel like shit.

I love that.

And every time I open one up, it's, like, you know, you know, you spent a lot of money going to school.

[ Laughs ] For a while there, I was it in New York City for safes.

I mean, I was working everywhere.

I never used to go to my shop.

I used to be out there in my truck going to the banks and all these different places that had safes.

The high-end safes, too.

A lot of jewelry safes, a lot of bank vaults.

I got it open.

When I started workin' on safes, it's because I was really bored with locksmithing.

There was -- there was no challenges that locksmithing was ever gonna give me again.

And it was fun for a while, and then they became as boring as locksmithing.

[ Laughs ] Three or four years ago, I -- I made a collage on this door with all these keys, you know?

I figured, "Okay, and I'll just do it and I like it.

You know, if nobody else likes it, it's fine.

They don't like it, that's fine too."

Well, people went bananas over this door, man.

They went fuckin' crazy.

So I said, "Let's make a chair out of keys, you know?"

I made the chair out of keys, and -- and people loved that even more than the door.

Then I said, "Ah.

I'm gonna cover the fuckin' building with keys."

All right, well, the keys are gonna be installed, basically, from here to here.

This is the panel straight up around the safe and across the top.

Over the top of the sign, up to the sides of the sign where it's broken, and then we're gonna go right across.

That sign's coming off, that Medeco sign.

Panel's going there.

Then we're gonna follow right down over here.

We're gonna start... When we install it, we're gonna start from the top, because if there's any problem with the measuring, I'd rather have the mistake on the bottom than on the top where everybody's gonna see it.

I can always fix the mistake on the bottom a lot easier than I can having to go back up there on a ladder and readjust everything.

So we're gonna start from the top and work our way down, as opposed to building a real building where you start from the bottom and work your way up.

Except on Pluto where there's no gravity, and then you can start anywhere you want.

[ Laughs ] It's like a key temple.

That's what I got this vision, too.

I wanted this key temple.

Like, -- like, you know, the whole building's made out of keys.

When you go inside, it's keys.

It's all keys.

I come home, usually, like, on Saturday night.

And I usually leave back for the city Sunday night.

So through that time, I have to do all my family stuff.

Have dinner, do my paperwork.

All the stuff... the regular family stuff.

>> I forget.

>> No, it was beautiful.

But it was basically to cool down, so it wasn't so hot.

>> Oh.

>> So we said that's, like... >> Some more mozzarella.

>> The kids are pretty much out of the house.

I mean, Phillip's 24, Mallory's 20.

About every five years, I move my family.

I don't necessarily move.

My family moves.

It sounds, I guess, terrible, but it's not that bad as it sounds.

And now we're about seven or eight years, I'm not sure, over here in Jersey.

I had an apartment on Grove Street for part of that time.

For about two years, I didn't have any apartment.

I was ready to off myself.

I swear to God, man.

I said, "What the fuck am I doing?"

And that was... you know, everybody was happy with me.

You know, the family was happy with me.

The in-laws.

One day, I said, "Fuck this, man.

What am I doing?

I gotta get the fuck outta here."

I always have to have my own place.

For only two years out of my whole existence when I didn't have an apartment in New York.

My second wife, I have three kids with.

I always told them, I said, "Listen.

You gotta understand something.

Don't ever get mad at your mother for us breaking up.

It was all my fault."

'Cause it's true.

It was all my fault.

I always wanted a family.

But I also always wanted my freedom.

So it's very hard -- it's a very hard thing to do.

It's almost impossible.

And maybe I didn't do it.

'Cause I've been married so many times.

Maybe it failed.

But I do have a family.

I have children.

I have children who love me very much.

This is... The problem is I'm a family man, and I'm not a family man, you know?

I'm a pillar of the community, and I'm not a fuckin' pillar of the community.

It's like, you know, I -- I got this, like, dual life always.

You know, when I was living in -- in Washington state... I'll do one better.

When I was livin' in -- in Northern California, which is even prettier than Washington state, I missed New York.

And then somebody asked me, What do I -- "What do you miss about New York?"

And the best thing that I could tell them was... I said, "You know what it is?

Sometimes there's a pizza -- a slice of pizza on the floor, and there's a couple of pigeons pecking at it.

