NY- The Fulton Fish Market, a cultural touchstone in lower Manhattan for nearly 184 years, packed up its last box of porgies early yesterday.
Its cobblestone-paved streets survived Tammany Hall, the Great Depression, two World Wars, the replacement of push carts with Nissan hi-low forklifts and alleged mob control.
“I’m very depressed. I’m not working. I’m drinking Sambuca,” 30-year veteran Mike Rizzuto, a foreman at Monte’s Seafood, said with a foot-long grappling hook slung around his neck.
“We’re gonna miss it,” added Rizzuto’s boss Richie Montelbano, 54. “We watch the sun rise over the Brooklyn Bridge every morning. My father was a truck driver here. I’ve been here all my life.”
Taking a coffee break at 5 a.m., a brawny vet nicknamed “Joey Tuna” struggled to hold back tears.
“Big guys ain’t supposed to cry, but a part of old New York is dying today,” Joey Centrone of Douglaston, Queens, said. “I recognize this place is antiquated, but it’s a part of us.”
His lower lip quivering, Centrone, 51, said he’s worked at the riverfront market for a quarter-century and watched the World Trade Center burn from his post at Arrow Seafood.
A day after the Sept. 11 attacks, he “borrowed” a vat from JMS Seasonal Seafood, filled it with 500 pounds of ice and delivered it by forklift to the relief workers at Ground Zero.
“We’ve all been through so much here. Good times. Bad times. It’s hard to leave,” he said.
As regular customers sidestepped inky puddles to poke glistening red snapper and whiskered catfish, Montelbano worried about his weekend move to the market’s new $85 million, fully enclosed home in the South Bronx.
He said workers had to rewire his new stall twice. And he predicted the army of forklift drivers accustomed to Fulton’s forgiving brick skeleton will shred the modern Marlite walls in Hunts Point.
And then there’s the new ID-based security system – a vast departure from the public square where Fulton fishmongers, tourists and ale-house denizens commingled under the belly of the FDR Drive.
“The new market will be like the Gestapo headquarters in Germany compared to this. If my granddaughter wants to visit, she’ll have to pay,” he said.
“This is a landmark. How can they make us move? They might as well give the Statue of Liberty to New Jersey,” complained Edgar (Ziggy) Galarza, 44, a salesman at the wholesale market for 25 years.
Indeed, the Fulton Fish Market is the stuff of legend – one of the last remaining links to Manhattan’s maritime history.
Author Joseph Mitchell wrote in the 1950s that “the racket the fishmongers make” helped rid his mind “of thoughts of death and doom.” And when artist Robert Rauschenberg rented a nearby attic space, he used fish market crates for furniture.
But the city is more concerned with sanitation than nostalgia. The bright new 400,000-square-foot Bronx market has better refrigeration, better truck access and proximity to the Hunts Point Produce Market.
Its opening was postponed for nearly a year by construction delays and a last-minute lawsuit by fish-unloading firm Laro Service Systems Inc. Barring any other hitches, it will open late Sunday night with Fulton’s 50-odd vendors and more than 600 workers.
“Everyone’s a little scared, because it’s something new,” said Slavin & Sons owner Herb Slavin, 74, who’s worked from 11 p.m. until 9 a.m. every weekday without a break for 65 years. “But even when you get married, you’re nervous. It’s something new.”
But others were looking forward to the move. “Who wants to stand outside like this when it’s pouring rain or 20 below? It gets crazy,” said Joe Scelzo, 44, a dispatcher for four years at Third Generation Seafood. “The new building will be 50 degrees every day, rain or shine.”