Sleeping with the fishes

July 14, 2005 6:26 PM

The Last Days of NYC's Fulton Fish Market. A lovely, Mitchell-like paean to the odiferous old fish market that, like the rest of Manhattan, is being sanitized. Here's another, not quite as well done. Here's a great page of old articles and info. Don't like word pictures? Flikr has some really nice galleries. Forgotten New York has a tour of the area around the market. Or maybe you just want today's prices.
posted by CunningLinguist (23 comments total)

A couple weeks ago I visted a bar (great place BTW) just above the hideous tourist trap that is South Street Seaport. Walking to the bar from the Fulton Street station, I went down Maiden Lane. My paternal grandfather (RIP, Joe Sr.) worked at Fulton before taking over the family marine supply/curio shop that supplied the workers at Fulton, when his dad passed away in his sophomore year at St. John's. Even with all the ugly high rises around, I kind of felt the presence of my grandpa and his world standing there. So the disappearance of the Fish Market is like a peice of my (and I bet a lot of New York based) families past disappearing. Thanks for the post.

(I remember my dad telling me that when he was a kid, grandpa would take him and his brother and sisters to a fried fish place called Sloppy Louie's. I googled in it in hopes of visiting. Apparently, it was demolished. The city needed another Bennigans. Sad.)
posted by jonmc at 6:36 PM on July 14, 2005

Sloppy Louie's was huge in Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel. Read it if you haven't. Terrific book.
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:40 PM on July 14, 2005

Thanks for posting. It's a passing worthy of note, another vestige of industrial New York fading into memory.
posted by Miko at 7:20 PM on July 14, 2005

What I loved about Fulton Fish Market as a blatant tourist (which I was when I was there) is that it's such a sudden haven from the concrete jungle that is Lower Manhattan. I walked there from Wall St after having sat there for hours charging my camera in a Starbucks (I know, I know), and the folksy quiet that hung in the air there was like a thousand pairs of fresh socks to a weary traveller like me.

Also, I asked directions to this guy, in my semi-British accent (English father, Dutch mother, grew up in NL), and he copied my lingustic idiosyncrasies in the answer, as in "continue on Ful'on, then take a left..." (single quote denounces a glottal stop) That made my day right there.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:28 PM on July 14, 2005

Linguistic idiosyncrasies, even. Even though I bring them with gusto.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:34 PM on July 14, 2005

You know, if this is progress, fuck progress. Fuck it right in the ear.
posted by keswick at 7:40 PM on July 14, 2005

The Museum of the City of New York has an exhibit of Danny Lyons' truely beautiful, sad b&w photos of the old downtown NYC, that opens this sat. Go.

The Destruction of Lower Manhattan presents vintage photographs by acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon. Created between 1966 and 1967, Lyon's photo essay addresses the demolition of some 60 acres of mostly 19th-century buildings below Canal Street. Lyon photographed virtually every building that was to be torn down to make room for the World Trade Center, as well as the workers involved in the demolition, in images that have new meaning in the wake of 9/11.
posted by R. Mutt at 7:53 PM on July 14, 2005

Oh mang. Anyone want to fly me out to New York for that?
posted by keswick at 8:02 PM on July 14, 2005

keswick, the original book: The Destruction of Lower Manhattan has just been reissued.
posted by R. Mutt at 8:08 PM on July 14, 2005

Wow. Quite a nice piece of writing by Mr Barry. I'm sad to see the fish market go. It's one of those bits of 'real life' you can still find downtown.
posted by nyterrant at 9:03 PM on July 14, 2005

Manhattan Luriete? Iddano, try the Brooklyn waterfront, Gwanus canal, East Williamsburg, Red Hook... all in Brooklyn. Manhattan is toast.
posted by R. Mutt at 9:27 PM on July 14, 2005

My father used to take the child version of me there. I didn't remember it until about 15 years ago when I met my aunt there for a get-together. Got a whiff and the olfactory memory kicked in causing me to blurt out "I've been here before!" My aunt looked at me like I was the special child everyone talks to very slowly and told me how my father used to bring me down there all the time.

