UPTOWNflavor

To start off the week, I thought I’d tell you all about one of my favorite people in my neighborhood. If any of you have a fixture or character in your life that defines the place where you live, send your stories and photos to me at helin@uptownflavor.com.

…

I was a new face in the neighborhood, he wasn’t, but there you have it, he and I started to say hello to one another, as neighbors do. The curious bit about the otherwise commonplace exchanges was that, though we greeted each other at the same time each morning, he was never in the same spot.

One day, he’d be on his stoop. The next, he’d be in the passenger seat of a green van. Sometimes, I’d see him peering into the guts of an old car in need of repair. Never the same car, never the same place, but he seemed to have the keys to every vehicle on the block. I started referring to him as the Van Man.

One day, we introduced ourselves formally. Sonny, he said everybody calls him. He became a fixture in my morning routine – I would always look for him, though he’d usually spot me first, rolling down a window and calling out, “Hey, sister, how you doin’?” If I was lucky, I’d get a ride down to the subway, or a walk to the street corner. When he was away, there was a hollow spot there on that stoop, and in the seats of all those different cars.

Sonny has been living in the neighborhood for over 25 years, and has been in New York City since he was 17. I don’t know much else about him, except that he used to be a welder, he hails from South Carolina, and most of all, he’s a kind, peaceful man who likes to say that “If I’m not going to help you, I won’t harm you.” In the mornings, he says his hellos and has his car side conversations. In the afternoons, he goes on coffee runs for his friends, occasionally buying some for strangers.

Everyone in the neighborhood knows him, if not by name, then by his floppy hat or his friendly demeanor. People like Sonny make me smile on my way to work, and I’m glad that he’s my neighbor.