Public Biography
Phil Amato, 67, is a retired housing inspector and a resident of East Ridgewood Avenue in Paramus, New Jersey, where he has lived since 1988 in a split-level ranch next door to Dennis P. Hagerty. He served thirty-four years with the Borough of Paramus Department of Code Enforcement, retiring in 2024, and by his own estimate completed some eleven thousand residential inspections, the majority of them conducted alone in crawl spaces, utility closets and unfinished basements.
Mr. Amato first appeared in The New York Time5 in March 2026, retrieving his recycling bins from the curb and offering a measured assessment of his neighbor’s decision to purchase a second bidet after the first perforated him. He is better known for a September 2026 feature documenting a change in his long-standing habit of talking to himself. For roughly thirty-five years the practice was conversational — Mr. Amato would pose himself a question, consider it, and answer, and the neighbors on East Ridgewood Avenue regarded the audible back-and-forth as a feature of the block. Beginning in the fall of 2025, it became a series of uninterrupted rants, of between eleven and forty minutes, on subjects including the northbound jughandles of Route 17, the self-checkout lanes at the local ShopRite, out-of-state shoppers unaware of the borough’s Sunday blue laws, and a deck on the next street whose balusters he estimates, from the sidewalk, at four and five-eighths inches apart.
Since June 2026 he has been seeing Dr. Judith Fenn-Caraway, a Ridgewood clinical psychologist who specializes in marital communication, at the urging of his daughter. Dr. Fenn-Caraway completed his intake on her couples form, twice.
His garage, which contains a pegboard of forty-one hand tools hung inside marker outlines of themselves, a workbench, and a folding chair, is regarded on the block as exemplary.
Notable Statements
- “The only other guy down there is you.” — on crawl spaces
- “I don’t let me finish. I’m aware that I don’t let me finish.”
- “I try not to take it personally. It isn’t about me. I know that. I know where I’m coming from.”
- “It’s the jughandle.” — on the suggestion that his rants reflect a national condition
Articles
- Man, Told by Wife to Stop Using Bidet After Stinking Up Bathroom, Asks Whether She Has Ever Stood Next to a Distant Wall and Listened to the Echo of Her Voice — Mrs. Hagerty confirmed that she has not, in fact, ever stood next to a distant wall and listened to the echo of her voice.
- Man Who Once Talked to Himself Now Only Rants to Himself, and Says He Tries Not to Take It Personally — Asked how it felt to be on the receiving end, Mr. Amato said he knew it wasn't about him, because he knew where he was coming from.