E M P T Y | V E S S E L | P R O J E C T | N E W S # 40 | JUNE . 03 . 06
These storms have slowed us down but the lady EV is weathering them wonderfully. As lightning strikes, she rocks and sways. She reflects every burst beam and bloom. She is a steady maiden waiting for us on our home shores. We are looking forward to an action-packed week aboard.
Our Hours This Week:
Sunday, 2 - 6p
Monday, 6 - 11p
Friday, 7 - 11p
Saturday, 3- 11p
Scroll down for a soggy myth-busting History. We are sorry we have waited so long.
U P C O M I N G
SUNDAY, JUNE 4
Work Day/Open Boat
Enjoy clear skies over the Gowanus. Watch the wood dry. Put up some wall boards.
NOTE: All classes cancelled today.
2-6p
MONDAY, JUNE 5
Haiti's Hades Harlequin's Hymns
Mondays in June and July
Two poets and two lyricists go tete-a-tete
Every week will also feature a guest musician, Chris Leo's words, and Jonathan Curley's professions.
9-11p, free, vodka cocktails $3
FRIDAY, JUNE 9
Visual Resistance presents a film
SALT OF THE EARTH (1954)
Based on an actual strike against the Empire Zinc Mine in New Mexico, the film deals with the prejudice against the Mexican-American workers, who struck to attain wage parity with Anglo workers in other mines and to be treated with dignity by the bosses. The film is an early treatment of feminism, because the wives of the miners play a pivotal role in the strike, against their husbands wishes. In the end, the greatest victory for the workers and their families is the realization that prejudice and poor treatment are conditions that are not always imposed by outside forces. This film was written, directed and produced by members of the original "Hollywood Ten," who were blacklisted for refusing to answer Congressional inquiries on First Amendment grounds.
http://www.visualresistance.org/
8p, $3-10. donation
SATURDAY, JUNE 10, day
Knitting Class with Mike Topper
Mike writes:
"Come learn how to knit! class can be for anyone beginner to intermediate that wants to learn more about knitting. no experience required. I will provide yarn and needles that you can use during the class." email
mtopper@riseupREMOVEANTISPAMMEASURE.net for info or to RSVP
http://www.myspace.com/topper
4p, by donation
SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 8pm
Resisting the Green Scare
A Night of Films, Discussion, and Letter Writing to Benefit Indictees of the "Green Scare"
Films:
*pickaxe: A story of struggle to save the forests of Oregon. An eclectic mix of activists take a stand to protect an old growth forest from logging at Warner Creek in the Willamette National Forest of Oregon, blockading the logging road and repelling the state police. Over months a community builds around the illegal blockade as it develops into the Cascadia Free State and similar actions spread across the region. Years after its release, Pickaxe has become a classic document of the potential for grassroots direct action to achieve victory against the forces of both government and big business. Lovingly crafted by the participants themselves, the film expertly presents every moment, from confrontation to celebration. By filmmakers Tim Lewis and Tim Ream. [94 min.]
*Breaking the Spell: An hour-long look at the 1999 Seattle WTO protests and the anarchists who traveled there to set a new precedent for militant confrontation, this documentary picks up where Pickaxe left off. Filmed in the thick of the action, including footage that aired nationally on 60 Minutes, it captures a moment when world history was up for grabs. [63 min.]
plus food, bar, and musical interludes...
$3 - 10 suggested donation. No one turned away for lack of funds
SUNDAY, JUNE 11, day
Work Day
Let's finish those walls once and for all!!! Come get dusty!
1-6p, free
Russian Class
Slavic tongue twisters for beginners.
5-6p, by donation
RSVP:
pz@emptyvesselprojectREMOVEANTISPAMMEASURE.org
SUNDAY, JUNE 11, evening
Floating Rock Show and BBQ
violet raid, flitter mice of yore, moth
7p BBQ, 8p show, by donation
For more upcoming events,check out our calendar at
http://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fcalendar%2Ffeeds%2Finfo%40emptyvesselproject.org%2Fpublic%2Fbasic
W H E R E I S T H E B O A T N O W ?
