On Monday, October 18th, UNY invited a new audience to dive into “That Sinking Feeling,” the water-themed 24th installment of the monthly storytelling series TOLD. TOLD was hosted by Seth Lind, produced by Heidi Grumelot and presented by Horse Trade.

The lineup included:

- Ted McAdams, flailing in the deep with only a nemesis to help him

- Steven Berkowitz, riding on a ferry boat to nowhere

- Penny Pollack, navigating tipsy waters a sloshed friend leaves behind

- Boris Timanovsky, making flood-soaked first impressions

And waterlogged interludes curated by UNY including: 

-animation based on Boris's story by John Urquhart: 

 -poetry by Matthea Harvey

-and an original song by Deidre Rodman Struck

UNY founding editor Nicki Pombier Berger collected stories at the Underwater New York Story Tank, hosted by PortSide at Pier 11, Atlantic Basin, City of Water Day, July 24, 2010. Here is some of what she gathered! 

Nick Capodice, an educator at the Tenement Museum and tour guide with Urban Oyster, talks about why the Williamsburg is his favorite of the bridges spanning the East River, and what happened on a recent walk across it…

Author, Bronx native, unearther and explainer of New York City’s sunken and buried past,Robert Apuzzo talks with Lucy Oxios about their work restoring a 1952 tugboat, their plans to find the elusive HMS Hussar, an 18th century frigate that sank in Hell’s Gate, and the treasure they found on their first date. Listen to their story and check out these pictures ofThe Bronx at the Labor Day Tug Races September 5.

UNY contributing author Adam Sexton lists an impressive number of NYC waterways, and describes one with a memorable funk and an appetite for soccer balls….

David remembers finding a mysterious object on a Staten Island beach…

Maria Nieto reflects on what the waters of Red Hook mean to her, and what happened one Christmas Day on the pier behind Fairway….

These objects were collected and photographed by Sonna Schupak and other participants in the Child Development Institute’s Empowering Teachers Program at Sarah Lawrence College, during a day-long Dead Horse Bay excursion and workshop led by Underwater New York. Some of them inspired poetry by CDI participants Cindy Mahan and Helene Alalouf. 

On July 8th, Underwater New York hosted an evening of poetry and performance at Observatory, the Brooklyn art space attached to Proteus Gowanus. Visitors were free to peruse the exhibition Transport III with Underwater New York and listened to a reading by the extraordinary poet Alex Dimitrov, a dramatic reading of the outrageous 1886 New York Times article entitled "A Barren Island Mystery: An Amateur Photographer's Peril--Was it an Attempt at Murder? " by actor Mark Emerson Smith, and underwater-y selections from the adjacent Reanimation Library. 

With a line-up almost too good to be true, Underwater New York presented a reading at Bryant Park's Word for Word series on June 30th, 2010.  

Readers included Jennifer Egan, Said Sayrafiezadeh, Ed Park, Deb Olin Unferth and Nelly Reifler. If that wasn't enough, Ben Greenman presented a letter-writing activity to the audience and Michael Hearst played some songs for underwater animals. Ed Park cracked a joke about Bryant Park being named after his grandfather and Michael's thermin drew curious stares from across the park. The event was absolutely amazing, and luckily  Stacey Szewczyk, a journalist and multimedia producer and the mind behind Hudson River Stories, an excellent blog “dedicated to the stories that flow from the Hudson River and the New Yorkers who draw sustenance and inspiration from it,” was there to film it.