I'm running this fan page to learn more about marketing in Facebook, and of course, to support the Downtown Boathouse. 

Interesting things missing:

• You can't invite your friend to the page, unless you want them to be admins.
• No plugin for donations

I wonder what else people would want from their pages.  I'm a fan of several pages, but they don't seem to want to interact with me much.

My friend Ashley is a painter.

I helped her out recently and she transformed one of my favorite photos into a painting to thank me.  The photo is of kayaks stacked up in Riverside Park after the Downtown Boathouse Harrison Street Regatta.

Check out how cool this is...

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A few years ago, the Hudson River Park Trust evicted the Downtown Boathouse from Pier 26 in order to make way for a brand new pier, similar to the one we moved into up at Pier 96. We knew we'd likely be back, but, in the short term, that left us without an actual Downtown Boathouse location.

Then I heard we were moving a few kayaks to the south end of Pier 40. Of course, typical buracracy delayed the permit that would have allowed us to put a dock down for months and months. That meant that we started our Pier 40 program in 2006 midway through the summer. It started very slow. Construction around Pier 40 meant that you needed to walk halfway past the whole Pier to figure out how to get to us. The neighborhood saw the demolition at Pier 26 and thought we were gone for good. They didn't know anything about the "Downtown Boathouse" as an organization...they just knew about the free kayaks at 26.

Little by little, we started to get more and more traffic to Pier 40. I was there helping to run the program there every weekend. When we started up this season, we hung a big kayak by the jogging path with an unmissable arrow.

People climbed over concrete planters to get to us rather than figure out how to go around. Regulars to 26 started returning.

Pier 40, with only 15 kayaks, no trips, no classes, skyrocketed in popularity.

What also happened was that the whole Pier became a destination. We took people out for a paddle who otherwise couldn't get into the sold out trapeze school on the roof. We took kids out after the soccer games they played on the fields indoors, or runners who normally didn't think much about what was going on inside the pier, and previously just ran around it.  Pier 40 became even busier than our main location uptown. 

And now, the Hudson River Park Trust is voting this Wednesday on one of two commercialized proposals for the development of Pier 40.  The only politician who seems to be on the side of the people is State Assembly Member Deborah Glick.  She wrote an editorial regarding the Related Companies' proposal:

"Unfortunately, Related’s latest proposal for Pier 40, though it has improved from previous versions, remains one for a mega-entertainment center, complete with Cirque du Soleil as the anchor tenant, a huge banquet hall, 12 movie theaters and several large restaurants. Such large-scale uses do not belong on a pier in the midst of a park and bear no relationship to the park. Uses like Cirque du Soleil are not water-dependent and serve no local need. They could be just as easily — and more appropriately — located on 42nd St. or 52nd St. Related’s latest plan, which is expected to draw 2.7 million visitors each year to Pier 40, would substantially impair the park’s ability to serve as a safe and quiet respite, since it would bring large numbers of vehicles across the busy bike lane, endangering walkers, runners and bikers. In addition, the proposal would only add to the area’s congestion issues, running counter to the city’s traffic mitigation efforts in Lower Manhattan."

There's already a major movie complex right down the street, by Battery Park.  And Cirque du Soleil?  I doubt that most of the 20,000+ people who went kayaking with us last year can afford the Cirque du Soleil ticket price.  Plus, most of those people would probably have more fun if the trapeze school were given room to expand and they could fly through the air themselves versus paying more to watch other people do it.

Plus, last time I checked, we're supposed to be building a PARK, here right?  Isn't that what it's called?  Hudson River PARK.  Go ask a five year old what belongs in a park.  I don't think he'll answer banquet halls, movie theaters and restaurants.

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Over the last few years, Sandy Sobanski has led a group of Downtown Boathouse volunteers over to Hoboken's Frank Sinatra Park to bring free kayaking across the river.  Over time, the Hoboken kayaking program has become a summer fixture.  This year, the program will become even more permanent as it moves to the Maxwellhouse Boathouse and becomes it's own independent program. 

If you've ever worked with any kind of local government, you know that getting new programs run on public property isn't easy.  Sandy's been at this for a few years now and 2008 was all set to be a big year for her and the new program.

That was, until a Hoboken fire destroyed her and her husband's apartment on January 7th. Since then, they've been staying in temporary housing--a chain hotel... and hopefully they'll be able to move into something more permanent soon. 

Her insurance isn't going to cover all of her costs, and it's going to be some time before she's able to get her affairs in order to be able to get back work. Sandy works tirelessly, without asking for anything in return, to better the Hudson River waterfront and make sure its resources are made available to the public. 

To have this happen to her of all people isn't fair... not that anyone deserves to lose everything like this...  but to have someone who has given so much back to her local community have her own local environment go up in flames...  it's really quite tragic.

That's why I'm helping the Downtown Boathouse raise money to help her get back on her feet.  With nearly 2400 mostly local subscribers, I'm hoping there are enough people who have either participated in some of the Hudson River kayaking, or who just care about the waterfront, that are willing to help out someone who has done a lot of great work for it.  I'll be matching donations from my readers up to $500 to help Sandy out.

Here's how you can help...  even a five spot will go a long way... there's power in numbers. You can make out a check to: The Downtown Boathouse Inc. West Village Station Box 20214 New York, NY 10014-9998 Memo: Sandy Fire Relief (from Charlie's blog)

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Yesterday, Betsy the kayaker and I had planned to take a trip.  We were either going to paddle over to Hoboken to take part in another kayaker's Halloween paddle, or down around the Battery to Red Hook.

This is Betsy and her little red boat:

We got out into the channel and it was fairly obvious no such trip was occurring.  It was just too windy and too choppy to get anywhere. Actually, it was a hell of a lot of fun, but not really the kind of surf condusive to trips.

So we decided to paddle across to the Newport marina just to hangout in their protected enclave. 

Here are some more pics....

These fake dogs are meant to scare off birds...

Protection from the sea:

Lower Manhattan skyline:

Inside the boathouse:

My boat... Well, my borrowed DTBH boat anyway:

I guess they leave those snowflakes on all year:

Empire State Building in the background:

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Tags: kayakingpier40 dtbh