Speaker 1: Okay. It is sixth a m. And I have three.
Speaker 2: Cats in bed.
Speaker 3: One of them was sleeping on my chest and the other
Speaker 3: two on my legs. I love waking up like that,
Speaker 3: so closy. My husband is still in bed asleep. Usually
Speaker 3: we go to work together about today. He goes in
Speaker 3: at a different time, so I get ready on my
Speaker 3: own and.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go do my skincare now that.
Speaker 4: I brush my teeth, and then I almostly get ready
Speaker 4: in the dark, and then I'll go down to work, which.
Speaker 1: Is very close.
Speaker 2: So I don't go to work till six forty five,
Speaker 2: and sometimes I don't get out of bed till.
Speaker 4: Six fifteen.
Speaker 1: And today I think I'll.
Speaker 4: Go down there about sixty five, so I have a
Speaker 4: little bit of time.
Speaker 1: Let's get going.
Speaker 5: This is finally a show about a fishmonger in Seattle.
Speaker 5: For five years, Hillary Brannick was until recently the only
Speaker 5: woman on staff at the world famous Pike Place fish Market.
Speaker 6: You want me in the middle of a snack, I'm
Speaker 6: eating some donuts. If you'd like some, have have some.
Speaker 6: I have to go tip the donut people. Do you
Speaker 6: want to come daily? Dozen makes us hot coffee every
Speaker 6: morning and taking care of us. They're old friends of
Speaker 6: the fish market, old old old friends. And right now
Speaker 6: I'm gonna go give them tips because they just gave
Speaker 6: us some donuts.
Speaker 7: Welcome to Pikeways. Fish.
Speaker 6: People come here for an experience that they're not gonna
Speaker 6: get anywhere else, which is really us connecting with them
Speaker 6: in the moments that they're here, like directly, like this.
Speaker 6: But we also throw fish, which is a huge crowd driver.
Speaker 6: So we get these fish in right here. These are
Speaker 6: called tetefish. They're like dummy fish, so we use these
Speaker 6: to learn how to throw customers real fish, so we're
Speaker 6: only ever throwing real fish. But like this lady in
Speaker 6: the purple may want this salmon, and so what I
Speaker 6: will do is I pick up the salmon, and then
Speaker 6: I go, where are you from, Purple hoodie? I would
Speaker 6: say co ho for Indiana, and then I'd launch it
Speaker 6: over the counter, and then they would hear that and
Speaker 6: we would continue. So everyone knows what's happening all the time.
Speaker 6: So when we shout like he's gonna do now. My
Speaker 6: name's Hillary Brannick slash Segar because I just got married,
Speaker 6: so I.
Speaker 1: Have a couple of names.
Speaker 6: Right now, I'm thirty three and I'm from a very
Speaker 6: small town called Florence in Colorado State. I am from Florence, Colorado,
Speaker 6: a little tiny town just.
Speaker 1: At the foothills of the Rockies.
Speaker 6: My mother, Kathleen, is a Wisconsin native, but she and
Speaker 6: my dad moved to Colorado to start a family. So
Speaker 6: me and my brother and my sister were all born
Speaker 6: in Pueblo, Colorado, which is about forty minutes west of
Speaker 6: where we live. Growing up in Florence is really really
Speaker 6: small town. I mean, this is the kind of place
Speaker 6: where everyone I graduated with were the same people I
Speaker 6: went to preschool with, and it was our class was
Speaker 6: like one hundred and five people. So growing up, everybody
Speaker 6: knows everything about you, all your dirt, all your good stuff,
Speaker 6: all your weird stuff, every growth you've had in your
Speaker 6: life and development. Everyone in the county knew that about me,
Speaker 6: and I knew it about them, which is interesting to
Speaker 6: navigate when you're trying to find your own identity in
Speaker 6: whatever part of your life. So I was definitely considered
Speaker 6: a loser. I was bullied a lot when I was
Speaker 6: in middle school. I was a very timid person. I
Speaker 6: was really afraid of everyone. I never ever ever in
Speaker 6: my life would stand up for myself. You know, a
Speaker 6: lot of kids have that experience. I definitely was one
Speaker 6: of them. Okay, we have this big silver top counter
Speaker 6: that makes sort of a half oval shape, and in
Speaker 6: the corner of it there's a little spot that you
Speaker 6: could say on it's like a ninety degree angle, and
Speaker 6: that's where we catch fish from our bench, which is
Speaker 6: a big metal display about I don't know. It was
Speaker 6: like ten yards away, ten yards away something like that.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 6: So, as soon as someone yells t T, which is
Speaker 6: test toss or tourist hoss, we all race each other
Speaker 6: over to this little corner so you can get there first.
