PortSide NewYork Summer 2017 Programs

For events on our ship MARY A. WHALEN below, our ship cat Chiclet requests that all dogs be on a leash.  Directions

TankerTime - Free!

Daytime, Weekdays 10:00am-6pm  See our TankerTime webpage
Relax, sketch, have lunch or a meeting on our main deck set with hammocks, tables and chairs.  Read books from our maritime library while you are aboard.  BYOB and your own food. 

Sunset TankerTime, Second Sundays, 5 pm - midnight (May, June, July, August, September) are over for the season. 
This year, for Second Sundays, we introduce a musicians’ jam "WaterStories of the Wine Dark Sea" with Mediterranean-themed music. This is the first phase of Mediterranean-themed programs that will reflect the major role that Mediterranean immigrants play in Red Hook's history and relates to our e-museum Red Hook WaterStories.  Bring an oud, a guitar, or clapping hands.  Bring your family histories of Mediterranean immigrants in Red Hook to add to Red Hook WaterStories.  

TankerTours - Free!

Sunday, 10/15, 12:30 to 6pm as part of Open House New York (OHNY). come tour the tanker MARY A. WHALEN an important artifact of Red Hook and New York harbor history, noteworthy for her role in a major 1975 Supreme Court legal decision and as the last of her kind in the USA. Learn about a bell boat, speaking tubes, cooking on a diesel stove, people who worked about, and life and work on a coastal oil tanker. Great for all ages; kids are allowed to touch things. Flat, rubber-soled shoes a must!   Take fun souvenir photos with our Salty Selfies" collection of props. Follow-up by touring Red Hook via our e-museum and community guide Red Hook WaterStories which lists all restaurants, bars, shops, galleries, etc. 

Existential Navigational Math”

Thursday 6/15/17 during nautical twilight 9:02 pm - 9:44 pm. FREE lecture with projections: Laurent Derobert’s existential mathematics lead to existential navigation, where drift is passion and wanderings are the destination. Musing through the relationship between navigation, astronomy, mathematics and poetry, the audience will deviate with him as he repurposes equations into haikus and formulas into metaphors of our own odysseys.  Derobert has presented at the Palais de Tokyo, MOMA PS1 and FIAC.   The lecture will be followed by a culinary performance by Paris-based Japanese artist Lei SAITO.

TankerTours Saturday, 6/3, 10am-5pm, come tour the tanker MARY A. WHALEN and celebrate the ship's 79th birthday of the tanker MARY A. WHALEN and the first weekend of NYC Ferry service in Red Hook right next to us!  

Superstorm Sandy 5th anniversary events

• Thurs, 10/26, 6-9 pm, opening of Watershed art projection on GBX grain terminal in the Parks ballfields overlooking the Henry St basin. Enter the Park from the west at Columbia Street at Halleck Street near IKEA or from the east at Clinton Street and Halleck. Speakers include:

Judy Brodsky -  Chairperson, New York Foundation for the Arts
Karen Blondel - Community Advocate, Fifth avenue committee
Anita Glesta - artist / Watershed
Ann Goodman - author of "Adapting to Change : The Business of Climate Resistance" 
Paul Mankiewicz -  Biologist/ Director of the Gaia Institute
Marjorie Martay - Founder of ArtW
Diana Reyna -  Deputy Borough President
Carolina Salguero - President, PortSide NewYork
Alexander Washburn - founding director of CRUX center for coastal resilience and urban excellence

• Sat, 10/28, 1:30 - 4:30 pm Red Hook Community Resiliency Roundtable discussion at Red Hook Library. 

In addition, during the summer, PortSide NewYork will be working on the following:

Our own Sandy recovery!! PortSide is trying to complete a FEMA superstorm Sandy alternate project valued at $322,000 by November of this year. We seek funding to cover the cost of resiliency upgrades to the MARY A. WHALEN. We must put the job out to bid, get the ship to a shipyard, complete the job, pay for the work and then be reimbursed by FEMA.

Red Hook WaterStories:  October 2016, PortSide launched version 1.0 of this e-museum and community guide We will continue historic research, update the website, create exhibit banners and install them around Atlantic Basin near the new NYC ferry terminal, and do outreach in the neighborhood to make the community aware of the Resiliency 101 and flood preparation info in the website. The site looks different on mobile and computers, so check it out both ways!

Growing school programs:   PortSide will continue work to expand our educational programs for school kids. Spring semester, we contacted all Red Hook schools to increase programs with them. We also began development of “Look Who’s Here” an inventory of wildlife in, on and near Red Hook’s waterfront that will provide a basis for school curricula and be available to the public via our e-museum Red Hook WaterStories at www.redhookwaterstories.org and. More at about our school programs at 

CTE vocational summer internships: PortSide trains high school students to do preservation work on our historic ship and we give them the experience of boating in small boats. In many cases, this is the students’ first paid job.  See photos of their work and read the interns’ own words in blogposts from the past two summers (2016 and 2015)

Training union labor: PortSide has a partnership with District Council 9 (DC9) going back to 2014. They use our ship as a training site for their Local 806 (Bridge Painters) and Metal Polishing division. More in this blogpost.

Restoration of our historic ship: PortSide’s own staff and volunteers execute restoration work that cannot be done by the interns and union.