The History of Concrete

The History of Concrete is not a history of concrete. This is no thorough documentarian micro-history in the vein of Mark Kurlansky’s great book Salt, journalistically reporting the scientific, social, historical, and religious meaning behind the titular substance. That’s not to say there is no science, sociology, history, or religion in John Wilson’s penny-free budget feature debut on the world’s most ubiquitous manmade substance: concrete. 

Concrete is everywhere. So too is Wilson, as his loyal audience of viewers from How To with John Wilson will evangelize. From a WGA workshop on successful Hallmark scripts to the grave of Chef Boyardee (apparently a real person and not just a corporate mascot), there is nowhere off limits. Concrete, and more specifically, its impermanence and the cracks in the cement-sand mixture that Father Time eventually cashes in on. Everything comes to an end—budgets, livable cities, the Ozone, life itself—and the ironic image of crumbling hard rock crystalizes this metaphor.

Wilson’s NYC is as eclectically New York as Curtis Sliwa. It is less a portrait of the city that never sleeps than it is the city in perpetual repair. Concrete trucks form the pincer movement in traffic, new (concrete) buildings push their way between neighboring granite towers, and would-be skate parks in Brooklyn. Sidewalks, in a constant flux of damage and repair, become the highway of the city’s pedestrians. The people we meet are just as weird as Wilson too: cover musicians that sell alcohol in the grocery store, disciples of a religious guru circumambulating a high school for days (and treading the concrete sidewalks in the process), and a business owner cornering the market on preserving the skin and tattoos of dead loved ones like a taxidermist. 

A few months ago, the only John Wilson I knew was an old hockey coach from my past life. I have never seen an episode of his HBO show, but, from what I can make out, it is glorified dad-vibe YouTube with the occasional fatalism about modern America and autistic-friendly hyperfixations on obscure (though omnipresent) topics, like scaffolding, that meander off-topic like an unmedicated ADHD student’s studying habits. 

If How To is anything like The History of Concrete, then John Wilson is the Jonas Mekas of the enshittification era.