Access to the Empty Vessel is from the west side of 1st Street, one block south of the Carroll Street Bridge over the Gowanus Canal.
To take a look at a bird’s eye view of the boat’s location, check out
http://maps.google.com satellite image at
http://tinyurl.com/ba9cd
For directions by train:
http://www.hopstop.com. We are 3 blocks
from the Carroll Street Stop on the F and G trains.
W I S H L I S T
We need your 1/2" plywood scraps to face our ceiling. Scraps of 2' x 2' or larger particularly useful. Bring 'em down.
C H E C K T H I S O U T
This section is dedicated to work elsewhere congruous with the EVP's vision. We will occasionally direct your attention to the work of our fellow travellers.
Canoe the Gowanus
The Gowanus Dredgers will take you on free canoe trips around the Gowanus estuary. They are our neighbors. All trips leave from 2nd Street at the canal.
Upcoming trips: Wednesday June 7th, 5:30p - 7:30p; Sunday June 11th, 10a - 2p; Thursday June 15th, 5:30p - 7:30p.
For more information or to RSVP, see
http://www.gowanuscanal.org
H I S T O R Y
Have you seen Hog Island?
It’s a pig-shaped mile-long barrier island off the southern coast of the Rockaways. After the Civil War, developers built saloons and bathhouses on this sandy spit, and Hog Island became a jewel of the Gilded Age. The city’s political bosses and business elite used the place as beachy annex of Tammany Hall. There were dances that lasted all night and tables set outside under the summer stars.
Over a century later, after the storms of early 1990s, Queens College professor Nicholas Coch, a coastal geologist who calls himself a “forensic hurricanologist,” sent his students to watch the Army Corps of Engineers dredge up sand to replace what had been washed away from the beaches of Rockaway. The students reported back that the beach was covered in "funny garbage." In the dredged-up sand, Coch's students found hundreds of artifacts—plates, whiskey bottles, teapots, beer mugs, lumps of coal and, what proved to be the most telling clue of all, an old hurricane lamp. In the last year, several press outfits, including the New York Press and Newsday, have reported Professor Coch's assertion that the island was wiped off the map overnight by a hurricane on the night of August 23, 1893. Coch says that Hog Island “largely disappeared that night." To his knowledge, "it is the only incidence of the removal of an entire island by a hurricane.”
It's a great story, a powerful New York myth. And it sounds like a dire warning. The truth is a bit more nuanced.
On the night of August 23, 1893, a terrifying Category 2 hurricane did strike New York City. It hit land in the marsh that is JFK airport today and began the erosion of the low-lying resort. The hurricane was a major event. All six front-page columns of the August 25, 1893, New York Times were dedicated to the “unexampled fury” of the “West Indian monster.” The storm sunk dozens of boats and killed scores of sailors. Everything below Canal Street was under water. In Central Park, hundreds of trees were uprooted, and gangs of Italian immigrant boys “roamed . . . in the early hours of the morning collecting the dead sparrows and plucking them of their feathers.” The brand-new Metropolitan Life building on Madison Avenue was severely damaged when a heavy-iron fence was torn away by the wind, plunging 10 stories and crashing through a stained-glass dome before landing on a mosaic "including quantities of costly Mexican onyx."
A 30-foot storm surge swept across southern Brooklyn and Queens, destroying virtually every man-made structure in its path. In Brooklyn, at Wyckoff and Myrtle Avenues, "the water in the street was up to a man's waist," and residents used ladders to get in and out of their houses. Most of the boats moored at the Williamsburg Yacht Club were "sunk, driven ashore or demolished." The East River rose "until it swept over the sea wall in the Astoria district and submerged the Boulevard." At Coney Island, 30-foot waves swept 200 yards inland, destroying nearly every man-made structure in its path and wrecking the elevated railroad.
