Hudson River Park User Survey

Today I would just like to share a link to a user survey that the Hudson River Park Trust has put up for the public. I filled this out a while ago after hearing about it from both the NYC Watertrail Association and PortSide NewYork on the very same afternoon; I meant to share it here but it slipped my mind until it appeared again today on the Lilac Preservation Project Facebook page. There's still time to fill it out, last day is March 6th. I of course went for historic ships and water access everywhere I could! Click here to visit the survey. Thanks!  

A Great Day At Sebago Despite My Best Efforts At Sabotage.

(swiping my own Facebook post for the evening!)
What a satisfying day. I started out completely failing to get myself out for either the rowing workshop (Floating the Apple has given Sebago a Whitehall rowing gig so now we need to learn how to use it) or the paddle Tony P. had called for. Toyed with the idea of just giving myself the day off from "doing" (haven't had just a nice do-nothing day in a long time) but it was looking so nice that I decided to go tend to the garden and take the surfski for a spin. 

Got to the club to find the gig still on land with the cover on and a clubmate and a lady I didn't know standing next to it chatting. I figured this must be Adina from Floating the Apple and introduced myself, asking what had happened to the rowing workshop (I was really afraid there just hadn't been interest, which would've been a bummer). Turned out that it was just that there was a huge overlap between club members who are interested in rowing a Whitehall and club members who are sailing instructors and today happened to be the first day of the big annual 2-day sailing class that the Sailing Committee runs, so the instructors were all out instructing. However, with 2 of us expressing interest, she decided to go ahead and give Marty and me a dry-land intro to the gig, the gear, and rowers' responsibilties, plus some great history about Floating the Apple. 


I was acquainted with Mike Davis, but I'd never heard the whole story about how he came to start up Floating the Apple. It also turned out that Adina and Mike had been involved with working for water access, especially along the stretch of waterfront that we now know as the Hudson River Park, since before the Hudson River Park existed, even on paper - Adina is an architect and worked on a project to update Grand Central Station for the 20th century. This must have been right after the Westway highway project was defeated, so suddenly there was a need for a new plan for the crumbling stretch of waterfront from the Battery up to midtown.

Through the Grand Central project, Adina was invited to go for a boat ride where the city planners were going to unveil the next great idea for the area. Next great idea turned out to be "Hey, let's build a whole bunch of buildings on the waterfront!". Adina was horrified, she called Mike Davis and they started working towards something better. I hadn't started paddling yet but I do recall walking by the McGraw Hill Building (still green & I presume still grooking, that description in one of Allen Ginsburg's poems has stuck in my head to the point that I can't see the building without thinking of that line) and being intrigued at seeing boats being built in a vacant space on the ground floor. That was Floating the Apple.

I got involved with the Hudson River Park after starting paddling in Chelsea a few years later - at that point the Trust didn't exist, there was instead the Hudson River Park Conservancy, there was a lot of planning going on and I and a number of my paddling friends started attending some of the planning meetings, along with Roger Meyer, founder of New York Outrigger, other early members of NYO (many of whom are now paddling in Hoboken as Ke Aloha Outrigger - must go join them for a paddle one of these days!), and of course John Krevey, John Doswell, and other Pier 63 denizens who became fast friends as we followed their leads in speaking up for a park where the river was more than just a sparkling scenic element, but something you could get to, go out on, use and enjoy.

I mostly stepped down from what I called "waterfront politics", which to me was always mostly about access, when I moved my boats out to Sebago, but there was a big chunk of my life when I was attending any meetings that various waterfront community leaders suggested recreational boaters might want to attend, writing letters, sending emails, whatever I could do as one person. Fascinating getting to hear some of chapters from before my time from someone who'd been involved from so much earlier on!