Speaker 6: And so he'll go t T and then we respond TT.
Speaker 6: And then as soon as he starts to throw the fish,
Speaker 6: we go hey. And then as soon as it hits
Speaker 6: his hands like that, we go yeah, so hey, And
Speaker 6: so we do that anytime we throw anything. Uh and
Speaker 6: then we say backjack, backjack b ack j a c K.
Speaker 6: It means put it back where it came from. So
Speaker 6: I'll go back jack too, both.
Speaker 7: Too.
Speaker 6: Here's the slap of the paper and how we did that. Alrighty,
Speaker 6: who's got those rainbow trout where are you come on over?
Speaker 7: Boss?
Speaker 6: After I graduated high school, I moved to Boston for college.
Speaker 6: I went to Berkeley College of Music for songwriting in
Speaker 6: twenty ten, I think maybe twenty eleven. Somewhere in between there,
Speaker 6: I going to school regular and then I worked at
Speaker 6: this place called the Poorhouse.
Speaker 1: Right on Boylston Street.
Speaker 6: Anybody that's listening that lived in Boston knows the place,
Speaker 6: really fun bar and on Marathon Monday. The first time
Speaker 6: I worked Marathon Monday, my voice was so shot afterwards
Speaker 6: that I just couldn't talk. And I thought I just
Speaker 6: had laryngitis and that it would go away, and then
Speaker 6: it really wouldn't go away. And then I went to
Speaker 6: a doctor and he's like, well, you have nodes or nodules,
Speaker 6: which are not something that can be fixed. And so
Speaker 6: I just went into a very spiraled, bad depression for
Speaker 6: like two and a half years. And the really crazy
Speaker 6: thing was I was misdiagnosed, so I just went he
Speaker 6: told me what it was, and I was like, well,
Speaker 6: I guess this is what I'm working with. And so
Speaker 6: I just had to drop out because I couldn't perform.
Speaker 6: And then I just off doing music all together because
Speaker 6: it killed me not to be able to sing, and
Speaker 6: I didn't want to write. And I had a lot
Speaker 6: of friends who wanted to help me, and they're like, well,
Speaker 6: you should learn to you know, play piano and you know,
Speaker 6: play guitar and do this, and like, at the time,
Speaker 6: I didn't know how to respond to that in a
Speaker 6: way that was positive because I was just so frustrated
Speaker 6: and my friends and my loved ones were trying to
Speaker 6: help me, but what I felt like. And I remember
Speaker 6: telling one of my friends I got frustrated, and I
Speaker 6: wasn't frustrated with her, but I was expressing to her
Speaker 6: I felt and I was like, I feel like when
Speaker 6: somebody says that to me, it'd be like me telling
Speaker 6: a pianist to learn how to sings, Like what if
Speaker 6: I broke your hands and you're a pianist. So I
Speaker 6: just had this whole horrible two year experience where I
Speaker 6: was just really depressed.
Speaker 1: I quit music.
Speaker 6: I didn't play music, I didn't really do anything. I
Speaker 6: stopped listening in music kind of regularly, just kind of
Speaker 6: became not ideal. And then a really good friend of
Speaker 6: mine named Jeremy, who I also went to school with.
Speaker 1: Jeremy Blass.
Speaker 6: He and I were walking down the street and I
Speaker 6: was drunk and I was crying, and I was talking
Speaker 6: about how I wanted to disappear and do something else
Speaker 6: because I was still so crushed. Music was the only
Speaker 6: thing I ever cared about.
Speaker 1: All growing up.
Speaker 6: I didn't care about anything else. I didn't want to
Speaker 6: be anything else. That was my thing was in some way,
Speaker 6: I was going to be a singer. And I didn't
Speaker 6: know what that meant. Sometimes I still don't, but I
Speaker 6: knew it's what I wanted. We were walking down the
Speaker 6: street and he's like, you need to go see another doctor,
Speaker 6: and I was like, I don't want to go again.
Speaker 1: He's like, you have to go. Will you please go?
Speaker 1: He's like, will you just go for me? He's like,
Speaker 1: you have different insurance now you can see a different doctor.
Speaker 1: He's like, just as a friend, do me the favor.
Speaker 1: Just go one more time.
Speaker 6: And because he and I were such good friends, I
Speaker 6: was like, Okay, I'll be reasonable, I'll go again.
Speaker 1: Maybe I just needed second set eyes.
Speaker 7: People come from.
