Originally published Saturday, July 19, 1997

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

More than half the customers come to Mark Chin's International District meat market to buy lottery tickets, but they're missing a good bet if they don't try some of his mother's homemade pork sausage.

Chances are, Georgie May Chin also would be the one selling the lottery tickets at her son's store, Russell's Meat Market. She's been at the cash register since she and husband Bob bought the vintage butcher shop in the heart of the International District in 1978, and they were among the first to be lottery agents in the neighborhood.

"We were No. 1 in lottery ticket sales in '94," said Mark, who has worked there since junior high and bought the store when his father retired two years ago. That No. 1 year happened to be the same in which Fernando Ongogon, a $22,000-a-year janitor, won a $16 million Lotto jackpot on $27 worth of tickets he bought at Chin's butcher shop.

In 1997 the shop was running sixth in sales across the state, according to lottery officials.

"But it's still a good corner for business, and the trade is good ... just not what it used to be," said 32-year-old Mark.

The little shop has been on the corner of South King Street and Maynard Avenue South since it was opened as Russell's Fair Meat Market in 1909 by a tough Scotsman named William S. Russell. In the mid-1930s, Russell refused to stop carrying meat products from certain wholesalers involved in union organizing battles dubbed the "Seattle Meat Wars." The windows were blown out of the shop one night by what police said was a dynamite bomb. Russell opened for business the next morning.

That was all history by the time Bob Chin apprenticed under another Russell family butcher in the late 1950s. Bob, 67 and a Seattle native, claims he's "retired," but he still puts on the white butcher's smock and helps out in the shop "almost every day," he said.

Old photographs on the back wall show a much younger Bob Chin, with a full head of black hair, among several butchers behind the long, refrigerated display case. And some of the photos show old Bill Russell and his original staff in 1909. Today, one of the ceiling lights in that 1909 photo still burns at the back end of the display case, and there are streaks of gray in Bob Chin's hair.

"Back then, we broke our own carcasses," he said. "And we carried a lot of special items we don't get much call for nowadays . . . things like sweetbreads, mountain oysters, brains and tripe. Pigs' knuckles and ears.

"Not much demand for those things now. The kids don't even know what it is, and the old folks who liked it are dying off. But we still draw a good amount of customers because our meat is the best, all 'choice' grade, and our prices are competitive."

The Chins have years of sweat equity on the line in the battle for consumers' dollars. Mom and Dad still come to work every day, and son Mark has been working there full-time since graduating from Franklin High School.

"I began working after school, three hours every day and all day Saturdays, when I was at Sharples (Junior High) and through Queen Anne (High) and Franklin," Mark said. "Mostly, it was cleaning and delivery and pickup. We did a lot more deliveries then, mostly special orders. After about two years full-time, as an apprentice, I got my license. I learned meat-cutting from my father and my uncle and a cousin, all butchers."

Mark never thought twice about meat-cutting as a career choice -- "I always knew I would be a butcher." He shows up about 6 a.m., Monday through Saturday, to do the pre-opening work of setting up the display case, cutting meat, working on orders, etc. "And at night I do the book work."

He takes only about one week's vacation every year, usually camping and hiking. But now that he's the owner, he's always back at work ahead of schedule.

"There was one time, when I was much younger, that I sort of 'missed' coming in. I was on a float trip." That was when Dad was still the boss, he said, and there must have been a paternal lecture on the responsibilities of work and career. "So it only happened once."

Several years ago, when Bob Chin thought both he and his son were ready, Mark bought out his father and became the proprietor.

It's still a good business, despite increased competition from the smaller meat counters in newer food stores catering to the broader base of Southeast Asian customers, according to Mark.

"We still have good prices, and enough demand to carry certain specials, like salt pork slabs, mountain oysters, and especially the Virginia hams," Mark said.

The popular Virginia hams usually arrive in the fall, and are just about sold out by the Christmas holidays.

There are also those choice-grade cuts of beef and pork, lunch meats, cheeses and a small selection of candy, cigarettes and groceries. But the biggest sellers, the things that keep the doors open, are still those lottery ticket sales.

Because of its location and customer base, the meat market has consistently ranked in the top six of state lottery sales. The little market sold almost $720,000 in lottery tickets last year, according to lottery officials.

Several multimillion-dollar winners have bought their tickets here. The names and dollar amounts of their winnings are posted high on the wall over the cash register and lottery ticket machine counter.

"Most buy the scratch tickets," Bob Chin said, nodding toward the big racks of about a dozen different instant-winner scratch cards, just above the $2.89-per-pound, center-cut pork chops and the $4.39 rib steak. "Some are big players. One man buys at least $100 worth a day."

That's lottery tickets, not pork chops.

"Not one (of the big winners) has ever come around and shaken my hand or said thank you," Bob Chin noted. But he's philosophical about those others coming in for lottery tickets.

"You never know; they come in to buy a lottery ticket and they might buy a pork chop for dinner."

Jon Hahn is a staff columnist who writes three times a week in the P-I.