WaterStories Programs
PortSide produces and hosts NYC’s most innovative waterfront programs
Please see this one-pager about what PortSide does and our impact. Our our awards and accomplishments are here.
PortSide NewYork is an award-winning nonprofit that creates programs on and off our flagship the MARY A. WHALEN and ashore and afloat in industrial spaces, parks, storefronts, on other historic ships and in the virtual realm. Our work is multi-faceted, interdisciplinary and often multimedia. We create documentary programs and also create, co-produce and host cultural programs with water, waterfront and maritime themes (we call them WaterStories) that are not typically found in maritime museums.
Why do we do those? We believe in the power of the arts and education in and of themselves, AND we see them as a way to bring people to the waterfront and maritime topics. Traditional maritime heritage programs were speaking to the choir; and PortSide wants maritime to have a bigger choir. During the COVID19 period, we relaxed our rule about WaterStories themes to select cultural groups which are shut down due to lack of outdoor space. If our ship deck and popup PortSide Park could help bring art to the world in crisis, we tried to help and did!
Our work is impactful. PortSide consistently creates “harbor firsts” in New York that then inspire the programs of others. We have brought more historic ships to Brooklyn than major parks.
We sometimes partner with other institutions such as the Brooklyn Public Library, Pioneer Works, Jalopy Theatre, and multiple maritime nonprofit organizations and businesses.
Regular programs on our historic ship, the retired coastal oil tanker MARY A. WHALEN, have the word tanker in the name as in TankerTunes, TankerFlicks, TankerTalks, TankerTours, and TankerTime.
If you want to propose a WaterStories program idea, please email chiclet@portsidenewyork.org.
Program Highlights
PortSide has wanted to have building space since our first 2005 business plan. The lack of it has made our cultural programs be more special-event based than we would like, largely shut us down in winter, drastically reduced our ability to do exhibits, and prevented us from having boat buildling program for youth. Rocking the Boat in the Bronx is an example we much admire.
education
See our webpage Education. PortSide NewYork educates school students, AND we believe education is a life-long process; so we also educate adults, policy makers and the media about the waterfront. We create WaterStories programs on and about the ship MARY A. WHALEN, and about the waterfront that bring multiple themes to life.
Read this blogpost showing how we inspired Red Hook’s PS 676 to become Brooklyn’s first maritime-themed elementary school. Our educational programs serve 1st grade through graduate school.
African american maritime heritage
In May 2018, PortSide launched our African American Maritime Heritage program (AfAmMH). It’s the only one in the region, to our knowledge. This encompasses stories of Black achievement, struggles against the sea and racism, and aspects of daily life and work (it’s not all derring-do) around the country. This part of the African American story is largely forgotten, even though some of these stories and people were famous in their day. We launched this before fully “ready” in terms of funding and partners in response to the virulent, resurgent racism and fake news/fake history about USA race history.
Exhibits
red hook waterstories - e-MUSEUM & COMMUNITY GUIDE
October 2016, we launched Red Hook WaterStories which tells New York City’s maritime story in microcosm via the fascinating past and present of our peninsular neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn. It includes resources on flood prepartion, due to the local devastation by hurricane Sandy in 2012 which relates to our resiliency policy work (more on that below). We launched Version 2.0 in May 2018 during the "MARY Month of May" festival honoring the 80th year of our ship MARY A. WHALEN. We continually add and update.
9/11 exhibit
PortSide researched, curated and installed the multimedia exhibit MARINER'S RESPONSE TO 9/11 on the historic ship LILAC on Pier 25 in Manhattan. It included photos, videos, oral histories, a reading room and guest speakers. This marked the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It was open for two months and is memorialized on our website where we continue to update. PortSide presents more content, and more informed content on this topic than the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
Multimedia Book Reading in a shipyard
Our 2007 book reading "A BOOK LAUNCH WHERE SHIPS LAUNCH,” shares with our TankerOpera below the PortSide approach of creating a cultural event that grows access to and understanding of maritime by location choice, interpretation and interventions. For the book "The Graving Dock" by Gabriel Cohen, we created the first cultural event at GMD Shipyard in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We negotiated access to this location related to the book where attendees could look into and photograph the huge graving dock where welding was underway. Inside the the “Tailshaft and Valve Shop,” which we lightly styled and lit, guests chatted over hot cider, beer, wine and sandwiches while a slide show of images, overlaid with quotes from the novel that we created was projected inside the shed wall. A video of churning water in the Buttermilk Channel lit up the wall behind Gabriel Cohen while he read. A fact sheet about shipyard operations was on every seat.
