{"id":114227,"date":"2017-08-23T11:00:24","date_gmt":"2017-08-23T15:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=114227"},"modified":"2017-08-23T11:24:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T15:24:32","slug":"conversations-with-fishermen-of-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/08\/23\/conversations-with-fishermen-of-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Fish Story: Dispatch from Coney Island"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

\u00c9douard Manet, Fishing<\/em>, ca. 1862\u201363.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t fish, but I enjoy being around those who do. They\u2019re easy to find in New York, leaning against the railing of a Brooklyn pier or resting on the rocky banks of the city\u2019s rivers. In Sheepshead Bay, the fishermen are often jolly and sun-beaten, as if they\u2019ve just returned from a long voyage. By early afternoon, they fill the local bars, swearing off red meat and bragging about not taking their medications. The Battery Park esplanade is more relaxed. Sometimes the only sign of a fisherman is an unmanned rod cast out to sea; a passerby might assume that fish in the Hudson catch themselves.<\/p>\n

One August morning a few years ago, I went out to Coney Island to clear my head on Steeplechase Pier, where fishermen gather in the summer months to fill their buckets with flukes, stripers, and porgies, much as they did a century ago. Coney Island is slow to change. Its busier blocks still have working pay phones on both sides of the street, and until recently, broken signs dangled off the facades of abandoned buildings, unmoored from their bracings by Hurricane Sandy. On hot days, the main stretch of Coney Island\u2019s two-and-a-half mile boardwalk is crowded with visitors from the nearby amusement park. They eat mango on a stick as they navigate the performers dancing with snakes and rainbow-colored poodles. Down by the fishermen\u2019s pier, the boardwalk quiets down. Elderly residents of the nearby towers read paperback novels and check the time on their digital wristwatches, and kids gather in the shade beneath the arches of an old terra-cotta building with a flaking portrait of Poseidon on the front. In the painting, the sea king is sitting alone in a rowboat, paddling toward the Atlantic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I joined a group of fishermen on the pier who were digging through ten-gallon buckets and tackle boxes. A man named Sonny was sitting on a Rascal scooter, baiting his hook with chopped-up fish and squid he kept in the vehicle\u2019s front basket. Another man, David, who looked to be in his late fifties, was leaning against the railing. As I sat down on a nearby bench, David noticed a tug on his line. He pulled up a fluke maybe ten inches long, too small to keep in New York State. He warned the others that city officials were known to inspect the fishermen\u2019s bags and buckets when they came in from the pier at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

As David removed the fish from his hook, a teenager sitting next to me on the bench jumped up. \u201cLet me buy it from you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

David looked around. \u201cJust take it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The teenager shoved the fish, which was flapping wildly, into a plastic bag. When the bag stopped moving, he put it in his backpack and sat back down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the last one for you,\u201d said David. He walked over to a bag tied to a nearby railing post and pulled out a bluefish, only a few inches long. He flattened it on the railing and sliced it into four pieces. He placed three of them back in the bag and baited his hook with the fourth.<\/p>\n

The teenager began to panic. He pointed to two men in yellow vests walking down the pier.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d said David. \u201cThey\u2019re not from the city.\u201d The teenager struggled to hide his backpack beneath the bench. \u201cI\u2019m telling you they are not with the city,\u201d David repeated. \u201cI can read their bodies. They\u2019re drunk on warm beer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moments later the men sat down and removed two cans of beer from their bag.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know everything!\u201d David laughed. \u201cThis is my corner. I\u2019ve been fishing here for thirty years.\u201d Looking out over the water, he told me about an evening, years ago, when thirty or so people arrived from Haiti to get baptized in the ocean. \u201cIt was very interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked if he had thought about joining them.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. Out here, my spirit is free.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

David was born into a family of undertakers, but he never took up the profession. He served in the navy and later worked as the superintendent for several buildings in his neighborhood in the Bronx. His wife died a few years before we met, and since then he had spent much of his time fishing. It had been years since he knew the time. \u201cI don\u2019t ask people the time and I don\u2019t keep up with the time,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m on my time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The men on the pier referred to David as Pop, one of many nicknames he\u2019s acquired over the years. The owner of his favorite pizza shop called him Mr. White for the white scruff that grew on his chin when an early morning tide required him to leave his house without a shave. A fishing-boat captain in Sheepshead Bay knew him as Joe, for reasons David did not himself know.<\/p>\n

As he and Sonny fished, David told me he\u2019d once caught a fifty-one-pound striped bass in the East River, a record at the time.<\/p>\n

