South Brooklyn Profiles: Charlie Sorace

Charlie Sorace
Long before there is any sign of spring there is Charlie standing at the corner of Court and President, looking for the truck. It's a truck all of us in Carroll Gardens know, the one that parks all spring, summer, and fall on what one friend calls Yuppie Row -- the street where the subway discharges its Manhattan workers.
Charlie, at 77, is still solidly built -- and dressed. In winter he wears flannel shirts, a quilted jacket and a watch cap. In summer, he drops the jacket and hat, and switches to a cotton short sleeved workshirt, the tee shirt underneath even in July. The black work shoes are happily steadfast, an unwavering presence in the world of instability Charlie so bemoans.
The shootings in Oregon had left him apoplectic, understandably waving his hands in disgust. "This kid in Arkansas," he said, confusing one massacre with the one before, "he shot the other kids in the cafeteria." This is followed by an understandable stretch for a bigger explanation, one that, a tad unfairly, leads to a bitter denunciation of a young mother pushing a pram with one hand and balancing her child on her shoulder with the other. "Look at that! Put that kid down. See, the kids don't respect their parents now! Aaay!" Charlie does not partake in the sotto voce of a timorous sidewalk critic -- he speaks with certain volume. But the woman misses his parental advice as his mumbling is clearly a language she has little experience with. (Some classicists believe that the Ancient Greeks were said to have sung their language, speaking in steep, undulating tones. Charlie too speaks with such extreme intonation that it often takes several seconds to understand if he is saying a simple yes or no.) It must be said that the child did look perilously wobbly and rather confused at this unrequested treat.
Charlie worries about New York's litter problem. When neighbors return from a trip, he always asks, "It's clean there, right? I know. It's got to be cleaner than here." His certainty about New York's inferior sanitary status is not threatened by a neighbor's report: No, Rio de Janeiro is, in fact, dirtier than Brooklyn. Charlie won't believe it and pretends he doesn't hear. He assures her, "I know. It's got to be cleaner than here."
He does not traffic exclusively in the morbid and unclean, but proves himself a capable sport. He regularly threatens, for example, to get an industrial-sized set of pliers to cut the lock on a neighbor's bike, which is attached to a gate near the fruit truck. Whenever the young bicyclist is moved to come downstairs to buy a bag of peaches, Charlie pointedly tells the fruit vendor, "I feel like taking a ride" and mimes the giant pliers with his hands.

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This project is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Development Fund of BAC/Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc., which is made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.