Meet Scott Bigos, the Philly comedian behind YouTube sensation CheeseParade

The big picture: One day, he was making dumb, little-viewed skits with friends on the neighborhood's "ominous" bridge and at Pretzel Park.

• The next, he was posting new content weekly and hauling in $10,000 a month after viral sketches like "Balloon Boys," "Tetris" and "Duck, Duck, Goose" helped him monetize his social media channels.

Zoom in: The show is a peek inside Bigos' hilarious, scatterbrained mind, which spits out ideas like a Powerball machine, each one carrying the promise of a viral jackpot.

• His skits have the silliness of "SpongeBob," the familiarity of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and the wholesomeness of the latest Hallmark movie.

• His most Philly skit: a PSA about grease pole climbing.

"It's just us greasing poles while talking shit to Philadelphians, being like, "You think you're gonna f––king climb this? My grandfather was greasing poles in Okinawa during World War II. You're not gonna climb this f––king pole."

The intrigue: Bigos has made a name for himself without the blessing of The Inquirer, the city's unofficial gatekeeper of cultural greatness.

• He's been featured on podcasts, blogs and, more sadly, in a GoFundMe created after the house he'd just purchased went up in flames in September.

What they're saying: "Sometimes I see other sketch people or whatever get written up or posted," he told Axios during a Zoom call.

• "I'm just like, 'OK, I'm just more invisible.' I think also the fact that it's a thing called CheeseParade and not my name, so it's very abstract. Like, 'What is this thing?'"

Catch up quick: Bigos built his comedic juggernaut with help from a few loyal high school friends, strategically placed plushies and The Grape, a local dive bar that's the backdrop of many of his skits and where his cheesehead calling card stares down at patrons from the rafters.

• That plushie sent Axios on a whimsical journey to find Bigos after a bartender gave us the SparkNotes version of the squishy cheddar block's origin story.

What we found: The 35-year-old Bigos looks like Alexander Supertramp and Willy Wonka had a baby — a boyish face with a mop of brown hair.

• He honed his production skills studying film at Temple University, then redoubled his dream of turning high school "shenanigans" into a career.
• Now that most of his high school friends have steady 9-to-5s, Bigos recruits his "boy-coded" band of volunteers from a pool of regulars at The Grape.

"It's like, whoever's available on Sunday," Bigos says. "We don't need great actors or comedians. We just need like 10 guys. They could just be any guys."

How it works: Fueled by a large cold brew from Volo Coffeehouse and stock music, Bigos plots sketches on a giant whiteboard while pondering this generation of artists' biggest dilemma: how to feed the dopamine-drip demand for instant creativity without burning out when everything has a short shelf life.

• And how to navigate a world that treats everything as potential fodder, even something as traumatic as losing your house.
• As Bigos watched firefighters bash in his windows and spray water on his computer, he couldn't help but think: This is material for a sketch.

Yes, but: These days, Bigos has hit pause on creating new content while plotting his future from a sparsely furnished apartment — a loaner as his house undergoes repairs.

• His next move: shooting long-form films his fans might not want.

The bottom line: It's risky for Bigos to abandon the formula that made him a viral sensation. But he says it's riskier to keep doing the same thing.

• "It's almost like, 'Let's find out who the real audience is.'"