Sonny laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can look it up,\u201d David said, adding that a bait shop named Stella Maris in Sheepshead Bay kept records of the biggest catches. He leaned toward me. \u201cStill, it\u2019s best when the guys see it for themselves. So they know it\u2019s not no fish story.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was hoping for a big catch today. For years, he\u2019d been using fish to settle his tabs at various shops in his neighborhood, and a payment was due. \u201cI have accounts all over the neighborhood,\u201d he told me. \u201cI have a big account at the pizzeria. But I keep my bills. You\u2019ve got to pay your way in life. Because nobody won\u2019t give you nothing for free. Believe me. I\u2019ve tried.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now and then, I\u2019ve come across stories of other fishermen who survived like David. At a bar in Clinton Hill, a man named Robert once told me about some fishermen who decades ago sold bluefish on his block. \u201cThis was back in the day. They fish in the morning. Really early in the morning. Come back one, two, three, four in the afternoon. They would open up the fire hydrant and clean the fish on the corner. I\u2019d go down right away and buy it. Fresh fish! People turned up,\u201d said Robert. \u201cThey made a rule that you\u2019re only supposed to bring in five pounds. Anything after that you have to throw it back in. But some fishermen used to take it and hide it because they needed money. A whole fish was five dollars.\u201d Back then, the police never bothered the fishermen. \u201cThe government didn\u2019t care too much about this neighborhood. People got shot on the corner. There were bodies, drugs, all over. Everyone selling drugs made five to six thousand a day. It stopped when the cocaine started coming into the neighborhood. The government started making strict rules in the community. Then white people came.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last fisherman Robert remembered seeing on the block was known as Cabo Rojo. \u201cHe was old but he was strong. He was afraid of nothing, short with tattoos all over.\u201d On summer evenings, people would line up around the block, waiting for Cabo Rojo to arrive. \u201cHe would take the money he made, buy a big bottle of liquor at the Puerto Rican grocery store, and we\u2019d all share it. Maybe take another fish and throw it on the barbecue. It was good times. He used to invite us to Far Rockaway to go to the beach. He used the money to rent a boat. We\u2019d jump in the water and drink beer.\u201d According to Robert, Cabo Rojo disappeared from the neighborhood sometime in the late nineties.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\u201cSome guys didn\u2019t come back this year,\u201d David told me as he cast his line into the water. \u201cStrokes, heart attacks. We all came out to throw roses into the water.\u201d On Steeplechase Pier, he said, it\u2019s a tradition to remember the dead by venturing out to their fishing spot, saying a prayer or two, and tossing a bouquet of flowers into the sea. \u201cEverybody wants to be remembered in some kind of way,\u201d he said. \u201cMe? I want to be remembered up on this pier. They\u2019ll say, Remember Pop?\u201d<\/p>\n

At the far end of the pier, two fishermen accidentally caught a stingray. After much effort, they pulled it up over the railing and freed their line. They watched the creature suffocate for a moment and walked away, leaving it in the center of a growing crowd. Seeing this, Sonny drove his Rascal over to the commotion. He and another fisherman grabbed the ray by the fins and tossed it back to sea. A group of onlookers lined up along the railing to watch the ray as it composed itself beneath the water and vanished.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like a bird,\u201d a small girl said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would think it could fly,\u201d said an older man in a Hawaiian shirt. \u201cBut it cannot.\u201d<\/p>\n

By dusk, David and I were alone. He had only caught one good-size fish, a fluke he kept in his bucket. \u201cThe ol\u2019 boy\u2019s about dead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I asked if it was a problem if the fish died.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cBut of course, in a way, it\u2019s a terrible thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

David reeled in a small bluefish, about six-inches long. As he took it off the hook, he noticed he\u2019d caught it using a piece of another bluefish as bait. \u201cThey eat their own,\u201d he said as he tossed the fish into the center of the pier and watched as it flopped its way toward the edge, in search of ocean. \u201cThe bluefish is a very ferocious fish,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t believe in letting go.\u201d<\/p>\n

David was interrupted when a couple showed up on the pier, arm in arm. Behind them a short old lady was crying, keeping watch over three children. One of them was carrying a bottle of Corona. Another held a bundle of balloons. As they approached David\u2019s corner of the pier, he bowed his head and hustled me out of the way. The family said what sounded like a prayer in Spanish. The family passed around the Corona, each taking a sip. \u201cFourteen miserable years!\u201d the man shouted out to the Atlantic as he tossed the bottle into the water. They huddled together on the edge of the pier and one of the girls released the balloons.<\/p>\n

After the family walked away, David noticed the bluefish he\u2019d caught a few minutes ago had made considerable progress toward the edge of the pier. \u201cI\u2019ve had an interesting life,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve had days when a guy next to me outfished me with a string and a soda can. Now I\u2019m just figuring out how I want to be buried. Put in the ground? Or scattered in the ocean?\u201d He walked over to the fish, now only inches from the water, and picked it up. \u201cOkay, Mr. Snapper,\u201d he said as he flattened it out on the railing. \u201cI\u2019m about to do sushi on you.\u201d He took out his knife and sawed through its tail and fins, flicking each into the water. \u201cThey die so fast,\u201d he said, as he sliced the finless body into four pieces. Blood pooled in the knife grooves scaring his section of the rail. He fixed a chunk of flesh on his hook. \u201cLet\u2019s try this again,\u201d he said, casting his line into the water once more.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, I went to Sheepshead Bay to visit Stella Maris, the bait shop where he told me he kept his fishing records. On my way down, I stopped in a nearby cafe, which advertised cheesecake, cappuccino, and \u201cgelato from Italy\u201d on its awning. I was hoping to find some fishermen returning from a day out on the charter boats, but the place was nearly empty. An old man was hunched over at the bar, tallying receipts and mumbling to himself as he poured a Budweiser into a small glass, downed it, and repeated. A bartender walked into the room. He saw me glance at an empty gelato case. \u201cWe don\u2019t have food here,\u201d he told me. I asked for a beer. He handed me a Budweiser and a small glass. A movie called The Fog <\/em>was playing on a television mounted on the wall. The old man at the bar turned to me and said, \u201cWhat I can only imagine is that the fog kills everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the movie ended I made my way to Stella Maris, a narrow, one-story brick building with fishing gear piled in the backyard. A few fishermen were lingering in the side alley, washing some equipment with a hose. Inside, a man with tattoos and a beard was standing behind a glass case full of tackle. I told the man about David and his fifty-one-pound catch that was once the largest on the East River. That made sense, he said, because striped bass liked the river\u2019s brackish water. I asked if I could see the records. He looked confused, so I explained that I wanted to confirm David\u2019s story, and to find out the name of the person who bested him. He laughed. \u201cOh,\u201d he said, looking over at the two fishermen now arguing with one another in the alley. \u201cWe don\u2019t write anything down.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Joe Kloc is the web editor at <\/em>Harper\u2019s Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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