I miss that.

I just miss the fact that something can be fuckin' dirty and be on the floor, and there can be a flying rat eating it right in front of us.

You don't have that out here.

Everything's clean, pristine."

A locksmith and an artist is very similar.

To be honest with you, my wife, my kids, friends thought I really goin' crazy.

They didn't see anything.

All they'd see me out there is working.

Making these panels and just puttin' 'em away.

No, the -- not the whole panel, just the pieces that are gonna go on the panel.

Eventually, I made the panels.

Then it started to take shape.

But this went on for a long time.

I would stay out there 12 hours a day.

It could be snowing.

It could be 100 degrees out.

Every weekend I did this.

And I didn't go sailing last summer.

I didn't do anything last summer.

And the summer before that, I did very little, too.

Just worked on this.

I pick up these keys about once a week.

Usually get 100 pounds, 150 pounds of keys, and, uh... But they gotta be sorted out.

I got a lotta different guys who collect scrap, you know.

And -- and I... I give the word out.

I said listen.

I'll pay you more for the keys than you can get at the scrapyard.

I've been lookin' at space in Brooklyn, and -- and I was thinkin' that, you know, maybe I should rent a studio out there.

The only problem is I stay in the city five days a week.

If I get a studio in Brooklyn, I'll be out there on the weekends.

I'll never be here with my family, you know, which is... I'm not here that much to begin with.

And I'm running kind of thin on that, and that -- that's a tightrope to walk for sure.

[ Horns honking ] >> In the shadows of modern Manhattan, surrounded by glass and steel, yet only a subway stop away from the seething city with its crowds of people, hectic workday schedules and the office routines, lies the sleepy village called Greenwich.

>> My earliest memories of -- of, you know, of lower Manhattan, I remember I was a kid, you know, very young.

Maybe 8 years old, being on Bleecker Street.

The neighborhood back then was more of a real place.

It was a working man's place, you know?

There were more kids around.

You had, you know, more businesses that you could really use.

I mean, now we have a bunch of crap, you know?

Now, it's fuckin' Disney World.

What do you really need?

You know, all these shops.

What is really practical?

Years ago, people came here, and -- and because they were artists and it was cheap living.

I mean, could you believe Greenwich Village is a prestigious address, now, to have?

You know, "I live in Greenwich Village."

"Oh!"

You know, when I lived in Greenwich Village years ago, it was because it was cheap.

It's just that... Anything that -- anybody that owns their own building was able to stay.

Anybody that didn't have their own building had to get out.

They killed the fuckin' neighborhood.

They ruined it.

I don't know exactly how many keys we have.

My daughter measured part of the panel and then multiplied it by what we have.

She said 50,000, but I don't think it's 50,000.

I -- but I guarantee you, at least 25,000.

[ Metal grinding ] It's 50 by 30, I think.

>> My father is a -- is a pillar of the community, you know?

I mean, everybody knows my dad.

Everybody knows that he's a locksmith.

Now, this -- this building is symbolic of what he really is, you know?

It's a long time in the works.

This is something that he's been working on for a really long time, and... I mean, to see it all come to fruition today is really amazing.

>> The only one of my children who might follow me into the business is my son Phillip.

'Cause, first of all, he knows how to run it.

And he runs it well.

He's very smart, you know?

And -- and -- and he loves economics.

But, I mean, he's really a sharp kid.

And he could probably do better with the economics.

This is an old-style business.

[ Rock music plays ] It's been a long day.

We got it all done.

I'm happy with it.

It's been a long two years, putting it all together, and, uh, it must be insane.

Think about it.

That many keys welded together.

I'm crazy.

Certifiable.

>> Welcome to Greenwich Locksmith.

Like we said before, this is the smallest freestanding building in all of New York.

You may notice an interesting pattern on the side.

These keys have been welded by the owner, Phil -- I think he may be in there today -- as his artistic gift to New York.

He has been here for a long time.

He's a New York staple.

He has been a locksmith to a number of famous people, celebrities including Andy Warhol and Bill Clinton, still to this day.

And, uh, I think it's pretty nice myself.

All right, guys.

