“It is easy to become sentimental about the Fulton Fish Market as you tour it in its final weeks, in its 184th year. Arrive at daybreak, when the sky is turning pink beyond the Brooklyn Bridge, and you have found a forgotten city. Salesmen with gaff hooks engraved with their nicknames hoist silver fish over their shoulders, shouting orders. Journeymen cart boxes through clouds of their own frozen breath. Hire-by-night laborers huddle around bonfires, looking for warmth and work.
On June 10, said George Maroulis, Fulton’s market manager, this will all be a memory like pushcarts on Hester Street. By then the hawkers and squawkers will leave their home by the harbor for the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx and a squeaky-clean box of a building, as long as the Empire State Building is tall. There, arrows on the floor will direct a fleet of new battery-operated forklifts past neat vendor stalls flanking a central corridor, with sinks, floor drains and other instruments of government-regulated food safety. A bland Costco to Fulton’s choreographed chaos.”
Coffee, a hot egg and cheese sandwich and tons of raw fish
There is really nothing like getting up at 2am in the morning and hopping on a big white van with my father to drive towards the Fulton Fish Market. Winters are the best times to go.
The whole world is dark as you get into the van and the chill in the air stirs a tingle in the pit of your stomach which subsides in decrements as your senses get closer and closer to the heart and life of the market place.
You know you are alive the moment you step foot on the cobblestoned streets, which seem to take you back in time. You can’t ignore the multitude of shouts, laughs and crude comments. One of the few original markets that exist in the city today, it never fails to remind you that there is something missing in our everyday lives despite living in a city as rich and developped as our own.
Good morning, Mr. Lee. So how are you doing today, Sir? - shouts an old friend of my father’s. My father then shruggs a familiar smile and raises a hand in recognition before letting out a gruff, How much Yellow Tail?
If he likes the price he orders in the boxes, if he doesn’t he moves on to the next vendor until we have hit all the vendors on the short strip just under the Brooklyn Bridge.
When I come across a fish that I don’t know, I love to ask my father for the name. He is an expert in his field and loves to share his knowlege. He beamed to tell me one time that the fish that I was pointing to is called a ribbon fish because it was flat and long like a ribbon.
The best part of the whole morning is meeting my father’s friends. The Korean Seafood Association is one of the largest and longest running business organizations in New York. The KSA is a tight knit group. At around 6am, my father gets together with a few of his friends at the market to chat and have his moring coffee and egg and cheese. I have to admit that the coffee and breakfeast sandwich I eat there never compares to any other.
I will be very sad to see the Fulton Fish Market move to the Bronx. However, it is not the place but the heart and soul of the people who comprise the market that has generated in me a sense of life and warmth. I hope that these precious sentiments will not be lost in the transition and that the people of the Fulton Fish Market will hold onto their beautiful human spirit and life!
Thank you
This is such a wonderful story of the Fulton Fish Market. Thank you for sharing it with us!
To Shin-pei Tsay
I am honored that you feel that way. Are you affliated with the market?
Not formally affiliated
PPS is not formally affiliated with the market but through our markets program, I was able to visit it early one Friday morning and got a small taste of the vitality from your description. It was especially fun to tour it with one of our public markets experts, David O’Neil. I felt very fortunate to catch the market before it closed. Stay in touch with us Jessica!
125 years ago….
From a little known enclave on the beautiful Gaspe coast of Quebec, Canada,smelts were bountiful in the winter fishing months in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. With little or no local trade available to them, my grandfather and his brother packed their catch in wooden boxes and shipped them off to the Fulton Fish Market every week during the winter months . It became a matter of pride that they were affiliated with such a presitigous company and I remember well,as a child,hearing of the great catches and how they were able to keep their farms “afloat” so to speak,because of the financial help they received from selling their fish to the Fulton Fish Market. It is with sadness that I read tonight of it’s proposed closing on the historic site that has been home to this family owned company. Somehow,this closing does not seem like progress to me and I’m sure many others feel likewise.
when is the final day?
I went down in early July and the market was still there, does anyone know when the absolute last drop dead date is for moving to the Bronx?
email me at jin.h.kim@gs.com
thanks!
When is the final day?
I am also curious when the absolute final day is. I have tourists coming the first week of November. Will it still be open? Joel@bikethebigapple.com
Fulton Fish Market moved Nov 14, 2005
I didn’t want to leave anyone a cliff-hanger with the last two comments. The Fulton Fish Market moved on November 14, 2005 to Hunts Point in the Bronx. We should make the effort of checking it out and seeing how it’s doing in its new home in a month or so. We’re hosting another public markets workshop in May 2006. It’s sure to be a topic of discussion during the workshop.