Upcoming Events - Blue Network, Sebago Invitational & City of Water Day

Moving right along! I promised Lorraine, who's interning right now for the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, that I'd post about City of Water Day tonight. She didn't have to twist my arm on that a bit, I had a wonderful, wonderful time there last year & one of my very few regrets about the timing of my fast-approaching 25th H.S. reunion is that I won't be in town for the fun this year. It was great last year, and it'll be bigger & better this year!

Here's what it's all about, from Lorraine:
A FREE day of entertainment, education & adventure for the whole family celebrating the potential of our waterfront!

On Saturday, July 24th thousands from throughout the metropolitan region will make their way to the waterfront for the 3rd annual City of Water Day Festival, presented by Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. A FREE day of entertainment, education, and adventure for the whole family celebrating the potential of our waterfront, the City of Water Day Festival is held each year on Governors Island and this year features activities in Liberty State Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and Atlantic Basin. Festival highlights include: over a dozen fun and free narrated boat tours; special children’s activities like fishing, races, sing-a-longs, arts and crafts, and more; an exciting line-up of local bands; delicious foods from NYC’s best vendors; and more! Please visit cityofwaterday.org for all of the exciting details.

From the upper Hudson to Raritan Bay, we are a City of Water—yet too many of us are cut off from this tremendous resource. Help us revitalize the waterfront with a festival for the entire family.

This is a festival for ANYONE who's interested in our city's wonderful waterways, not just us boaters! Save the day, it's sure to be a good one.
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Of course since it turned out I'm doing an events post today, I have to get in another plug for Sebago's own big waterfest, the All-Club (And Anybody Else Who Has Their Own Boat & A Way To Get It To Canarsie To Join Us Too) Invitational! That's this Saturday, the 17th of July. 10 am - 5 pm, rain or shine, Full details here.

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And finally - I never did a post about the last Vision 2020 waterfront meeting, the Blue Network one on June 24th, but I did make it. It was another interesting discussion, but it ended up feeling truncated. They had some good harbor-expert speakers who had a lot of interesting things to say. They also had a whole bunch of people from all walks of harbor life, commercial pilots to open-water swimmers & everyone in between too, who also had a lot of interesting things to say. The big hitch was that the speakers all had certain amounts of time reserved for their presentations, which ended up only leaving enough time for each of us public commenters to have a 60-second-or-less sound bite. There was much grumbling & discontent as it became apparent that time was going to run out without a huge percentage of the info people had come to get on the record being heard. Actual mutiny was averted & a fair amount of speed-commenting was done, but the organizers did recognize, in the end, that there was indeed a need for a Round 2 for further exploration of the issues & ideas that were being raised. That Part II has been set for next Monday, the 19th, from 6 - 8:30. Full details here. BTW, if you missed your borough's meeting & want to know what was said, or if you can't make it to this one but you've got something to say, there are recaps of each meeting up until the Staten Island & Blue Network Part 1 ones (both "coming soon") at that same link, and also a link to an online comment form. It would be impossible for every single New Yorker's waterfront dreams to be fully realized, the nature of a mixed-use waterfront like we've come to have is always going to be one where compromise & cooperation is going to be required among the various users - but if you've got a dream, an idea or a suggestion, this is a time to be heard!