Anybody wants pictures in front, I'm happy to take pictures, as always.

>> Only in Greenwich Village would you have an artist locksmith.

You need to get your shoes repaired, you need a locksmith, you need a little hardware store.

They're all disappearing.

The fact that he's still here?

That already is special.

That he, a local locksmith, is still in business.

But the fact that he takes his keys and turns them into the artwork that he turns them into?

I just think that's phenomenal.

And that is the kind of spirit that Greenwich Village is all about.

Phil has come out of the tradition of this place, but in a sense, he's continuing it into the 21st century.

>> When Phil began my class, he claimed that he, uh, couldn't draw a stick figure.

And it's -- it's interesting to observe his sort of growth in my class over the semesters, because, on the one hand, it speaks to his lifelong profession.

Being a locksmith.

And, you know, certainly, when you look at all these myriad keys sort of swirling about, uh, in -- in, you know, this composition, you -- you think of all the keys that perhaps he's made, and all of the interactions that he's had with -- with people.

You know, his art relates to his profession, but also in some broader sense, to a greater story about New York.

>> My art's gotta be part of the city.

I don't wanna just be one of the people who pass through New York and nobody knows who the fuck they are in 10 years.

I was hunting for studio space, you know, basically in Brooklyn, Williamsburg area, and it was -- it was expensive as anything was gonna be in Manhattan.

Now this place here has come up on the corner.

It's not ideal for a studio, 'cause low ceilings, and there's not a lot of room to work.

But it's close.

I mean, it's across the street from my apartment, next door to my shop.

So, yeah, it's gonna work out well.

This is the new obsession for me.

I mean, nothing else comes before my art right now.

When I did the building, I had a -- I used almost as much reefer as I did fuckin' silver solder.

Because you had to constantly smoke.

Because how could you... you know, I'm doin' this right now.

It's like, you know, I'm kind of fuckin' around.

But if I was really like into this, I'm gonna do this for 8 hours, you gotta fuckin' get high.

Otherwise you're -- otherwise you go insane.

I mean, it's just like one little fuckin' weld after another.

I enjoy this.

As much as I bitch about it, I enjoy it.

What I am gonna do for the rest of my life is make art.

And whether anybody wants it, don't want it, if they like it or don't like it, I really don't care.

At the end, when everything is all done, people will decide.

People will decide.

They'll -- they'll look at it and they'll say, "This is good" or "This is shit."

My parents were born in Sicily.

They had this different idea of America.

I used to come home tripping, man, it's like, you know, dropping acid and seeing my parents.

They had no idea.

They couldn't figure me out.

In 1968, I had hair down to my shoulders and they didn't know what the fuck was goin' on.

They had no idea.

Now, you see what we drop in here, right?

There's a solid brass lock cylinder.

Okay.

Then we'll put that on there, let it cook for a little while.

It's like cooking.

I thought my father was a real hardass, you know?

You know, I thought -- when I was growing up, I thought the guy was a prick and a half, man.

I never hit my kids ever.

Not one of 'em.

And my father would think nothing of knockin' the shit out of you.

Now, it's... That's only because, probably, his father did the same thing to him.

And they weren't enlightened enough to realize that at some place, you gotta stop that.

The reason I have the, uh, mask on is 'cause I got a big whiff of this stuff before, you know?

And it's not good to get all that in your lungs.

I didn't talk to my father for 12 years.

And that's a long time not to talk to somebody that was your father, right?

And don't forget, he lived in Astoria.

I lived here.

For 12 years, I didn't see him, I didn't talk to him.

The only time I saw him was at the end when he was on his deathbed.

But for the last 12 years of his life, I didn't, uh... didn't deal with him.

♪♪ >> I get this text message from my sister saying that she needs to talk to me.

Dad's not feelin' well.

I drove back up, you know, to the house in Jersey, and sure enough, he was a mess.

I said go to the doctor.

I'll run the shop for the day.

They seem to think that it has to do with the welding and possibly inhaling fumes.

Things right now are pointing towards mercury poisoning, but they're still looking for something else.

>> That night, all of a sudden, I got so sick.

I mean, to my stomach.

I went outside and actually puked.

And I said, "Oh, man.