And yes, I learned a lot about Whitehall gigs too! :D

After we finally wrapped up at around 2:00 (the session went long because I kept asking for more stories!), I decided that I would eat the sandwich I'd brought for lunch and then go out for the surfski spin I'd originally planned for the day. About this time, Tony's paddle had got back; I apologized for being too late for the paddle and promptly got invited to join them for wine and pie. I went light on the wine 'cause I still wanted to paddle, and I haven't been surfskiing much lately, but I did have a little, and one of the gang had found some peaches that were very good for this early in the season, and then there was pie, and then I did get out for a 4-mile spin on my surfski, including "one more mile for Glicker", thinking of Joe Glickman, a friend and Sebago clubmate who we lost a little more than a year ago, and who was one of my inspirations for keeping positive and active through my own round with cancer - mine was so much less awful and if he was able to keep up such good spirits all the way through to the end, as he did, I didn't see how I could get mopey about mine.

Extra mile was good, I'd started out feeling very shaky and with each mile I got a little steadier - coming back up the basin on the last leg I finally let a motorboat wake hit me from the side and didn't put my feet down in the water for stability (yes, I was that shaky at the start, it had been a long time!). And after aaaaaalll that I still got back in time to water and weed the garden and pick some chard - first pickings of the season, which I'm looking forward to sharing with a lovely friend from Ithaca soon! :D

Great day on and by the water. So glad I rousted myself out of the house in the morning - of course spending the day curled up on the Evil Futon of Nap with a book would've been lovely too, but what a fine day at the club it turned out to be.

Yes yes yes.

Great North River Tugboat Race and Skills Contest, 9/6/2015

Ha ha ha. "Cheerybabble resumes tomorrow", she said on Sunday, completely forgetting about how work gets in the middle of September, ha ha ha.

So I'll just change the order a little bit here and put Sunday of Labor Day Weekend first instead of going in date order. I went through my photos last night and put them up in a Flickr album - didn't caption yet but it's basically the race, the bow-to-bow pushing, the last competitor in the line toss contest, and then the spinach eating contests - didn't get much of the kids but Mandy and I had front-row seats for the adults and as usual, it wasn't pretty, but it was tons of fun!

Album ends with a dog ready for the mascot contest and a sailboat enjoying the quieting river. Click here to visit the album.

Terrific work as always by the Working Harbor Committee. Missed Capt. John Doswell but I know he would've been glad to see all of us out there having another great day celebrating the working boats of NY Harbor.

Flashback Friday - Manhattan Kayak Company moves to John Krevey's Barge, Pier 63 Maritime

OK, I know it's supposed to be Throwback Thursday, but I wanted the post with the link to the memorial pictures to be the top post for a while. Still wanted to re-share my story about when MKC moved from Chelsea Piers to Pier 63 Maritime though. I'd written these back in 2011 after John Krevey passed away most unexpectedly; I ran across them again yesterday when I was thinking of adding pictures of Krevey and Doswell to the memorial post and it was just sort of fun revisiting these memories of earlier days in the Hudson River Park and the strange, fun, rusty, seat-of-the-pants little world John Krevey created there at 23rd Street. John Doswell isn't mentioned in this story 'cause we were just getting started there at this point, but he and Jean had their boat, the Laissez Faire, there, so of course that's where I was lucky enough to get to become friends with them as they welcomed the new kids to the barge.

Part 1: Moving to the Barge
Part 2: Making a Home for the Kayaks 

Memorial for Capts. John Doswell and John Krevey - another photo set.

I have another small set of photos to share with you today - not as happy this time, as the event in question was a memorial for Captains John Doswell and John Krevey, both gone from us far too soon. Hard to imagine what sort of waterfront we'd have without them, but I think it would be a lot less fun and accessible. Krevey (both were regularly called by their last names) was providing recreational access to the Hudson at Pier 63 at a time when there was still some resistance to and even resentment of the growing popularity of recreational boating on our reviving estuary, and I think that by welcoming paddlers and trusting us to take responsibility for our own safety out there, he laid a solid part of the foundation for today's growing acceptance of our presence out there.

In the meantime Doswell was drawing the attention of us "civilians" to the working waterfront - there is still a solid maritime industry here in NYC, but the casual visitor to the shores of most of our boroughs could be forgiven if they didn't realize that, with all of the pretty parks that have sprung up in the more residential areas; Doswell celebrated that industry (and let us less-salty types celebrate it too) with the  Working Harbor Committee's Hidden Harbor Tours and the big annual Labor Day Tugboat Race and Skills Contest (those both carry on, that site has details if you're interested).

