Changes coming to Governors Island? Weigh in by October 9th if you're interested!

City of Water Day a few years back.

Just a quick post tonight to share some stuff a paddling friend from way back has been sharing on the NYC Kayaker Facebook group. Unfortunately I have to preface it with an "Uff da!", to borrow a most useful exclamation of dismay from friends of Norwegian descent - it turns out there was one public meeting to review the scoping document, that was a week and a half ago, and the NYC Gov website announcement is VERY vague about submitting comments, just says "Written comments on the Draft Scope of Work may be submitted to the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Coordination until 5:00 P.M. Tuesday, October 9, 2018." There is a contact page, I've sent a message asking if that's an acceptable place to submit a comment. Will update if I hear anything. Worth a try and there's also a mailing address there for snail mail submissions.

Click here for a NY Times article about some possibilities

update slightly later - OK, maybe I can relax a little bit, the Times article does refer to September's meeting as being the first of several. 

I'm not the biggest Gov's I user, but I have been there for one Figment art festival, one Porch Stomp folk music day, I think 2 Halawai Hawaiian potlucks - all lots of fun. I also went to a few City of Water Days there before we started doing City of Water Day In Your Neighborhood open houses in Canarsie. This year, though, the main City of Water event moved to the South Street Seaport Museum for unstated reasons. Actually one of the coolest things about the early City of Water days was that participating boaters got to bring our tents and camp out for a night, that was so much fun - I would pick that over glamping (starting at a hundred and fifty bucks a night and going up to $800 a night!!! for two people!!! gaaah!!! oh, but you get a concierge so I suppose that's not so bad, right?) ANY DAY. :(

Anyways, pardon me for a somewhat blithery post, I am really just chucking this out there fast because the cutoff date for comments is so darned close and although this blog is not as rabble-rousy as it was back when I was fighting for storage on the Hudson River waterfront, I still think it's very important for people to make themselves heard when they are given the chance. If you read that Times article and find you have some thoughts on the matter, please do try to get them in to the powers that be - I don't know if it'll make a difference but it's worth trying. I am hoping people who care are more aware of this, I've been really caught up in other things for the last couple of months and this just totally took me by surprise when I finally really started reading stuff tonight.

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.

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. 

Ferry Flap

Kayak-related story going around in the NY media today regarding ferry horns, the paddlers who have been wanting to hear horns when the smaller ferries leave their docks (as is required by Coast Guard Regs) for ages, and a few Battery residents who are throwing a fit now that they are. Frankly, although I'm in thoroughly in favor of people following navigation rules, I might have had more sympathy with the residents if the main instigator didn't indulge in the worst censorship of opposing views I've ever seen on a blog.

I myself actually got blocked from even VIEWING batterypark.tv for having the gall to post a link to the regulation in question. OK, OK, I tried to post it twice - once and then again when the first attempt disappeared. The nerve of me, huh? 

Anyways, I could opine some more, I've certainly found the guy annoying enough to work up a good head of steam, but I got to work late today because of a bit of a personal emergency - nothing bad, just something I chose to attend to - so I've got a lot of catching up to do and I'll just cut to the links.

Here's the basic story in the New York Times CityRoom Blog. They didn't go into the censorship and general unpleasantness there as much, that's a column that has space constraints and has to focus on the main issue - the blog crap really was a sideshow and I think Mr. McGeehan did a good job of explaining the actual story. 

Also made the Talk of the Town section of New Yorker magazine - subscribers only but if you are, you can read it here.

And click here for the viewpoint of a paddling blogger who's taking a far less tiptoey approach to this (but with whom I pretty much agree).

On an interesting and sort of disappointing side note, a friend reported that she was by that terminal this morning and the ferries had gone back to silent running. Maybe the squeaky wheel did get the grease, him and his four-member Facebook group. 

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

Oh, ouch.

