News & Events

Obscura Day: The Forgotten Beaches of the Forgotten Borough

An abandoned children’s hospital, disintegrating into the sea. Boarded-up bungalows, yards still littered with their evicted tenants’ beach toys. Fresh air initiatives. Eminent domain. Generations of beach-dwellers. Robert Moses.

Participants in this year’s Underwater New York Obscura Day excursion–part of Atlas Obscura‘s international day of exploration–will hear about all this and more at the adjacent beaches where over a century of drama has transpired: New Dorp Beach and Cedar Grove Beach.

Team UNY will be joined by Underwater New York contributing poet Jen Fitzgerald, a lifelong Staten Islander and one of Cedar Grove’s evicted residents, along with several guest experts, who will share the history and lead an exploration of these two beaches on their borough’s eastern shore.

The first session, from 1-4pm, sold out so quickly that we added a second 3pm start time. Ticketing and additional information can be found on the Obscura Day website. Also check out this article naming our event as an Obscura Day-highlight in this week’s Time Out New York.

If you’re able to get one of the few remaining tickets, be sure to bring cameras, sketchpads, notebooks and other documentation supplies! We hope the excursion will inspire writing, art, music and further exploration. If you can’t join us this weekend, stay tuned to hear all about it.

Thursday, April 26th, 2012 News & Events Comments Off

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

UNDERWATER NEW YORK is looking for flash fiction for a special new initiative we have in the works.

We’ve edited down our list of real-life underwater objects to ten weird, evocative items that no writer yet has been brave enough to tackle.

Choose one and tell us the story it inspires, in under 500 words.

We are looking for invention, but do require you to keep your object anchored where it was found—i.e. we give you the what and the where, you give us the how and the why. It’s always a good idea to read a few of the stories on our site to get a feel for what we publish.

Here are the ten objects we’ve selected for you! Visit our complete list for more information and images:

  1. A Bag of Lottery Tickets, Prospect Park Pond
  2. HMS Hussar, Westchester Creek
  3. Gowanda the Harp Seal, Gowanus Canal
  4. Baby Doll Heads, Dead Horse Bay
  5. Two Shipwrecks on top of each other, Hudson River
  6. Freight Train, Hudson River
  7. Scooter, Newtown Creek
  8. 1897 Pocket Watch, Coney Island
  9. Silicone Breasts, Coney Island
  10. Hebrew Newspaper Fossil, Dead Horse Bay

Deadline is May 1st—send your submission to underwaternewyork@gmail.com. Please include a short biography.

Monday, March 12th, 2012 News & Events Comments Off

An Underwater New York Poetry Reading

On August 24, six phenomenal UNY contributing poets–Matthea Harvey, KC Trommer, Katie Naughton, Danniel Schoonebeek, Allyson Paty and Cate Marvin–shared their poems from the site, as well as a small, stunning selection of other work. Matthea Harvey read several poems she wrote about, and for, mermaids (she had just returned from a mermaid convention!), Cate Marvin revealed Staten Island’s dark side and KC Trommer changed the way we’ll think about “On the Waterfront” forever. We luckily caught Katie Naughton before she sails off for warmer waters (Thailand!) and were swept away by Danniel and Allyson’s “Torch Songs,” a series of poems they write, and read, together. More than sixty poetry fans assembled at beautiful Poets House, overlooking the Hudson River, for the event and many stayed afterwards to drink wine, peruse the library and celebrate. Big thanks to the poets, to the audience and to Poets House!

Here are a selection of photographs from the event: 

 

 

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Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 News & Events Comments Off

Art in a Bottle: An UNY Artist Talk

On the evening of July 20th, about fifty people assembled at Chelsea gallery PPOW to hear an amazing roster of Underwater New York contributing artists speak about their work.

Amy Jean Porter, whose show OF LAMB was up in the project room of the gallery, kicked off the event by tying the humpback whale she drew for UNY into a larger narrative of her exploration of the natural world versus human culture. img_0692

Elizabeth Albert took it from there, explaining how her research of NYC’s fringe shores such as Dead Horse Bay and Coney Island Creek was sparked, in part, by Underwater New York and piquing everyone’s interest in a waterway-themed exhibition she is curating for the fall of 2012. img_0694

Marie Lorenz made us all feel like we were traveling NYC’s waterways on her Tide and Current Taxi, being inspired equally by the objects we encountered, the people we met and the ebb and flow of the water itself. img_0696

George Boorujy closed out the event with a talk followed by a bottle toss into the Hudson River, all of which was luckily captured on video by the very talented Stacey Szewczyk of the blog Hudson River Stories. Watch her piece below and be sure to follow up to track the fate of George’s project NY Pelagic!

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Saturday, August 6th, 2011 News & Events Comments Off
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