The New Yorker Who Interviews Doormen on TikTok
Sara Leeds doesn't always get the interview she wants.
There was the time she went to a building on the Upper East Side, trailed by her videographer, and asked the doorman if he wanted to appear on camera. The answer was no. The building has its rules.
'I'm walking away,' Leeds said, 'and the doorman calls back to me. He's like, 'Wait, wait, come back.' So I walk over, and he goes: 'My superintendent can see you on the security camera. And he wanted to say, Thank you so much for what you're doing.''
What she does, when the supers or the co-op board bosses don't say no, is interview doormen on TikTok. She has posted hundreds of videos in the last couple of years — fast-moving conversations with the protectors and problem-solvers of daily life for people in thousands of buildings. She has 5.8 million likes on TikTok and 200,000 followers across different platforms.
Doormen are 'quintessentially New York,' as the sociologist Peter Bearman observed in a 2005 book: 'a critical element' of some New Yorkers' 'sense of self and place.' Leeds says that doormen are gatekeepers to the outside world and confidants to the inner world of the buildings where they work — as well as quartermasters. 'The Amazon Primes of the world have made the job physically taxing,' Leeds said.
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