The memorial was held at Pier 66 (which I still always want to call Pier 63 even though it was moved to 26th street several years ago). A parade of boats was organized, including the kayaks and outrigger canoes that found such good early homes on Krevey's rusty masterpiece ("Pier 66" is actually a retired railroad barge); Hudson River Park based paddling  did ask me if I wanted to join them but I decided that since I was coming from work it would probably simplify my life if I just went to the barge - and besides, that way I could bring my Lumix and get some nice pictures, which I think I did. It was a beautiful evening, with a wonderful collection of people and boats turning out to pay their respects. 

 Click here to visit the album. 

New Yorker Magazine Talk of the Town - A Paddle with New York Outrigger and the Polynesian Voyaging Society (with a plug for NYO's Liberty Challenge on Satruday!

And I was lucky enough to get to go!

Back in the middle of May, Nainoa Thompson and some of his colleagues from the Polynesian Voyaging Society visited us here in New York as part of the preparations for Hokule'a's visit here in June 2016. They spent the weekend here with 3 different official events. I went to all 3 and it was great - there was an educators workshop, where I was amazed the range of ways teachers in Hawaii are incorporating Hokule'a and her voyage into their lesson plans (social studies, geography, ecology, biology, art, music, history, all of those and more can and do incorporate lessons from the wa'a - I was almost jealous of the kids in Hawai'i these days getting to learn so much this way, but mostly I just think it's rather wonderful), then there was a fundraising cocktail reception at the Harvard Club where Dr. Sylvia Earle welcomed Nainoa, who then gave us a marvelous talk about the history and the voyage. I think my favorite moment was when Nainoa decided to give Dr. Earle the beautiful maile lei which had been presented to him at the beginning of the evening, and as he took his lei off an draped it around her neck she took her own orchid lei and gave it to him in a lovely moment of warm mutual respect - but then Nainoa's stories were wonderful too. 

The next day there was a planning meeting at NYY that was pretty exciting to be part of. As we wrapped things up at the end of the day I thought I would be heading for home, but then I was talking to Lehua from the PVS and she said something about needing to get Nainoa and everyone else up to Pier 66 for a paddle with NYO. I jokingly said "Oh, I wish I'd brought my paddling clothes, I would invite myself along!" - totally totally totally TOTALLY kidding, but then, gesturing at her jeans and t-shirt, Lehua said "Well this is what I'm wearing. You should come."

WOW. There was a split second when I was for some reason sure I couldn't do it, I don't always deal perfectly with abrupt changes of course and my immediate response is sometimes to try to stick with my original plan even if there's no reason to, but then it sank in that I'd just been invited by a member of the current generation of Polynesian navigators to go paddling with her and another of her compatriots and Nainoa Thompson himself and...heck, I went, and it was wonderful, and you can read an absolutely wonderful article about it in New Yorker Magazine's Talk of the Town this month (click here). 

And speaking of the nice folks at New York Outrigger - their big Liberty Challenge race is this Saturday! Festivities kick off tonight with a screening of a Hokule'a documentary by 'Oiwi TV (see yesterday's post for full details), and then the races run over the day on Saturday, starting and finishing at Pier 26 on the Hudson River, where the East Coast's largest festival of Pacific Island culture will also be going on all day. The canoes will be all over the upper harbor, the northern reaches of the race are 23rd street on the Hudson and the Brooklyn Bridge on the East River while the southern portion goes south of Governor's Island and over to the Statue of Liberty. It's a terrific day - I'll be up at the Clearwater Festival talking story about the Hokule'a but if I could be 2 places at once, Pier 26 would be the 2nd place I would be!

Wrapping up with a few pictures from that paddle with the PVS. I didn't have my waterproof camera along because I never in a million years expected to end up on the water, but here are a few pictures from pre-launch on shore. 2nd picture is Nick Paumgarten, the author of the Talk of the Town piece, interviewing Nainoa. What a great evening that was. 

