#5 - New York pets II

Other sort of the City's beloved pets include:

- mosquitoes, they say everywhere, on the radio, magazines and newspapers: be prepared, they are on their way!

- cockroaaaaches! I had the pleasure of "meeting" a couple at home... small sized luckily!phew! On the street, though, the other day leaving work and turning the corner there it goes speeding! A lovely juicy big "cucaracha" above the allowed speed limit crossing my way on the sidewalk... eeek!

- at high speed also a couple of mice have scooted away on my way to or out of the metro.

- which takes me to other rodents. Rats, the lords and ladies of the subway. They do not shy away as they exercise back and forth on the rails. And when I mean they don't shy away it's because they really think they own their joint! Underground, one of these days, I step out of the metro car and there it is: one fat rat (no no, no subliminal pun about Wall Street's wealthiest) right in the middle of the platform! And bloody hell the thing didn't move an inch as people poured out! Nonchalant, it just couldn't give a damn, it just stood there! Even the rats have got the nerve in this town!

Oh yeah... I think they name all the above plagues*, in fact.



*Before posting this I realized that actually this list is rather incomplete... Further, there are the pigeons, raccoons, chipmunks/squirrels, seagulls, starlings... The question is: were they in the city before us or did they come as we urbanized? I wonder what/who started the "plague".

#4 - In search of a working fish market

In highly urbanized environments such as New York, or even more cosmopolitan and touristy spots such as the area around Pier 17, there is hardly place for what I had been dreaming about the whole previous day. I heard on the radio about a fish market “reopening”. However, I did not tune too accurately in on they actually were advertising. In my mind I was finally going to find, here in the big metropolis, a fresh fish market with enough offer I would visit as often as I liked so as to buy proper fresh whole fish. Well, I guess I had something in mind similar to where I used to go as a kid with my mum. A place where we would go buy us fresh fish for the week/coming weeks, a place down by the true fish docks.

It was rather naive of me to assume that WNYC would announce something less than hip and novel instead of just telling listeners about yet another place where one could buy cheap and have a lot to choose from. I mean, I love this radio station and a lot of what I try around here follows their suggestions but let's say that when it comes to culture they do serve certain groups of people. Which is fine and they did refer also that at that market there would be demos on how to cut and prepare fish. That alone should have given it a bit away that I wasn't going to meet the regular market by the docks, but it didn't click in my mind then. Indeed, I ended  in front of what use to be the old Fulton fish Market. The New Fulton Fish Market is actually located in the South Bronx and from the photos on the internet looks rather mass scale and industrial, to serve the best fish restaurants in the city I suspect.

Old Fish Market down by South Ferry

But back to Old Fulton. Although decrepit, it is a nice evoking building. It is pretty much falling apart and looking as abandoned as it could. Its architecture does remind me of the same type of coop-regulated markets I indeed was used to from going shopping for food with my mum. These are big bulky buildings divided in rows of shops/stands that circled around the ground and sometimes upper flours. Each vendor sold more or less similar fishes and seafood with the occasional rarity to be only found at specific stands. As a customer you would take a couple of strolls to probe where to get the freshest fish for the best price (the one with healthy eyes, that smelled like the seaside, salty water and algae rather than of the bloody long standing ones. At this New Amsterdam Fish Market, however, I ended up where there were but a bunch of fish stands, half of them selling actual whole fishes the other half selling ready to eat fish-based (very tasty) snacks (I ate an awesome sea scallop ceviche). The fresh fish stands were by far outnumbered by numerous artisan bread, farm greens, handcrafted cider sirup and all sorts of organic-made sweet stuff. I ended up at yet another cool and cosmopolitan "museum for food" to educate city people, rather than at a place where I would have gone to buy some fish to stuff my fridge and freezer with. I even had stopped at Duane Reade to get myself a cooling back in case I would take too long to get back home..."you fool" I thought.

The New Amsterdam Fish Market

As it seems I have to strongly improve my filtering of local markets for genuine food  so that I won’t end up at educating urbanites markets about sustainably produced goods. Goods which I would like to buy in any case but I could easily pass on the gloss that comes with all the fancy advertising and of course the price of it. The hunt continues.

