The Sea Bass Update Saga

Many years ago, we went to dinner at a restaurant in Chinatown with our friends Mike and Cindy. On the menu, sea bass was listed as ‘market price’. Since Mike was interested in the sea bass, he asked the waiter what it cost. The waiter responded with ‘market price’, which lead Mike to ask what the market price was. The communication/language barrier caused a Whose on First type of scenario.

I don’t remember if Mike ended up getting the sea bass or not, nor do I remember if we ever determined exactly what the market price was that evening. But one thing I do know that came out of that evening which is this: on a fairly regular basis over the next 37 years (and still counting) I have been made aware of what the market price of sea bass was at random times and locations. How did this come about you may wonder? Mike had a job where he traveled quite a bit and he also was a foodie long before such a term existed. So at any given time, he would find himself at a market somewhere or other and report the price of the sea bass to me. Originally I learned this information several days or weeks after the fact but eventually, come the age of cell phones, the market price of sea bass was just a phone call or voice mail away. Now in the age of texting, I will often receive a photo of the fish with the current price. If I had known at the time all this started that I would be getting sea bass updates for the next several decades, I may have kept a log of the information. But I didn’t. So in honor of this bazaar tradition that came about, for the sake of making some permanent record, I am recording the latest sea bass price update in the photo below.