Lilac Art Series 2015 - a sampling

Here are a few shots from last night at the Lilac Arts Series. It's an interesting exhibit but I only saw part of it because for the first time ever in her time at Pier 25, the retired USCG buoy tender Lilac reached her official insurance-dictated capacity of 149 and there was a line to get in. I decided to leave to let somebody else board; I work not far away and I will come back on another day to see what I missed. The exhibit runs through August 15th, and it's definitely worth a visit!

Oops, note slightly later - just realized this wasn't much of a sampling, somehow I thought there was more art in here but mostly it's just the ship! I think it was just too crowded for good picture taking. All the more reason to go back, right? 

I finish here with a snippet of video of one of the exhibits - I didn't see everything but of what I did see, Lilac's Dream was my favorite. If you're going, it might be a bit of a spoiler. Click "watch in YouTube" to read more about the installation - it's very neat, what the artist did.  

Lilac Art Show opens tonight, runs through August

Oops, with all the excitement over Hokule'a, this one really snuck up on me - retired USCG buoy tender Lilac opens for the season tonight with another set of installations for always-enjoyable Lilac Arts Series. Head on over to the Working Harbor Committee blog for more information plus a couple more nice views of the Lilac!

Are You Ready For Winter Boating? Find out at New York Kayak Company, Saturday, 10/18/2014

Proxigean Paddle - January 2010, possibly still my coldest paddle ever! 

Well goodness gracious, it's felt like summer again for the last couple of days here in NYC, but the flaming maple tree I see outside of my window every morning says, "Nope, it's still Fall", and (groan) that means winter is right around the corner.

Does that mean the NYC paddling season is coming to an end, though? Nope, no way, no how. A lot of people do hang up their sprayskirts (or move indoors to the various pool sessions) for the winter, but it is absolutely possible to keep going through the entire winter if you have the right gear, skills, and knowledge. Interested, but not sure? This is a great time to find out as outfitters will frequently hold cold-water workshops this time of year.

The first of those that I've heard about this season, as announced on the NYCKayaker moderated email list,  is coming up this Saturday at New York Kayak Company, located on the south side of Pier 40, which is right at the Hudson River end of Houston Street. This one's got an unusual spin as Randy's Kokatat rep is also the area's GoPro rep, so it's going to be a combination winter paddling and GoPro for SUP and kayak workshop. The fun starts at 11 am. Bring your own booties if you want to go swimming. The workshop is free but Randy would appreciate RSVP's at 212-924-1327.

Here's Randy's full announcement: 

When: Saturday, October 18th at 11 AM

Where: New York Kayak Co. at Pier 40

What: Tom Harsh represents Kokatat and Go Pro. This Saturday he will be coming to New York Kayak Co. to discuss how to dress for off season paddling. As days grow shorter and temps fall, Kokatat makes it easy to manage challenges to safety, comfort and performance. Tom Will also be presenting an Introduction to Go Pro for SUP and Kayak.

Join us to see and feel the apparel, and hear what Tom has to say about dressing for maximum enjoyment of your off season paddling opportunities. Topics will include strategies for avoiding hypothermia, proper layering, and material selection. We will examine the differences between various wet and dry items and how to select the garments that best suit both your off season paddling goals and budget.

Have you ever worn a dry suit? This is your chance to not only try one on, but people who BRING THEIR OWN IMMERSION FOOTWEAR and sign a waiver can see what its like to go for a short swim in a dry suit - it’s really fun! Additionally, attendees will receive10% off all Kokatat items - even our over-stock dry suits, jackets and PFDs here at the shop that are already on sale! We are overstocked in size small for both men and women - so if that’s your size, now is the time to get a dry suit! In addition to dry suits made for kayaking, we have lighter paddling suits specially made for SUP and surf ski paddling, and a few made specially for kayak fishing.

This is also a great opportunity to learn how to use a Go Pro. We can combine the demos so you can take a camera into the water.

Apparel discussion will begin promptly at 11, and Go Pro will start at 12. Please spread the word and call the number below to reserve your spot today. Hope you can join us!

Randall Henriksen 
New York Kayak Co. 
Pier 40, Hudson River Park

www.nykayak.com

Winter Paddling is Fun. Penguin Hats Optional.