Speaker 6: All over the world to see us throwfish. We obviously
Speaker 6: don't want to throw customers fish that they're paying for
Speaker 6: because we take really good care of those. So she
Speaker 6: would order this, and I would ask her, do you
Speaker 6: want us to cut this for you? We do that
Speaker 6: for free. Do you want us to leave it whole
Speaker 6: so you can do it? We kind of get whatever
Speaker 6: they want as instructions and then we throw it over.
Speaker 6: And the reason that we shout the way we do,
Speaker 6: or sing the way that we do, chant whatever people
Speaker 6: call it, is so that you tell me one time
Speaker 6: what you want. I tell everybody at the same time,
Speaker 6: so that whoever gets to you first knows what to
Speaker 6: help you with. So then you know how to repeat
Speaker 6: yourself to ten people, you know. And it's not like
Speaker 6: a grocery store. You take your stuff and you go
Speaker 6: check out. We grab every single thing for you. And
Speaker 6: that's how we communicate. So that the guy in the
Speaker 6: red that's JB red Hair, he will never have to
Speaker 6: come down here to get anything. He'll just call for
Speaker 6: it and then we'll send it up to him, and
Speaker 6: vice versa. So I went and I went to Massachusetts
Speaker 6: and Ear Infirmary, which has done surgery.
Speaker 1: I'm like opera singers.
Speaker 6: There's been a lot of really big people that have
Speaker 6: been treated there and they're fantastic. And my doctor he
Speaker 6: did what they call is a larenscopy. So they take
Speaker 6: this camera and it goes up on my as the
Speaker 6: left side of my nostril goes all the way up
Speaker 6: and then down my throat. And so he put this
Speaker 6: camera in my throat and asked me to sing so
Speaker 6: that he could see how my vocal colds are functioning.
Speaker 6: And I'm singing and then he goes, oh, and I
Speaker 6: go what. He goes, you don't have nodes or nodules,
Speaker 6: and I go what. He's like, I think I can
Speaker 6: fix this. And with this camera in my mouth, I'm
Speaker 6: like in shock. I'm crying. He's trying to get me
Speaker 6: to calm down, but I'm so excited and trying not
Speaker 6: to let myself be excited because I also know how
Speaker 6: medicine works and it's not always that way. But I
Speaker 6: was like, holy shit, this doctor thinks he can do it.
Speaker 6: After he explained what I had, which was essentially I
Speaker 6: had a tear in my vocal cord and then it
Speaker 6: grew cysts. It just basically grew inside itself. And if
Speaker 6: you guys can all put your two pointed fingers together
Speaker 6: in a horizontal way, that's what your vocal cords look like,
Speaker 6: but they are kind of like rubber bands. And if
Speaker 6: you pull a rubber band apart into a long string,
Speaker 6: that is what your vocal culture are like. And so
Speaker 6: if you imagine two marbles in the middle of it,
Speaker 6: when you talk or you sing, they get really tight
Speaker 6: and then the sound goes through. But I had basically
Speaker 6: little tiny marbles, and so I would lose my range
Speaker 6: in certain places because when I would sing or speak,
Speaker 6: it would just stop or wouldn't close enough for the
Speaker 6: sound to get out properly. I guess sing something before
Speaker 6: you made me okay, if it's bad, you have to
Speaker 6: delete it, though, Oh come to bed with you, but
Speaker 6: don't love me.
Speaker 8: I won't love you, and that just kay fee, I
Speaker 8: don't want.
Speaker 4: To feel you.
Speaker 9: That's a new song. Does it sound okay?
Speaker 2: Why can't I.
Speaker 10: Leave a launch here and a launch of gone get
Speaker 10: away from Me?
Speaker 6: You can call out anything from anywhere. It's basically just
Speaker 6: to let someone know. Somebody needs help right now, somebody
Speaker 6: needs something next, And so we try to do it
Speaker 6: in a way that you can get everything succinct and
Speaker 6: quick and in a good cadence. So we always say
Speaker 6: you get the response that you call. And so if
Speaker 6: I'm like two bows, houses like they're not gonna hear that,
Speaker 6: they're also not going to respond very well. So then
Speaker 6: I'll go two bows, two bows.
Speaker 7: This is that's not real. That was just a test
Speaker 7: that she could hear.
Speaker 6: But see how everyone immediately like perked up and knew
Speaker 6: what to do.
Speaker 7: That's why we do that.
Speaker 6: So even the person over here selling smoke salmon knows
Speaker 6: that two rainbow trout are coming over the counter, and
Speaker 6: then that person that wants to trout might want the
Speaker 6: smoked salmon as well. So Adrian knows, oh, you're getting
Speaker 6: trout too cool, I'm going to add this to your order,
Speaker 6: and then he'll go.
