The polo shirt reads Siren Pipeworks Plumbing & Gas, and so does the van the guy wearing it just hopped out of.
Yet Alex Smith hasn’t pulled up to a home with a clogged toilet or a business with a leaky pipe.
With his cell phone, tripod, microphone and a sheet of paper in hand, Smith makes his way toward a sign that reads Fort Washington in Norfolk. He sneaks behind a fence onto a gravel parking lot and hops onto a slab of raised concrete, the stage for another "Alex the Plumber" video.
In a booming voice, he starts talking into his phone, pointing toward Harbor’s Edge at One Colley Ave.
“In the 1950s, Norfolk cleared out a slum to build this medical center. But a lot of the people who lived here didn't call it a slum. They called it home, and they worked the waterfront that built this city.
“This was Atlantic City. …”
Norfolk’s Atlantic City neighborhood, among the new racially integrated ones in the 1800s, existed until the 1950s.
Smith, owner of a plumbing and gas company, is in his element producing punchy reels that explore the quirks of Hampton Roads history. He’s only been doing it for a couple of months and already boasts a Facebook following of 23,000 and an Instagram count of more than 15,000. Then there’s TikTok.
“It blew up more than I could have ever imagined,” Smith said. “It’s like playing the lottery a little bit and winning.”
His one-minute, 11-second reel on how Witchduck Road got its name went viral with almost 350,000 views.
“The videos that tend to do the best for me aren’t just about the places,” Smith said. “They’re about the people and the places.”
His first job working for Norfolk Plumbing thrust him into the world of Victorian homes and deepened his appreciation for how things were built. He’s always had a fascination for the offbeat, having once competed on a unicycle on a 9-mile course in the Shenandoah Mountains.
“I love old houses, and I love old things,” said Smith, who grew up in Chesapeake and graduated from Grassfield High School. “That started me down a path of learning about Norfolk and learning about the history of the area.”
When he started Siren Plumbing three months ago, he knew he was entering a competitive field. “You can be the best contractor in the world, but if nobody knows you exist, you’re invisible.”
Smith isn’t shy about talking in front of others. He appeared multiple times at Shakespeare in the Grove (fun fact: He met his wife, Kat, when they played lovers in “The Taming of the Shrew” at the annual outdoor theater event in Chesapeake).
“I married my love of theater, my love of old homes and my love of plumbing into Alex the History Plumber,” he said.
While social media wasn’t always his thing, he recognizes the need to meet people where they are, “and that’s online.”
In only a few months, he’s covered the legend of the most haunted road in Virginia (spoiler: Elbow Road), old cemeteries in the Commonwealth and what’s behind the name Little Neck. Sometimes he combines plumbing and history in what he calls “The Siren’s Log.” With pliers and wire in hand and a cabinet door open, he shares the story of a statue on 25th Street at the Oceanfront.
“It’s not just any old statue; it’s a grave marker of a Norwegian lady whose husband watched her die.”
When the time-lapse video ends, not only does Smith wrap up the story of the statue that memorializes a pregnant woman lost during a shipwreck, but he has also installed an elongated faucet.
Should his followers ever want to know how to hypnotize a chicken, he shows and tells that in another reel.
Smith uses Google for his research, acknowledging that he’s not a historian. Sometimes his phone doubles as a teleprompter, and he films only a couple of lines at a time, often doing multiple takes. He puts it all together using a software program called Edit.
Smith knows he isn’t going to run out of topics anytime soon, and he hasn’t yet set foot in Williamsburg to film. He weathers a few strange looks now and then, but that’s OK.
“It’s got to translate through a little screen, so I have to be a little larger than life,” he said. “Once I was scared to be myself. Now I encourage everybody to post what interests you. You never know what’s going to land.”
