Sensing Site: Expedition on Newtown Creek w/ Jan Mun

Sensing Site: Expedition on Newtown Creek at North Brooklyn Boat Club on Saturday, October 4th 2014 @ 4-7pm

Purchase tickets at: http://sensingsite.eventbrite.com

Sensing Site is a canoe expedition performed on Newtown Creek, a Superfund industrial waterway that separates Brooklyn and Queens. During the expedition, the cast and audience – who are also participants – improvise their movements along the water in boats while collecting specimens of non-native invasive plants as artifacts in search of what remains of the once pristine natural watershed. The journey is documented on a GPS; the mapping data is converted into a musical composition through a custom-designed software program. This song of the journey will later be used in an interactive art installation that stores the collected plants.

The cast for this expedition is Mara Catalán, a photographer, and her 13 years old daughter, Luna. Since 1994, Mara has documented herself and Williamsburg unifying worlds that collide in time. A Place I Once Called Home is a coming of age story of a girl, a Spanish immigrant, who came to live in Williamsburg and became part of its history. Over time as zoning regulations and gentrification brought a new flux of people to occupy the streets, forever changing the neighborhood. Once familiar smells embedded in memory are now gone and the shadows of night disappear – the remnants left for a new generation. Visit http://maracatalan.com for more information.

Jan Mun is the Artist in Residence at Newtown Creek Alliance. Sensing Site is a part of her ongoing social sculpture series, ProfileUS: Invasive Species which explores the biopolitics of immigration of humans and plants through the United States judicial system, and questions the potentiality of loss of life and community in result of prohibitive historical and current laws. Living organisms pose an interface to systems of representation, affording a re-evaluation from the perspective of the immigrant. The project is a series of social sculptures and installations that reveal ‘citizens’ that have not been written into our cultural, judicial, and historical archives.

This program is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). With organizational support from the Newtown Creek Alliance and North Brooklyn Boat Club.

All ticket sales will be donated to the North Brooklyn Boat Club.

Purchase tickets at: http://sensingsite.eventbrite.com

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on September 29, 2014 by admin.

Boat Club Helps End Illegal Oil Dumping in Newtown Creek.

In April of 2014 boat club members began reporting a series of heavy and vibrant sheens (like the one pictured) on Newtown Creek. In each case, the Department of Environmental Conservation Spill Response was quick to act, but each time unable to find the culprit – until August when an anonymous tipster provided the needed break in the case.

The North Brooklyn Boat Club was conceived, in part, with the belief that getting people on the water, would turn them into stewards of those waters. We are immensely gratified to see this already taking place, and even more gratified to see it acknowledged by others:

From the NY Times coverage: “If no one has any eyes on it, then it’s very easy for this sort of thing to keep happening.”
From the NY Daily News coverage: “It’s promising to see the community is so watchful of the creek, and so protective, this ‘business as usual’ of illegally dumping oil down the storm drain — we’re putting an end to that,”
From the Queens Brownstoner, who broke the story, “There’s a bit of good stuff to take away from all this. Will Elkins and the North Brooklyn Boat Club folks spotted an ongoing spill and reported it to the correct authority.”
And finally from the Department of Environmental Conservation who diligently and persistently followed up on this problem and our reports: “The public in the area has been actively involved in this matter, and credit should go in part to them.”

We look forward to creating more stewards, and watching these North Brooklyn waters flourish.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on September 23, 2014 by Jens.

3rd Annual Rock the Pulaski Benefit Concert

Winter is coming! Before it does come celebrate the end of summer with the North Brooklyn Boat Club featuring:

The Brooklyn Brewery beer, delicious New York Distilling Company‘s gin, fire grilled food, and a fantastic line up of bands including sea shanties by the Brooklyn Blowhards, Brittany Campbell, Twin Wave, Semi Femme, and special guests.

Admission is $5. Show is all ages and pets are welcomed. Help us put the fun in super fund as we end the season in style under the stars. See you there!

Special thanks to our volunteers and our sponsors Aura Sonic, Brooklyn Brewery, and NY Distilling Company. All proceeds go to funding North Brooklyn Boat Club.

Get more info at: 3rd Annual Rock the Pulaski Benefit Concert event page.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on September 12, 2014 by Jens.