What the hell is wrong with me?"

So I shut the door, went upstairs, got up the next morning.

Laying in this bed, couldn't get out of bed.

Could not move.

My -- my -- my kidneys were in so much pain that I... Just to get up and go to the bathroom, I pretty much couldn't stand up straight.

I almost had to crawl there.

Now, I'm thinking, "Fuck.

This is not good."

They actually did a CAT scan of his neck.

They found a few really small growths near his thyroid.

That was just a game changer.

They decided that the thyroid needed to come out.

[ Sirens wailing ] >> I'm a little pissed off right now.

It's, you know, it's the way fuckin' shit's been goin' lately.

Things have not been goin' good.

The stars are not in line, for sure.

Way the fuck outta line.

This represents a lot of fuckin' work.

Hours and hours are just thrown down the goddamn tubes.

Just thrown the -- thrown the fuck out.

I don't even know how to -- how to figure out how much damage there is.

I can't believe this shit.

You know, Monday, I gotta go in for this fuckin' surgery, right?

And, you know, as much as I'm not bugged out about it, I am bugged out about it.

And I don't think anybody dies... or not a lot of people, anyhow, from thyroid surgery.

All these things, you got to admit, are kind of bizarre.

And in Sicilian, they would say "Malocchio."

Somebody's given me the evil eye.

[ Telephone ringing ] Hey -- hey, man.

How you guys doin'?

Everything went okay.

The, um, you know, operation went all right.

Pretty much, you know, I'm feelin' better.

Just, oh, shit, 'cause, you know, you're -- yeah, it's just a shitty thing.

But, um, the nodule, you know, that they took off is, uh, pre-cancerous, but the rest of the thyroid was good, so they only took part of it out, so I'm happy with that.

>> When the surgeon told us how long his recovery time was gonna be, I realized that it was inevitable that there was gonna be a period of time where I was gonna have to run the shop.

But I had never had to run it multiple days in a row.

This was something new.

So I was flyin' solo.

Flyin' solo for almost two weeks.

It was okay, though, because, in the same time, uh, I've emerged from that with a sort of new understanding of -- of my role in my family.

>> This building here is an old friend of mine's building who's passed away about a year and a half ago.

I'm -- I'm -- I'm gonna use it for a while now, since my studio got destroyed on the corner.

And I can't get any work done in there, and repairing it's gonna take months.

I think we can clean this out in a few days and be operating in here in about a week.

So that's what we need to do.

>> There's a very long recovery time for this surgery.

My birthday was on that Thursday, around 1:00, when my mom's car is pulling up.

I'm saying, "What's going on here?

My mom should be at home with my dad, you know, taking care of him.

Why is she pulling in over here?"

And coming out of the car, he needed my mom's help.

He couldn't even get out himself.

My dad came into the city just for a half an hour, just to see me on my birthday.

He gave me a hug and he said, "I would never let your birthday go by with seeing you."

And I've never been touched like that.

My mom and everyone came out.

She made me a birthday cake.

People walkin' by had slices of cake, you know, all the guys that were working here.

And I had a surprise birthday party, you know, at the shop.

>> Phillip had the acid test, man, and I don't mean that in a drug-related way, but -- but he had, "This is it.

It's either sink or swim."

Just being thrown in the deep end of the pool and nobody's gonna fuckin' throw you a line.

You either got to swim or fuckin' drown.

And, uh, he swam just fine, man.

I was really proud of him.

He ran it just perfectly.

And that made me very happy.

I'm really fuckin' happy with what I'm doing.

I really like being here.

I like being at my shop.

I like making my art.

I like havin' my apartment here.

I like havin' the house in Jersey.

I like all these things because they're all like, in a perfect orbit with perfect gravitational pull holding 'em together.

So nothing's really getting thrown to shit, you know?

It's all in order, and it's all, like, in balance.

And my grandfather used to say, "Bilancia."

That was it... He always said, "Bilancia."

And, you know, when I was young, I didn't understand, really, what the fuck he meant.

And I thought I -- I understood him, up until not that long ago.

I said, "Yeah, that's -- that's what he meant.

Now I really understand it.

Bilancia is important.

♪♪