More Sandy fallout,and much worse than the just-discovered demise of the 5-year old rosemary bush in my garden I was lamenting earlier today on Facebook. Boy, it was bad enough having to find someplace to move a sea kayak and a surfski back in '06 when Pier 63 Maritime got shut down - has to be so much worse when you can't just slap your boat on the roof of a car and go.

Regarding the rosemary -- I thought it had made it but it was just slower to succumb to the saltwater ducking than the sage and the thyme. Of the 4 plants that used to always make it though the winter, it's looking like the green onions are the sole survivors, and I'm not sure those are safe to eat after their October immersion in the floodwaters.

Updates on PortSide NewYork

Glad to see the plight of the Mary Whalen getting some airtime. For more information, visit PortSideNewYork.org. Oh, and for the latest news, here's the latest e-newsletter - just got it today!

This all reminds me I've been meaning to put together a bit of an essay on why I think it would be such a loss if PortSide NewYork were to go out of business - will try to do that soon, time is flying.
************
And yay, one more update, Friday morning - they've got some temporary office space outside of the container port - they're looking for moving help on Tuesday. I can't take a day right now but I was glad to hear that - it's not a berth for the boat but at least now they've got somewhere they can coordinate efforts here in these last couple of weeks without all the TWIC card/homeland security hassles.

Newtown Creek Meeting TONIGHT (2/23/2012)

Oh shoot, nearly past the point of there being any point in posting this now, but just in case - there's a meeting tonight about Newtown Creek that should be interesting for local boaters & waterfront fans (especially those in the neighborhoods of Bushwick, Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn; and Maspeth, Ridgewood, Sunnyside and Long Island City in Queens). Full details here.

I learned about while I wasa passing out flyers for next monday's PortSide NewYork meeting - stopped to talk to the gentleman who was working at the Riverkeeper table at the farmer's market near the Gowanus Old Stone House Park & he told me about it. The NYCKayaker list has been discussing it all week - I can't make it myself but I'd meant to at least post it here - with no home computer, I spaced until now. Better late than never, but sooner would've been better. :(

Wetlands Strategy Draft on "A Walk in the Park"

Further to the Four Sparrow business - as I mentioned in a post on Facebook yesterday, that meeting report actually ended up being a rather hard one to write:

" don't know why I'm having such a hard time doing it, used to do that sort of thing all the time...guess I'm out of practice. Or Mill Basin doesn't feel like my turf the way the Hudson River Park was, where I first got involved when the Trust was a Conservancy, knew the people, followed the stories, maybe even got to help write little bit of its now and then before they shut down the barge and I left for the shores of the Paerdegat. This one, I was seriously jumping in in a chapter in the middle of what turned out to be a much longer tale than I realized & aside from the initial incoherent spluttering I did the other day I'm at a bit of a loss."

I did finally cough up a report last night, but I was reading it and feeling like it just wasn't very good precisely because I didn't have any sense of the backstory or how this one development fits into the bigger picture.

Fortunately the same paddling birder friend who told me about the plan and the meeting in the first place forwarded the following message that had been sent out among the birding community. I saw it AFTER I'd posted last night, looked at the link this morning, and there it was, a summary the big picture that I knew I wasn't seeing. Wish I'd read it before I wrote my report, might have made it easier!

Thanks, Prof. M!
*****************

A Walk in the Park: City Releases Wetlands Strategy Draft.

The attachment in the link above ( "Read On" in the second link ) is a very important conservation proposal put out by our city Jan 18th ( last Thursday) . The draft is 63 pages long but necessary to understand how critical this proposal is in the fight to save places like 4 Sparrow Marsh ( 64 acres) which the latest development plan threatens the marsh ecology with a large car dealership Kristol Auto next door at the current Toys R Us site; Kristol Auto is under investigation by the NY State Dept of Environment Conservation (NYSDEC) for its current location elsewhere for brownfield contamination

If you can comment on the proposed Wetlands policy, please do even if it isn't much. The deadline is February 18th.

