Originally published at: Consider the lobster: fun facts for National Lobster Day | Boing Boing
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Bill Darden sounds like an okay guy; going against segregation must have been a ballsy move for a small businessman.
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Happy Lobster Day!
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I understand there was an 18th C. riot in a local jail (gaol at the time) in Marblehead, Mass by prisoners protesting being fed only lobster.
Also, the original “chicken of the sea” was in fact lobster before it became a tag line for a tuna brand. This survives in undersized lobsters being referred to as “chicks” on the boats and in the trade.
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I used to run lobster pots (traps) with my dad back in the 80s. I would never eat any of the “ugly red bugs” as my parents put it, but not because of any phobia or even dislike of the taste, but because I read up on them and refused to eat a bottom-dwelling, literally crap eating scavenger, no matter how delicious.
You see, we lived close to the Long Island Sound, and that body of water is not only notoriously polluted, but also filled with the outflow from Combined Sewage Overflow systems all up and down the coasts of Long Island, NYC, and Connecticut. The very first time I pulled up a lobter pot, it was covered in black muck that stank of rotting excrement and dead fish, that low-tide scent you get off of mud flats combined with the stench of a waste treatment plant when they’ve run dry the perfume budget. It didn’t take much research to figure out what they were living in and on, and while I cheerfully set and hauled pots for several years, I could never bring myself to eat one that came out of that area. The rest of the family loved them, that was good enough for me. But those lobsters had a stink to them that persisted even through cooking that I couldn’t get past my nose. As an adult, now that I know those particular lobsters were not a good representation of the culinary delicacy celebrated on National Lobster Day and have enjoyed non-stinky lobster on several occasiona, for me it really comes down to quality.
Modern grocery-store/fishmonger lobter doesn’t have this issue, as a) all reputable lobster vendors purge and generally clean lobsters out before they go to market, and b) back in 2000 the pollution levels got so bad the lobsters had a massive die-off and the Long Island Sound lobstering industry died for the most part.
Do you have any lobstering questions? I ran pots in the Long Island Sound in the early 80s, earned some cash on a boat off of Rhode Island one summer in 1987, and even did some recreational lobstering with friends up in Maine in the late 90s, walking them through the licensing and trapping process.
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One of the signals I learned on bow watch while on a brief sail tour in the area between Massachusetts and New York was how to alert the helmsman to lobster pots in the path: hold up both hands and make a grabbing motion with the thumb and fingers, imitating lobster claws. It was the last training voyage of HMS Rose, who was repurposed into HMS Surprise for Master and Commander.
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Came here to say the same. Worthy, as most of Lanthimos movies (all I’ve seen - I still miss some).
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Lobstercules approves!
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(WIth the big yellow stripe! And the Skipper and his Jack Russell! I knew her in Rhode Island waters.)
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