More on Pier 40

There was a very good article about the situation at Pier 40 in the NY Times last week. Thanks to a friend on the NYCKayaker/HRWA Facebook group for sharing that in response to my posting about the the meeting last week - I had hoped that following that meeting, there would be something in the press that I could pass along. This is a well-written discussion of the issues that were discussed on Thursday night, and the individuals and groups that are involved, and I'm happy to pass it along. Click here to read.

Note later - Another paddling friend weighed in on my Facebook posting of this same article, saying that the probable outcome here is that the two sides keep fighting "long enough for the pier to collapse...no one wins, not the kids , not the Trust, not the kayak community". Unfortunately, from what I heard last week Thursday, I have to say I agree. I found myself leaning towards the Durst's concept, because it uses what's there and so actually seems like something that could happen much faster, but the Champions group is very set on their idea being the only way that things should possibly proceed.

Makes me glad, once again, to be out of the Hudson River Park - there are politics in the Paerdegat, including occasional border disputes, but as far as I know, we just don't get to the scorched-earth level out there. I feel very badly for my friends at Pier 40 (New York Kayak, the Village Community Boathouse, and to a lesser extent, the Downtown Boathouse, their program there is just a satellite, so loss of Pier 40 isn't quite as bad, but it has allowed them to keep a toehold in an area where they began) - it must be very depressing to be caught in the middle of all of this.    

Pier 40 meeting - Facebook notes...

Interesting meeting.

It was strange just being there as a curious onlooker. Unlike my politicking days up at Pier 63, I mostly don't know the cast of characters who were presenting concepts; as I mentioned, I'd completely lost track of what happened after Cirque du Soleil so I sort of went in with no idea of what was going to be presented and no preconceived notions beyond something of a personal preference for grassroots efforts.

Personal preferences are subject to change, though.

I don't think I'm going to have time to write up a full report but here were a few impressions I threw out on Facebook when I got home last night (slightly edited):

"I don't know the cast of characters in this section of the park at all, but there's the grassroots-looking set (who I really wanted to like, being a fan of grassroots efforts) and then there's the men in suits, and the men in the suits presented what looked to my uneducated eye like a fairly practical reworking of what's there (including boating), and the grassroots guys were pushing for what appeared (again to my untutored eye) to be a pretty extreme (and expen$ive) redesign, funded by sticking a couple of apartment buildings in on the water's edge, facing the pier. I don't want to rush to judgement when it's not territory I really know, but I found myself leaning towards the proposal of the suits."

"Weirdest moment of tonight's meeting: one of the presenters, dismissively referring to a picture showing the south side of Pier 40 (home to 3 separate and complementary boating organizations) - 'There's nothing you can do with that'. Really? Nothing? What really sort of threw me about that was that it was the group that had styled itself as more of a community, grassroots type. Wasn't expecting them to be so dismissive of the boating, somehow -"

"Maybe I should have submitted my question. I'd written one down about whether the Champions really meant to dismiss the 3 boating groups that call that strip of 'nothing' home as completely as it sounded like they did, but I refrained from submitting because I know so little about that particular community's politics.Refrained from....chickened out...decided to leave to...the...actual residents, really."

"The people at the organizations there (Downtown Boathouse branch, New York Kayak, and Village Community Boathouse) all know what they're doing, who they're dealing with, and I suspect they're already well along with how best to deal with the situation."

I'll be interested to see what develops. The chair of Community Board 2 asked that the concept proposals be made available for posting on the C.B. 2 website - I'll try to keep an eye out for those and link when they're up.

Oh - and what did happen with the Cirque du Soleil? Apparently both proposals that were submitted in response to that RFP were dismissed as economically unfeasible. Pier 40 is in a tough situation - dilapidated and going down fast. Seems like something needs to happen soon, or it'll be too late for anything to happen at all. 

