PortSide NewYork meeting report - in Facebook statuses

Carolina Salguera, founder of PortSide NewYork, wrapping up the first part of Monday night's meeting

I have been wanting to give an update about how the PortSide NewYork meeting went, but my home computer is still at the shop (it's all fixed now but I won't have a chance to retrieve it for a few more day), and I've got tons of work to do here at work, so I'm going to cheat & just copy a Facebook exchange that give a good picture here.

I will start with a cut to the chase - Carolina's response to that exchange. Carolina was the last poster in the thread but I'm putting hers first, 'cause it was of course the best summary:

"A crisis getting good response! but not over yet. More offers of help came in last night, and we have more things people can do to help. Updates coming on our website soon, will get posted here, tho best way to get info is on our website, PortSideNewYork.org."

My initial quick report, slightly edited for reposting here:

And speaking of spunky, straight-talking, bighearted Brooklyn folks...it was a pleasure being in the company of a whole BUNCH of them (and some friendly outlanders like myself) last night. Encouraging talk of the future at the Long Island Community Hospital, wonderful tales of the past later on at Montero's (hope to see Bowprite's illustrated versions someday!).

Talking story at Montero's

That being pretty vague, a friend asked "‎'Encouraging' as in 'crisis is over' or 'crisis could be over soon'?"

I responded:

"Closer to the latter. There's no solution yet, but there's a ton of support, there are potential solutions, and a number of ways that people can actually help maybe make one of those possibilities turn into an actuality. Also, more basically, there was a good turnout. I've been involved in a lot of meetings about various waterfront access topics. The most disheartening thing is to walk into a meeting about a topic you care about and see a mostly-empty room."

That was absolutely not the case on Monday night. The Mary A Whalen has some wonderful friends.

Saying goodnight after Montero's. The cow picture was taken a few minutes later, a few blocks south.