Seattle's Pike Place Market

It is early morning, and the Seattle air is cool. My husband and I are heading out from a condo on Vine Street and Western Avenue to get hot coffee and breakfast. The four-block walk from Bell Town to Pike Place Market is a trip through a transitional neighborhood from yuppie land to tourist town. We walk past the Millionaire’s Club where homeless men gather, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups. Farther down the road, Mexican day laborers line the sidewalk waiting to be picked up in vans for an honest day’s work. A man apparently high on drugs is standing in the middle of an intersection yelling obscenities at the cars that weave around him. We avoid making eye contact, but he spies us and directs his foul language our way. Finally, we pass a small park overlooking the harbor where homeless people, wrapped in newspapers, are still asleep on benches and on the ground.

We enter the market from the north end where the venders who do not have permanent stands are anxiously gathered around the man who assigns booths for the day. There is barely room to squeeze by the crowd huddled at the assignment board. Trucks and vans rumble in along Western Avenue as they stop to unload goods to be sold in the market. Men with dollies wheel boxes through the market to the stands, ready to be unpacked. Just like the task of Sisyphus, it needs to be done and undone every day. We are quickly walking past the empty market booths to our destination, which is a restaurant called Lowell’s that serves breakfast in a dining room overlooking Elliot Bay, Seattle’s hardworking harbor.

The only stands that are open on the north end are the flower venders. Here the women are busy making tall and exotic bouquets that will sell quickly at the bargain price of five dollars. The sweet smell of fresh flowers is in the air. I stop to speak to one of the flower ladies. She is a petite Japanese American of a hard-to-determine age; she does not smile as she works intently. I ask her where she grows her flowers and, in broken English, she tells me that she lives on a farm north of Seattle in Mt. Vernon. Each day she gets up at 3am and loads the flowers that her husband has cut into a van and then he drives her to the market. She has been doing this for 30 years. I ask her the names of the flowers in her stunning bouquet. She tells me they are “lilies, delphiniums, and dahlias.”

My husband is growing impatient, so we proceed to Lowell’s where there is no line yet. A man and his son are ordering the Market Special breakfast with hot chocolate. My husband and I order breakfast and climb upstairs to the third floor of the restaurant to get a table with a window overlooking the harbor where we drink coffee while we wait for our breakfast. From the window, we can see the massive green and white state ferries crisscrossing the harbor, bringing commuters in from Bainbridge and Vashon Islands. Farther out, barges head north or south towards the shipping piers. I hear the ferry’s low horn.

Even though it is the third week in July, it’s cold up on the third floor; so when the server brings the meals up on the dumb waiter and delivers food to the tables, someone asks him to please close the high transom windows. Only a few patrons make it up the two flights at this hour; they are quiet, reading newspapers, and wearing their I-need-my-coffee faces.

Breakfast is hot and delicious. The well-cooked scrambled eggs sit alongside crispy hash brown potatoes and an English muffin drenched in butter. I select a packet of blueberry jam to spread on the muffin. Then I wash it down with a second cup of strong, hot coffee from one of the big urns on a table near the stairs. Seattle’s Best Coffee is the brand. Starbucks may beg to differ.

After finishing our breakfast, we reluctantly give up our window seats and walk down the stairs. As we leave Pike Place Market to go downtown, we pass the famous fish stand. The biggest crowd always gathers at the fish monger’s, which is directly inside the main entrance, but it is still too early for the majority of tourists and cruise line travelers to be up and about. The young men who work here are good salesmen, and they try to entice potential customers to buy fresh salmon or Alaskan crabs and send them, packed in dry ice, to their faraway homes. The fish mongers wear rubber boots, rubber aprons, and flannel shirts or tee shirts and jeans. The ice-packed counters are crowded with salmon, halibut, Dungeness crabs, shrimp, and other types of seafood. The prices are written on small pieces of cardboard, stuck like flags in the ice. King salmon is $22.99 a pound. The fish mongers have their work cut out for them to make a dent in this mountain of expensive fish.