Speaker 7: Smoke with the bows.
Speaker 6: And so we just kind of all have to listen
Speaker 6: all the time and then just keep That's how we
Speaker 6: keep tack of our customers want I was it, okay,
Speaker 6: I got Here's so weird. I ended up in Seattle
Speaker 6: at the end of twenty sixteen. When I was living
Speaker 6: in Nashville is when Trump first ran for office. The
Speaker 6: people I was living with openly began to become like
Speaker 6: they were openly racist after he came out and ran
Speaker 6: for president, and they were openly doing racist shit, and
Speaker 6: so I was like, not a chance. So I packed
Speaker 6: up all my stuff. I took some of it to
Speaker 6: my aunt's house in Wisconsin, my aunt uncle's house, and
Speaker 6: then I took shoved the rest of it in a
Speaker 6: closet and left for the summer. And then I worked
Speaker 6: in Boston, got some money together, just to see what
Speaker 6: I was going to do next. And one of my
Speaker 6: friends that I met at a festival was like, Hey,
Speaker 6: I'm going to move to Seattle. I know you're up
Speaker 6: in the air about what you want to do. Do
Speaker 6: you want to move with me to Seattle? And I
Speaker 6: was like, I've never been there, Let's do it. My
Speaker 6: first job was here in the market, and the second
Speaker 6: I stepped into this market, people took care of me immediately.
Speaker 6: I actually came here. The first day I came to
Speaker 6: Seattle was allo of the day I moved here, just
Speaker 6: like Boston. But that first week we came down to
Speaker 6: Pipe Place Market, which I'd never heard of before, never saw,
Speaker 6: never knew anything about. I really just didn't know about
Speaker 6: Seattle at all. I will say Seattle is one of
Speaker 6: my favorite cities now, but it's also like a hidden city,
Speaker 6: like people kind of forget that this is a metropolitan place.
Speaker 6: So I came down here and I stood outside pipe
Speaker 6: place fish actually, and I was standing by Rachel. This
Speaker 6: big golden pig that's right in front of the shop.
Speaker 6: It's a statue.
Speaker 1: Definitely google it. She's a prize winning pig. It's really weird.
Speaker 1: It's like a bronze thing.
Speaker 6: But I was standing there next to Rachel, just staring
Speaker 6: at the fish market and they're throwing stuff and they're screaming.
Speaker 6: I've never even seen a fish market before. I don't
Speaker 6: even know what I'm looking at. And this guy, who
Speaker 6: is a legend here's name's Justin Hall shouts. He's like,
Speaker 6: you gonna buy something? And I'm like, ah, I'm poor,
Speaker 6: Yes I will. I'm like, I don't have any money,
Speaker 6: I don't live anywhere, but I'm for sure about to
Speaker 6: buy this cocktail, this shrimp cocktail.
Speaker 1: So I get it.
Speaker 6: And I started talking to the guys and they're like, oh,
Speaker 6: you know, where are you from? And I told him
Speaker 6: I just moved here. I'm looking for work. And I
Speaker 6: asked them, you know, I was a very experienced bartender.
Speaker 6: You know, I bartended for and waitressed over a decade,
Speaker 6: so I was like, do you know any restaurants that
Speaker 6: need help? Because I'm the lady, they will hire me.
Speaker 6: And one of the guys at the time was dating
Speaker 6: a lady that had also been down here about twenty
Speaker 6: five years. He's like, yeah, my girlfriend runs Albaracho upstairs,
Speaker 6: and you know, I'll put in a word for you.
Speaker 6: And I went in there and got hired, and it
Speaker 6: was funny because I did all the things you shouldn't do,
Speaker 6: and all the servers out there we'll understand this. I
Speaker 6: went in on a Friday afternoon with like a shoddy
Speaker 6: resume because I didn't have a printer, and it was
Speaker 6: like during a rush. I also wasn't really sure what
Speaker 6: day was or well, you know, I was in like
Speaker 6: this insane place in my life where I didn't live anywhere,
Speaker 6: I didn't have any money. I was trying to get
Speaker 6: a job desperately. So I walked in on a Friday
Speaker 6: afternoon lunch rush and I was like, hey, hire me.
Speaker 6: And then I had to convince Kira to hire me,
Speaker 6: and she did, and she told me she was a
Speaker 6: straightforward lady. I loved working for her. She's really fun
Speaker 6: and really cool and really took me under her wing
Speaker 6: in the market and she was like, honestly, she's like,
Speaker 6: I would never hire someone coming in on a Friday.
