When I lived in Seattle, it was always fun to go down to Pike Place and watch tourists dodge flying salmon. The one guy that called out instructions like an air-traffic controller had a voice like ball bearings in a bucket. At work a few years ago, we threw plushy fish around after a team leader got ahold of the FiSH! corporate morale-boosting book. That whole idea of “play at work, work becomes play, be totally in the moment with your customer and throw a fish at them accurately” went away after that particular team leader or VP moved on.
Apparently, the PETA people have decided to take on Seattle’s beloved institution. Good luck with that…
Seattle’s Pike Place fishmongers under fire — chicagotribune.com
Reporting from Seattle – In this noisy den of brine and ice, scales and slime, fish always have been part meat, part missile.
One man points to an enormous white-bellied fish, and another man in a wet apron scoops it up from the ice, hoists it over his shoulder and sends it flying 15 feet toward the counter.
“Hali-BUT! Hali-BUT! Heyyyyyy!” six men scream in unison. “Goin’ right home! Goin’ right home!” The counterman catches the hurtling fish neatly between the head and tail fin and slaps it onto a wrapping sheet.
The Pike Place Fish Market is the legendary home of the flying fish: Halibut as big as a wrestler’s thigh, spiky medallions of crab, the smooth, rainbow flesh of Chinook salmon, all become rapid-fire marine rockets in the hands of Seattle’s fishmongers — who are as famous for the speed of their fish as for its freshness.