Thanks for Brooklyn's birds and her habitats !

P

Four Sparrows Meeting Review

Just a quick bit of scribbling (note later: quick bit of scribbling? who was I kidding, when did I EVER do a meeting writeup that was "quick"??? oh well, at least it's done!) out my recollections of the updated plan for the Four Sparrows - I'd gone looking for the updated version of the plan, found an older version over on Sheepshead Bites & figured I'd just do one of my Microsoft Paint-jobs on it. Not very pretty but it gets the idea across. This isn't perfect, I should have done it sooner as sitting here 5 days after the meeting I'm not sure I'm remembering it right, but this is my best recollection.

The great thing is that the area I outlined, crosshatched & marked Gone in blue, covering buildings "Retail A", "Retail B" and the parking to serve them, are relics of the Ratner plan. Those are GONE now, thank goodness -- although as the invitation to the Community Board meeting pointed out, developers are likely to keep taking flyers at that unless it's eventually properly handed over to the parks department.

What's left is a couple of businesses that are already operating in the area, Toys 'R' Us (owners Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Bain Capital Partners LLC - and did that get a gasp when the manager started reading out the owners - and Vornado Realty Trust, who also owns the Kings Plaza Mall where the meeting was held) and Kristol Motors trying to rearrange things a bit. I've outlined the lot that they're working with in orange. The squarish building marked "Old" is the Toys 'R' Us. The polygonal building marked "New" is the car dealership. Where the marsh comes into play is that that new building will be taking up what is currently a large part of the Toys 'R' Us parking lot, so to replace that parking, they are proposing that a 60 foot wide "easement" be carved out of Four Sparrow (comprising roughly 5% of that land that everybody thought was a park)and handed over for a parking lot.

The developers were making all kinds of reassuring noises about how it was being set up so that nothing but a parking lot could ever be built on that strip, as though a parking lot is somehow a completely neutral thing to add in and of itself.

Ida Sanoff, president of the Brooklyn/Queens division of the Natural Resources Protective Association called them on that one, and I was glad to hear that as it seemed to me that putting a parking lot right on the edge of a marsh is pretty much going to guarantee that every time it rains, it's going to mean oil and gas and anything else that leaked from the cars that park there are going to wash into the marsh.

Dan Mundy from the Jamaica Bay EcoWatch followed up and said that by pointing out that with all of the money that's being poured into the maintenance and restoration of the marshes of Jamaica Bay, not protecting the Four Sparrow Marsh just didn't make sense. Well, he said it better than that but that's what it boils down to.

The residents seemed to have mixed emotions - on the one hand, Kristol is a genuine local businessman and they'd like to see him do well, but chairwoman Dorothy Turano expressed a lot of frustration with the way the developers had evaded requests for a preliminary meeting, and concern about how the development was going to deal with the increased traffic (there'd been hopes for a bus turnaround and that didn't seem to be part of the plan), and most of all, she was quite vehement about the residents not wanting even the smallest piece of that park used.

A couple of other comments that stick out in my mind -

An individual asked Kristol about his role in the brownfield status of the land where his current dealership stands - he said he inherited that when he took over the land & had nothing to do with it but that was something people seemed to be pretty clearly concerned about.

There was a very strange moment when Councilman Lew Fidler began talking about how it was his understanding that the strip of marshland was just going to be used a buffer, tree plantings, etc. etc. - he must have arrived late because the fact that that land was intended for parking cars had been one of the first things the developers said. The developers corrected him although he didn't really seem to acknowledge it - hopefully that did sink in. That mistaken assumption was also posted on Sheepshead Bites & I made a comment I sort of wish I could revise, I was just there looking for the map, saw that the Councilman had posted a comment saying the same thing & posted a rather snappish correction, thinking he'd just ignored the developers' correction...then realized he'd posted that the day before the meeting. Oh well, at least there's a correction with it now.

hmm, and back to "I'm not sure I'm remembering it right", I swear they said the strip was for parking but Dan Mundy's report says " 'some parking but mostly as a buffer area with trees and plants' according to EDC. " Maybe I misheard...still, definitely not just trees.