Am saddened to see "progress" remove those things that remind us that the place we find ourselves in is indeed home.
posted by sillygit at 10:01 PM on July 14, 2005

what'll barton fink write about now?
posted by Silky Slim at 10:13 PM on July 14, 2005

My old office -- before I left New York more or less permanently in May -- was below Canal on Broadway. We moved up to Park Ave. South about two years ago; but that doesn't really matter right now. When I got out, generally around 1 or 2:00 a.m., I would take nice, ambling walks through lower Manhattan -- Fulton Fish Market was such a huge part of this. Creepy and charming by turns, it was one of the many things I grew to love about Manhattan. This may just be the bourbon and Kentucky humidity talking, but this has brought a tear to my eye. The veritable destruction of Washington Square Park, the closing and subsequent re-opening of the sanitized Small's...bit by bit the things I love(d) about NYC are being torn down. Sigh.
posted by ford and the prefects at 11:00 PM on July 14, 2005

My old office -- before I left New York more or less permanently in May -- was below Canal on Broadway. We moved up to Park Ave. South about two years ago; but that doesn't really matter right now. When I got out, generally around 1 or 2:00 a.m., I would take nice, ambling walks through lower Manhattan -- Fulton Fish Market was such a huge part of this. Creepy and charming by turns, it was one of the many things I grew to love about Manhattan. This may just be the bourbon and Kentucky humidity talking, but this has brought a tear to my eye. The veritable destruction of Washington Square Park, the closing and subsequent re-opening of the sanitized Small's...bit by bit the things I love(d) about NYC are being torn down. Sigh.
posted by ford and the prefects at 11:00 PM on July 14, 2005

(sorry for the double post, btw)
posted by ford and the prefects at 11:00 PM on July 14, 2005

There's fast, reliable free wireless at the Seaport--on the 3rd floor observation deck/food court at the end of the dock. (I spent a full week sitting there tinkering freely while on a waitlist for my cable internet installation.)
posted by superfem at 11:42 PM on July 14, 2005

The Seaport wasn't a tourist trap when it opened, which was at the time I worked on John Street. It was something new and pleasant. At that time, my building (#10, I think. The one with the neon tube entrance, picture on Tangerine Dream's "Exit" album) had an unobstructed view of the river. Then they built something newer and taller across John Street.

Ford: I don't know what you're talking 'destruction' of Washington Square Park. I haven't seen the plans, but it doesn't sound that radical in the article you linked. God knows the place can use a makeover. Does stuff in Manhattan have to be old and grizzly, for you to feel right?

Funny thing, I thought the fishmarket had been closed to build the Seaport. I'm not one to buy fresh fish, so maybe just ignored its existence. But I'm not quite a native, NYC has been my 2nd home since I was 16.
posted by Goofyy at 3:26 AM on July 15, 2005

Manhattan is toast

Oh, that's hogwash. Luriete, by "interesting" I'm not sure if you mean "busy" a la the fishmarket, but if you stick to poor and working-class neighborhoods you'll surely find pockets not yet gentrified. Have you been to Washington Heights or Inwood? How about the area around 110th and Cathedral Parkway? Some of upper Amsterdam Avenue's pretty good too. Try the farthest East Side in the 90's.

/tangent

That was a surprisingly appealing piece in the NYT, unlike, say, the human-interest dross that Charlie Le Duff types.
posted by scratch at 6:36 AM on July 15, 2005

Ok, toast is an exaggeration, but pockets not yet genitrified is pretty weak, and I think proves my point. In the past 20 years entire sections of the city, say... The East Village, Soho, The Lower East Side, Tribeca ... have become extremely upscale, and less exciting.
posted by R. Mutt at 8:23 AM on July 15, 2005

Does stuff in Manhattan have to be old and grizzly, for you to feel right?


Not necessarily old and grizzly, no. But you have to admit that the "spirit" of the park -- if you want to put it that way -- is going to be compromised by the new design. I can't say whether it'll look better or worse, but it will undoubtedly be different. I'm not so sure it needs a makeover: you live in New York, you've seen it in the fall. Is there anything more beautiful? Maybe a clean-up, yeah. But a radical makeover is absurd.

I guess my problem is that while the bulk of New Yorkers (the most provincial people on the planet, by the way) claim that their city upholds history and tradition, they're only too glad to bow towards so-called aesthetic "progress," even if it threatens to ruin the personality of the City. At least in L.A. people don't pretend: they know their history is being paved over bit by bit, and make no bones about it. I just wish there was some way the citizens of Lower Manhattan could get together and make a conscious effort to maintain some of the personality of the island, before it's all turned in to the Upper East Side. That's all.
posted by ford and the prefects at 2:49 PM on July 15, 2005

Yes, NYC is changing. It's in constant flux and always has been. I worked in the horribly, vapidly touristic South Street Seaport as a street vendor years ago, selling African art along with the other vendors selling psychedelic candles etc. The whole place looked like a cheesy tax write off for the various corporate stores there. A great view of the river though and the old folks from Chinatown liked to sit on the upstairs verandahs.

It was a weird place to buy fish because the parking was lousy and it was so out of the way.

Another aspect of the fulton fish market moving.
posted by nickyskye at 7:38 PM on July 15, 2005

I just read Old Mr. Flood, which, I'm ashamed to say, is the first Joseph Mitchell I've read. What a great book! Thanks for this post so that I have more to read about the market.
posted by OmieWise at 7:55 AM on July 17, 2005