An artist invites you to collaborate
BY ANA MENENDEZ
amenendez@herald.com
Watson Island used to be the place to go for fresh fish, and that's the picture I still have of it in my mind: a handful of weathered shacks animated by equally weathered fishermen, each assuring us that the other guy's fish were at least a day old.
It was the early '90s, I had just moved to South Beach and I was in love. Everything in those years was colored by the state I was in. I'd never had such tasty fish, seen such deep sunsets, wandered into such a marvelous place.
On Sunday afternoons, my love and I would drive to Watson Island to buy our fish. He'd worked on a fishing boat as a kid and loved to regale me with stories as we cruised the shacks. Once, he told me of how he'd been hastily scaling a customer's fish when his knife slipped and he cut his finger nearly to the bone. Without hesitating, he'd taken off his T-shirt, wrapped his bleeding finger and finished the job. The customer never even knew, he bragged, and I learned a little of all he was willing to conceal.
