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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, July 30, 2003

OUR HONOLULU
New York remains the city of dreams

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

NEW YORK CITY — America is still the land of the free and the home of the brave. We're also becoming the world capital of flab.

At least one in 10 of the people I've seen — white, black, brown, tan — on a trip up the East Coast of the United States is seriously overweight. Not just heavy. I mean FAT!

Yet, there are exceptions.

I got up at 4:30 a.m. at Peck's Slip on the New York waterfront to check out the fish market along South Street.

During the day it's called South Street Seaport, with hordes of tourists in shorts and stretch jeans climbing on board sightseeing boats, shopping for souvenirs, eating in dockside cafes and gathering around acrobats performing on the boardwalk. A few even take time to see the historic ships.

But at night South Street deals in fish under the harsh glare of electric lights. It's smelly, wet, crowded, noisy; two long blocks bursting with energy. I didn't see a single fat person pushing a dolly loaded with fish, racing around on a forklift, shouting, making deals.

The fresh fish comes in trucks from Florida, the Carolinas, Cape Cod, all up and down the coast, to be bargained over by owners of fish stores, supermarkets, restaurants and hotels in a race against daylight.

John Nino, 56, is a fisherman from Portugal; rubber boots, baseball cap, a gaff hook hanging from his belt. He said he can make more money pushing a dolly at the fish market in New York. He was taking a 10-minute break, gulping coffee and chomping on a sweet roll from a lunch wagon.

In a heavy accent, Nino said he lives across the East River from Manhattan but often flies back to Portugal, has sent his three children to college and likes both hard work and America. So does Georgeo from South Africa who gives the spiel to tourists on top of a sightseeing bus. Georgeo makes $12 an hour plus tips and said he loves New York. He's not fat.

Neither are the immigrants in the stirring photos in the museum on Ellis Island. Like the Arizona Memorial in Hawai'i, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island are among the most popular sightseeing attractions in New York.

Ellis Island is a powerful place. The vast halls where immigrants waited in terror of being rejected have been turned into galleries of pictures that evoke admiration and amazement at the variety of people who came to the United States, the hardships that brought them and the successes they achieved.

I felt like an immigrant aboard the ferry; every seat filled, people crowding the rails for a view of the Statue of Liberty. It's an emotional experience not limited to citizens of the United States. I heard foreign languages spoken all around me; Italian, Armenian, Japanese, Indian, Spanish. Liberty appeals to everybody.