Meeting Tonight (Feb 28th) re plans for Pier 40

Passing along something Carl Steiniger posted on the HRWA group on Facebook. I'm completely confused about what's going on at Pier 40 now, there was an RFP, there was Cirque du Soleil, there was a local group, I don't know where everything landed - I guess I'll go find out tonight. I'm not quite as obsessive about what's going on in the Hudson River Park as I was when I kept my boats there, but I still have a ton of friends in the park so I care about what happens there. Will be there for silent moral support if nothing else.

Carl's post:

Thanks to Nancy Brous for the heads up -

i believe some on this list are interested in the future of pier 40 at

west houston street on the hudson. it is the home of the village community boathouse, ny kayak company, the interim home of one of the downtown boathouse locations, not to mention the many non-boating uses currently there. as has been the case for so long, discussions about its redevelopment are ongoing, made more critical by Hudson River Park's financial problems (in large part a reflection of City and State $ issues) and more recently by the effects of last year's great storm and its surge. i thought this public meeting, sponsored by community board 2 of Manhattan, might be of interest:



Dear Neighbor:



Just a reminder that Community Board 2 (Manhattan) will be hosting a Pier 40 Forum this Thursday, February 28th, at the Saatchi & Saatchi Building, located at 375 Hudson Street (between West Houston and King Streets). The Forum will begin at 6:30 p.m.There will be presentations regarding a number of income-generating proposals for Pier 40 and comments by many of our elected officials. If time allows, there will be a limited question and answer period. We hope you can attend.



Sincerely,



David Gruber

Chair

Community Board No. 2, Manhattan

Bob Gormley

District Manager

Community Board No. 2, Manhattan

Art Reception on the Hudson - An Invitation From The Bowsprite, Tonight (Thursday, 8/30/2012)

So so sorry about the late notice, but if you're going to be anywhere in the vicinity of Greenwich Village this evening and you have a little time to spare, here's something that's bound to be a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to it!

Please join us for a reception this thursday, 30 august, 6 to 10pm
maritime paintings of Frank Hanavan & illustrations of Christina Sun
Reception: Thursday, August 30, 6 to 10 PM.

Art auction at 8:30pm, portion of all sales go to benefit the Lilac

Music by the Jug Addicts!
Lighthouse tender Lilac is berthed at Pier 25, Hudson River Park

at West Street and N. Moore Street

Subway: Franklin St stop on the 1, Canal St stop on the A/C/E (exit at Walker St.)

The show closes on August 31.

Hope to see you there!

christina
--

http://bowsprite.com/
http://lilacpreservationproject.org/home.html
http://www.frankhanavan.com/

Sailing School and Town Dock Operator Wanted, Pier 25, Hudson River Park

In my inbox last night, thought I'd pass it along.
*************************************************
Hudson River Park Trust Seeks Proposals for a Sailing School and Town Dock Operator on the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan: Up to forty mooring spots and a town dock provide an opportunity to develop a thriving and active waterfront business on Pier 25

Hudson River Park Trust, a public benefit corporation in the State of New York and consisting of a partnership between the State and City of New York, announces the release of a request for proposal for a sailing school, town dock, and private vessel mooring concession at Pier 25 in the Tribeca section of Hudson River Park. The Trust is looking for an experienced operator to run a sailing school and town dock; additional opportunity exists to offer transient and seasonal mooring berths. An optional information session will take place on February 17 and responses are due on March 5.

To download the RFP and for more information, go to
http://www.hudsonriverpark.org/organization/bids.asp

And Speaking of Tugs & Barges -

Laydeeeeeez and gennlemeeen! Steprightupsteprightup!!! Showboat's a-comin'!!!!

It's that time of year again! Once again, Capt. Pamela Hepburn of the beautiful old Tugboat Pegasus and Showman David Sharps of the world-famous Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge are getting their act together and taking it on the watery road. Join them at the Brooklyn Bridge Park from July 14th - July 24th or at the Hudson River Park in Tribeca from July 28th - July 31st.

Full details here, including information on buying tickets for any of the 3 trips involved -from the museum's home in Red Hook to the Brooklyn Bridge Park, from there to Tribeca, and then back home to Red Hook - each vessel can take 12 passengers - I've been for some great rides on the Pegasus & I think it would be even cooler to actually have the experience of being on board when she's travelling with a barge "on the hip", doing the job she was built for.

