So the fish market is moving. Maybe. There has been some talk, but nothing specific has happened this week, only stray notices here and there, people dusting off oft-used paeans to the dwindling manufacturing base, finding the most colorful anecdote they can, and you can practically hear the syrupy violin music accompanied by the long dissolve.
The reason it occurred to me was a recent afternoon reading Phillip Lopate’s Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan (a good book, though such an arbitrary structure means the concept gets thin in places — a danger this site is acute aware of — and the word peripatetic is a little overused), which has a chapter on, yes, the Fulton Fish Market (replete with the ubiquitous Dave Pasternak, proprietor of Esca, and go-to figure when one wants a good pull quote on crudo). It’s as a good as any other, though somehow he missed the cigarette woman. Written four years ago, it takes a decidedly skeptic position on the likelihood of the relocation, which has been discussed, planned for, and even, at times, seemingly underway for most of the last century.
No longer dependent on the river as a source of inventory, the market succeeds for the same reasons any established business does: traditional, efficacy, and a presumption of superior quality, prices, and not wee bit of color. Oh, yes, and the mob. That always minimizes competition. The culture of these places gets confused in the external reading: middle class appropriated nostalgia and envy reduces the image we understand to cutouts and stereotypes. With every bland desk job in danger of shipment off to far away lands where they have better grammar and lower wages, the middle-managers of industry and media flatten every backbreaking schlub into an old salt with a clever nickname, and then attempt to jettison their workplace.
What occurred to me in reading the article was: I don’t understand why it has to move. Isn’t it the perfect definition of mixed use? Hardly anyone is ever around to actually see it, it provides jobs, a reasonable service (being proximate to most of their important customers), and is centrally located (allowing only for its unique hours of operation). Most importantly, it makes Manhattan look like, well, Manhattan. The only shred of authenticity in the abysmal failure that is the South Street Seaport, what kind of renaissance are we to expect once it’s gone? An additional outpost for Lids? There are the standard complaints: noise, mob influence, but mostly the smell. Ooh, the smell of fish. Strange thing, that, right next to the ocean. Yes, it can be gamey in places, but I regularly walk and jog that route, and once the market goes, they aren’t going to remove the pier currently operated by the sanitation department, and I’ve gone by trash compactors at the housing complexes that line South Street and there’s no lack of competition there for the aromatic. And I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but the smell of offal (and I’m not talking C-List models and IB-guys) hasn’t tempered the wild success of the other major food market/entertainment destination in the city.
You can’t manufacture scenes, especially in New York. Times’ Square worked because it was a destination that simply had all the culture scrubbed away. The South Street Seaport was never a logical tourist locale, and whatever Rouse thinks they are good at, they aren’t good at it here. If it weren’t for the fish market, most of us would probably forget that it is even there.
I’ve never been to the fish market. I probably never will, even if it doesn’t move next week. But that’s because I wouldn’t do much besides gawk and hope to see some bit of local color myself. I don’t need that any more than those who actually do work there. Because it’s not a Disney ride, but people trying to hold down a job, pay the mortgage, and not get a crippling disability in the course of carrying around frozen hunks of fish. But it is more of what we think of our town than any sanitized corporate sports bar experience, and I don’t understand the urgency to blot it out.
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The Fish Market is Dead, Long Live the Fish Market.
So the fish market is moving. Maybe. There has been some talk, but nothing specific has happened this week, only stray notices here and there, people dusting off oft-used paeans to the dwindling manufacturing base, finding the most colorful anecdote they can, and you can practically hear the syrupy violin music accompanied by the long dissolve.
The reason it occurred to me was a recent afternoon reading Phillip Lopate’s Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan (a good book, though such an arbitrary structure means the concept gets thin in places — a danger this site is acute aware of — and the word peripatetic is a little overused), which has a chapter on, yes, the Fulton Fish Market (replete with the ubiquitous Dave Pasternak, proprietor of Esca, and go-to figure when one wants a good pull quote on crudo). It’s as a good as any other, though somehow he missed the cigarette woman. Written four years ago, it takes a decidedly skeptic position on the likelihood of the relocation, which has been discussed, planned for, and even, at times, seemingly underway for most of the last century.
No longer dependent on the river as a source of inventory, the market succeeds for the same reasons any established business does: traditional, efficacy, and a presumption of superior quality, prices, and not wee bit of color. Oh, yes, and the mob. That always minimizes competition. The culture of these places gets confused in the external reading: middle class appropriated nostalgia and envy reduces the image we understand to cutouts and stereotypes. With every bland desk job in danger of shipment off to far away lands where they have better grammar and lower wages, the middle-managers of industry and media flatten every backbreaking schlub into an old salt with a clever nickname, and then attempt to jettison their workplace.
What occurred to me in reading the article was: I don’t understand why it has to move. Isn’t it the perfect definition of mixed use? Hardly anyone is ever around to actually see it, it provides jobs, a reasonable service (being proximate to most of their important customers), and is centrally located (allowing only for its unique hours of operation). Most importantly, it makes Manhattan look like, well, Manhattan. The only shred of authenticity in the abysmal failure that is the South Street Seaport, what kind of renaissance are we to expect once it’s gone? An additional outpost for Lids? There are the standard complaints: noise, mob influence, but mostly the smell. Ooh, the smell of fish. Strange thing, that, right next to the ocean. Yes, it can be gamey in places, but I regularly walk and jog that route, and once the market goes, they aren’t going to remove the pier currently operated by the sanitation department, and I’ve gone by trash compactors at the housing complexes that line South Street and there’s no lack of competition there for the aromatic. And I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but the smell of offal (and I’m not talking C-List models and IB-guys) hasn’t tempered the wild success of the other major food market/entertainment destination in the city.
You can’t manufacture scenes, especially in New York. Times’ Square worked because it was a destination that simply had all the culture scrubbed away. The South Street Seaport was never a logical tourist locale, and whatever Rouse thinks they are good at, they aren’t good at it here. If it weren’t for the fish market, most of us would probably forget that it is even there.
I’ve never been to the fish market. I probably never will, even if it doesn’t move next week. But that’s because I wouldn’t do much besides gawk and hope to see some bit of local color myself. I don’t need that any more than those who actually do work there. Because it’s not a Disney ride, but people trying to hold down a job, pay the mortgage, and not get a crippling disability in the course of carrying around frozen hunks of fish. But it is more of what we think of our town than any sanitized corporate sports bar experience, and I don’t understand the urgency to blot it out.