4 a.m. at the old fish market

You turn eastward now, toward the East River, and continue south toward Fulton and South Street. The streets will seem empty and waiting as the early dawn slowly brings dimensions to the black cardboard buildings, but you will never be quite alone.  A young policeman walking his somnolent path will greet you; a head will emerge from a manhole and shout “Good morning;” a truck driver will tap his horn gently so that you may notice and greet him.  And then the Fulton Fish Market breaks through the silences with a tremendous roar.

From Fulton Street to the Brooklyn Bridge on South Street, under the highway and to the edge of the river, stream stalls on stalls of red snapper, of endless sacks of scallops and scallop-shaped dogfish, of dried slabs of cod in soldierly rows, of silver threads of smelt glittering in gilt cans, of ice nests holding mounds of shrimp and a strayed starfish or two. 

Weathered men in high boots and heavy sweaters weigh out heaps of fish in suspended 100-pound scoop scales.  Two men drag and carry a grouper twice their size, its face still set in the common fish expression of blustering anger.  A row of cod, each in its own basket, stands head down with tail fins spread up and out, like precision drivers in a water ballet. Out at the very end of the piers rest a few fishing smacks, rusty and worn, their nets hanging limp and dull. At one time, the bulk of deliveries to the market was made by boats, but they have been supplanted by trucks, and it is now the truckmen who are the tough, salty characters while the fishermen become anachronistic shadows.

For breakfast, recross the market (watch out for slashing freight-hooks and heaving swinging scales) to South Street, just before Fulton, where you will find Sloppy Louie’s. It will be full of leather-lunged drivers and merchants engulfing extraordinary breakfasts, taking full advantage of the menu’s promise: “Saute´dishes with garlic flavor no extra charge.”