Yesterday was fish-monger day at the outdoor market. We closed after 5 hours, after selling-out of every bit of Cod, Black Sea Bass, Flounder, Tuna, Sea Scallops, Whiting, Monkfish, Skate, Porgy, Weakfish, Squid, Oyster, Clam, Razor Clam, Whelks, and the solitary Butterfish caught. Which sucks for me, because GF & I didn't set-aside any fish for ourselves this time. I was really looking forward to repeating last week's experience of living on fish protein & greens for half a week after market day. Felt great.
One reason we sold out-- was the fishing vessel was boarded by the Coast Guard. It happens. Everybody gets boarded. The Coast Guard found a violation, so they seized that run's catch. According to the coast guard, the fishing net-- which is, like, 3 miles long-- was 1/4 inch too wide. So the boat is also grounded until Capt replaces the net.
Fuel prices are way-up, for the boat & the delivery truck. Marijuana is newly-legalized in nyc, so the capt & crewman shared a joint in our empty booth. I opted for a tobacco cig, still illegal in the park. Most customers still wear masks, but some don't. I think I got some piercing looks from the lackeys who run the market-- for unloading & loading with my mask off... but it's hard to tell. Because they're wearing masks & so many people walk-around with judgy-mad eyes all the time, anyway. The curbs & crannies of NYC are full of wet litter, homeless droppings-- much more than usual. The subway service home was slow, but no violence or homeless people sleeping across 5 seats on trains (a constant sight last year). Back in Chinatown, the Chinese lady who sells us the Chinese Newspaper... was badly beaten & robbed after asking someone to put on a mask in her store. Store has been closed for days, afterward. My recovery-time-- from a short, early day of work-- is now quite poor. The night was damp, and noisy with people outside. Shitty 'urban' music from cars is louder than ever. Lots of recently-dead-at-50 rapper DMX playing. Hard to tell if the people yelping in the street were happy drunks or angry druggies.
As long as I'm typing this mundane report... the day before GF returned to the sort-of-work we did pre-covid. A housewares company has rented an Air B'n'B for a couple months. They're decorating the interior to showcase their wares & offer customers a chance to win a vacation-stay in the apartment. GF's pay rate has jumped from $400 to $750 to $1000 per day, as it becomes obvious that the marketing agency middlemen (all women) are only qualified to attend Zoom meetings and wave facetime phones around the empty apartment. They can't haggle with the doormen or loading dock guys, figure out what to buy or do to paint a 700 square foot studio apartment. They can barely order lunch for the crew. They can make sure everyone takes a 7-page diversity inclusiveness sensitivity mini-course. They can demand workers fill-out paperwork showing they carry their own individual liability insurance-- until they are told every single worker has been not-working for a year/ and nobody kept-up their insurance/ do you want this job done or not? GF's pay rate was absurd at $400 let alone $1000... especially since the work she's doing on the apartment is about-at college students decorating-their-first-place level. The doormen told the marketing girls they couldn't bring in a ladder over 3 steps tall... without extra proof of insurance. (What part of 'bribe the fucking doorman' don't they understand?) So no one could reach the top few inches of wall, to paint. So I was called in to finish the job. Except the sun went down & the empty apartment had no built-in lights-- so who-knows if I did a good job. They ordered some tacos & guacamole for me & GF... from some place where the bill was $100.
Blundering, inflation, mismanagement, litter, incompetence, feral have-nots, government bureaucrats... business as usual.