Most depressing moment of the evening was when someone proposed that approval be hinged on guarantees that the park be left alone. A gentleman who I believe was representing the Empire Development Corporation was quick to remind everyone that a community board doesn't actually have any power to DO something like that, they're only there in an advisory capacity.

Weirdest moment of the evening was actually before the meeting. I'd made a poster and while I was standing in line, the guy in front of me said "Nice pictures". I said thanks & told him I'd taken them from my kayak & that I paddle out of Sebago. He paused for a second & then said, "You know, I'd like to like your club but you want to ban all the motorboats from the Paerdegat". Coulda knocked me over with the proverbial feather - sure there are a couple of turkeys who just WON'T slow down when they come under the bridge, but the neighboring yacht clubs are just that, our neighbors, I can't imagine asking to have them turned out! Anyways, turned out that he was from Canarsie and some club member had said something to that effect at some planning meeting - somebody's personal opinion clearly got mistaken for club policy. Bizarre though.

According to my notes, the next meeting on the topic will be on February 8th at 5:30 at Brooklyn Borough Hall, and then there'll be a followup in March, and in April or May it'll go to the City Council.

Guess I won't throw away my poster yet.

And a meeting to discuss the proposed Expansion of JFK Airport Runways into the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preserve

"Reclamation", the powers that be are calling the proposal to turn some number of acres of Jamaica Bay into airport runways. "Reclamation", my okole. Here's another notice that should be of great interest to those who love Jamaica Bay. I highly doubt that I will be able to make it because of work pressures, but I did want to spread the word.

JAMAICA BAY TASK FORCE MEETING

APRIL 7, 2011 @ 6:30 pm

NPS Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center
Cross Bay Blvd. Broad Channel, NY 11693

AGENDA
6:30 - 6:45 Sign in, Introductions, Acknowledgment of Elected/Agency
Officials
6:45 - 7:05 Overview of Regional Plan Association Proposed Plan for
Expansion of JFK Airport- Environmental Response
Dan Mundy Jr. Jamaica Bay Ecowatchers
7:05 - 7:15 Potential impacts of JFK Expansion
Brad Sewell, Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense
Council
7:15 - 7:35 JFK Airport Expansion and Bird Hazard issues
Don Riepe, Jamaica Bay Guardian
7:35 - 7:55 Marine Life in the targeted areas; A
commercial/recreational
Perspective from the local Fishing Industry
Captain Vincent Calabro
7:55- 8:30 Discussion, Q & A
Dan Mundy, Don Riepe
Co-Chairs
For more information and directions, please call 718-318-9344

Just in on NYCKayaker - How to Vote for a New Boathouse

This just in on one of my favorite local paddling email lists, nyckayaker. Good luck, Dewey & company - always exciting to have a potential new boathouse in the works! I've actually been meaning to post about these guys for months now & I'm glad to pass this along:

How To Vote for a New Boathouse on Newtown Creek

The City Parks Foundation is now soliciting "community support" for proposals for the 7 million in Environmental Benefit Project (EBP) funds they received from the EC as compensation to the community affected by delays and violations in the Construction (still ongoing) of the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant.

The Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks & Planning, in coordination with the North Brooklyn Boat Club (and 40 other local organizations) has proposed the Greenpoint Boathouse and Environmental Education Center. It would refurbish the (currently broken and off-limits) bulkhead and renovate the (currently empty) ground floor space of the GMDC (Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center) building on the Newtown Creek, right where Manhattan Avenue starts. For more information about the proposal, check out: NorthBrooklynBoatClub.Org.

To vote for this terrific project, here's how the CPF explains how to do it:

"You will be able to express your preferences about which projects you would like funded in one of two ways. If you attended one of the three public meetings on the project (and were therefore added to our e-mail list by October 26th), you will be able to communicate your preferences via e-mail. More information about the process will be sent to you within a few weeks.