"Food & awareness" stands

I guess I am only now realizing how as a young person I did not think at all about these places to where we went for food. I just took them for granted, the markets where we bought the edibles which were the ingredients of my mum's conscious and delicious cooking. For me such docks were naturally the places where to go for the proper real fish. There, men with sun-stained skin and a mustache, in a tank top and balding, and women with big hands and a scarf on their head, they were the ones that knew all about the Ocean and seafood. Far from the experience of the urbanites around me, I grew up where the small fishing boats, “traineiras” with their small but ever burpy motors, arrived loaded with mussels, octopuses, fresh sun shining scaly (and often still jumping) sardines and mackerels. And a few hours later with a crusty salted skin, with fresh olive oil poured over their fresh white tender meat and sided by a fresh tomato, cucumber and lettuce salad and boiled potatoes (in their skin) they would be the on my plate for lunch and take over both my taste buds and my brain circuits.

#3 - Seamen

They circumambulate the city and he fills my mind with reveries of sails and the high Sea.

by Herman Melville, in Moby Dick

#2 - New York pets

Dogs, dogs! An endless number of pooches and hounds get walked everyday by their owners in the island of Manhattan and surely in other boroughs. I have seriously never seen so many elegant Afghan hounds, happy labs, jumpy terriers, fluffy golden retrievers, tough bulldogs, minuscule chihuahuas and prepped poodles in my life! And the worse of this is that I am starting to go insane with such dogged sweetness around! I fear one of these days I might end up on the brink of just crazily hugging one of those dogs without any respect whatsoever!* Of course together with these four-legged, tail-wagging buddies there are doggy gyms, doggy salons and hairstylists, Petco, Unleashed, Furry Paws... places from where all sort of canine paraphernalia comes from: in Winter dogs wear jackets, capes, shoes, socks, sometimes they have on more layers than I do! I am expecting some sunglasses as the Sun starts to be blinding bright this Summer.

*For the record, I really like dogs but I am actually more of a cat lover, but, unlike in the Netherlands, New Amsterdam people don't seem to have a cat on every window... might also be that I see them less as most buildings are not small grachtenhuisjes/ grachtenpanden and ground floor windows are not just there next to the sidewalk with curtains wide open. 

#1 - "I'm walking here!!!"

In New York, everyone has something to say and they don't give a damn if you get offended. Be that about the world around them, injustice, politics, the neighbor, the boss, their sweetheart, construction on the subway... You name it.  How else can you deal with this accelerated  mix of  honks, crazy competitiveness, daycare, sporting, gathering food for the day, sweating behind the counter making burritos? 

Often these exclamations, opinions and remarks just... cannot be contained. For the good and for the bad I find it great! Especially for my own amusement... unintended of course, or is it? 

Big guy with a nice round belly and a bit of a long bit greasy hair 

on the sidewalk under the scaffolds a bit ahead of me:

- There is actually a road you can bike on!

Sportier guy about the same age but grayer 

much shorter wavy hair almost whining:

- I live here!

Big guy assertively:

- Good! So do I.

All the New York drama? Not planned for my sole entertainment ...yet, I just can't stop myself from smiling along with it.

Zero.

Short, long. A snapshot, a description. In a metropolis that brews with culture (in the broadest sense of the term... not only the intellectual, fancy-schmancy bits of it, the elite's culture) and tones stories, images/tales are bound to bombard any and every soul in this City. I too am subject to the influence of that culture mixture that distills into a multitude of feelings: compassion, amazement, anger, happiness, despise, understanding...nostalgia. As I can no longer contain all of these emotions and thoughts I will simply let some of these stories, allegories or loose ideas be spilled over the rim of my everyday life. What whatever random pace. In my attempt to be reasonably realistic I will stick to the order of magnitude of number 8000.  Eight million just seemed to me like a task infinitely far from my ambitions. I will dwell and depart and who knows where will I find a "harbor".