Speaker 6: But I convinced her. I was like, you need to
Speaker 6: hire me. You will be happy that you hired me.
Speaker 6: I was like, I know that I have no one
Speaker 6: here to vouch for me. I was like, but I
Speaker 6: promise you. I was like, I don't even have a
Speaker 6: place to sleep tonight, but I will be here every
Speaker 6: day on time. And I was there every single day
Speaker 6: on time. And I worked there for a year and
Speaker 6: a half.
Speaker 7: So they're called TETs, which stands for.
Speaker 6: Test toss or tourist toss, and they are a keeto
Speaker 6: or chump salmon, and we actually buy them for throwing
Speaker 6: and then we donate.
Speaker 7: Them to the zoo and also a Wolfhaven.
Speaker 8: Pay did.
Speaker 7: Thanks boss? Oh, thank you?
Speaker 6: Don We have different whole fish all the time, but
Speaker 6: also some of the stuff kind of lives here, so
Speaker 6: we always have king salmon we filter through coho and
Speaker 6: sake depending on season, halib it from Alaska. We've got
Speaker 6: Alaskan black cod, we have trout from Idaho springs, and
Speaker 6: bronzino come fresh from Turkey, so we get those fresh,
Speaker 6: which is really cool eleven hour flight or something. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's awesome. All sustainable. We're sustainable seafood market. Our octopus
Speaker 6: come from Spain because we can get them sustainably.
Speaker 7: There.
Speaker 6: Actually one of the people that works here show she
Speaker 6: makes authentic Spanish ink prints. She used the Spanish octopus
Speaker 6: to make ink prints. They're beautiful.
Speaker 1: And then I got fired.
Speaker 6: I think that me getting fired from this place was
Speaker 6: actually it didn't go the way any of us wanted
Speaker 6: it too. I'm still very good friends with the owners
Speaker 6: and it's all okay now, so I definitely have no
Speaker 6: bad blood there. But it was hard. It was a
Speaker 6: hard let go. I don't think it's when anyone wanted.
Speaker 6: It just happened that way for whatever complex reasons. And
Speaker 6: then I stopped serving and I'd wanted out for a
Speaker 6: really long time because I'm also sober six years and
Speaker 6: alcohol was an issue for me, and I had stopped
Speaker 6: drinking a few months before I got fired because my
Speaker 6: grandmother got sick and I wanted to take care of her,
Speaker 6: and so I just I always told myself, like, I
Speaker 6: could have a drink again if when she got better,
Speaker 6: and she never did. She passed, and so I stayed sober,
Speaker 6: and one of the things that helped me with that
Speaker 6: was not going back to restaurants. And I knew that
Speaker 6: if I wanted to stay sober, that was probably for
Speaker 6: me one of the healthiest ways to do it. And
Speaker 6: I didn't know how I was going to do that,
Speaker 6: and then I ended up getting fired, which I knew
Speaker 6: was coming. I knew it, and then I just, you know,
Speaker 6: chose because I was able to just not go and
Speaker 6: work in another restaurant. I was very fortunate that I
Speaker 6: I didn't have to do that, so I was supported
Speaker 6: and I wasn't ever in danger of not having a
Speaker 6: place to live or not having food because people here
Speaker 6: take care of you like a family.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 6: I came in here homeless and people were bringing me
Speaker 6: groceries that didn't have to be refrigerated and making sure
Speaker 6: I had somewhere to stay. And nobody was like giving
Speaker 6: me money or anything, but they checked in and they
Speaker 6: treated me like family. The second you start in the
Speaker 6: market and you become a market worker, you become part
Speaker 6: of this really insane, loving circus family and there's nothing
Speaker 6: anybody down here wouldn't do for you. So I was
Speaker 6: able to not have to dive back into getting tips
Speaker 6: every day, and I ended up one of my regulars,
Speaker 6: who was also just a very good friend, hired me
Speaker 6: at the ice cream shop Shy Giant here in the market,
Speaker 6: and then as I worked there, I worked there for
Speaker 6: about a year and a half as well. Where I
Speaker 6: worked in Pipe Place Market, there's many stalls. If you
Speaker 6: haven't ever looked it up, google it. There's tons of businesses.
Speaker 6: There's eight floors. Some of it's an indoor market, some
Speaker 6: of it's an outdoor market. I worked in an outdoor
Speaker 6: ice cream stand that was year round and it was lovely.
