Tzadok

I'm an electrical engineer at Johnson Controls, where I spend my days making buildings smarter—convincing HVAC systems and lighting controls to cooperate, basically. Grew up in Crown Heights taking apart watches and radios, studied at City College, and now live in Kensington with my wife and two daughters.

Somewhere along the way, I became an urban beekeeper. Started with one hive on my roof three years ago, now I maintain two. My neighbors thought I'd lost it at first, but they've warmed up to the idea—especially when the honey shows up at building parties. Turns out bees have better organizational instincts than most of the mechanical systems I work with professionally.

I keep Shabbat, take the F train to work, and spend Sunday afternoons repairing watches with my father's old tools. He ran a watch repair shop on Kingston Avenue for forty years. The shop's gone now, but I kept his equipment. There's something about working with your hands on something small and precise that clears your head.