Brooklyn Has a Knife Sharpening Guy: Who Knew?

Photo via Apartment Therapy

I love that we have a guy (apparently named Bob) who visits our streets from time to time, offering nothing more than sharpening whatever it is you need sharpened.  And he visits the nabe in the same manner as an ice cream truck… driving from street to street, stopping occasionally to announce his presence.

It’s old school and genius. Apartment Therapy even blurbed about him a few years back.

Everyone has kitchen knives and scissors.  And a smaller group of us have garden shears, lawnmower blades, ninja/pirate swords, mohel tools and other instruments with blades that simply get dull.

But few have professional grinding tools. 

In college I hacked away at veggies in restaurant kitchens.  One of the important things learned is that semi-dull blades are more dangerous than something super sharp.  A knife that bounces off a tomato, for example, will cut other things (such as the end of my pinkie finger – which got stitched back on).  But how do you maintain blades when you also are busy maintaining all manner of other shit in your life?

Enter Bob.

My first encounter was because of the bell.  His siren.  He drives up to my place near 7th Street and 8th Ave and clangs his availability.  And then there was the truck… or trolley.   What the heck he was pushing.  Korean Tacos?   Peruvian truffle waffles?  But upon closer inspection, he was sharpening knives.  Nice.

Upon zipping back to my abode, I filled a shoebox with things that hadn’t been properly sharpened for years.   He quoted me a price and told me to check back in an hour.  Being new to NY, it felt a bit disconcerting to blindly trust someone with stuff, especially when they can drive off, laughing evil-like. But sure enough, he was there, finishing up my items.

His schedule is unknown to me, but every once in a while a deep, long bell ring echoes up the canyon of my street, which now triggers a Pavlovian need to assess the cutlery.   And in a way it connects us to a Brooklyn of old, where people had a single expertise and toiled the neighborhoods to make their daily wage.