We leave the market to go downtown for the rest of the morning.
_________________________

Later in the day, around noon, we return to the market. It is getting much warmer in the afternoon sun. Approaching from the south, we pass souvenir shops, restaurants, and a kiosk selling show tickets for theaters all over Seattle. Now it is time to “play.” Bumper-to-bumper traffic grinds through on Pike Street and onto Western Avenue as mobs of people walk across the street oblivious to the cars. The street in front of the market is made of cobblestones. Above the market, window boxes filled with cheerful purple and pink flowers hang on the roof and add to the quaint and colorful atmosphere.

A bakery named Piroshky, Piroshky for its popular Polish pastries is where we decide to buy lunch. Despite an astonishing array of choices for fillings, I go with my old favorite, apple cinnamon. It tastes sugary, buttery, and satisfying. This tiny shop features bakers working hard at making the pastry in full view of the customers behind glass windows. A piroshky is a small square of dough filled with cheese or meat or fruit; the corners are folded in to make a cover. Then the pastries are baked until golden brown and puffy. Cinnamon is the strongest and most identifiable smell in the shop as small as an elevator. One seller stands squeezed behind the counter while only two customers at a time can fit inside the store. Adding to the chaotic scene is a TV camera crew. A reporter asks my husband if she can interview him for Korean television. So after he buys his piroshky, he stands outside the shop in front of the camera and tells the reporter that “This shop makes more dollars per square foot than any other in the market.”

A huge crowd is gathered at the ever-popular fish stand. Tourists hold their cameras up high as the fish mongers toss Alaskan crabs from the tables up to the cashier and the packer: “one crab…two crabs…three crabs” and finally “six crabs.” The crowd claps at the showy way that the merchandise is handled. A hideously ugly fish with a huge mouth and sharp, jagged teeth lurks at the edge of the ice-packed counter. A young woman leans down for a closer look. Suddenly, the fish jerks as an unseen string pulls it from behind the counter. The woman screams, and everyone who witnessed the event, and especially her friends, bursts out in laughter. Behind the crowd, children take turns sitting on a life-size brass statue of a pig while their pictures are taken.

It is difficult to pass down the wide corridors of the market now because of the large number of people who are pressing to get through and stopping to look at the items in the stands. The stands with fruit are still beautifully arrayed in neat rows because venders stand in front and select and bag the peaches, apples and Rainer cherries for each customer. When sales get a little slow, free samples of fruit are given out to the hesitant buyers. I can’t help but notice the great number of people who are dressed in Red Sox regalia as they shop and walk around. Clearly the Red Sox nation is in town for the three-game series with the Mariners at Safeco Field.

At the middle entrance to the market, a guitar player plays and sings some Simon and Garfunkel songs. His guitar case is open on the ground in front of him, and an occasional passer-by drops some coins into it. I find it somewhat difficult to hear him singing over the rumble of the crowd, but I recognize a song called “The Boxer.”

I want to buy a gift for a friend, so I look for the jewelry booths. I approach one booth and ask the man behind it for the price of a necklace. He says that he is busy setting up and to come back later. He keeps his head down while he speaks to me. With so many other venders to choose from, I quickly move on. A scarf vender demonstrates the many different ways to wear her scarves. Sweatshirts, pottery, honey, soap, tee shirts, aprons, tote bags, and barrettes are among the many items to consider.

Glass pendants with a swirled design catch my eye at a nearby booth. I ask the woman selling the jewelry if she made them. She replies that she is not the glass blower or jewelry maker. That person lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Port Townsend. She is a friend who helps out by selling a few days a week. Pike Place Market is open every day, so the jeweler needs time to make her product. Another customer, the seller, and I discuss the glass blowing demo and current exhibit at the Tacoma Glass Museum. The seller tells us, “Seattle is world renowned for its glass blowers, and the museum has brought even more glass makers to the area.”

As we exit the north end of the market, there are more booths outside along the sidewalk. In one booth, a smiling, blonde-haired woman shows customers how to wear the sun visors with the stretchy part low on the back of the head, hidden under their hair. She also helps customers find visors with appropriate fabric motifs, for example, cats or fish. She said, “I go for an outside booth because people are more likely to buy a sun visor when they are outdoors squinting in the sun.” I look for one with a Red Sox logo or baseball motif, but end up buying one that is mostly red to wear at the afternoon game.

Leaving the market, we continue north on our way back to Vine and Western. Fortified by an apple cinnamon piroshky and wearing a red visor against the sun, I am ready to run the gauntlet of street people once again.