Speaker 6: It's called Shy Giant Frozen Yogurt. And I worked for
Speaker 6: my friends ce Last for about a year and a
Speaker 6: half and I kind of ran the ice cream shop
Speaker 6: on my own. Oh yeah, I live really close. My
Speaker 6: commute is very short, so I look like I'm in
Speaker 6: my pajamas all the time. I live about twenty yards
Speaker 6: from my job. I live in Pipeclasce Market. I won't
Speaker 6: say where, but I do live here in the market
Speaker 6: very close. And I walk down my stairs and I
Speaker 6: take about ten steps outside in my door and I'm
Speaker 6: at work. I was living in the market and the
Speaker 6: way I got my apartment was very interesting. Mostly I
Speaker 6: was really annoying. You have to put yourself on a
Speaker 6: wait list, and there are years of waiting for apartments here.
Speaker 6: They're not widely known. There's not a ton especially for
Speaker 6: the building that I live The building that I live
Speaker 6: in has tenants that have been there for like thirty
Speaker 6: and there's only.
Speaker 1: Like twelve of us, like twelve.
Speaker 6: Apartments, so it's like kind of the friends building, but
Speaker 6: really it's just the hallway of all of us that
Speaker 6: know each other. But I had put myself on the
Speaker 6: wait list for the market apartments and I called every week,
Speaker 6: every single week. I was like, Hey, do you have anything, Hey,
Speaker 6: do you have any apartments? And they're like, no, I
Speaker 6: don't have anything. Also you're not at the top of
Speaker 6: the wait list, and like they were nice and stuff,
Speaker 6: but I was like, I'm getting in those apartments. I
Speaker 6: cannot live here anymore. I can't be in the situation
Speaker 6: I'm in. I didn't want to commute anymore, you know,
Speaker 6: Like I lived on Alcai across the water, which is awesome,
Speaker 6: but it was still two buses. Even if it's an hour,
Speaker 6: it's still two buses. It's still like weirdly timed buses.
Speaker 6: I had to take a bus from the water to
Speaker 6: you know, the middle part of West Seattle to get
Speaker 6: on another bus to come downtown. And it was just
Speaker 6: the situation was not ideal. So I just kept calling.
Speaker 6: I kept calling and calling and calling every week. And
Speaker 6: then right when we almost gonna get evicted, not because
Speaker 6: of me, I'll just say that, they called me and
Speaker 6: they're like, hey, we've got an apartment available. Do you
Speaker 6: want to come see it. I was like, right now,
Speaker 6: I can come right now, And so me and my
Speaker 6: husband went and saw it and got the apartment, and
Speaker 6: so then we just we've lived there for almost seven years.
Speaker 6: And so I lived there while I was still bartending
Speaker 6: at Elbaracho. I lived there when I worked at Shy
Speaker 6: Giant Frozen Yogurt, and I still live there now. At
Speaker 6: pipe Place Fish Market where the ice cream stand is.
Speaker 6: It's in a small little building called the Sanitary Market,
Speaker 6: and that's in pipe Place Market, and there's a little
Speaker 6: corner where there was a pickle stand called Britz Pickles.
Speaker 6: There was the poke stand the I believe it's wild
Speaker 6: poke is what it's called.
Speaker 1: And then the famous.
Speaker 6: Unmatched Oriental Mart and is a three generation owned Filipino market.
Speaker 1: They are so.
Speaker 6: Cool and during the slow freezing times, ice cream sales
Speaker 6: not super high. So I could see the ice cream
Speaker 6: shop from the Oriental Market kitchen, and so I would
Speaker 6: sit back there and hang out with them, and I
Speaker 6: would watch my shop from across the hall because they're
Speaker 6: very close, so it wasn't like if somebody came up
Speaker 6: and wanted help.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, oh, hey, I'm coming.
Speaker 6: Over and they'd be like great, Like you're two steps away,
Speaker 6: And so I would sit back there and I would
Speaker 6: just sit over there and hang out and have fun
Speaker 6: and hear old market stories from like people that really
Speaker 6: are the ones you want to hear it from. They've
Speaker 6: been down here a long time, they've seen everything. They're wonderful.
Speaker 6: It's just like it's awesome. It's like sitting in a
Speaker 6: live movie. It's crazy. And one day I just kind
Speaker 6: of joked with Sam. I was like, I think I
Speaker 6: could do what you guys did for a day, I
Speaker 6: really do. I think I could do it, and I
Speaker 6: just we kind of joked about it for a few months,
Speaker 6: and one day he walked by the ice cream shop.
Speaker 6: He's like, hey, I put you on the schedule for
Speaker 6: this day. He's like, you got to show up at
Speaker 6: six thirty, you got to stay the whole twelve hours,
Speaker 6: because you know, he knew my schedule because we were
Speaker 6: around each other all the time.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, I can do that.
