POST January/February 2015

You grew up in an Italian family.
Yes, in West Irondequoit. On Kings Gate
Street with my sister, Jean Marie. My parents
built the house when I was 3 because it
was equal distance between Christ the King,
where I went from grades 1 to 8, and Bishop
Kearney, where I went from 9 to 12. Isn’t that
funny?
You are such a good Catholic. Isn’t it amazing
how parents do that? What was your family
like?
impactful going out there. You would go
through the hallway to get to the house from
the garage, and there’d be cheese hanging. I
mean, he made his own wine. It was like onestop
shopping. You’d always leave with stuff,
and she always would have more food than
you possibly could even imagine. And nothing
was a big deal. But, of course, it had to be.
Looking back, it had to be a lot of work. But
that’s just what they did, and they were cute
together. They were a little round, and they
4. Four is my cut-off point.
What kind of alarms are they?
Just on my iPhone. But my father used to
call me every morning. Whenever I needed to
get up.
“Chaz, son, time to get up.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Isn’t that funny? Because I would tell
him, “Can you call me tomorrow morning?”
I didn’t trust my alarm. So he would set his
alarm to call me.
Scenes from Arena’s
shop on East Avenue
My mother was Italian but didn’t seem it.
So we’d go out to my grandparent’s house—
her parents—and get the whole, full dose of
Italian.
What do you remember most?
My grandfather gardened organic. Anything
from the kitchen table went into the
garden. They reused plastics, and he would
capture rainwater and store it in barrels because
he liked the rainwater for his plants. He
had a compost pile. My grandmother would
make eggs, and then the eggshells went in the
garden. He would graft his own trees, and
there was every kind of fruit tree imaginable.
It was magical. It was magical.
That’s where you started.
Oh my God, absolutely. That was so
were adorable. Her English wasn’t great, but
she was very loving.
Why did you stay in Rochester, Charles?
I was busy. I was just busy. Honestly, and
as it turns out, I’m kind of a homebody, you
know. But I also like getting away from here
and looking at it from a distance, too, getting
what I need and coming back and jumping
back in. I do get a little goofy when I don’t get
out of here. But that’s because when I’m here,
all I’m really doing is working, which is fine.
What time do you wake up to go to work?
I start waking up at 3:30 a.m. I have seven
or eight different alarms and depending on
how I’m feeling and what’s on my head about
the day, I’ll hit one or I’ll wait for the next
one. But the latest I wake up is usually before
That’s really sweet! Is there something that
you do every day that you find meditative?
It’s the start of the day with my cut-flower
team, my flower-processing team, because I
think that’s one thing in most flower shops
that’s overlooked, the actual floral hygiene.
Every flower in the store is handled every
single day. And every vase is sterilized. The
new product comes in, and it’s inspected. And
I’m front and center.
New product comes in every day?
Every day, all day. And way before the
store opens, I meet with my team. The other
thing that is a part of my morning ritual is
right after flower processing or just before
flower processing, I always do something I
don’t want to do. I get it right out of the way.
Issue 9 January / February 2015 | POST 15