Others may go to one of two locations to express your preferences:

On Wednesday, December 1st, from 3pm to 8pm, we will be at Queens Library (Court Square) at 25-01 Jackson Avenue

On Thursday, December 2nd, from 3pm to 8pm, we will be at PS34 in Brooklyn, at 131 Norman Avenue (near McGuinness Boulevard)

City Parks Foundation staff will be at both locations to answer questions about the projects and the process. You may only vote once."

And thanks for your support!


Dewey Thompson
North Brooklyn Boat Club
www.northbrooklynboatclub.org

VISION 2020 - LAST WORKSHOP TONIGHT 6/24 - PLUS Waterfront Book Festival Saturday 6/26 in Red Hook.

Click here for ALL DETAILS.

This is the last in the series of development workshops for the NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. I managed to miss the Brooklyn one. I was hoping to go check on my garden tonight, it's hot hot hot and I should have gone & watered this morning but I didn't get up early enough, but I think I may cross my fingers, hope that my wonderful gardening clubmates are once again going to save my garden from my horrible neglect, and go to the Blue Network meeting.

Can't believe they haven't heard that the proper name is "The 6th Boro".

Thanks Nancy at the NYC Watertrail Association for spreading the word.

PLUS...oh Scheiße! Scheiße! Scheiße! Here I had my weekend all kinda planned out nice. A day at the club, gardening and a nice long paddle, and a day at home, housework and errands so it's all nice for when my guy visits next weekend, la la la, relaxed...but then that dreadful, horrid, beastly David Sharps at the Waterfront Museum went and sent THIS around. Drat him all to heck anyways.

Sounds absolutely fantastic. I see 2 total favorites on there & a bunch more that sound incredibly interesting. I think I need to go!

Theoretically I could, tides & weather permitting, paddle there, leaving Sunday free. note, slightly later...oh man. no fair. Tides are almost PERFECT... And if this were on the other end of the summer, I probably would. Problem is, that would be a mighty long jaunt for somebody whose longest paddle of the year so far has been to Manhattan Beach & back. Sort of like running a marathon when you haven't done anything longer than a 5K in months & months. Good way to foul yourself up for the rest of the season.

Ah well, one very nice thing about living quarters of less than a thousand square feet is they really don't take all day to clean!

Comprehensive Waterfront Plan - Borough Workshop Dates!

I'd snuck a mention of these with a link in at the end of one of my posts about the MWA's writeup about that City Council Committee on Waterfronts meeting, but I think these meetings are important enough to warrant mentioning again -

Full schedule & lots more info here, courtesy of the MWA.

Observation re Waterwire article - Best reason of all to put the horse to bed.

Excerpt from an email to a friend...

Interesting final quote from Capt. Mahlmann in the Waterwire article - he went through the horse/bike-on-a-highway party line but then he kept going & what he closed with makes so much sense...

"I believe there are already plenty of rules in effect -- and they can't enforce those rules, so making more unenforceable rules wouldn't work. Education of the small boating community is the best we can do."

I read that & think maybe we're more on the same page than I thought. That horse or bike on a highway thing just puts us paddlers so much on the defensive, I think we stop listening once it's said.

Remember my diatribe about why it was time to put the horse to bed?

I think that was all "bloggerhea" compared to the this last reason that the "horse on a highway" line should be retired.

That being because the minute somebody says that phrase, they've almost guaranteed that a bunch of people who should be listening & may have been listening will stop listening.

Rules of the Road & Cooperation Meeting - plus followup meetings for comprehensive waterfront plan link.

Quick post on a busy day - hot off the email, here's an excellent writeup of that Rules of the Road meeting last week - the one that was in the middle of the work day.

