Contemporary artists have taken notice of the waterfront, even in New York, the most lubberly and inwardly-focused of all the coastal cities. Connie Hockaday’s Boggsville Boatel is a new way to experience the funkiness of waterfront culture out in Far Rockaway, Queens, and, by virtue of the age of the boats involved, ot touch a former culture of recreational boating. She has strung together a flotilla of old cruisers, houseboats, and fishing boats, put them up for rent, and called it a “Boatel.” Who’s to stop her? This is the border of the sea. She has gotten a lot of press, from NYT to NPR. 

The project is part of Sea Worthy, the collaborative series of exhibitions I warned you about this past spring. I went down to see it over the summer, and Connie ended up buying me breakfast. Hopefully we can work together in the future, there will be some contemporary art at the Antique Boat Museum soon. Not surprisingly, when I visited the Boatel on Sunday morning it was in a drizzly a post-party haze, with folks from other projects that turn refuse into floating art. Swimming Cities and Miss Rockaway were well represented, more about them later. 

To find out more about the Boatel, visit the page at Flux Factory. You can still book tickets for this weekend, Connie has leant the place to Swimming Cities for a fundraiser for the India Raft Project. Take a look here.