Nice enough for ya?

The calm after the storm, I guess!

Pier 66, with the lightship Frying Pan and the retired fireboat John J. Harvey. I was on my way to the map project meeting, which was pretty interesting, and is the usual for me for 6:00 meetings, I was running late & hurrying to get there. I came out from the side street, saw this, and all the sudden, hyper ("I'mlate,I'mlate, foraveryimportantdate") changed to hypnotized ("Aaaahhh! Muuussssst...Taaaaake...Pictuuuure...")!

So I stopped & took some pictures & quite unsurprisingly, the meeting carried on just fine for a few more minutes without me.

(Note to Capt. JP - haven't seen the Gormleys yet but I want to!)

Hudson River Pageant & Water Dance Of Boats - Gallery Done!

I had gone to see my friend Laurie performing in the Alice Farley-choreographed "Water Dance of Boats", the grand-finale of the Hudson River Pageant earlier in May - between that (which was extremely photogenic) and the Laser regatta I've just had way too many pictures to sort through & not enough time, but I finally finished the Hudson River Pageant gallery! Got the parade, got the Dance, and lots of backstage after-the-show shots!

From Hudson River Pageant

Thought I was actually going to have a nice little video after I figured out how to stick QuickTime clips together last night - I'd cobbled together six and a half minutes or so of parade & boat-dancing, then set my computer to work uploading my creation to YouTube, feeling ever so clever. Many many hours later, YouTube said "Here you go, Your Cleverness" - and it was only the first clip. Bah. So much for my dreams of becoming a video editor. Oh wait, that was never one of my dreams. Phew, what a relief!

I'm uploading the individual clips now. That should go better. In the meantime, enjoy the pix & have a very happy Memorial Day weekend!

Meanwhile, back in the Hudson River Park -

Times may be bad, but the developing waterfront parks can't just quit developing. Particularly when they are supposed to be generating their own income through rent, like the Hudson River Park is.

The pier above is Pier 57, at 15th street, just south of the Chelsea Piers sports complex. The plan for the Hudson River Park always called for this to be developed into...something. Three possibilities for what that something might be were the subject of an article in the NY Times that I read this morning on my way to work (if I eventually leave this city, how I am going to miss reading on the way to work!). Not surprisingly, the Related Company is back - they were the ones behind the big home-on-the-Hudson for the Cirque du Soleil concept for Pier 40 - that didn't go through in the end, but it looks like they've re-tailored their proposal for Pier 57. No Cirque du Soleil this time around, though! Interesting, very interesting. Anyways, you can read about their proposal plus a couple of others here.

In good news, Nancy Brouse, the metropolitan coordinator for the Hudson River Watertrail Association had posted to NYCKayaker about this this morning, and she mentioned that all 3 proposals include access for human-powered boating. Good to hear.

The picture above? That is from the VERY first gallery I ever did - a simple tour from Pier 63 down to the old Downtown Boathouse at Pier 26. It was on Buzznet, which back then was more a Flickr-like photosharing site (it's gotten way buzzier since then, which is sort of why I moved to Flickr & Picasa - I was feeling seriously out of place there among all the pink-haired emo kids!) it was taken with a single-use waterproof camera. With FILM inside. Remember those?

I honestly haven't looked at that gallery in years, but that was the one place where I was pretty sure that I would have a picture.

The picture wasn't so hot. I wasn't expecting it to be. No taking 20 pictures & picking the best one there!

What did surprise me was that I'd written a pretty detailed caption back there in the summer of 2005 - and in the intervening 3 year forgotten at least one of those details entirely! Along with a brief history of the pier & of course some words about the use for which it was most notorious at that time (holding pen for Republican National Convention protesters, I knew people who got sent there) there was a good bit of bubbling about how that pier was almost positively going to be Pier 63's future home, yay! Boy. I had COMPLETELY forgotten about that particular twist in the saga! The final outcome of that particular version of the world is covered, succinctly yet clearly, in the Times article. Sigh. Click on the picture above to read my 2005 writeup.

