Photo: Nathan Kensinger
In a marina in the Far Rockaway neighborhood, in the New York City borough of Queens, a summer habitation has grown up from a group of abandoned docks and boats. Part artists’ colony and part junk yard, the Boatel at Marina 59 is described as :
... Summer adventure art camping on boats. The Boatel is an interactive art + sound installation that takes place on the docks of Marina 59, under the planes taking off from JFK airport and five blocks from Rockaway Beach.
23 artists from NYC and abroad are meticulously crafting a world out of the flotsam & jetsam of Jamaica Bay. A cluster of reclaimed/rebuilt docks + junk boats create worlds within worlds, an hour from the city and a thousand miles away from reality.
You are invited to visit our outpost for an overnight stay in one of our sixteen floating installations–a boat that sings, a patchwork treehouse, a Victorian-era naturalist’s laboratory, a hillbilly kama sutra honeymoon suite…
Though we aim to be hospitable, remember that you are joining us in the rough + tumble and please come adventure ready.
The Boatel is open Wednesdays to Sundays, May 16th to November 1st.
Rates for sleeper boats, which house between two and five people, start at $55 a night. Thanks to Tony Seideman for passing along the news.
Art huh? They say one man’s cheese is another man’s rotted milk….
If they are encouraging people to stay overnight, what arrangements have they made for human waste and sewage? Did they bother to apply for a permit for this?? Are the local authorities at all concerned about the fire hazard??
We’ve had too many incidents out here of people living in derelict vessels with no facilities whatsoever and it creates real problems when they are in a public waterway and dumping the toilet buckets over the side. This sounds like a new take on an Occupy movement to me and a budding public nuisance that the taxpayers will probably end up paying to clean up after these “artists” grow bored and the weather changes.
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