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