Personality type: generous, pedagogical
Age: middle
Nationality: Dominican-New Yorker
Accent: Italian
Praxis: sales
Métier: showmanship
Joie de Vivre: visible
Catch phrase: "Roll Tide!" in deep baritone
This cosmic Paisano gave everyone behind the counter at Murray's cheese in New York a bottle of red wine for Christmas 2008. No other gifts were potlatched with such devil-may-care largesse, perhaps not anywhere along Bleecker St or the whole of Greenwich Village for that matter. As John Henry was to the steam-powered hammer, so is Cielo to the laser barcode-reader; his instant recall for thousands of cheeses and their associated PLU codes is becoming the basis for a growing body of soul-stirring urban folklore. After fifteen years of cheesemongering, he harvests 80 lb. wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano with a sickle that Death himself would envy, and wrangles bone-crushing Provolone torpedos with greater skill than Buffalo Bill. We're talking nuclear-age retail cheese cowboy. The Horatio Alger of cheese, complete with self-mythologizing aspects. Glittering grandpa eyes behind nerd spectacles, pug nose, and big round cheeks strangely evocative of William Carlos Williams' famous plums. Occasionally he wears a large medal he won at the 2008 Caseus awards in Lyon (aka, The Cheese Olympics) for mowing through a wheel of Parm in about four seconds. Inexplicably a serious fan of Alabama Crimson Tide football (see above). Otherwise endearingly soft-spoken.
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