Names for our Big Canoes!

After much hard-fought deliberation, NBBC is proud to announce the names of our big canoes. We received over 50 wonderful submissions but in the end did not pick a single suggestion. Rather we took some of the most common themes that we feel properly serve these vessels main purpose which is on-water environmental education. While we appreciated many suggestions alluding to mythology, nautical history and noted waterway and local environmental activists, we ultimately sought more than just a namesake and rather a display to aid people in learning more about their local waterways. Furthermore we sought to use the boats themselves as teaching props that contain geographic and natural information on their sides. Also we really just needed something to tell the two identical boats apart!

So, (drumroll please) our two chosen themes, and nicknames for each boat, are: Kills and Currents.

Currents
The most common suggestion was in fact ‘Max Flood’ and ‘Max Ebb’ referring to the fastest moments that tidal currents move in either direction. Using this theme (which plays a crucial trip planning role in almost all NBBC trips) we will use the words Ebb and Flood on either side of the boat with corresponding arrows that show which way the East River Ebbs and Floods (if seen from Brooklyn or Queens).

Kills
Kills is the Dutch word for creek, and we wanted to highlight the tributaries that are apart of Newtown Creek. A number of people suggested Newtown Creek geographic-based names and we wanted a way to do more than just reference or list these. So, imagining the canoe as Newtown Creek itself with each side as the two boroughs that border the creek (port side = Queens; starboard = Brooklyn) one can approximately place each tributary’s name where it intersects with the main channel of Newtown Creek. East Branch lies at the end of the main channel in both Brooklyn and Queens, so it is split at bow of the boat on to either side.

Of course the easiest way to understand this creative take on naming a boat is to see an illustration :

We will be placing the ‘names’ on the boats in the coming month and look forward to continuing to take more community groups, educational institutions and regular folk from NYC out onto the waterways in them. If interested in on-water environmental education please contact us: northbrooklynboatclub (at) gmail (dot) com

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on July 30, 2014 by admin.

Free Community Boating

Join NBBC this summer for our bi-monthly open paddles where trained guides take participants on short tours to the mouth of the East River. See the skyline, learn about Newtown Creek, hang out and have some food and drinks and check out all the other activity happening at our boatyard!

2014 Dates:
May 3rd
May 17th
June 14th
June 28th
July 26th
August 23rd
Sept TBA
Oct TBA

All participants must sign a waiver of liability, no rsvp required, open to the public. We offer kayaks, canoes and big canoes (25′) depending on weather conditions and water quality.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on July 24, 2014 by admin.

Help Name Our Big Canoes!

Some of you may have seen, or even already paddled in, our 25 foot canoes that we obtained via GCEF funding to deliver on-water environmental education. They are amazing boats: large, stable and able to comfortably and safely carry more passengers than our regular sized canoes. But they are new and thus nameless. So, in order to give each boat a little character and help distinguish one from the other we will be naming the two big canoes in the coming weeks; and we want you to help!

To suggest names for the two boats use the form here (paired names are encouraged).

We will pick from the suggestions and announce in the coming weeks; deadline for submissions is July 20th, so get cracking!

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on July 9, 2014 by admin.

ED Shed Aquarium Christening!

Please join us for a special event at our environmental education outpost, the ED Shed. We will be setting up and filling our center piece aquarium tank and checking out some of the various wildlife native to Newtown Creek. Come see the various invertebrates, plankton and other critters that call Newtown Creek home! No RSVP required, open to all.

June 26th, 5 to 8pm
Family Friendly

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on June 22, 2014 by admin.

3rd Annual Summer Solstice Benefit Concert – June 21st

Some days are meant for quiet reflection. The Summer Solstice is not one of those days. Come join your neighborhood boat club as we grill great food, catch up with friends, and dance under the stars to the Whiskey Bitches, Puppies, Metorana, Throw Vision, and Late Cambrian along the scenic shores of Newtown Creek. It is an all ages show with a $5 cover. Special thanks to our sponsors the New York Distilling Company, The Brooklyn Brewery, and Aura Sonic. We can’t wait to see you there!

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged boatyard, music, party, public, solstice on June 11, 2014 by admin.

Jun-Sept 2014 News & Events