Smith Street Loses a Barber Legend

I've passed by the above storefront on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens 500 hundred times. I never went in. My loss. Inside, a local legend plied his trade, and it's my loss I never had him give me a trim.

Giorgio Zocco, the head barber at Sal's Hairstylists—and known to everyone as "Sal"—died on April 4 at the age of 70. He had worked out of the Smith Street store, between Union and Sackett, since the 1970s. Zocco was born in Pozzallo, Sicily. He left when he was 13 for Venezuela, where he learned to cut hair. Coming to Brooklyn, he first worked in a different Smith Street shop. After he bought the business, he moved it in 1979 to 299 Smith Street. He lived upstairs from the barber shop.

There's a picture of the man, below, courtesy of Brooklyn Paper. Love that interior. Something out of a Coen Brothers film.