After Silicon Valley, few cities know the benefits of the tech boom better than New York. "Silicon Alley" is now home to hundreds of tech startups, helping to diversify an economy that for many years was undeniably reliant on Wall Street's might.

Weaving through ladders of all shapes and sizes and buckets of bolts, nuts, and hinges, you begin to get the sense that little has changed since Putnam Rolling Ladder moved to Soho in the 1930s.

Paul Schweitzer stands like a relic from a bygone era in a three-piece suit and tells us that he fixes typewriters for a living. His story needs to be told precisely because he makes up the fabric of this city.