Speaker 6: You know, still living right next to the fish market,
Speaker 6: so that was helpful. But one morning, I just that morning,
Speaker 6: I went down there, got there at six, started shoveling ice.
Speaker 1: I put on a He.
Speaker 6: Dressed me up in the bibs and the boots, and
Speaker 6: I wore one of the guy's boots. They were too
Speaker 6: big and the bibs were kind of too big and
Speaker 6: also too short because I borrowed everyone else's stuff. And
Speaker 6: then I worked here for one day and I did
Speaker 6: it as a volunteer, but at the end of the
Speaker 6: day they paid me, which I wasn't expecting. But I
Speaker 6: was like, I just wanted to come have the experience,
Speaker 6: and I knew I couldn't do that at my husband's job.
Speaker 6: I didn't want to go work with my husband. I
Speaker 6: wanted to go do this other thing on my own. Also,
Speaker 6: just a different operation. Our neighbors we love, but they
Speaker 6: do a different thing than we do. And I just
Speaker 6: I went and working here for one day changed my life.
Speaker 6: Just being here changed my life. And it's because of
Speaker 6: the way that the team moves like as one and
Speaker 6: the way we support each other and the way we
Speaker 6: lift each other up. You know, I was invited into
Speaker 6: this really, really interesting, loving space that I've never been.
Speaker 6: I've never been involved in anything like that.
Speaker 7: Some of the guys that have been here a little
Speaker 7: bit longer will say, like they're.
Speaker 6: So he called out two bows as is, two rainbow
Speaker 6: trout as is. That means they don't want us to
Speaker 6: cut them. They're just as they come. That's what they want.
Speaker 7: Now. If it was me, I would have said.
Speaker 1: Two bows as is.
Speaker 6: Then I would have waited for the pause and I'd
Speaker 6: say going home.
Speaker 7: Going home means no ice.
Speaker 6: I set up means I set up twenty four in
Speaker 6: a bag. It's a twenty four hour ice tsa bag.
Speaker 6: We have twenty four mini, which is the same thing
Speaker 6: in a box, and then we have a four y
Speaker 6: eight hour box which is what we used to ship
Speaker 6: in and also for people that want to.
Speaker 1: Take a little x A on the plane.
Speaker 6: So we actually have little things that we say so
Speaker 6: that we don't even have to ask each other what
Speaker 6: they need. Yes, chef, thank you chev. It is very
Speaker 6: much like that. Yes, there is definitely a call in response.
Speaker 6: It's an interesting team dynamic we have here, and it
Speaker 6: sounds a lot more hectic than it is. It's intimidating
Speaker 6: when you start, but then you sort of get into
Speaker 6: this like weird flow of like we say, some weird
Speaker 6: stuff we have, like our own little slang and lingo.
Speaker 6: It's like our own dialects.
Speaker 7: I guess.
Speaker 6: Getting paid a pipe place fish is interesting because as
Speaker 6: an adult, I now factor in the paid time off
Speaker 6: and sick pay and insurance as part.
Speaker 1: Of my wage.
Speaker 6: So in the places where some people might say, hey,
Speaker 6: this isn't enough of an hourly, I always check myself
Speaker 6: really quick and go, oh, I'm also having all of this,
Speaker 6: Like I can all this other stuff that we would
Speaker 6: normally pay a lot of money for, I don't have
Speaker 6: to pay for And so for me it works out wonderfully. However,
Speaker 6: I bartended and waitress for a really long time, and that,
Speaker 6: as you know, for the people that do it, is
Speaker 6: really different money and it's everyday money, and so that
Speaker 6: was definitely adjustment, and it was definitely a hit but
Speaker 6: I also knew that happiness for me couldn't be attached
Speaker 6: to how much I made anymore. It wasn't sustainable because
Speaker 6: I wasn't I could make a lot of money and
Speaker 6: not do music, or I could make a little bit
Speaker 6: less money.
Speaker 1: Be happier and do music.
Speaker 6: And so I really was consciously choosing a better lifestyle.
Speaker 6: And also, you know, I felt better and I was
Speaker 6: living in it. I was working in a space where
Speaker 6: the bosses and the other employees care about you, and
Speaker 6: in restaurants it's really not often that way. You're a
Speaker 6: body there and you really connect with some people. And
Speaker 6: some restaurants aren't like that, but the majority of them
Speaker 6: are like, yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't care if you're sick, come to work.
