TikTok Loves the New York City He Built Out of Balsa Wood
In Joe Macken's New York, the Empire State Building stands tall — eight inches tall. The supertalls of Billionaire's Row go a couple of inches higher. West 42nd Street is no wider than his thumb.
And the United Nations looks out on a cement floor in a $140-a-month storage unit complex, because Macken has lost track of where he put the East River.
Macken built a miniature New York by hand in his basement in upstate New York, 165 miles from the real thing — office towers, apartment houses, brownstones, garages, thousands and thousands of buildings. It took him 21 years, a third of his life.
Now he has become something of a social media star. His first video on TikTok, posted on July 13, has been viewed eight million times. He said his wife was annoyed that he had not spruced up the wall behind him.
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