I had been meaning to throw out a question - maybe we could even call it a writing challenge, a la Tillermaan - for those of you who boat in urban waters. The situation in NY Harbor has an interesting spin because the place was so polluted for so long that recreational boating had really dropped off in popularity. The tugs & tankers had the place more or less to themselves for a long time. There were always a few determined people who kept playing out there, but there's been a huge resurgence since the harbor has become cleaner.

Every time the issue comes up, with or without references to horses, bicycles or children on highways, I find myself wondering how things work in harbors where recreation never waned. San Francisco, Boston, Hong Kong, Sydney, Venice, Seattle, wherever you are - near or far, if you're dodging freighters & ferries when you're out for fun, or if you're on the freighters of ferries being dodged, I'd love to read a little bit of how things are handled in your little piece of our wide watery world.

And before I dash, I should also add that the Metropolitan Waterfront Association also has full info & links about the 6 breakout workshops for NYC's Comprehensive Waterfront Plan up now on Waterwire.net

Another meeting

We're in the budget hell homestretch at work right now, so it was a slightly late night at the office. At one point while I was momentarily idle, waiting for the next round of revisions to appear, I remembered to check on a City Council committee meeting I'd heard about. It was on the calendar so I did up a quick email to all my various mailing lists & a few friends who aren't on any of those:
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This sounds like it should be interesting meeting of the Waterways Committee of the City Council.

Oversight – Rules of the Road, Boating Safety and Cooperation in New York City Waters.

I don't think I can make it (in the homestretch for FY11 budget season so pretty much chained to desk, there now in fact) but I'd heard about it through a friend & I thought I would pass it along - already had to a few people but I think it had been rescheduled right before I first heard about it & the original cancelled date was still on the calendar with a note it was being rescheduled - that's done so here it is.
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It didn't hit me until after I got home that it was a little shortsighted of the committee members to hold a hearing like this at a time when most recreational boaters would presumably be at our desks, working at the jobs that earn us the money that lets us pay for our recreational boating habit. If you were here earlier than around noon today (Saturday), you saw an initial version of my complaint that I'd slapped together last night & set to post today. I'd planned to join one of my sailing friends this morning at the club for an 8am launch, heading over to the north channel bridge - but I woke up this morning feeling lousy in a way that said a quiet day at home would probably be a better idea.

:(

So since I'm home instead of out in the sunshine planting marsh grass, I figured I might as well take that late-night whine & actually do something with it. Here's what I sent:


Dear Councilmembers:

My name is Bonnie K. ...

I am a paddler, sailor, and resident of NYC.

You are having a hearing on Rules of the Road, Boating Safety and Cooperation in New York City Waters. Concerns have apparently expressed about failures among the recreational boating sector to comply with the rules of the road, boat safely, and cooperate. There might be things being said at your hearing that members of the recreational boating sector should be able to hear for ourselves -- so why are you having the meeting at a time when the vast majority of recreational boaters are at work & may find it difficult to attend?

I imagine that this is because for all the other participants, this IS work, and because it's normal practice to have such committee hearings during the work day, and it didn't occur to anyone that this one might be worth changing. I suppose there's no way to make it work for everybody - try to include the recreational set & you'll be asking all the professionals to sacrifice their leisure time; put it during the work day so the professionals can attend as a normal part of their work day, and the recreational set has to sacrifice office hours.

The word is out about the meeting & I am hoping that representatives of local recreational organizations (like the New York City Watertrail Association, copied above) have been invited to participate and & will be able pass the word later on what happened - but I do wish that the cooperation could have extended to finding a time for the meeting when a wider set of waterway users could conceiveably attend, for example, at 4 pm on a workday. Let the recreational set find a way to leave work a little early, and let the professionals get home a little late. Wouldn't that make sense?

Thank you for your consideration - if not for this meeting, then at least in future planning.

Sincerely,

Bonnie K. ...

BTW - A very sincere "Thank you" to PortSideNY for initially passing the word even before the final version appeared on the City Council - once again filling in a communication gap between the different types of waterway users.