resident artist program
We have hosted residencies as part of the citywide Poets Afloat program and participating in the annual Red Hook Open Studios. Our annual TankerTours for the ship’s birthday now include reserving the morning for an artist inspiration program.
resiliency ART Project
This 2017 project pegged to the 5th anniversary of hurricane Sandy is a classic example of PortSide partnering and innovative cultural work. We collaborated with noted artist Katherine Behar, and Pioneer Works. PortSide helped shape the presentation concept for how the final work "Maritime Messaging" would be presented (on the day’s incoming NYC Ferries to Red Hook, referencing the incoming surge of hurricane Sandy water), and we contributed all the text from our e-museum Red Hook Water Stories which Behar put through a neural network to "teach water to talk." A video presented moving water, and the AI voice speaking the WaterStories language it learned about Red Hook while words typed over the video. Performers presented the work on all NYC Ferries arriving in Red Hook that day, and the sound was installed on our ship both inside and outside. The sound piece was again installed in our ship’s engine room during Red Hook Open Studios of October 2019.
Performing arts
TANKERopera
In 2007, PortSide co-produced Puccini's "Il Tabarro" the first public performance in a Port Authority marine terminal, staged on the MARY A. WHALEN. The opera was performed and co-produced by Vertical Player Repertory and directed by Beth Greenberg of the New York City Opera. PortSide created a multi-faceted event along the entire pier with a maritime exhibit and installations, mermaid greeters, sunset reception and cash bar. With a background of gantry cranes and passing ships, the effect was vividly staged opera AND a great port appreciation event. It netted rave reviews from local, national, and international press and sell-out crowds. We also set up the on-line ticketing, growing the opera company's audience from 50 a night to over 400.
TANKERTUNES
We have presented diverse concerts including new and traditional folk music, sea chanties and Sacred Harp. Our Second Sundays TankerTime from 2017 through 2019 hosted jams of “Music of the Wine Dark Sea” or Mediterranean music from many countries. Responding to COVID19, we created PortSide’s Pandemic PopUp minipark while our pier and ship were closed, and musicians were busking and playing scheduled and popup concerts there and in the adjoining parking lot.
OTHER
TankerTours
PortSide customizes tours of the MARY A. WHALEN to different audiences and varied themes. The latter include the history of work and crew of this ship, fuel consumption, distribution and sustainability issues, the harbor economy and ecology, hurricane Sandy, resiliency and climate change. We offer TankerTours as part of the citywide OHNY weekend, in May for the ship’s birthday, and to school groups from 1st grade to post-graduate students and as professional education. We offered TankerTours in Spanish at a salsa concert. We love new ideas and new audiences; hit us up!
TANKERFLICKS
We screen water-themed movies, documentaries and feature films, on the tanker. The deck is the auditorium.
TANKERTALKS
This book readings and talks have included: “Deep Water” a gay love story and sailor’s memoir about, HET VEER about the past, present, and future of New York's waterfront markets; knot-tying and marlinspike demonstrations; the romance and commerce of travel by steamboat. In 2020, we shifted to more virtual events. Our most sustained TankerTalk series was our daily sunset live stream, begun during COVID19 to provide a view and sunset zen to New Yorkers shut in during the social-distancing lockdown. We did 160 of these during 2020.