Speaker 6: You don't get insurance, you can't really call in, you
Speaker 6: don't get those privileges. You just have to get people
Speaker 6: to cover for you, which is doable but obviously not ideal.
Speaker 6: So working here I didn't have to experience that, and
Speaker 6: I actually got to That was a big weight lifted
Speaker 6: from me. I was making a little less, but I
Speaker 6: had been given all of these other things. So no,
Speaker 6: it wasn't in dollars, but it was in quality. Of life,
Speaker 6: and I would choose that any day. My work ethic
Speaker 6: is a strange creature because it's also tied into my
Speaker 6: anxiety of failure. But I also tried to overtime, treat
Speaker 6: that more like a superpower instead of something that hinders me.
Speaker 6: And I do not like making mistakes. That being said,
Speaker 6: I make them. I just try to make sure it's
Speaker 6: not often in that it's as less as possible. I
Speaker 6: don't like making mistakes. I don't like learning in front
Speaker 6: of people. It makes me really anxious. And so my
Speaker 6: work ethic is always learn it fast, do it right
Speaker 6: the first time, and keep doing it right. Don't cut corners.
Speaker 6: I don't recommend this work for everyone.
Speaker 8: No, I do not.
Speaker 6: I do recommend everyone trying anything they want to try.
Speaker 6: I do not think this job is for everyone. It
Speaker 6: gets very cold here, and immediately some of our listeners
Speaker 6: are gonna say, well, it's really cold in Minnesota and
Speaker 6: it's like negative twelve degrees.
Speaker 1: Yes, I agree with you, it is much colder.
Speaker 6: However, standing outside for ten hours anything below twenty degrees
Speaker 6: is miserable. And also our hands are constantly in ice.
Speaker 6: I will start to lose feeling in my fingertips, and
Speaker 6: then that'll slowly travel all the way to the back
Speaker 6: of my knuckles and then I just can't feel my fingers,
Speaker 6: and then I just keep working. But really what happens
Speaker 6: is our we lose feeling in our hands. Then we
Speaker 6: go wash our hands in warm water, and then we
Speaker 6: start that process over again. It's just always going to
Speaker 6: be painful for our hands and our feet.
Speaker 7: So we just got done with the day.
Speaker 6: It was pretty cold, so we're going to go through
Speaker 6: what a fishmonger wears to stay cold or to stay
Speaker 6: not cold for.
Speaker 1: Ten hours outside in Seattle.
Speaker 6: I think today I woke up and it was told
Speaker 6: it was going to be twenty six degrees. So we'll
Speaker 6: start from the outer layer. I've got a down jacket
Speaker 6: and I have a scarf from the Seattle Winter Classic
Speaker 6: when the Kraken played the Vegas Night, so that's pretty cool.
Speaker 6: I have on a Grundan's Leee pullover. Grundans takes really
Speaker 6: good care of us. Grundans is a company Slash brand
Speaker 6: that makes deck fishing gear like so like the Deadliest Catch,
Speaker 6: and guys that are really and women that are out
Speaker 6: there in the the Favor Sea.
Speaker 1: Are mostly wearing grundans.
Speaker 7: Oh that's my knife that's connected to my bibs.
Speaker 6: So also now after the pullover, I've got a t
Speaker 6: shirt and then under armour and that's just for the
Speaker 6: torso on my bottoms.
Speaker 7: We wear these things called.
Speaker 6: Hercules bibs, the hirks, that's what they call them, and
Speaker 6: they are orange.
Speaker 1: Overalls essentially that are made out of like a.
Speaker 6: What is this, like a plastic of some sort. It's
Speaker 6: like a something like that. It's a definitely patented design.
Speaker 6: But they are bright orange and they keep you really
Speaker 6: really dry, and I wear them every.
Speaker 7: Day, and then I have sweat.
Speaker 6: Pants on, and I have leggings on, and I have
Speaker 6: two pairs of socks, and then I have insulated boots
Speaker 6: from Extra Tuf which are like the best deck boots
Speaker 6: available on the market. Like across the board you'll see
Speaker 6: most fishermen and women in Grundans and Extra Toughs.
Speaker 2: It is eleven PM and we are now fully going
Speaker 2: to sleep. I paid hers still cold. I never really
Speaker 2: warmed her all the way today and they've got our
Speaker 2: kiddies a prain and it's very quiet and it's a
Speaker 2: good time.
Speaker 5: Okay next time on finally a show.
Speaker 4: I don't understand why, what what the big fat ones
Speaker 4: are and those were really big and fat is are those?
Speaker 4: I mean what you don't put those inside of you?
Speaker 4: Do you?
Speaker 2: I mean you do like a penis