But Hog Island held on to weather a few more storms. The destruction came in a creeping wave of almosts and nearlies, not in an apocalyptic stroke. As it happened, it heralded new development and improved facilities. And then one day it really was no more. Here are some samples from Brooklyn Eagle reports:
February 7,1896. "The beach at Hog Island ... is nearly washed away. The wind and surf overturned Gipson Lockwood & Co.'s bathing pavilion on Hog Island, wrecking it completely. A number of bathhouses were carried away and bathing suits were scattered along the beach for nearly a mile. The loss to the company is about $3000. A two story frame cottage ... was carried off its foundation and deposited on the sand a total wreck. Loss about $2000. The new channel which was cut through Hog Island by a recent storm was deepened and widened twenty feet by this storm."
June 5, 1896. "The severe storms of the past winter, which swept this coat and nearly demolished Hog Island, and which were thought to have spoiled our beach, have in reality proved a boom to the village as a summer resort and a bathing place. The new inlet which was cut through by the action of the ocean has been considerably widened and deepened ... is now a fine channel. It has furnished a direct connection for sailing parties and blue fishing excursions to reach the fishing grounds in much less time than formerly, while bathing facilities are much better than ever owing to the new large roomy bathing pavilions and bath houses which have been erected in lieu of the miserable structures which served that purpose heretofore and which were washed to sea this winter."
September 10, 1896. "Hog Island is now a thing of the past... The Far Rockaway Ferry and Improvement company was early at work this morning to save what had not been washed out to sea or been totally destroyed by the pounding of last night's heavy seas. What was formerly the inlet is one mass of floating debris, composed of bathhouses, chairs, tables and other fixings and furniture of the pavilions and restaurants of the outer beach. Where there was formerly solid and continuous beach there could be seen this morning only small patches of sand covered with a few feet of water when the tide receded at daylight."
September 20, 1896. "What left of the beach known as Hog Island is now flooded and the houses are being carried to the mainland."
October 20, 1898. "Hog Island, at Far Rockaway, has been almost washed off the map [by the storms of yesterday and last night] and the inlet has become a rolling sea."
Finally.
Thanks again to the Brooklyn Public Library for cataloging the Brooklyn Eagle. Check it out:
http:// www.eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org
H E R O E S
A history of heroes:
Danny, GDM, Captain Jim, Fictional Company, Ed, Michael, Madagascar Institute, Cindy Vanden Bosch, Dirty Fingers, Porkchop, northguineahills, Front Room Gallery, DJ Olive, Steven, Ed and Brooke, Paris 1968, Corey and the Free Store, Christian, Mike Topper, Alisa Blanter, Jesse Green, Leo Raphaely, Peter Field, Jeff Stark, Stephen, Lee Azzarello, Nathan,
ToddP?, Dan and Elizabeth, Trevor, Brian Spinks, Andy Baker, Shellshag (Jen and Shell), Urban Stitch (Alessandro and William), Paul Ford, Bez, Brian, Alex Lucas, Leah Beeferman, Brent Arnould, The Daniel Carter Quartet, Estee Pierce, Alison Prete, Jason Enghert, Rosie Weinberg, Johns Manville, Black Label Bike Club, New York Harbor School, Eric Forman, Gregory Zaslavsky, Leslie Stem, Andres Colapinto, Anney Fresh, Justin Green,
BuildItGreen?, Mojo Fine Art Moving, Dave Sharps, David & Sharon Lefkowitz Hannah Marcus, Ruban, Cameron Hull, Bill Wasik, Alyssa Abeta & Zeb Stewart of Union Pool, Dylan Gauthier, Arnie at the Puppet Len
ding Library, Josh Wienstien, Dept. of Transportation Bridge operators, The Doctor, Erica Freas
W H A T I S T H I S ?
The Empty Vessel Project is an action, art, and sustainability experiment. We salvaged EV, a WWII rescue boat, to create a space for re-imagining the post-industrial urban environment. We are a non-profit, volunteer-run organization and encourage participation on all levels.
EV is moored on Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal. The boat is our first project. We invite you to come join us on board to work and play.
We host work parties, movie nights, seminars, concerts, dinners, and workshops. The Empty Vessel is available to realize your dreams and schemes.
This newsletter is your guide. It appears in your in box each week, listing events and tracking changes. Can it be better? Contact
pz@emptyvesselprojectREMOVEANTISPAMMEASURE.org with suggestions.
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