A Pioneer Passes

As I mentioned in my earlier post - in the midst of all the election happiness, there's sadness at the loss of Mike Davis, the founder of Floating the Apple.



Rob Buchanan, who I've mentioned here from time to time (usually linking to his New York Harbor Beaches site, which I love), is another tireless campaigner (pardon the election rhetoric) for recreational access in the New York City area. He posted the following yesterday after Erik of the Long Island City Boathouse saw the news on another online forum, posted it to NYCKayaker & asked Rob for more information. This response, coming as it did from an active Whitehall rower who knew Mike well, was far better than anything I could've come up with. I asked if I could post it here & he was happy to let me do so. Thank you, Rob.
**********************************
I'm sorry that I don't have much news to report at this point. Mike had a stroke last week and died yesterday in the hospital. I don't think anyone but immediate family--his mother, brother and neice--were able to visit him there. I have not yet heard what the plans are, if any, for a memorial service.

For those of you who don't know Mike's story, he was an archeologist who spent a lot of time in Turkey, was impressed by the amount of human-powered boating on the Bosporus, and came up with the idea of building boats and community boathouses here as a means of reestablishing 'universal public access' (one of his favorite phrases) to our urban waterways. The boat he developed, along with an engineer/naval architect named Mike Mcevoy and a master boatbuilder named Don Betts, was a 27-foot plywood-and-epoxy replica of a 19th-century Whitehall gig, a classic New York Harbor design perfectly suited for fast, safe rowing and sailing in these waters. About 30 of them have been built so far, the vast majority by high school and college
students.

Mike had a kind of Johnny Appleseed vision in which Floating the Apple would spawn a series of spinoff boathouses, and in fact that is pretty much what has happened. While the FTA 'mother ship' resides in one of the new Hudson River Park boathouses (on pier 84), three other groups are rowing the same boats: the Village Community Boathouse on Pier 40, East River Crew on East 96th Street, and WeeRow in Weehawken, New Jersey. It's also worth noting that Adam Green, who started a similar program called Rocking the Boat in the South Bronx, was a Mike Davis protégé for a while.

One of the greatest--and, occasionally, most maddening--things about Mike was how stubbornly he pursued his agenda. His belief that there could be no compromise when it came to the right of the public to the waterways and the foreshore was a huge inspiration to many of us, and key to the development of recreational boating in the harbor. It also sometimes made him difficult to work with, to put it mildly. But the fact remains that without his clear vision and unwavering advocacy, there's just no way we'd be where we are today.

Among Floating the Apple's oldest traditions is an annual youth regatta called the American Star, after the sleek rowing gig that defeated a British counterpart in a famous match race off the Battery in 1832. Before his death, Mike laid plans to hold this year's American Star at Pier 84 on December 6, and barring some hideous bureaucratic snafu, that's when it will happen. If you want to get a firsthand appreciation for what Mike Davis brought into being and what he was all about, please join us there.

Rob Buchanan
Village Community Boathouse

Lyman, and good stuff in the Hudson River Park!

Here's the tug Lyman, northbound in the Buttermilk Channel around noon on Thursday, March 27th. She's towing a really weird-lookin' thing which I put up in the gallery of the day (link to the thing in a minute).

I was totally curious about this thing. I checked in with Tugster Will 'cause I tend to think of him as the go-to guy for identifying weird floating things. Well, he didn't know but he said if I could get him the name of the tug, that might help. Fortunately I took this nice picture - there she is, the Lyman.

And a minute later I took a picture of the thing.

BTW, I think it's pretty funny that I wrote that caption LESS THAN 24 hours before I heard this news! Came out yesterday morning, first saw it in a post from Nancy, the metropolitan coordinator for the Hudson River Watertrail Association, on NYCKayaker, was in the papers the same day.

And in other good news in the Hudson River Park - I was very happy to see that the barge that practically used to be my summer home (hey, we can't all afford the Hamptons) will FINALLY be reopening! Congrats to the Kreveys & all my old friends over there - won't be paddling there much since my boats are all in Canarsie, but you can bet I'll be stopping by to say hello & enjoy my favorite Lackawanna #3 combo - bargeburger and a cold beer, with a side order of sunset!