TANKERTIME
During TankerTime, the public is invited to enjoy the main deck of the tanker, cool sea breezes, and harbor sunsets. You can bring dinner, a bottle, a book, or a sketchpad. We provide hammocks, tables and chairs, free art supplies, a kiddie pool in summer, and new in 2023, the BookTent with a kids free library, eg books you can take home. Weekdays 10-6pm, most weekend days at the same time. Volunteer and help us do this more weekend evenings! Just takes 1 person at a time!
WALKING TOURS
PortSide has organized walking tours for the general public and for educational institutions. We have tours in our virtual museum, a walking tour based on one given to Fulbright scholars and another for Columbia University graduate historic preservation studio. We can create a tour for you!
Visiting Vessels
PortSide has brought more visiting vessels to Brooklyn than major parks. The vessels have come from overseas, out of state, upstate and Manhattan. Some are now homeported in NYC as a result of our work. It’s a diverse range of vessels: tall ships, tugboats, a British racing yacht, a buoy tender, rowing gigs, kayaks, and a large historic fleet from the Netherlands. The list includes the historic sloop CLEARWATER, the racer MAIDEN with her all-female crew, Connecticut’s flagship AMISTAD, Philadelphia’s flagship GAZELA, the historic tug CORNELL, the Steamer LILAC. In 2009, we helped bring the large Dutch Flat Bottom Fleet to Atlantic Basin from the Netherlands to commemorate the Hudson Quadricentennial festivities. Some 400 visitors swarmed the pier.
PortSide, working with the NYC EDC, secured a 2009 winter berth in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook for two impressive schooners: the 158’ replica CLIPPER CITY and historic 82’ SHEARWATER. PortSide proposed that they offer free community sails and distributed 550 free tickets in late April and early May 2010. We have done subsequent free community sails with the two vessels which are now homeported on the same pier.
PortSide is also a force promoting visiting vessels arranged by other groups. Our 2012 promotion of OpSail/Fleet Week was very impactful. Our guide to the ships in Red Hook was so good, OpSail used it. Our webpage for those ships attracted over 26,000 hits in May. Once Fleet Week became coming to the cruise terminal next to us, we began working closely with the Navy to promote it. Our Twitter and Facebook pages provide a steady stream of updates about exhibit vessels coming to NYC.
We operate a visiting vessel ourselves. We offered the first, free, bilingual historic ship tours in NYC when we took the MARY A. WHALEN to a Sunset Park salsa concert. We called our TankerTours “Petrolero con salseros.” 400 people streamed aboard; it was the first time on a ship for many.
We deal with small boats too! In 2006, PortSide invented Kayak Valet. It’s now common practice in New York City. It’s offered by the Red Hook Boaters on their program days. We designed the event to raise awareness that people want to visit by water and to promote that concept. We watched kayaks in Valentino Park so people could paddle in, leave their boats and visit Red Hook. We secured discounts from local stores and handed out our visitor guides to Red Hook.
Policy work
Advocacy
See our webpages Advocacy and Waterways Info for examples. PortSide engages in harbor advocacy work in many ways. We submit testimony, we work directly with government agencies and the staff of elected officials, we answer questions posed by harbor uses, the general public and the media. We also use our social media to promote a greater understanding of our harbor and better urban waterways.
Recovery & Resiliency
Starting in late 2012, in response to the destructive WaterStories of hurricane Sandy, PortSide stepped up to offer recovery and resiliency work for our neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn. We were honored for our Sandy prevention and recovery work by the Obama White House and the NYS Senate. Our recovery work served hundreds. Our resiliency work is ongoing and helps thousands: our founder and ED Carolina Salguero was appointed by New York State to Red Hook’s NY Rising committee and she and our staff contributed major parts of the final plan. We have a Resiliency 101 section in our e-museum. At the White House, when receiving our Champions of Change award, we proposed the idea that became the FEMA and then NYC Sandy High Water Mark sign. We got one installed here in Atlantic Basin. We did all this while being Sandy victims ourselves. We battled red tape for years to get a Sandy recovery project approved by FEMA. Please support by donating here.
